1/31/10
On this last Sunday before the Illinois primary, Governor Pat Quinn (no relation) and Comptroller Dan Hynes, Governor Quinn’s (no relation) opponent in the Democratic gubernatorial race, are campaigning in Black churches on the South and West Sides of Chicago. The activities of these two pols, neither of which I can support, despite Quinn’s (no relation) terrific last name and Hynes’s geographical origins, and almost equally attractive last name, brings up a point that has nothing to do with the merits of either’s candidacy.
When a church hosts a campaigning candidate, be it a Black Pentecostal, Baptist, or AME church in a big city welcoming a Democrat, a White Evangelical church in the rural reaches of our state or country hosting a Republican “passionate conservative” (See today’s other post, “I WAS MISINFORMED.”), or a Catholic parish in the suburbs throwing open its doors to a GOP opportunist willing to exploit the abortion issue for Catholic votes, isn’t there something intrinsically wrong happening? Aren’t the faithful in those churches seeking salvation, or at least some form of it, in the temporal world of secular politics rather than in the eternal words and assurances of Jesus Christ? Isn’t there something inherently un-Christian going on when Christians place their confidence in the promises of perfidious pols, or even those few good and honest people who occasionally seek public office?
There is also the constitutional question here: Should places of worship, with their property tax exemptions and other forms of favorable treatment by government and its tax code, be advocating for political candidates? But the more profound question is where the faithful are placing their faith when they welcome politicians to their churches and services.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
“I WAS MISINFORMED.”
1/31/10
Today’s (i.e., Sunday, 1/31/10’s) Chicago Sun-Times reports that Representative Jean Schmidt, a “passionately conservative” Republican from Ohio and an ally of the “birther” movement, which contends that President Obama is not a U.S. citizen and thus is an illegitimate president, strategically positioned herself during, and immediately after, the State of the Union address so that she could personally greet the president and get his autograph on copy of the Speech.
Representative Schmidt explained away this paradox by stating that she was merely trying to get government help for a uranium enrichment plant in her district. Representative Schmidt apparently has a firm enough grip on the obvious to see the irony in her alternately lambasting the president’s integrity and shamelessly begging him for the favor of an autograph but apparently doesn’t possess the mental horsepower to see the at least equal irony in her response. It seems that this “passionate conservative” has no problem with big government, as in federally funded uranium enrichment plants, as long as the remunerative rewards of that big government are channeled in her direction.
Huh.
I always thought that conservatism had its basis in a fundamental distrust of government power, a vigilant concern for liberty, support of a muscular yet humble foreign policy that limited itself to the defense of American interests, and an attendant opposition to the overreaching power of governing, and especially of federal, institutions, or something like that. I wasn’t aware that “passionate conservatism” amounts to supporting the GOP in its efforts to expand government in its proper direction, i.e., toward Republican constituencies, opposing the Democratic Party even on those rare occasions when it actually supports the advance of liberty, endlessly exuding boundless and blind enthusiasm for sending even more young men and women to their graves in conflicts that seemingly serve only to enrich the defense contractors who underwrite your (and, come to think of it, the other) party, and ensuring the continuation of further government encroachment into the lives of individuals as long as there is something, usually money, in it for one and one’s constituents.
I guess according to Jean Schmidt and all those other “passionate conservatives,” I have been wrong all along.
Today’s (i.e., Sunday, 1/31/10’s) Chicago Sun-Times reports that Representative Jean Schmidt, a “passionately conservative” Republican from Ohio and an ally of the “birther” movement, which contends that President Obama is not a U.S. citizen and thus is an illegitimate president, strategically positioned herself during, and immediately after, the State of the Union address so that she could personally greet the president and get his autograph on copy of the Speech.
Representative Schmidt explained away this paradox by stating that she was merely trying to get government help for a uranium enrichment plant in her district. Representative Schmidt apparently has a firm enough grip on the obvious to see the irony in her alternately lambasting the president’s integrity and shamelessly begging him for the favor of an autograph but apparently doesn’t possess the mental horsepower to see the at least equal irony in her response. It seems that this “passionate conservative” has no problem with big government, as in federally funded uranium enrichment plants, as long as the remunerative rewards of that big government are channeled in her direction.
Huh.
I always thought that conservatism had its basis in a fundamental distrust of government power, a vigilant concern for liberty, support of a muscular yet humble foreign policy that limited itself to the defense of American interests, and an attendant opposition to the overreaching power of governing, and especially of federal, institutions, or something like that. I wasn’t aware that “passionate conservatism” amounts to supporting the GOP in its efforts to expand government in its proper direction, i.e., toward Republican constituencies, opposing the Democratic Party even on those rare occasions when it actually supports the advance of liberty, endlessly exuding boundless and blind enthusiasm for sending even more young men and women to their graves in conflicts that seemingly serve only to enrich the defense contractors who underwrite your (and, come to think of it, the other) party, and ensuring the continuation of further government encroachment into the lives of individuals as long as there is something, usually money, in it for one and one’s constituents.
I guess according to Jean Schmidt and all those other “passionate conservatives,” I have been wrong all along.
Friday, January 29, 2010
IRISH EYES HAVE ANOTHER REASON TO FROWN
1/29/10
Of all the posts on this blog, the one on which I received the most compliments was my 3/27/09 piece, IRISH EYES HAVE A REASON TO SMILE, in which I wholeheartedly agreed with the cancellation of the annual drunken brawl, and slap in the faces of my forefathers, that the South Side Irish Parade had become. I heartily recommend that piece both on it own merit (If I can say so myself, it is one terrific piece of writing, if something of a departure from the normal fare, if such a thing exists, of this blog.) and as background for this post.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports on the efforts of a Mr. George Kelleher, a resident of Evergreen Park, one of the suburbs abutting the 19th Ward in which the South Side Irish Parade was held until its cancellation after last year’s especially egregious display of shameless behavior. Young Mr. Kelleher is leading a crusade to conduct a pub crawl (The term “pub crawl” always seemed to be a bit too cutesy-pie for my tastes, something more akin to Lincoln, than to Western, Avenue, but that is another matter.) along the western side of Western Avenue, known in some quarters as the “Irish Death March,” which is an appropriate moniker in more ways than one, on the traditional day of the parade, the Sunday before St. Patrick’s Day. This year, that Sunday is March 14. It appears that if Mr. Kelleher and the 13,000 folks who have gone to Facebook to pledge to show up for the revelry have their way, a drunken orgy of (literally) urinating and regurgitating on Irish-American heritage with a parade as a rationalization will be replaced with a drunken orgy of (literally) urinating and regurgitating on Irish-American heritage with no parade as a rationalization. St. Patrick, St. Brendan, St. Bridget, Eamon DeValera, Michael Collins, James Joyce, Cardinal O’Connor, and Richard J. Daley would be so proud!
I echo the sentiments of one Sarah Cullina, a resident of the neighborhood who, according to the Sun-Times, responded to Mr. Kelleher’s plans with the following:
“On behalf of those who live in Beverly…If you don’t have a party to attend please don’t show up in the neighborhood, get blacked out by 10:00 A.M., puke, fight, go to the bathroom, or have sex on our front lawns or in our alleys or backyards.”
I write this piece, however, not to lambaste Mr. Kelleher and his plans to further caricature his forefathers who probably didn’t know that they came to this country and worked like mules on canals and railroads so that their descendants could equate their heritage, country, and Church with alcohol addled lasciviousness. No, I write this piece to use Alderman Ginger Rugai’s reaction to these developments to lambaste our country’s political class.
I have nothing against Alderman Rugai specifically; I know her only to say hi and I doubt if she would know me were we to meet at Sacred Heart, Lume’s, St. Walter, or one of the other places in the old neighborhood I so much enjoy visiting. I think I voted for her in 1991. She seems to do a pretty good job for the ward. She garners only two criticisms, from what I hear: First, she, like one of her predecessors as 19th Ward alderman, Thomas Fitzpatrick, known as Tommy Fitz, is regarded as little more than a silent lapdog for Mayor Daley. That, however, is not considered much of a criticism by most 19th Ward voters, or certainly enough 19th Ward voters to vote out Ms. Rugai. Second, she has been accused of favoring Beverly, the large, somewhat more upscale neighborhood in the eastern reaches of the ward, where she resides, over Mt. Greenwood, the large, somewhat less upscale neighborhood in the western reaches of the ward. She seems to have, in recent years, remedied, or at least tried to appear to remedy, her apparent, to some people, favoritism toward Beverly at the expense of the rest of the ward. Whatever the criticisms of Ms. Rugai, they have never been of sufficient intensity to cause her political trouble; though she usually garners more than token opposition, she generally wins reelection quite handily and thus has been alderman of the 19th since 1990. Rumor (and perhaps more than rumor; I don’t get back to the ward as often as I’d like) has it that she will face a far more serious than usual challenge in 2011 from relatively new ward committeeman, Matt O’Shea, in one of the intramural battles that has come to characterize 19th ward politics in recent years. It will be interesting to see where such neighborhood political denizens like the Sheahans, the Hynses, the Joyces, and the Darts come down should such a contest develop, but, at least for now, Rugai seems to be quite comfortable in her office. But I digress.
Alderman Rugai, when she had gotten wind of Mr. Kelleher’s plans to further dishonor both my old neighborhood and my ancestry, said “I doubt very much that number (13,000 Facebook “definites” and 7,000 Facebook “probables” for Mr. Kelleher’s “pub crawl”) of people will actually show up. But I’ve made police aware of it (Emphasis mine), and I think they will be prepared.”
Alderman Rugai has “made police aware of it”? Since when do the police need a politician to tell them that there might be trouble brewing in their district, a district that has one of the heaviest concentrations in the city of residents who are police officers and fire fighters? Alderman Rugai, probably unwittingly, by making this asinine statement, betrays the hubris that characterizes the modern day politician. We, all of us, the police, everybody, are helpless without guidance from our political “leadership.” The police can’t do their jobs, we can’t live our lives, without help from our obvious betters who have somehow hoodwinked and bought their way into public office.
Again, Alderman Rugai is not at all unique in this attitude; everyone, it seems, who holds or seeks a public office is guided by the idea that he or she is guided by some superior wisdom and insight that only he or she, or his or her class of Olympians, possesses. It is his or her mission to favor the benighted masses by serving as their leader. If doing so results in him or her making a few bucks on the side, hey, he or she deserves it. What would the unwashed masses do without them?
And, no, I’m not making too much of a seemingly idle comment by a relatively obscure politician. That Rugai probably didn’t even notice, and probably can’t recall, the comment just shows how ingrained such messianic thinking is in our politicians.
Of all the posts on this blog, the one on which I received the most compliments was my 3/27/09 piece, IRISH EYES HAVE A REASON TO SMILE, in which I wholeheartedly agreed with the cancellation of the annual drunken brawl, and slap in the faces of my forefathers, that the South Side Irish Parade had become. I heartily recommend that piece both on it own merit (If I can say so myself, it is one terrific piece of writing, if something of a departure from the normal fare, if such a thing exists, of this blog.) and as background for this post.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports on the efforts of a Mr. George Kelleher, a resident of Evergreen Park, one of the suburbs abutting the 19th Ward in which the South Side Irish Parade was held until its cancellation after last year’s especially egregious display of shameless behavior. Young Mr. Kelleher is leading a crusade to conduct a pub crawl (The term “pub crawl” always seemed to be a bit too cutesy-pie for my tastes, something more akin to Lincoln, than to Western, Avenue, but that is another matter.) along the western side of Western Avenue, known in some quarters as the “Irish Death March,” which is an appropriate moniker in more ways than one, on the traditional day of the parade, the Sunday before St. Patrick’s Day. This year, that Sunday is March 14. It appears that if Mr. Kelleher and the 13,000 folks who have gone to Facebook to pledge to show up for the revelry have their way, a drunken orgy of (literally) urinating and regurgitating on Irish-American heritage with a parade as a rationalization will be replaced with a drunken orgy of (literally) urinating and regurgitating on Irish-American heritage with no parade as a rationalization. St. Patrick, St. Brendan, St. Bridget, Eamon DeValera, Michael Collins, James Joyce, Cardinal O’Connor, and Richard J. Daley would be so proud!
I echo the sentiments of one Sarah Cullina, a resident of the neighborhood who, according to the Sun-Times, responded to Mr. Kelleher’s plans with the following:
“On behalf of those who live in Beverly…If you don’t have a party to attend please don’t show up in the neighborhood, get blacked out by 10:00 A.M., puke, fight, go to the bathroom, or have sex on our front lawns or in our alleys or backyards.”
I write this piece, however, not to lambaste Mr. Kelleher and his plans to further caricature his forefathers who probably didn’t know that they came to this country and worked like mules on canals and railroads so that their descendants could equate their heritage, country, and Church with alcohol addled lasciviousness. No, I write this piece to use Alderman Ginger Rugai’s reaction to these developments to lambaste our country’s political class.
I have nothing against Alderman Rugai specifically; I know her only to say hi and I doubt if she would know me were we to meet at Sacred Heart, Lume’s, St. Walter, or one of the other places in the old neighborhood I so much enjoy visiting. I think I voted for her in 1991. She seems to do a pretty good job for the ward. She garners only two criticisms, from what I hear: First, she, like one of her predecessors as 19th Ward alderman, Thomas Fitzpatrick, known as Tommy Fitz, is regarded as little more than a silent lapdog for Mayor Daley. That, however, is not considered much of a criticism by most 19th Ward voters, or certainly enough 19th Ward voters to vote out Ms. Rugai. Second, she has been accused of favoring Beverly, the large, somewhat more upscale neighborhood in the eastern reaches of the ward, where she resides, over Mt. Greenwood, the large, somewhat less upscale neighborhood in the western reaches of the ward. She seems to have, in recent years, remedied, or at least tried to appear to remedy, her apparent, to some people, favoritism toward Beverly at the expense of the rest of the ward. Whatever the criticisms of Ms. Rugai, they have never been of sufficient intensity to cause her political trouble; though she usually garners more than token opposition, she generally wins reelection quite handily and thus has been alderman of the 19th since 1990. Rumor (and perhaps more than rumor; I don’t get back to the ward as often as I’d like) has it that she will face a far more serious than usual challenge in 2011 from relatively new ward committeeman, Matt O’Shea, in one of the intramural battles that has come to characterize 19th ward politics in recent years. It will be interesting to see where such neighborhood political denizens like the Sheahans, the Hynses, the Joyces, and the Darts come down should such a contest develop, but, at least for now, Rugai seems to be quite comfortable in her office. But I digress.
Alderman Rugai, when she had gotten wind of Mr. Kelleher’s plans to further dishonor both my old neighborhood and my ancestry, said “I doubt very much that number (13,000 Facebook “definites” and 7,000 Facebook “probables” for Mr. Kelleher’s “pub crawl”) of people will actually show up. But I’ve made police aware of it (Emphasis mine), and I think they will be prepared.”
Alderman Rugai has “made police aware of it”? Since when do the police need a politician to tell them that there might be trouble brewing in their district, a district that has one of the heaviest concentrations in the city of residents who are police officers and fire fighters? Alderman Rugai, probably unwittingly, by making this asinine statement, betrays the hubris that characterizes the modern day politician. We, all of us, the police, everybody, are helpless without guidance from our political “leadership.” The police can’t do their jobs, we can’t live our lives, without help from our obvious betters who have somehow hoodwinked and bought their way into public office.
Again, Alderman Rugai is not at all unique in this attitude; everyone, it seems, who holds or seeks a public office is guided by the idea that he or she is guided by some superior wisdom and insight that only he or she, or his or her class of Olympians, possesses. It is his or her mission to favor the benighted masses by serving as their leader. If doing so results in him or her making a few bucks on the side, hey, he or she deserves it. What would the unwashed masses do without them?
And, no, I’m not making too much of a seemingly idle comment by a relatively obscure politician. That Rugai probably didn’t even notice, and probably can’t recall, the comment just shows how ingrained such messianic thinking is in our politicians.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
“YOU JUST TAAAAALLLLLKKKKK, TALK TOO MUCH”
1/28/10
There will be much yammering about last night’s State of the Union speech today and maybe tomorrow. Then the speech will be forgotten, as it should be. Despite its being one of the few specific presidential duties specified in our Constitution, the speech has of late, mimicking American society, descended into banality and pointlessness.
There was one telling line in last night’s speech which has garnered notice, but not for the right reasons. That line was
“To say no to everything may be good short term politics, but it’s not leadership.”
President Obama, like most politicians, is usually wrong; the modern day politician’s life experience, or, more properly, lack thereof, virtually dictates that s/he will be wrong the vast majority of the time. But, in this case, the President was monstrously wrong; in fact, the opposite of what he said is precisely true.
Any self-aggrandizing showman who wishes to ingratiate himself to an uninformed and self-consumed public can role out a long list of the things he can give to people, an extensive itemization of the requests he will grant with other people’s money, though few can do so with the eloquence that Mr. Obama displayed last night. But it is the true leader who can say “No” to the wishes of the public, or at least those elements of the public, who will, perhaps rationally, always demand “More, more, more” as long as someone else is paying for it. Playing Santa Claus isn’t leadership; it is pandering in its most egregious and shameless form. A true leader says, perhaps not literally, but nonetheless effectively, “No. You can’t have that because we simply cannot afford it.” Yes, I know that sounds strange, but that is only because we have not had leaders in Washington, or in most geographic centers of political power, for generations. That is why we are in the fiscal and financial soup in which we currently swim…until we drown.
The analogy, by the way, to parenting is obvious. A real parent does not see his or her role as wish fulfiller, but, rather, character former. Thank God that the politicians are not our parents, but, increasingly, the American people are coming to see their politicians, and their government, as a sort of sugar daddy, dispensing favors and generally allowing his children to avoid the painful decisions necessary in order to grow up.
Mr. Obama uttered the aforementioned whopper in response to a perception that the Republicans are the party that says “No.” Would that this were the case! The Republicans talk a good game, as did Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell last night. But when they are in power, GOPers act just like Democrats, seeing government’s role as favor dispenser, problem solver, and pain reliever, or avoider. Talk is cheap, action is difficult. When it comes to action, the differences between the Republicans and the Democrats amount to little more than details and, in some cases, direction; the Dems want to grow the government in one direction, the GOP in an ever so slightly different direction.
Incidentally, and way off point, the really good thing about Governor McDonnell’s speech was not so much the laughs it provided to the listener who took the time to contrast its rhetoric with the actions of the last GOP president and Congress, but its brevity, especially as that conciseness contrasted with the President’s long windedness. One of the things that came to my mind, besides the aforementioned yawning gap between GOP talk and action, was a fervent desire that Mr. McDonnell convert to Catholicism and pursue the priesthood. Our Church has a lot of problems, but many could be solved if we could find a few priests who, like Mr. McDonnell, can make a point in ten minutes or less. Of course, this, like the Dems’ awaking from their cluelessness, the GOP’s words matching its actions, or politicians’ actually showing leadership is a mere pipe dream. Dems from another planet, hypocritical Republicans, and long winded vacuous priests and attendant marathon Masses are facts of life that will be with us, in the case of the last, forever, in the case of the first two, until the Republic collapses, which may be sooner than most people think.
There will be much yammering about last night’s State of the Union speech today and maybe tomorrow. Then the speech will be forgotten, as it should be. Despite its being one of the few specific presidential duties specified in our Constitution, the speech has of late, mimicking American society, descended into banality and pointlessness.
There was one telling line in last night’s speech which has garnered notice, but not for the right reasons. That line was
“To say no to everything may be good short term politics, but it’s not leadership.”
President Obama, like most politicians, is usually wrong; the modern day politician’s life experience, or, more properly, lack thereof, virtually dictates that s/he will be wrong the vast majority of the time. But, in this case, the President was monstrously wrong; in fact, the opposite of what he said is precisely true.
Any self-aggrandizing showman who wishes to ingratiate himself to an uninformed and self-consumed public can role out a long list of the things he can give to people, an extensive itemization of the requests he will grant with other people’s money, though few can do so with the eloquence that Mr. Obama displayed last night. But it is the true leader who can say “No” to the wishes of the public, or at least those elements of the public, who will, perhaps rationally, always demand “More, more, more” as long as someone else is paying for it. Playing Santa Claus isn’t leadership; it is pandering in its most egregious and shameless form. A true leader says, perhaps not literally, but nonetheless effectively, “No. You can’t have that because we simply cannot afford it.” Yes, I know that sounds strange, but that is only because we have not had leaders in Washington, or in most geographic centers of political power, for generations. That is why we are in the fiscal and financial soup in which we currently swim…until we drown.
The analogy, by the way, to parenting is obvious. A real parent does not see his or her role as wish fulfiller, but, rather, character former. Thank God that the politicians are not our parents, but, increasingly, the American people are coming to see their politicians, and their government, as a sort of sugar daddy, dispensing favors and generally allowing his children to avoid the painful decisions necessary in order to grow up.
Mr. Obama uttered the aforementioned whopper in response to a perception that the Republicans are the party that says “No.” Would that this were the case! The Republicans talk a good game, as did Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell last night. But when they are in power, GOPers act just like Democrats, seeing government’s role as favor dispenser, problem solver, and pain reliever, or avoider. Talk is cheap, action is difficult. When it comes to action, the differences between the Republicans and the Democrats amount to little more than details and, in some cases, direction; the Dems want to grow the government in one direction, the GOP in an ever so slightly different direction.
Incidentally, and way off point, the really good thing about Governor McDonnell’s speech was not so much the laughs it provided to the listener who took the time to contrast its rhetoric with the actions of the last GOP president and Congress, but its brevity, especially as that conciseness contrasted with the President’s long windedness. One of the things that came to my mind, besides the aforementioned yawning gap between GOP talk and action, was a fervent desire that Mr. McDonnell convert to Catholicism and pursue the priesthood. Our Church has a lot of problems, but many could be solved if we could find a few priests who, like Mr. McDonnell, can make a point in ten minutes or less. Of course, this, like the Dems’ awaking from their cluelessness, the GOP’s words matching its actions, or politicians’ actually showing leadership is a mere pipe dream. Dems from another planet, hypocritical Republicans, and long winded vacuous priests and attendant marathon Masses are facts of life that will be with us, in the case of the last, forever, in the case of the first two, until the Republic collapses, which may be sooner than most people think.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
THINGS THAT (SURPRISE!) ANNOY ME
1/27/10
One might think that the entire Insightful Pontificator is, and has been since its inception, one huge and unceasing parade of things that annoy me, and one would be excused for thinking that way. But I have entitled today’s post as it is entitled because three things have come to mind, all of which are related, to varying degrees, to the current primary election in Illinois, which especially annoy me, and none of these is long enough, or annoying enough, to merit its own post.
Those of you who, like yours truly, were devoted fans of Mad magazine in your youths, will remember the regular feature in that greatest of periodicals entitled “Don’t You Hate?”. If so, this post should be very familiar, and may become a regular feature. So, without further adieu, things that annoy me:
--Robo-calls and radio ads by politicians decrying politicians and accusing their opponents of being politicians.
--Robo-calls and ads, usually from Republicans, that castigate the public sector and public sector employees while extolling the virtues of the private sector…sponsored by politicians who have never been on, let alone met, a private sector payroll.
--Those ads on television, usually for some inane prime time drama, but also occasionally for an investment firm or a politician, in which the subject of the ad, at its conclusion, stares into the camera with an earnest, and, one must guess, supposedly intimidating, look on his or her face and then folds his arms. You’ve seen the ads; you know the ads; c’mon, you are similarly annoyed by these ads. If you haven’t, don’t, or aren’t, you will be after reading this post. The look the subject gives the viewers is supposed to convey, one supposes, something like “I am serious; I am a player; I’m a big shooter; watch out for me, I’m a tough guy (or gal).” What it does convey, though, is something like “I have a grossly and groundlessly overinflated opinion of myself.” The folding of the arms? I don’t know that is supposed to convey. Most people who read body language say that folding of the arms is a defensive gesture, saying something like “You’re getting to me; you’re on to me. I know I’m a fraud, and I think I’ll just hunker down right now and hope you’ll go away without inflicting too much damage to my psyche or to my physical well being.” If that is a correct interpretation, it is especially appropriate for these ads, but one suspects that is not the message the advertising wonderboys intend to deliver to their audiences. But perhaps an accurate assessment of the mental horsepower of the typical television viewer, and especially of the prime time shows these ads generally are employed to promote, has led these Madison Avenue types to conclude that the obvious conclusion is well beyond the intended audience of these commercial messages.
One might think that the entire Insightful Pontificator is, and has been since its inception, one huge and unceasing parade of things that annoy me, and one would be excused for thinking that way. But I have entitled today’s post as it is entitled because three things have come to mind, all of which are related, to varying degrees, to the current primary election in Illinois, which especially annoy me, and none of these is long enough, or annoying enough, to merit its own post.
Those of you who, like yours truly, were devoted fans of Mad magazine in your youths, will remember the regular feature in that greatest of periodicals entitled “Don’t You Hate?”. If so, this post should be very familiar, and may become a regular feature. So, without further adieu, things that annoy me:
--Robo-calls and radio ads by politicians decrying politicians and accusing their opponents of being politicians.
--Robo-calls and ads, usually from Republicans, that castigate the public sector and public sector employees while extolling the virtues of the private sector…sponsored by politicians who have never been on, let alone met, a private sector payroll.
--Those ads on television, usually for some inane prime time drama, but also occasionally for an investment firm or a politician, in which the subject of the ad, at its conclusion, stares into the camera with an earnest, and, one must guess, supposedly intimidating, look on his or her face and then folds his arms. You’ve seen the ads; you know the ads; c’mon, you are similarly annoyed by these ads. If you haven’t, don’t, or aren’t, you will be after reading this post. The look the subject gives the viewers is supposed to convey, one supposes, something like “I am serious; I am a player; I’m a big shooter; watch out for me, I’m a tough guy (or gal).” What it does convey, though, is something like “I have a grossly and groundlessly overinflated opinion of myself.” The folding of the arms? I don’t know that is supposed to convey. Most people who read body language say that folding of the arms is a defensive gesture, saying something like “You’re getting to me; you’re on to me. I know I’m a fraud, and I think I’ll just hunker down right now and hope you’ll go away without inflicting too much damage to my psyche or to my physical well being.” If that is a correct interpretation, it is especially appropriate for these ads, but one suspects that is not the message the advertising wonderboys intend to deliver to their audiences. But perhaps an accurate assessment of the mental horsepower of the typical television viewer, and especially of the prime time shows these ads generally are employed to promote, has led these Madison Avenue types to conclude that the obvious conclusion is well beyond the intended audience of these commercial messages.
“THEY SAY, ‘TRY TO BE HIP, AND THINK LIKE THE CROWD’, BUT NOT EVEN THE CROWD CAN HELP ME NOW…”
1/27/10
As I was shaving this morning I was tuned to WBBM Newsradio 78, Chicago’s only remaining (almost) all news radio station. Newsradio 78 is a great station (as is WGN 720 in Chicago, which does not pretend to be all news and so is exonerated from the criticism of WBBM that follows), but its touting itself as all news is a serious misnomer. Its tag line is “All News, All the Time,” but truth in advertising would dictate modifying that line to “All News, All the Time, Except When the Bears are Playing, when we are Almost No News Anytime.” I can understand the station’s desire to carry Bears games; such games are probably one of the station’s biggest money makers. However, I don’t understand why fans need a three hour pre-game show and a two hour post game show for every exercise in futility known as a Bears game, or a Lovie Smith show for an hour every Monday night, in which Lovie explains away the latest disaster and tries to make an apparently convincing (at least to the McCaskeys) case for keeping his job. This turns a three hour game into (at least) an eight hour broadcast marathon every Sunday, during which WBBM’s news operation is shut down except for two minute snippets at the hour, but only during the pre and post game shows and at half time, and cuts into Monday night newscasts. “All News, All the Time”? Hardly. Other than that, though, WBBM is a wonderful resource, and true all news stations (unless one considers Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Sean Hannity, Ed Schultz, and Stephanie Miller “news,” as, apparently, “news/talk” stations do) are becoming a rarity on our national landscape. Once you get beyond WBBM, WCBS and WINS in New York, and maybe WWJ in Detroit, you’ve pretty much exhausted the pack. But I digress.
One of the programs featured on WBBM in the morning is “The Osgood File,” with Charles Osgood. I generally find this snippet entertaining and informative. This morning, Mr. Osgood reported on a professor from Yale (Unfortunately, since I was shaving, I didn’t have a pen handy to write down the professor’s name and my memory isn’t what it used to be, especially when cluttered with all the things I think about when shaving. Since I couldn’t find a link to the Osgood file on WBBM’s web page, I could not salvage his name that way, either; sorry.) who was discussing political robo-calls, those annoying calls we all receive at all hours of the night and day during election time from pols seeking their first, or a better, position at the public trough. The professor concluded that these robo-calls are not cost effective; in fact, he found that they were not effective at all and, indeed, may be counterproductive in that they irritate potential supporters. I concur; it is almost to the point at which I will take down the names of pols who hit me with robo-calls so that I can punish them at the polls.
The professor went on to ask the obvious question: If these robo-calls are counterproductive, why do pols engage in such calls? He concluded that politicians engage in these annoyances because everyone else, including their opponents, do so, and (This is the especially profound point, but I can’t quote it (again, that listening while shaving thing), so I will avoid quotations marks):
No one gets fired for doing what everyone else is doing.
The professor, probably unwittingly, since he wasn’t speaking of investment matters, thus makes a point I have been making for years. The reason that what passes for “investment advice” from the “experts” is so useless, and the reason that consensus is so easy to achieve in the field of economic and financial prognostication, is because
No one gets fired for doing what everyone else is doing.
The reason that most portfolio advice we get amounts to “Put everything in stocks and you can’t miss for the long run,” (until recently) “Real estate cannot go down in price; why, they aren’t making more of it,” “money market funds and bonds are a chump’s game,” or “Never bet against the American markets” is because the investment world, with the help of the omnipresent financial media, has become a massive echo chamber. The reason very few people (You are reading one of them.) saw the big crash of 2007-2008 coming is because there is safety in going along with the crowds. If an “expert” predicts continued growth, continuing low inflation, great real estate and stock markets, and a treasure trove of massive wealth for everyone who has the patience to wait for the long run (whatever that is), he or she cannot possibly lose his job. “After all, boss, all the other distinguished experts were calling for slow, but steady, growth and continued negligible inflation; how can you single me out?” or “Everyone else borrowed heavily to buy worthless CMOs; how can you blame me?” or "Everyone else said the stock market would clearly outperform the alternatives; how could all of them have been wrong?" or "With money funds paying no interest, you have to go into stocks if you want to get any return on your money; who could possibly argue with such a well reasoned strategy?"
It’s not that the experts are all stupid people; it’s just that they are engaging in the age old tactic of covering their posteriors. They have very good jobs, and some even realize that they are paid well beyond what they produce, or are even capable of producing. If they stick their necks out, they might be faced with the prospect of having to get jobs in which they will be required to do real work for real world wages rather than opining with no accountability for pay packages of which most people cannot even fantasize. Why take a chance? Go along with the crowd; what the heck, it’s not their money that’s at stake.
As I was shaving this morning I was tuned to WBBM Newsradio 78, Chicago’s only remaining (almost) all news radio station. Newsradio 78 is a great station (as is WGN 720 in Chicago, which does not pretend to be all news and so is exonerated from the criticism of WBBM that follows), but its touting itself as all news is a serious misnomer. Its tag line is “All News, All the Time,” but truth in advertising would dictate modifying that line to “All News, All the Time, Except When the Bears are Playing, when we are Almost No News Anytime.” I can understand the station’s desire to carry Bears games; such games are probably one of the station’s biggest money makers. However, I don’t understand why fans need a three hour pre-game show and a two hour post game show for every exercise in futility known as a Bears game, or a Lovie Smith show for an hour every Monday night, in which Lovie explains away the latest disaster and tries to make an apparently convincing (at least to the McCaskeys) case for keeping his job. This turns a three hour game into (at least) an eight hour broadcast marathon every Sunday, during which WBBM’s news operation is shut down except for two minute snippets at the hour, but only during the pre and post game shows and at half time, and cuts into Monday night newscasts. “All News, All the Time”? Hardly. Other than that, though, WBBM is a wonderful resource, and true all news stations (unless one considers Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Sean Hannity, Ed Schultz, and Stephanie Miller “news,” as, apparently, “news/talk” stations do) are becoming a rarity on our national landscape. Once you get beyond WBBM, WCBS and WINS in New York, and maybe WWJ in Detroit, you’ve pretty much exhausted the pack. But I digress.
One of the programs featured on WBBM in the morning is “The Osgood File,” with Charles Osgood. I generally find this snippet entertaining and informative. This morning, Mr. Osgood reported on a professor from Yale (Unfortunately, since I was shaving, I didn’t have a pen handy to write down the professor’s name and my memory isn’t what it used to be, especially when cluttered with all the things I think about when shaving. Since I couldn’t find a link to the Osgood file on WBBM’s web page, I could not salvage his name that way, either; sorry.) who was discussing political robo-calls, those annoying calls we all receive at all hours of the night and day during election time from pols seeking their first, or a better, position at the public trough. The professor concluded that these robo-calls are not cost effective; in fact, he found that they were not effective at all and, indeed, may be counterproductive in that they irritate potential supporters. I concur; it is almost to the point at which I will take down the names of pols who hit me with robo-calls so that I can punish them at the polls.
The professor went on to ask the obvious question: If these robo-calls are counterproductive, why do pols engage in such calls? He concluded that politicians engage in these annoyances because everyone else, including their opponents, do so, and (This is the especially profound point, but I can’t quote it (again, that listening while shaving thing), so I will avoid quotations marks):
No one gets fired for doing what everyone else is doing.
The professor, probably unwittingly, since he wasn’t speaking of investment matters, thus makes a point I have been making for years. The reason that what passes for “investment advice” from the “experts” is so useless, and the reason that consensus is so easy to achieve in the field of economic and financial prognostication, is because
No one gets fired for doing what everyone else is doing.
The reason that most portfolio advice we get amounts to “Put everything in stocks and you can’t miss for the long run,” (until recently) “Real estate cannot go down in price; why, they aren’t making more of it,” “money market funds and bonds are a chump’s game,” or “Never bet against the American markets” is because the investment world, with the help of the omnipresent financial media, has become a massive echo chamber. The reason very few people (You are reading one of them.) saw the big crash of 2007-2008 coming is because there is safety in going along with the crowds. If an “expert” predicts continued growth, continuing low inflation, great real estate and stock markets, and a treasure trove of massive wealth for everyone who has the patience to wait for the long run (whatever that is), he or she cannot possibly lose his job. “After all, boss, all the other distinguished experts were calling for slow, but steady, growth and continued negligible inflation; how can you single me out?” or “Everyone else borrowed heavily to buy worthless CMOs; how can you blame me?” or "Everyone else said the stock market would clearly outperform the alternatives; how could all of them have been wrong?" or "With money funds paying no interest, you have to go into stocks if you want to get any return on your money; who could possibly argue with such a well reasoned strategy?"
It’s not that the experts are all stupid people; it’s just that they are engaging in the age old tactic of covering their posteriors. They have very good jobs, and some even realize that they are paid well beyond what they produce, or are even capable of producing. If they stick their necks out, they might be faced with the prospect of having to get jobs in which they will be required to do real work for real world wages rather than opining with no accountability for pay packages of which most people cannot even fantasize. Why take a chance? Go along with the crowd; what the heck, it’s not their money that’s at stake.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN
1/23/10
The Chicago media are abuzz over Circuit Court Clerk, and County Board Presidential Candidate, Dorothy Brown’s “Jeans Day” fund. Apparently, employees of the Circuit Court Clerk’s office can fork over $3 per day or $10 per week, cash, for the privilege of wearing jeans to work. No one is quite sure where the money, which amounts to, depending on whom one believes, $40,000 to $60,000 per year, goes, but Ms. Brown and her Chief Financial officer, Wasiu Fashina, assure us that the money goes for “charitable, benevolent, and employee morale causes” while we await a genuine accounting. One can be reasonably sure that at least one employee of the Clerk’s office has had her morale tremendously enhanced by the “Jeans Day” fund, but that is another issue about which I am sure we will hear more in the near future.
Dorothy Brown’s “Jeans Day” fund is not without precedent, and I am not talking about Ms. Brown’s practice of “accepting” cash birthday and Christmas gifts from her employees in the spirit of former Governor, and current federal inmate, George Ryan. No, the precedent about which I speak goes back even further than Aurelia Pucinski, former Circuit Clerk who reportedly started the quaint “Jeans Day” custom and who is the daughter of Chicago political legend, Roman Pucinski, who was promoted from Congressman to Alderman in 1972 after a suicide mission against Charles Percy at the behest of the Daley Machine. No, the precedent about which I write goes back to the dawn of the Daley Machine.
The year was 1956. Richard J. Daley had only been mayor a little more than a year and Chairman of the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization a little more than three years. The Organization had slated Cook County Treasurer Herb Paschen as its candidate to face Governor Bill Stratton in the upcoming gubernatorial election. Stratton, the prototype for many GOP governors who followed him, was said to be, until Bill Scott ran the State Treasurer’s Office in the 1970s, “Daley’s favorite Republican.” Mr. Paschen was a decent Treasurer, but showed little beyond a passable level of competence to distinguish him as a worthy candidate for governor. Still, when a scandal broke out in Stratton’s administration (State auditor, Republican Orville Hodge was indicted for defrauding the state of millions of dollars.), it looked like Paschen might win. Suddenly, a “flower fund” was discovered in Paschen’s office. Employees of the Treasurer’s office were forced t contribute to a fund that was used to buy flowers and gifts for employees in the office who were in the hospital. No mention was made in this case of “charitable, benevolent, and employee morale causes,” which probably says more about the relative chutzpah of the colorless Herb Paschen and the colorful Dorothy Brown than it does about the ultimate employment of the funds. Paschen was forced to drop out of the race and the party slated Richard Austin, a virtually invisible County Judge to take on Stratton. Stratton went on to squeak by the unknown Austin in the Eisenhower led Republican landslide of 1956.
A couple footnotes, neither of which has anything to do with County Board Presidential race:
First, the discovery of hapless Herb Paschen’s “flower fund” was almost certainly not an accident. If Pat Quinn gets renominated for Governor, an outcome that is no longer the sure bet it was even a month ago, and one of the establishmentarian Republican candidates, Jim Ryan, Bill Brady, Kirk Dillard, or Andy McKenna, gets the GOP nod, as seems likely, look for similar revelations coming from Quinn’s office. Anyone who thinks the powers that be in Cook County Democratic politics would be less comfortable with any of the aforementioned GOPers as governor than they would be with Governor Quinn does not understand Chicago or Illinois politics.
Second, Dick Daley may have been too clever by half, as the saying goes, in 1956. As a consolation prize for taking on Stratton, Richard Austin was given a federal judgeship, ostensibly at the recommendation of Senator Paul Douglas but really by Daley. The same Judge Richard Austin went on to give Daley fits in the 1970s by trying to force the integration of the Chicago Housing Authority’s public housing horrors. Resistance to such efforts became one of the major issues, some might say distractions, of Richard I’s reign in its twilight years.
The Chicago media are abuzz over Circuit Court Clerk, and County Board Presidential Candidate, Dorothy Brown’s “Jeans Day” fund. Apparently, employees of the Circuit Court Clerk’s office can fork over $3 per day or $10 per week, cash, for the privilege of wearing jeans to work. No one is quite sure where the money, which amounts to, depending on whom one believes, $40,000 to $60,000 per year, goes, but Ms. Brown and her Chief Financial officer, Wasiu Fashina, assure us that the money goes for “charitable, benevolent, and employee morale causes” while we await a genuine accounting. One can be reasonably sure that at least one employee of the Clerk’s office has had her morale tremendously enhanced by the “Jeans Day” fund, but that is another issue about which I am sure we will hear more in the near future.
Dorothy Brown’s “Jeans Day” fund is not without precedent, and I am not talking about Ms. Brown’s practice of “accepting” cash birthday and Christmas gifts from her employees in the spirit of former Governor, and current federal inmate, George Ryan. No, the precedent about which I speak goes back even further than Aurelia Pucinski, former Circuit Clerk who reportedly started the quaint “Jeans Day” custom and who is the daughter of Chicago political legend, Roman Pucinski, who was promoted from Congressman to Alderman in 1972 after a suicide mission against Charles Percy at the behest of the Daley Machine. No, the precedent about which I write goes back to the dawn of the Daley Machine.
The year was 1956. Richard J. Daley had only been mayor a little more than a year and Chairman of the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization a little more than three years. The Organization had slated Cook County Treasurer Herb Paschen as its candidate to face Governor Bill Stratton in the upcoming gubernatorial election. Stratton, the prototype for many GOP governors who followed him, was said to be, until Bill Scott ran the State Treasurer’s Office in the 1970s, “Daley’s favorite Republican.” Mr. Paschen was a decent Treasurer, but showed little beyond a passable level of competence to distinguish him as a worthy candidate for governor. Still, when a scandal broke out in Stratton’s administration (State auditor, Republican Orville Hodge was indicted for defrauding the state of millions of dollars.), it looked like Paschen might win. Suddenly, a “flower fund” was discovered in Paschen’s office. Employees of the Treasurer’s office were forced t contribute to a fund that was used to buy flowers and gifts for employees in the office who were in the hospital. No mention was made in this case of “charitable, benevolent, and employee morale causes,” which probably says more about the relative chutzpah of the colorless Herb Paschen and the colorful Dorothy Brown than it does about the ultimate employment of the funds. Paschen was forced to drop out of the race and the party slated Richard Austin, a virtually invisible County Judge to take on Stratton. Stratton went on to squeak by the unknown Austin in the Eisenhower led Republican landslide of 1956.
A couple footnotes, neither of which has anything to do with County Board Presidential race:
First, the discovery of hapless Herb Paschen’s “flower fund” was almost certainly not an accident. If Pat Quinn gets renominated for Governor, an outcome that is no longer the sure bet it was even a month ago, and one of the establishmentarian Republican candidates, Jim Ryan, Bill Brady, Kirk Dillard, or Andy McKenna, gets the GOP nod, as seems likely, look for similar revelations coming from Quinn’s office. Anyone who thinks the powers that be in Cook County Democratic politics would be less comfortable with any of the aforementioned GOPers as governor than they would be with Governor Quinn does not understand Chicago or Illinois politics.
Second, Dick Daley may have been too clever by half, as the saying goes, in 1956. As a consolation prize for taking on Stratton, Richard Austin was given a federal judgeship, ostensibly at the recommendation of Senator Paul Douglas but really by Daley. The same Judge Richard Austin went on to give Daley fits in the 1970s by trying to force the integration of the Chicago Housing Authority’s public housing horrors. Resistance to such efforts became one of the major issues, some might say distractions, of Richard I’s reign in its twilight years.
Friday, January 22, 2010
I DOUBT HE’LL BE WORKING ON 59TH AND WESTERN
1/22/10
The talk over the last few days has been that Obsequious Ben Bernanke is going to have a very hard time getting confirmed for a second term as Fed Chairman. He needs sixty votes for confirmation, and there seems to be a growing, bipartisan group of senators opposing his confirmation, including Democrats Byron Dorgan, Jeff Merley, Russ Feingold, and Barbara Boxer, Republicans Jim Bunning, Jim DeMint, David Vitter, John McCain, and great American Richard Shelby, and Socialist Bernie Sanders. While Obsequious Ben has plenty of supporters, none, or at least none in the Senate, is all that vocal about it.
Some thoughts:
--Good. Now, should Obsequious Ben lose his job, or even if he doesn’t, maybe when can we give the rest of the bailout bunch their walking papers, starting with Tim Geithner and working our way through the bipartisan bureaucracy which seems to serve at the pleasure of Wall Street.
--When I think of Ben Bernanke, I am reminded of Jesus’s parable of the dishonest steward.
According to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus told the tale of a steward whose master was about to fire him for squandering the master’s property. When the steward learned that he was about to be let go, he called together those who owed his master and wrote down their debts…
“He said to the first ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ‘One hundred measures of olive oil’ ‘Here is your promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’ Then to another he said ‘How much do you owe?’ ‘One hundred kors of wheat.’ ‘Here is your promissory note; write one for eighty.’”
The steward did this to ingratiate himself with his master’s debtors so that one of them might hire him after his service to his current master was over. One has to wonder who on earth would hire a guy who made a habit out of stealing from his employers. Perhaps the steward was seeing far into the future and envisioning the American voter, who has a habit of rehiring the same people who steal from him, and others, routinely, but that is another matter.
Ben Bernanke has behaved very much like the dishonest steward. He has effectively stolen from his master, the U.S. taxpayer, to ingratiate himself with Wall Street, and especially with counterparties of AIG, in the hopes that one of these will do something for him, either by hiring him or paying him generous and frequent “consulting” fees or “speaking” fees if he returns to academia.
The wicked steward’s master, as St. Luke tells us, commended him for acting prudently. What his master’s other actions might have been, beyond, and perhaps counter to, commendation, we are not told. While we don’t have to commend Mr. Bernanke, we at least ought to give the Obsequious Ben the credit, and the appropriate disparagement, for looking out for Number 1. And we ought to remember the guy who appointed him, George Bush, and the guy who continues to ardently support him, Barack Obama. We also ought to note the sorry Bernanke chapter at the Fed when we hear the experts rant about how “partisan” Washington has become, remembering that, when it comes to taking taxpayer money in order to take care of Wall Street, good old fashioned bipartisanship prevails in Washington. But what we ought not to do is shed a tear for Obsequious Ben, even if he does wind up losing his current gig..
POST NOTE:
I’ve never asked this before, but am compelled to do it now: Does anyone get the reference in the title to this post? I’m counting on one of my two champion reference getters to come through here, but anyone is welcome to guess.
The talk over the last few days has been that Obsequious Ben Bernanke is going to have a very hard time getting confirmed for a second term as Fed Chairman. He needs sixty votes for confirmation, and there seems to be a growing, bipartisan group of senators opposing his confirmation, including Democrats Byron Dorgan, Jeff Merley, Russ Feingold, and Barbara Boxer, Republicans Jim Bunning, Jim DeMint, David Vitter, John McCain, and great American Richard Shelby, and Socialist Bernie Sanders. While Obsequious Ben has plenty of supporters, none, or at least none in the Senate, is all that vocal about it.
Some thoughts:
--Good. Now, should Obsequious Ben lose his job, or even if he doesn’t, maybe when can we give the rest of the bailout bunch their walking papers, starting with Tim Geithner and working our way through the bipartisan bureaucracy which seems to serve at the pleasure of Wall Street.
--When I think of Ben Bernanke, I am reminded of Jesus’s parable of the dishonest steward.
According to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus told the tale of a steward whose master was about to fire him for squandering the master’s property. When the steward learned that he was about to be let go, he called together those who owed his master and wrote down their debts…
“He said to the first ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ‘One hundred measures of olive oil’ ‘Here is your promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’ Then to another he said ‘How much do you owe?’ ‘One hundred kors of wheat.’ ‘Here is your promissory note; write one for eighty.’”
The steward did this to ingratiate himself with his master’s debtors so that one of them might hire him after his service to his current master was over. One has to wonder who on earth would hire a guy who made a habit out of stealing from his employers. Perhaps the steward was seeing far into the future and envisioning the American voter, who has a habit of rehiring the same people who steal from him, and others, routinely, but that is another matter.
Ben Bernanke has behaved very much like the dishonest steward. He has effectively stolen from his master, the U.S. taxpayer, to ingratiate himself with Wall Street, and especially with counterparties of AIG, in the hopes that one of these will do something for him, either by hiring him or paying him generous and frequent “consulting” fees or “speaking” fees if he returns to academia.
The wicked steward’s master, as St. Luke tells us, commended him for acting prudently. What his master’s other actions might have been, beyond, and perhaps counter to, commendation, we are not told. While we don’t have to commend Mr. Bernanke, we at least ought to give the Obsequious Ben the credit, and the appropriate disparagement, for looking out for Number 1. And we ought to remember the guy who appointed him, George Bush, and the guy who continues to ardently support him, Barack Obama. We also ought to note the sorry Bernanke chapter at the Fed when we hear the experts rant about how “partisan” Washington has become, remembering that, when it comes to taking taxpayer money in order to take care of Wall Street, good old fashioned bipartisanship prevails in Washington. But what we ought not to do is shed a tear for Obsequious Ben, even if he does wind up losing his current gig..
POST NOTE:
I’ve never asked this before, but am compelled to do it now: Does anyone get the reference in the title to this post? I’m counting on one of my two champion reference getters to come through here, but anyone is welcome to guess.
“YOU CHEATED, YOU LIED, YOU SAID THAT YOU LOVED ME…”
1/22/10
The Wall Street Journal, along with just about every other newspaper in the country, reported this morning that John Edwards has finally admitted that he is the father of two year old Frances Quinn Hunter, who is the daughter of Rielle Hunter, a videographer who worked on Mr. Edwards’ 2008 campaign for president. Note several things:
--Mr. Edwards has denied paternity of this child since she was born. Nice; how’s this child going to react when she learns that her father denied that he was her father for the first two years of her life?
--Mr. Edwards only admitted paternity on the eve of the release of a book by another campaign aide who was going to spill the beans on the whole sordid affair.
--That other campaign aide, Andrew Young (not the same Andrew Young who was UN Ambassador under Jimmy Carter), initially claimed that the baby was his, presumably out of a sense of loyalty to Mr. Edwards. This gives us a pretty good idea of what the typical professional politician, and professional campaign aide, considers a good, noble, and well placed sense of loyalty.
--Little Frances was conceived three months after Elizabeth Edwards, John Edwards’ wife, learned that her cancer had returned and was terminal.
In the great scheme of things, this is an unimportant story, largely because Mr. Edwards is, thankfully, largely unimportant now. However, I bring it up for three reasons:
--I often use words like “preening poltroon” to describe the typical politician of our current era. Mr. Edwards epitomizes “preening poltroon.” But the more one thinks about it, a better description of Mr. Edwards must be more base. Striving carefully to avoid raw profanity, I will describe Mr. Edwards as a “duplicitous portable receptacle of human, or perhaps bovine, but probably porcine, defecatory product.”
--The American public, addled by watching the endless hours of mind decaying pabulum, or worse, that emanates from the electronic brain numbing device that is present in every American home, has a very short and not all that acute memory. Mr. Edwards may yet rise from his political grave.
--Mr. Edwards’ lying for two years provides yet another example of a point I have made repeatedly in the Pontificator. (See, most recently, my 1/10/10 post “HIS LIPS ARE MOVING.”) Harrison Hickman, whom the Chicago Tribune describes as “a longtime friend and political advisor” to Mr. Edwards, reportedly said
“It is a very complicated set of reasons why (Mr. Edwards) lied. I’m not sure he even knows specifically why he did. The important thing, instead of untangling why, is to acknowledge that he did.”
Hmm…
Only someone named “Harrison Hickman” who is in the business of political prevarication could come up with such drivel. A normal, serious (or even not all that serious) person who works for a living knows that there are two reasons that John Edward lied, and lied in a way that has the potential to cause serious psychological and emotional problems in his daughter, whom he professes to love. First, he was afraid of the political repercussions of his affair with Rielle Hunter. This makes him not only a liar, but a scoundrel, a hyper-narcissist, and a coward. Come to think of it, those traits probably predestined him for great success (Remember, even though he never got the big prize, at least not yet, he was a U.S. Senator and a major party candidate for Vice-President.) in politics.
There is the longstanding theory of mine that states politicians lie because doing so comes even more naturally than telling the truth. They lie even when there is no point in doing so. (Some day I will repeat the story of Barry Goldwater’s death, a story that first led me to concoct this theory of politicians’ lying. That is grist for another post.) Further, they are so convinced that their attaining and holding high office is so important, both for them and for the benighted public, that such quaint notions as honesty and morality, or at least any morality that would supercede their own, twisted, personal version of morality, are rendered irrelevant. Professional politicians, and almost everyone who runs for office today is a professional politician, despite his or her protestations to the contrary, are natural born liars. Mr. Edwards is unique only in degree, not in substance.
The Wall Street Journal, along with just about every other newspaper in the country, reported this morning that John Edwards has finally admitted that he is the father of two year old Frances Quinn Hunter, who is the daughter of Rielle Hunter, a videographer who worked on Mr. Edwards’ 2008 campaign for president. Note several things:
--Mr. Edwards has denied paternity of this child since she was born. Nice; how’s this child going to react when she learns that her father denied that he was her father for the first two years of her life?
--Mr. Edwards only admitted paternity on the eve of the release of a book by another campaign aide who was going to spill the beans on the whole sordid affair.
--That other campaign aide, Andrew Young (not the same Andrew Young who was UN Ambassador under Jimmy Carter), initially claimed that the baby was his, presumably out of a sense of loyalty to Mr. Edwards. This gives us a pretty good idea of what the typical professional politician, and professional campaign aide, considers a good, noble, and well placed sense of loyalty.
--Little Frances was conceived three months after Elizabeth Edwards, John Edwards’ wife, learned that her cancer had returned and was terminal.
In the great scheme of things, this is an unimportant story, largely because Mr. Edwards is, thankfully, largely unimportant now. However, I bring it up for three reasons:
--I often use words like “preening poltroon” to describe the typical politician of our current era. Mr. Edwards epitomizes “preening poltroon.” But the more one thinks about it, a better description of Mr. Edwards must be more base. Striving carefully to avoid raw profanity, I will describe Mr. Edwards as a “duplicitous portable receptacle of human, or perhaps bovine, but probably porcine, defecatory product.”
--The American public, addled by watching the endless hours of mind decaying pabulum, or worse, that emanates from the electronic brain numbing device that is present in every American home, has a very short and not all that acute memory. Mr. Edwards may yet rise from his political grave.
--Mr. Edwards’ lying for two years provides yet another example of a point I have made repeatedly in the Pontificator. (See, most recently, my 1/10/10 post “HIS LIPS ARE MOVING.”) Harrison Hickman, whom the Chicago Tribune describes as “a longtime friend and political advisor” to Mr. Edwards, reportedly said
“It is a very complicated set of reasons why (Mr. Edwards) lied. I’m not sure he even knows specifically why he did. The important thing, instead of untangling why, is to acknowledge that he did.”
Hmm…
Only someone named “Harrison Hickman” who is in the business of political prevarication could come up with such drivel. A normal, serious (or even not all that serious) person who works for a living knows that there are two reasons that John Edward lied, and lied in a way that has the potential to cause serious psychological and emotional problems in his daughter, whom he professes to love. First, he was afraid of the political repercussions of his affair with Rielle Hunter. This makes him not only a liar, but a scoundrel, a hyper-narcissist, and a coward. Come to think of it, those traits probably predestined him for great success (Remember, even though he never got the big prize, at least not yet, he was a U.S. Senator and a major party candidate for Vice-President.) in politics.
There is the longstanding theory of mine that states politicians lie because doing so comes even more naturally than telling the truth. They lie even when there is no point in doing so. (Some day I will repeat the story of Barry Goldwater’s death, a story that first led me to concoct this theory of politicians’ lying. That is grist for another post.) Further, they are so convinced that their attaining and holding high office is so important, both for them and for the benighted public, that such quaint notions as honesty and morality, or at least any morality that would supercede their own, twisted, personal version of morality, are rendered irrelevant. Professional politicians, and almost everyone who runs for office today is a professional politician, despite his or her protestations to the contrary, are natural born liars. Mr. Edwards is unique only in degree, not in substance.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
(NOT) KEEPING COOL
State Senator Terry Link (D., Vernon Hills) is running for Lieutenant Governor of the state of Illinois. I don’t know much about Terry Link and don’t really know if he would make a good lieutenant governor, if there is such a thing. I do know he’s been involved in Democratic politics for a long time, is Majority Whip and is Chairman of the Revenue Committee. He knows his way around Illinois politics, and probably plays a pretty good game of ball with Senate President John Cullerton and House Speaker Mike Madigan, and I don’t mean basketball.
This post, though, is not about Terry Link; it is about one of the commercials he is endlessly running on local news radio. And, though I haven’t heard specific ads in the exact same vein, I am reasonably confident that Mr. Link’s plans for the office, as outlined in this commercial, are not at all unique. So this is not a post to blast Terry Link, or at least not to blast Terry Link specifically; it is a post designed to blast all the candidates for lieutenant governor, unless one can demonstrate plans for the office approximately the opposite of those Mr. Link outlines in this offending ad.
In this particular manifestation of the annoyance to which radio listeners are subjected during any election season, Mr. Link complains that the lieutenant governor has nothing to do. One hears a person alternately snoring and working a crossword puzzle. (That Mr. Link actually paid someone to come up with such drivel is testimony to his unfitness for coming anywhere near the public purse, but, judging from just about every other political commercial, all candidates are displaying a similar degree of unfitness.) But Terry Link promises to do something with the lieutenant governor’s office, like assuring that all Illinois residents get (Surprise!) health care. He doesn’t mention any trendy “green” initiatives, or maybe he does; I sort of tune out after the first few seconds of idiocy in any political ad. If he doesn’t, I am sure that failure was an oversight.
We are, of course, supposed to admire Mr. Link’s work ethic and applaud his plans to have the lieutenant governor crusade for the (apparently, in Mr. Link’s mind) benighted citizens of the Land of Lincoln. I, for one, am not consoled. I don’t want politicians looking for things go do. Such activity is a prescription for danger.
I, too, am not happy paying pols to do nothing. But doing so is far less treacherous, and far less expensive, than paying them to look for things to do. One of the attributes of Calvin Coolidge that made him one of our nation’s great presidents, and certainly our most underrated, was his insistence on sleeping ten hours a night and taking a two hour nap each afternoon. He clearly wasn’t looking for things to do because he realized that the less government did the more effective, and cost efficient, it was. Would that Mr. Link, and every self-important pol running for lieutenant governor (or any office, for that matter) emulate our 30th president, one of the few men to occupy that (or any) political office who was not driven by a grossly inflated estimate of his own ability or importance.
This post, though, is not about Terry Link; it is about one of the commercials he is endlessly running on local news radio. And, though I haven’t heard specific ads in the exact same vein, I am reasonably confident that Mr. Link’s plans for the office, as outlined in this commercial, are not at all unique. So this is not a post to blast Terry Link, or at least not to blast Terry Link specifically; it is a post designed to blast all the candidates for lieutenant governor, unless one can demonstrate plans for the office approximately the opposite of those Mr. Link outlines in this offending ad.
In this particular manifestation of the annoyance to which radio listeners are subjected during any election season, Mr. Link complains that the lieutenant governor has nothing to do. One hears a person alternately snoring and working a crossword puzzle. (That Mr. Link actually paid someone to come up with such drivel is testimony to his unfitness for coming anywhere near the public purse, but, judging from just about every other political commercial, all candidates are displaying a similar degree of unfitness.) But Terry Link promises to do something with the lieutenant governor’s office, like assuring that all Illinois residents get (Surprise!) health care. He doesn’t mention any trendy “green” initiatives, or maybe he does; I sort of tune out after the first few seconds of idiocy in any political ad. If he doesn’t, I am sure that failure was an oversight.
We are, of course, supposed to admire Mr. Link’s work ethic and applaud his plans to have the lieutenant governor crusade for the (apparently, in Mr. Link’s mind) benighted citizens of the Land of Lincoln. I, for one, am not consoled. I don’t want politicians looking for things go do. Such activity is a prescription for danger.
I, too, am not happy paying pols to do nothing. But doing so is far less treacherous, and far less expensive, than paying them to look for things to do. One of the attributes of Calvin Coolidge that made him one of our nation’s great presidents, and certainly our most underrated, was his insistence on sleeping ten hours a night and taking a two hour nap each afternoon. He clearly wasn’t looking for things to do because he realized that the less government did the more effective, and cost efficient, it was. Would that Mr. Link, and every self-important pol running for lieutenant governor (or any office, for that matter) emulate our 30th president, one of the few men to occupy that (or any) political office who was not driven by a grossly inflated estimate of his own ability or importance.
AND ON THIS HAPPY NOTE…
1/21/10
I don’t spend as much time listening to economic and market “experts” as I used to, but I probably spend more time listening to the cacophonous drivel they produce than do most people. It keeps me informed and amused and checks my thinking.
Lately, most of the experts have been saying things like
“Consumer spending seems to be coming back, so recovery is in the cards.”
Or
“Consumer spending is not coming back as quickly or as strongly as we would like, so the recovery will be slow and tenuous.”
Or
“If consumer spending comes back as strong as we think, we should be well on the road to recover by late this year.”
Or
“If consumer spending doesn’t pick up, we might not get the recovery we are anticipating.”
The thinking that consumer spending is essential to a recovery is right out of Econ 101 and there is doubtless some wisdom to it; after all, consumer spending is something like 70% of our economy. So, naturally, those who study economics believe that, without a spring back in consumer spending, recovery will be impeded if not aborted. But think about it for awhile; if all that were necessary for a strong economy were strong consumer spending or, more mildly, if lots and lots of consumer spending is a vital, indeed, the most vital, component of a strong economy, we would have never experienced the economic problems of the last few years. Consumer spending was going strong and then, suddenly, the economy fell off the rails. And why was consumer spending going so strong? Because Americans spend money better (or at least in greater volumes; “better” seems to imply a quantitative judgment) than anybody else. We spend money like nobody’s business. If a free spending consumer leads to economic health, we should be in a permanent state of economic Valhalla.
So why aren’t we in such a state? The economic problems we are still confronting are the economy’s natural reaction to years and years, decades and decades, perhaps, of far TOO MUCH spending and far too little saving. We have forgotten how to save but intensified our mastery of profligacy and thus have borrowed, borrowed, and borrowed some more to sustain our dangerous and silly addiction to consumer spending on gimcracks, geegaws, and general manifestations of emptiness of our souls. The economy simply couldn’t take any more spending and importing money (Calling money borrowed to spend “capital” is somehow sacrilegious.). To continue to borrow and spend, this time, one presumes, in an effort to “save” the economy, is simply an unsustainable strategy; that we were able to keep that particular crap game going so long is remarkable, and is testimony to the wisdom of our forbearers who built this country, wisdom we have chosen to ignore in favor of useless spending and other excerebrose pursuits.
So, yes, a steep increase in consumer spending might get us out of the economic soup…temporarily, just as a few shots of Jack Daniels relieves the maladies caused by the prior night’s overfamiliarity with the same old chum. But ramping up consumer spending will only lead to a succession of economic “events” like the last one and, ultimately, to our economic ruin and irrelevancy, much like a person who continually treats hangovers with hair of the dog eventually destroys his body, mind, and soul. If we are to solve our economic problems in the long run, we have to reorient our economy away from consumer spending and more toward saving, capital formation, and, if not capital exportation, at least a cessation or severe lessening of capital importation. This is especially true since a pickup in consumer spending increasingly goes overseas and thus benefits our economy only indirectly, if at all, and only in the short run.
Reorienting the economy away from one nearly completely dependent on the baser aspects of our national character will prove difficult and will impede any short term economic recovery. Such a metamorphosis will be a painful, and slow, slog. However, our choice is between that and a series of fake recoveries that ultimately lead to the end of our economy, and probably of our country, as a going concern. Again, an economy that sees its mission as spending the seed corn is headed toward destruction.
A long, painful, and maybe not ultimately successful (It is, after all, very late in the game.) transition to a real economy or continuing on the primrose path to financial ruin with big smiles on our faces and endless paeans to the power of “optimism” on our lips are the two choices that we have created for ourselves. The smart money says we will choose the latter. Hey, it was a fun 234 or so years!
I don’t spend as much time listening to economic and market “experts” as I used to, but I probably spend more time listening to the cacophonous drivel they produce than do most people. It keeps me informed and amused and checks my thinking.
Lately, most of the experts have been saying things like
“Consumer spending seems to be coming back, so recovery is in the cards.”
Or
“Consumer spending is not coming back as quickly or as strongly as we would like, so the recovery will be slow and tenuous.”
Or
“If consumer spending comes back as strong as we think, we should be well on the road to recover by late this year.”
Or
“If consumer spending doesn’t pick up, we might not get the recovery we are anticipating.”
The thinking that consumer spending is essential to a recovery is right out of Econ 101 and there is doubtless some wisdom to it; after all, consumer spending is something like 70% of our economy. So, naturally, those who study economics believe that, without a spring back in consumer spending, recovery will be impeded if not aborted. But think about it for awhile; if all that were necessary for a strong economy were strong consumer spending or, more mildly, if lots and lots of consumer spending is a vital, indeed, the most vital, component of a strong economy, we would have never experienced the economic problems of the last few years. Consumer spending was going strong and then, suddenly, the economy fell off the rails. And why was consumer spending going so strong? Because Americans spend money better (or at least in greater volumes; “better” seems to imply a quantitative judgment) than anybody else. We spend money like nobody’s business. If a free spending consumer leads to economic health, we should be in a permanent state of economic Valhalla.
So why aren’t we in such a state? The economic problems we are still confronting are the economy’s natural reaction to years and years, decades and decades, perhaps, of far TOO MUCH spending and far too little saving. We have forgotten how to save but intensified our mastery of profligacy and thus have borrowed, borrowed, and borrowed some more to sustain our dangerous and silly addiction to consumer spending on gimcracks, geegaws, and general manifestations of emptiness of our souls. The economy simply couldn’t take any more spending and importing money (Calling money borrowed to spend “capital” is somehow sacrilegious.). To continue to borrow and spend, this time, one presumes, in an effort to “save” the economy, is simply an unsustainable strategy; that we were able to keep that particular crap game going so long is remarkable, and is testimony to the wisdom of our forbearers who built this country, wisdom we have chosen to ignore in favor of useless spending and other excerebrose pursuits.
So, yes, a steep increase in consumer spending might get us out of the economic soup…temporarily, just as a few shots of Jack Daniels relieves the maladies caused by the prior night’s overfamiliarity with the same old chum. But ramping up consumer spending will only lead to a succession of economic “events” like the last one and, ultimately, to our economic ruin and irrelevancy, much like a person who continually treats hangovers with hair of the dog eventually destroys his body, mind, and soul. If we are to solve our economic problems in the long run, we have to reorient our economy away from consumer spending and more toward saving, capital formation, and, if not capital exportation, at least a cessation or severe lessening of capital importation. This is especially true since a pickup in consumer spending increasingly goes overseas and thus benefits our economy only indirectly, if at all, and only in the short run.
Reorienting the economy away from one nearly completely dependent on the baser aspects of our national character will prove difficult and will impede any short term economic recovery. Such a metamorphosis will be a painful, and slow, slog. However, our choice is between that and a series of fake recoveries that ultimately lead to the end of our economy, and probably of our country, as a going concern. Again, an economy that sees its mission as spending the seed corn is headed toward destruction.
A long, painful, and maybe not ultimately successful (It is, after all, very late in the game.) transition to a real economy or continuing on the primrose path to financial ruin with big smiles on our faces and endless paeans to the power of “optimism” on our lips are the two choices that we have created for ourselves. The smart money says we will choose the latter. Hey, it was a fun 234 or so years!
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
“WHAT CAN BROWN DO FOR YOU?”
1/20/10
Back in 2006, when the Democrats won back majorities in both houses of Congress, I wrote that the undoing of the Dems would be assuming that their victory meant that the American public had bought into their big government agenda and acting appropriately. The Dems, I wrote, seized Congress because people were sick and tired of George Bush (and this was before the financial meltdown) and just wanted him out of there. One thing in particular that infuriated people about Mr. Bush was his foreign policy, which I labeled Big Government on a Global Scale, that held that the U.S. government somehow had the right to tell everyone, everywhere how to behave, merely an application to foreign affairs of the attitude of just about every U.S. politician, regardless of party, toward domestic policy. The Democrats were elected because, first, they weren’t George Bush and, second, because the American people wanted them to do something, that is, get us out, of George Bush’s misguided foreign policy adventures.
So the Dems got elected in 2006 and the public’s revulsion toward Mr. Bush remained strong enough to elect Mr. Obama president in 2008, which is indeed testimony to the degree of antipathy Mr. Bush understandably generated. So what did the Democrats do? Some would argue that they pursued a big government agenda, which is true, but, in reality, what the Democratic domestic policy has amounted to is a continuation and amplification of the Bush policy—bailouts for anyone capable of writing a sufficiently large campaign check, ever bigger spending on pointless projects, counterproductive efforts to “fix” an economy which has had enough of injurious tinkering by amateurs, and general disregard for the people who pay the bills. On the foreign front, the Dem policy has been an almost line by line continuation of the Bush interventionist policy, only with Mr. Obama pursuing pointless efforts in that graveyard of empires, Afghanistan, with a gusto that makes Mr. Bush look like a peacenik. This general tendency to pursue business as usual is why I refer to the current administration and its predecessor as one and the same, the Bush/Obama administration.
Given that the complete disregard, nay the contempt, that Mr. Bush and his henchmen showed for the taxpayer has been continued under Mr. Obama and his accomplices, the victory of Scott Brown, a state legislator whom few knew and even fewer seemed to dislike, over uber-establishmentarian Martha Coakley is well deserved, or at least the defeat of Martha Coakley is well deserved. The danger, and the probability, of course, is that the Republicans will make the same mistake in the wake of Mr. Brown’s victory that the Democrats made in the wake of their victories in 2006 and 2008; i.e., they will assume that what happened is not a repudiation of their opponents but, rather, an endorsement of them.
Two more points, only tangentially related to Mr. Brown’s victory:
First, after her pathetic campaign and crushing defeat, Ms. Coakley said: “Though our campaign ends tonight we know our mission goes on.” Think about that puerile pap. Serious people don’t utter such jejune platitudes. But we don’t elect serious people. We elect poltroons and popinjays, and Ms. Coakley is only one of legions of such patheticos. Given the clowns we elect, people who think such gormlessness as “Though our campaign ends tonight, our mission goes on” is the very essence of profundity and determination, we are getting about what we deserve from our public officials.
Second, as I was thinking of this election and the pious proclamations from Democrats that “This had nothing to do with President Obama,” I was, and am, growing more convinced that Mr. Obama and his minions, especially Rahm Emanuel (See my 12/23/09 post, “I CAN TELL BY THE WAY YOU DRESS THAT YOU ARE A REAL COWBOY”) are in WAY over their heads. It seems like in our desperation to rid ourselves of the Bush infestation, we (as a people…yours truly voted Libertarian, as usual) got behind an ephemeral fantasy, an ethereal dream, a man without substance. But time will tell.
Back in 2006, when the Democrats won back majorities in both houses of Congress, I wrote that the undoing of the Dems would be assuming that their victory meant that the American public had bought into their big government agenda and acting appropriately. The Dems, I wrote, seized Congress because people were sick and tired of George Bush (and this was before the financial meltdown) and just wanted him out of there. One thing in particular that infuriated people about Mr. Bush was his foreign policy, which I labeled Big Government on a Global Scale, that held that the U.S. government somehow had the right to tell everyone, everywhere how to behave, merely an application to foreign affairs of the attitude of just about every U.S. politician, regardless of party, toward domestic policy. The Democrats were elected because, first, they weren’t George Bush and, second, because the American people wanted them to do something, that is, get us out, of George Bush’s misguided foreign policy adventures.
So the Dems got elected in 2006 and the public’s revulsion toward Mr. Bush remained strong enough to elect Mr. Obama president in 2008, which is indeed testimony to the degree of antipathy Mr. Bush understandably generated. So what did the Democrats do? Some would argue that they pursued a big government agenda, which is true, but, in reality, what the Democratic domestic policy has amounted to is a continuation and amplification of the Bush policy—bailouts for anyone capable of writing a sufficiently large campaign check, ever bigger spending on pointless projects, counterproductive efforts to “fix” an economy which has had enough of injurious tinkering by amateurs, and general disregard for the people who pay the bills. On the foreign front, the Dem policy has been an almost line by line continuation of the Bush interventionist policy, only with Mr. Obama pursuing pointless efforts in that graveyard of empires, Afghanistan, with a gusto that makes Mr. Bush look like a peacenik. This general tendency to pursue business as usual is why I refer to the current administration and its predecessor as one and the same, the Bush/Obama administration.
Given that the complete disregard, nay the contempt, that Mr. Bush and his henchmen showed for the taxpayer has been continued under Mr. Obama and his accomplices, the victory of Scott Brown, a state legislator whom few knew and even fewer seemed to dislike, over uber-establishmentarian Martha Coakley is well deserved, or at least the defeat of Martha Coakley is well deserved. The danger, and the probability, of course, is that the Republicans will make the same mistake in the wake of Mr. Brown’s victory that the Democrats made in the wake of their victories in 2006 and 2008; i.e., they will assume that what happened is not a repudiation of their opponents but, rather, an endorsement of them.
Two more points, only tangentially related to Mr. Brown’s victory:
First, after her pathetic campaign and crushing defeat, Ms. Coakley said: “Though our campaign ends tonight we know our mission goes on.” Think about that puerile pap. Serious people don’t utter such jejune platitudes. But we don’t elect serious people. We elect poltroons and popinjays, and Ms. Coakley is only one of legions of such patheticos. Given the clowns we elect, people who think such gormlessness as “Though our campaign ends tonight, our mission goes on” is the very essence of profundity and determination, we are getting about what we deserve from our public officials.
Second, as I was thinking of this election and the pious proclamations from Democrats that “This had nothing to do with President Obama,” I was, and am, growing more convinced that Mr. Obama and his minions, especially Rahm Emanuel (See my 12/23/09 post, “I CAN TELL BY THE WAY YOU DRESS THAT YOU ARE A REAL COWBOY”) are in WAY over their heads. It seems like in our desperation to rid ourselves of the Bush infestation, we (as a people…yours truly voted Libertarian, as usual) got behind an ephemeral fantasy, an ethereal dream, a man without substance. But time will tell.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
LIVE…AND ON TELEVISION!
1/16/10
According to Naperville Community Television’s (“NCTV”’s) programming schedule, my appearance on Becky Anderson’s “Authors Revealed” program will have two additional run times next week. So the remaining air times are:
Saturday, 1/16/10 at 4:00 AM, 8:30 AM, and 1:30 PM
Sunday, 1/17/10 at Midnight and 10:00 AM
Monday, 1/18/10 at 5:00 AM
Tuesday, 1/19/10 at 11:00 AM
NCTV is on channel 17 in Naperville on both Comcast and Wide Open West. For those of you outside Naperville, it streams live at NCTV17.com. Some potential viewers have had problems connecting online, but others have experienced no such difficulties.
I am part of an author’s evening at 57th Street Books, one of the Seminary Coop Bookstores, at 57th and Kimbark in Hyde Park on Wednesday, 1/20/10 at 6:00 PM. I, and two other local authors, will be reading selections from our books. Books, of course, will be available for sale at the event.
According to Naperville Community Television’s (“NCTV”’s) programming schedule, my appearance on Becky Anderson’s “Authors Revealed” program will have two additional run times next week. So the remaining air times are:
Saturday, 1/16/10 at 4:00 AM, 8:30 AM, and 1:30 PM
Sunday, 1/17/10 at Midnight and 10:00 AM
Monday, 1/18/10 at 5:00 AM
Tuesday, 1/19/10 at 11:00 AM
NCTV is on channel 17 in Naperville on both Comcast and Wide Open West. For those of you outside Naperville, it streams live at NCTV17.com. Some potential viewers have had problems connecting online, but others have experienced no such difficulties.
I am part of an author’s evening at 57th Street Books, one of the Seminary Coop Bookstores, at 57th and Kimbark in Hyde Park on Wednesday, 1/20/10 at 6:00 PM. I, and two other local authors, will be reading selections from our books. Books, of course, will be available for sale at the event.
Friday, January 15, 2010
“YOU DO THAT VOODOO THAT YOU DO SO WELL…”
1/15/10
When the subject of megabanks’, many of whom would no longer be extant without government help, paying astronomical bonuses to their employees, arises (Just this morning, CNBC reported that Wall Street pay this year (i.e., paid in 2010 ostensibly for 2009 performance) would be the highest in history.), those who defend Wall Street’s pay practices argue that, without these pay packages, Wall Street would lost its “talent.” Those on the other side of the argument counter with something like “Where are these people going to go to make the kind of money they make on Wall Street?” To which the defenders of these pay packages respond “Hedge funds.”
I find this very interesting. I would like very much for these people in big banks, investment or commercial, who are very confident that they are worth what they are being paid to go to work at hedge funds. As those of you who have been reading this blog carefully over the years know, while I spend a great deal of time criticizing large banks who champion the free market system and rugged individualism while using their carefully cultivated contacts in the upper reaches of our government leviathan to grab a grossly disproportionate share of federal largesse, I have very few problems with hedge funds. Hedge funds are the ultimate free market, capitalist experiment, at least as applied to the financial industry. If one runs a hedge fund and does very well for his or her investors, he or she does very well for himself. If one runs a hedge fund and does poorly for one’s investors, one can make a very nice living for a very short while but will soon be forced to close up shop unless one if fortunate enough to tap a large group of extraordinarily clueless investors, a la Bernie Madoff. At a hedge fund, one’s pay depends on one’s performance. So I say let all these hotshots at big banks who feel they are underpaid when they only break into the low seven figures defect to hedge funds or, better yet, start their own hedge funds. Let them find out how easy it is to make the big bucks when you don’t have a big name, and lots of capital, behind you. Let them find out that the payday at which they sniff is not at all guaranteed but actually depends on doing a good job for the people who have entrusted you with their money.
Doubtless, many, or at least some, of these Wall Street traders will do well at hedge funds, and good for them if they do. But many, and I suspect, most, will fail miserably and go back to their former cushy jobs at hyper-insulated financial behemoths, tails between their legs, and beg for their old jobs back. Just as surely, they will complain when the next round of bonuses is determined and they have to settle for another Porsche or two rather than the Ferraris on which they had counted, but that is how these popinjays operate. A massive defection to hedge funds will show who is really worth his or her salt or who isn’t. And note also that hedge funds have no openings for the McKinsey addled management types who have run these financial institutions into the ground and who seemingly are incapable of running a two car funeral without plenty of government help in the form of either direct aid or cheap money.
Some might argue that allowing such traders to defect to hedge funds will leave the banks with the detritus, with the incompetent non-performers incapable of making a living without the security blanket of employment at a large institution, the dolts who have their jobs because they had the good fortune of their fathers’ being born before they were (who in turn had the good fortune of their fathers’ being born before they were) and a fourth name which is a number. This is true as far as traders are concerned; the best will go to hedge funds. But, just as hedge funds have no use for management types whose skills extend no further than knowing to whom to whine when the going gets the least bit uncomfortable and an amazing ability to blow money on trendy piffles and useless enthusiasms, they also have no use for even the best commercial lenders and underwriters. So the banks may be left with a bunch of half-wit traders but also will be left with individuals who are very good at the core crafts of commercial and investment banking—commercial lending and securities underwriting. Sure, banks, especially investment banks, must do some trading to support their issues, but they have no need for the fancy, convoluted trading that turned them into hedge funds on the taxpayers’ dime and so mightily contributed to our financial misfortune. And they will be able to find some traders, even at reduced pay levels, capable of doing such ancillary trading. But a major defection of the types of traders who make hedge funds work may force banks back into their core businesses, much to the benefit of their shareholders, the financial system, and the American economy.
When the subject of megabanks’, many of whom would no longer be extant without government help, paying astronomical bonuses to their employees, arises (Just this morning, CNBC reported that Wall Street pay this year (i.e., paid in 2010 ostensibly for 2009 performance) would be the highest in history.), those who defend Wall Street’s pay practices argue that, without these pay packages, Wall Street would lost its “talent.” Those on the other side of the argument counter with something like “Where are these people going to go to make the kind of money they make on Wall Street?” To which the defenders of these pay packages respond “Hedge funds.”
I find this very interesting. I would like very much for these people in big banks, investment or commercial, who are very confident that they are worth what they are being paid to go to work at hedge funds. As those of you who have been reading this blog carefully over the years know, while I spend a great deal of time criticizing large banks who champion the free market system and rugged individualism while using their carefully cultivated contacts in the upper reaches of our government leviathan to grab a grossly disproportionate share of federal largesse, I have very few problems with hedge funds. Hedge funds are the ultimate free market, capitalist experiment, at least as applied to the financial industry. If one runs a hedge fund and does very well for his or her investors, he or she does very well for himself. If one runs a hedge fund and does poorly for one’s investors, one can make a very nice living for a very short while but will soon be forced to close up shop unless one if fortunate enough to tap a large group of extraordinarily clueless investors, a la Bernie Madoff. At a hedge fund, one’s pay depends on one’s performance. So I say let all these hotshots at big banks who feel they are underpaid when they only break into the low seven figures defect to hedge funds or, better yet, start their own hedge funds. Let them find out how easy it is to make the big bucks when you don’t have a big name, and lots of capital, behind you. Let them find out that the payday at which they sniff is not at all guaranteed but actually depends on doing a good job for the people who have entrusted you with their money.
Doubtless, many, or at least some, of these Wall Street traders will do well at hedge funds, and good for them if they do. But many, and I suspect, most, will fail miserably and go back to their former cushy jobs at hyper-insulated financial behemoths, tails between their legs, and beg for their old jobs back. Just as surely, they will complain when the next round of bonuses is determined and they have to settle for another Porsche or two rather than the Ferraris on which they had counted, but that is how these popinjays operate. A massive defection to hedge funds will show who is really worth his or her salt or who isn’t. And note also that hedge funds have no openings for the McKinsey addled management types who have run these financial institutions into the ground and who seemingly are incapable of running a two car funeral without plenty of government help in the form of either direct aid or cheap money.
Some might argue that allowing such traders to defect to hedge funds will leave the banks with the detritus, with the incompetent non-performers incapable of making a living without the security blanket of employment at a large institution, the dolts who have their jobs because they had the good fortune of their fathers’ being born before they were (who in turn had the good fortune of their fathers’ being born before they were) and a fourth name which is a number. This is true as far as traders are concerned; the best will go to hedge funds. But, just as hedge funds have no use for management types whose skills extend no further than knowing to whom to whine when the going gets the least bit uncomfortable and an amazing ability to blow money on trendy piffles and useless enthusiasms, they also have no use for even the best commercial lenders and underwriters. So the banks may be left with a bunch of half-wit traders but also will be left with individuals who are very good at the core crafts of commercial and investment banking—commercial lending and securities underwriting. Sure, banks, especially investment banks, must do some trading to support their issues, but they have no need for the fancy, convoluted trading that turned them into hedge funds on the taxpayers’ dime and so mightily contributed to our financial misfortune. And they will be able to find some traders, even at reduced pay levels, capable of doing such ancillary trading. But a major defection of the types of traders who make hedge funds work may force banks back into their core businesses, much to the benefit of their shareholders, the financial system, and the American economy.
Monday, January 11, 2010
THE MINISTRY OF SILLY ECONOMICS
1/11/10
This morning’s Wall Street Journal reports that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a rising star in the state and national Democratic parties, has decided to attack LA’s lethargic economy, and LA County’s resultant 12.6% unemployment rate, by hiring the city’s first “economy chief.” This newest bureaucrat, Austin Beutner, formerly of Blackstone, now of Evercore, will be charged with making the nation’s second largest city more “business friendly.”
So the Mayor proposes to attack the nation’s second largest city’s unemployment problem by expanding the city’s public bureaucracy, the support of which is the primary reason that Los Angeles, and California, has become such a difficult place to do business, or to live, for that matter. Your government, and your tax dollars, at work.
Such an approach to economic problems is not unique to Mayor Villaraigosa, California, or the Democratic Party. It is the very nature of the modern politician, even those GOPers who spend their lives extolling the virtues of the private sector while doing everything possible to avoid the ignominy of actually having to participate in that sector, to look to the government, and the expansion thereof, as the solution to all our problems. And yet there remain many citizens, even those of a supposed libertarian bent, who insist that the answer to bloated government lies in electing the latest politician piously pontificating about the perfidiousness of government as long as he is not in charge of it
This morning’s Wall Street Journal reports that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a rising star in the state and national Democratic parties, has decided to attack LA’s lethargic economy, and LA County’s resultant 12.6% unemployment rate, by hiring the city’s first “economy chief.” This newest bureaucrat, Austin Beutner, formerly of Blackstone, now of Evercore, will be charged with making the nation’s second largest city more “business friendly.”
So the Mayor proposes to attack the nation’s second largest city’s unemployment problem by expanding the city’s public bureaucracy, the support of which is the primary reason that Los Angeles, and California, has become such a difficult place to do business, or to live, for that matter. Your government, and your tax dollars, at work.
Such an approach to economic problems is not unique to Mayor Villaraigosa, California, or the Democratic Party. It is the very nature of the modern politician, even those GOPers who spend their lives extolling the virtues of the private sector while doing everything possible to avoid the ignominy of actually having to participate in that sector, to look to the government, and the expansion thereof, as the solution to all our problems. And yet there remain many citizens, even those of a supposed libertarian bent, who insist that the answer to bloated government lies in electing the latest politician piously pontificating about the perfidiousness of government as long as he is not in charge of it
Sunday, January 10, 2010
“HIS LIPS ARE MOVING”
1/10/10
I wrote the following to Mark Brown of the Chicago Sun-Times in response to his 1/10/10 column regarding Pat Quinn’s apparent pandering to Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Mark’s disappointment in both Pat Quinn and Dan Hynes. I thought my readers might enjoy it:
Hi Mark,
You’re too nice a guy.
In today’s column, you explain that both Dan Hynes and Pat Quinn (no relation) have disappointed you and how they may not be “honest, earnest, and conscientious public servants. Nice guys, too.” In this specific instance, the occasions for your disappointment are Quinn’s kowtowing to Representative Jesse Jackson (with what looks to be at least scores of millions of taxpayer money for various south suburban capital projects), Quinn’s “hanging his state prison director out to dry for his (Quinn’s) own bungling of a prisoner early release program,” and Hynes’ “exploiting it (the prisoner release program) for fear-mongering”.
In explaining your disappointment, you were doing fine when you said that the “…part I overlooked (about Quinn and Hynes) is that, first and foremost, they are both politicians…” If you had quit there, you would have been correct, but then you said “…and politics demands a certain amount of expediency,” thereby at least partially exonerating Messrs. Quinn and Hynes by excusing their frequent shading of the truth and visits to moral gray areas as mere imperatives of their profession.
You would have done better if you had said that they are both politicians and, as such, they lie and pander reflexively. A politicians lies and panders both because doing so comes more naturally than telling the truth and standing on principle and because, in the politician’s perverted moral system, lying is less of a moral fault than having the electorate face the heavy burden of enduring life bereft of his enlightened leadership.
Face it, Mark; politicians, even those who trumpet their honesty and reform minded nature, are liars because they have lied so long that they fail to recognize the truth, or at least the value of the truth relative to the value of prolonging their tenure at the public trough.
I’m not saying Messrs. Quinn and Hynes are not “nice guys”, as you put it. I don’t know Hynes, but I used to know his dad and he’s a nice guy. I’ve met Pat Quinn on a few occasions and he’s a nice guy. You and I both know a lot of politicians. I think you’ll agree that very few of them are not nice guys. Part of their job description is “nice guy.” People don’t vote for misanthropes. But being a “nice guy” does not say anything about one’s moral code and what naked ambition can do to twist and pervert it so that it no longer resembles the average person’s conception of right and wrong.
I wrote the following to Mark Brown of the Chicago Sun-Times in response to his 1/10/10 column regarding Pat Quinn’s apparent pandering to Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Mark’s disappointment in both Pat Quinn and Dan Hynes. I thought my readers might enjoy it:
Hi Mark,
You’re too nice a guy.
In today’s column, you explain that both Dan Hynes and Pat Quinn (no relation) have disappointed you and how they may not be “honest, earnest, and conscientious public servants. Nice guys, too.” In this specific instance, the occasions for your disappointment are Quinn’s kowtowing to Representative Jesse Jackson (with what looks to be at least scores of millions of taxpayer money for various south suburban capital projects), Quinn’s “hanging his state prison director out to dry for his (Quinn’s) own bungling of a prisoner early release program,” and Hynes’ “exploiting it (the prisoner release program) for fear-mongering”.
In explaining your disappointment, you were doing fine when you said that the “…part I overlooked (about Quinn and Hynes) is that, first and foremost, they are both politicians…” If you had quit there, you would have been correct, but then you said “…and politics demands a certain amount of expediency,” thereby at least partially exonerating Messrs. Quinn and Hynes by excusing their frequent shading of the truth and visits to moral gray areas as mere imperatives of their profession.
You would have done better if you had said that they are both politicians and, as such, they lie and pander reflexively. A politicians lies and panders both because doing so comes more naturally than telling the truth and standing on principle and because, in the politician’s perverted moral system, lying is less of a moral fault than having the electorate face the heavy burden of enduring life bereft of his enlightened leadership.
Face it, Mark; politicians, even those who trumpet their honesty and reform minded nature, are liars because they have lied so long that they fail to recognize the truth, or at least the value of the truth relative to the value of prolonging their tenure at the public trough.
I’m not saying Messrs. Quinn and Hynes are not “nice guys”, as you put it. I don’t know Hynes, but I used to know his dad and he’s a nice guy. I’ve met Pat Quinn on a few occasions and he’s a nice guy. You and I both know a lot of politicians. I think you’ll agree that very few of them are not nice guys. Part of their job description is “nice guy.” People don’t vote for misanthropes. But being a “nice guy” does not say anything about one’s moral code and what naked ambition can do to twist and pervert it so that it no longer resembles the average person’s conception of right and wrong.
Friday, January 8, 2010
CHAIRMAN’S FURTHER PROGRESS
1/8/10
Earlier this week, I mentioned that I had appeared on Naperville Community Television’s (“NCTV”) “Authors Revealed” program, hosted by Becky Anderson, and that the segment would air on the following dates at the following times: (All times are Central Standard Time, and note that NCTV streams live at NCTV17.com. The problems that NCTV was having with its live internet feed have been resolved.)
Monday, 1/11/10 at 10:00 AM
Tuesday, 1/12/10 at 11:00 AM
Wednesday, 1/13/10 at 10:30 PM
I have just learned that there will be additional airing dates and times, as follows:
Thursday, 1/14/10 at 7:30 PM
Friday, 1/15/10 at 8:30 AM and 6:30 PM
Saturday, 1/16/10 at 4:00 AM, 8:30 AM, and 1:30 PM
Sunday, 1/17/10 at Midnight and 10:00 AM
We are also working on further appearances on other media; I will keep you posted.
The blog this week contains some stories from the old neighborhood, which you probably have already read, in addition to comments on the federal government’s approach to terror, or to any problem, for that matter, and the budgetary woes of the state of Illinois.
Thanks; I hope you continue to enjoy the blog and that you have enjoyed or will enjoy my book, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics
Earlier this week, I mentioned that I had appeared on Naperville Community Television’s (“NCTV”) “Authors Revealed” program, hosted by Becky Anderson, and that the segment would air on the following dates at the following times: (All times are Central Standard Time, and note that NCTV streams live at NCTV17.com. The problems that NCTV was having with its live internet feed have been resolved.)
Monday, 1/11/10 at 10:00 AM
Tuesday, 1/12/10 at 11:00 AM
Wednesday, 1/13/10 at 10:30 PM
I have just learned that there will be additional airing dates and times, as follows:
Thursday, 1/14/10 at 7:30 PM
Friday, 1/15/10 at 8:30 AM and 6:30 PM
Saturday, 1/16/10 at 4:00 AM, 8:30 AM, and 1:30 PM
Sunday, 1/17/10 at Midnight and 10:00 AM
We are also working on further appearances on other media; I will keep you posted.
The blog this week contains some stories from the old neighborhood, which you probably have already read, in addition to comments on the federal government’s approach to terror, or to any problem, for that matter, and the budgetary woes of the state of Illinois.
Thanks; I hope you continue to enjoy the blog and that you have enjoyed or will enjoy my book, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
“…AND LET THEM KNOW WHY YOU’RE WEARING THE CROWN!”
1/6/10
After reading today’s post concerning my encounter with George Wendt at the 1986 Super Bowl, an old and treasured friend and former colleague reminded me of the story, which I used to tell on the trading desk, of my teaching the lyrics to the Bear fight song to my fellow passengers on the flight to New Orleans. He asked me to repeat it, and I have done so for him and for you. If you liked the Wendt story, you’ll probably like this one. If you didn’t like the Wendt story, you might want to skip this one.
Thanks!
mightydad@att.net
Leading the entire chartered ATA L-1011 passenger manifest of 350 in "Bear Down, Chicago Bears" came on the way to that trip! The flight was delayed about three hours, so a normally spirited crowd of Bear fans was vastly overserved by the time the plane took off. The captain, in a feeble yet gracious attempt to make up for the delay, offered to buy a drink for everyone on board. (Talk about throwing gasoline on a fire!) So I ordered a light beer (after the, oh, I don’t know (I’d lost count.), 8 or 10 I’d had in the airport), but my buddy jabbed me in the ribs. “Quinny, the pilot is buying us a drink! This is no time to be drinking Lite Beer from Miller!” Seeing the logic of my friend’s observation, I quickly changed my order to some kind of rotgut bar whiskey, and it was GOOD, and so became the first of many.
As the time passed, I found the crowd not sufficiently raucous for my tastes, so I asked my fellow passengers in my row if they would like to learn the Bear fight song. Nowadays, “Bear Down Chicago Bears” is commonly played at all Bear games and everyone knows the words. Back then, in a less enlightened era, everyone recognized the tune, but almost no one, other than yours truly, knew the words. So, line by line, I patiently taught my fellow passengers the words….
“Okay, now…
‘Bear down, Chicago Bears, make every play lead the way to victory…’
Got it?”
They would repeat that line. Then I would continue.
“ ‘Bear down, Chicago Bears, put up a fight with a might so fearlessly…’
Got that?”
They would repeat the line. Then I would continue.
“ ‘We’ll never forget the way you thrilled the nation…with your T-Formation’
Got that line?”
They would repeat that, and so on down the line until
“ ‘You’re the pride and joy of Illinois, Chicago Bears, bear down!’”
They repeated every line faithfully back to me. Then the whole row, led by yours truly, belted out the entire song, word for word, in all its melodic glory. Inspired by this rapturous display of team and city spirit, soon the whole plane was trying to sing along, insisting that we repeat it, again and again, so that they, too, might learn the words of this timeless anthem. By the time we had landed in New Orleans, every passenger was belting out “Bear Down, Chicago Bears” with varying degrees, depending on the singer’s endurance level, of fidelity to the actual words of the song.
Also on that trip, I met Tip O’Neil coming out of St. Louis Cathedral after Mass on the Saturday before the game, the same evening I met George Wendt. I told Tip, as we left Mass, that the first vote I ever cast was for Richard J. Daley. He told me that he knew Richard J. Daley and that I ought to be proud to have cast that vote. It’s amazing how unprotected public people were in those days.
Also on that trip, one night (about 3:00 AM, actually) we piled into a cab and I noticed that the cab driver’s name was James Ruffin. I instantly decided (My judgment may have been clouded by the evening’s activities, but I still was convinced I was right.) that he had to be THE Jimmy Ruffin. So I said to him “You’re Jimmy Ruffin, aren’t you?” He replied “I’m James Ruffin, sir.” I said “Aw, c’mon, you’re Jimmy Ruffin.” My friends by this time were asking “Who the h--- is Jimmy Ruffin?” So I launched into “What becomes of the broken hearted, who had love that’s now departed…I know I got to find, some kind of piece of mind, I’ll be searching everywhere, just to find someone to care…” Everyone soon joined in and I said “That’s our cabdriver…Jimmy Ruffin!” He just shook his head and said “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. I’m James Ruffin.” To this day, I don’t know if he was THE Jimmy Ruffin. I hope not.
After reading today’s post concerning my encounter with George Wendt at the 1986 Super Bowl, an old and treasured friend and former colleague reminded me of the story, which I used to tell on the trading desk, of my teaching the lyrics to the Bear fight song to my fellow passengers on the flight to New Orleans. He asked me to repeat it, and I have done so for him and for you. If you liked the Wendt story, you’ll probably like this one. If you didn’t like the Wendt story, you might want to skip this one.
Thanks!
mightydad@att.net
Leading the entire chartered ATA L-1011 passenger manifest of 350 in "Bear Down, Chicago Bears" came on the way to that trip! The flight was delayed about three hours, so a normally spirited crowd of Bear fans was vastly overserved by the time the plane took off. The captain, in a feeble yet gracious attempt to make up for the delay, offered to buy a drink for everyone on board. (Talk about throwing gasoline on a fire!) So I ordered a light beer (after the, oh, I don’t know (I’d lost count.), 8 or 10 I’d had in the airport), but my buddy jabbed me in the ribs. “Quinny, the pilot is buying us a drink! This is no time to be drinking Lite Beer from Miller!” Seeing the logic of my friend’s observation, I quickly changed my order to some kind of rotgut bar whiskey, and it was GOOD, and so became the first of many.
As the time passed, I found the crowd not sufficiently raucous for my tastes, so I asked my fellow passengers in my row if they would like to learn the Bear fight song. Nowadays, “Bear Down Chicago Bears” is commonly played at all Bear games and everyone knows the words. Back then, in a less enlightened era, everyone recognized the tune, but almost no one, other than yours truly, knew the words. So, line by line, I patiently taught my fellow passengers the words….
“Okay, now…
‘Bear down, Chicago Bears, make every play lead the way to victory…’
Got it?”
They would repeat that line. Then I would continue.
“ ‘Bear down, Chicago Bears, put up a fight with a might so fearlessly…’
Got that?”
They would repeat the line. Then I would continue.
“ ‘We’ll never forget the way you thrilled the nation…with your T-Formation’
Got that line?”
They would repeat that, and so on down the line until
“ ‘You’re the pride and joy of Illinois, Chicago Bears, bear down!’”
They repeated every line faithfully back to me. Then the whole row, led by yours truly, belted out the entire song, word for word, in all its melodic glory. Inspired by this rapturous display of team and city spirit, soon the whole plane was trying to sing along, insisting that we repeat it, again and again, so that they, too, might learn the words of this timeless anthem. By the time we had landed in New Orleans, every passenger was belting out “Bear Down, Chicago Bears” with varying degrees, depending on the singer’s endurance level, of fidelity to the actual words of the song.
Also on that trip, I met Tip O’Neil coming out of St. Louis Cathedral after Mass on the Saturday before the game, the same evening I met George Wendt. I told Tip, as we left Mass, that the first vote I ever cast was for Richard J. Daley. He told me that he knew Richard J. Daley and that I ought to be proud to have cast that vote. It’s amazing how unprotected public people were in those days.
Also on that trip, one night (about 3:00 AM, actually) we piled into a cab and I noticed that the cab driver’s name was James Ruffin. I instantly decided (My judgment may have been clouded by the evening’s activities, but I still was convinced I was right.) that he had to be THE Jimmy Ruffin. So I said to him “You’re Jimmy Ruffin, aren’t you?” He replied “I’m James Ruffin, sir.” I said “Aw, c’mon, you’re Jimmy Ruffin.” My friends by this time were asking “Who the h--- is Jimmy Ruffin?” So I launched into “What becomes of the broken hearted, who had love that’s now departed…I know I got to find, some kind of piece of mind, I’ll be searching everywhere, just to find someone to care…” Everyone soon joined in and I said “That’s our cabdriver…Jimmy Ruffin!” He just shook his head and said “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. I’m James Ruffin.” To this day, I don’t know if he was THE Jimmy Ruffin. I hope not.
“LAST YEAR WE GAMBLED TO GET RICH; THIS YEAR, WE’RE PUTTING OUR MONEY IN BONDS!”
1/6/10
A front page article in the Chicago Tribune today informs its readers that the University of Illinois (not Harvard, commonly known as the “U of I of the east,” but, rather, the U of I with campuses in Champaign-Urbana, Springfield, and Chicago) is owed $436 mm by the state of Illinois and thus will ask faculty and administrators to take unpaid furlough days “by mid-June.” The amount of time from now until “mid-June” indicates to the insightful reader that U of I President Stan Ickenberry is playing a game of chicken with the state, and a very wise one at that; given Governor Quinn’s (no relation) propensity to fold at the nearest sign of distress, real or feigned, on anyone’s (but taxpayers’) part virtually guarantees that the yours truly’s alma mater will get its money one way or the other. Northern Illinois University (NIU), which occasionally employs me, and Southern Illinois University (SIU) are experiencing similar difficulties with money owed them by the state.
Governor Quinn (no relation) acknowledges, according to the Trib, the cash flow “crisis” but promises that money will be winging its way across the prairie after the state finishes this week’s round of bond issuance. This is where this episode gets especially interesting.
The state is going to sell $3.5 billion face amount of bonds this week. $800 million to $1 billion of that will be available to pay overdue bills to vendors, universities, and others who are waiting for their money. The first question that comes to mind is where the other $2.5 to $2.7 billion will go when the state already has a $6 billion pile of unpaid bills. If the additional spondulicks are going to fund operations, shouldn’t vendors and others who have been stiffed get paid before new vendors are paid? If the money is going for capital projects, one has to ask why the state is embarking on $2.5 to $2.7 billion of capital projects when it owes vendors, universities, and other service providers $6 billion. If it’s going to refinance short term borrowing (See the next paragraph.), this might make financial sense but is just a symptom of fiscal irresponsibility. Doubtless Governor Quinn (no relation) will work up some figurative tears over those who “have been hurt by this terrible economy,” his usual justification for ignoring the fiscal peril in which the state finds itself, but, whether this money is being spent for operations, for capital projects, or to paper over some short term borrowing, it is yet one more manifestation of the fiscal mismanagement that Governor Quinn (no relation) continues under the guise of “compassion”…for everyone but the people who pay the bills.
That having been said, at least part of Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes’ assertion that “We’ve had $6 billion of short term borrowing (MQ—by definition, this “short term borrowing” which Mr. Hynes cites is separate and distinct from this week’s bond issue.) under Pat Quinn, and he wants to borrow more. We are over-leveraged. We can’t borrow our way out of this problem.” is disingenuous, and not only because Mr. Hynes signed off on every round of that short term borrowing until the latest, which was proposed after Mr. Hynes began his quixotic primary campaign against Mr. Quinn (no relation) for the governor’s job. It is not a question of being “over-leveraged” or “borrow(ing) our way out of the problem.” The state already owes the money. It is merely a question of whether the state owes it to vendors, universities, and the like or whether we owe it to short term debt, and, presumably, after this bond issue, long term bond, holders. So do we finance state government at no interest by stiffing service providers or do we finance state government honestly by actually borrowing the money we use to run the state and paying interest on it?
One can argue, and I certainly would, that fundamental problems and approaches need to be addressed, that the way, or at least the rate at which, the state spends money has to change. That may even involve reexamining the amount by which the state subsidizes higher education. But we are talking here about money that has already been spent and is already owed, not a basic reexamination of the state’s wastrel ways.
A front page article in the Chicago Tribune today informs its readers that the University of Illinois (not Harvard, commonly known as the “U of I of the east,” but, rather, the U of I with campuses in Champaign-Urbana, Springfield, and Chicago) is owed $436 mm by the state of Illinois and thus will ask faculty and administrators to take unpaid furlough days “by mid-June.” The amount of time from now until “mid-June” indicates to the insightful reader that U of I President Stan Ickenberry is playing a game of chicken with the state, and a very wise one at that; given Governor Quinn’s (no relation) propensity to fold at the nearest sign of distress, real or feigned, on anyone’s (but taxpayers’) part virtually guarantees that the yours truly’s alma mater will get its money one way or the other. Northern Illinois University (NIU), which occasionally employs me, and Southern Illinois University (SIU) are experiencing similar difficulties with money owed them by the state.
Governor Quinn (no relation) acknowledges, according to the Trib, the cash flow “crisis” but promises that money will be winging its way across the prairie after the state finishes this week’s round of bond issuance. This is where this episode gets especially interesting.
The state is going to sell $3.5 billion face amount of bonds this week. $800 million to $1 billion of that will be available to pay overdue bills to vendors, universities, and others who are waiting for their money. The first question that comes to mind is where the other $2.5 to $2.7 billion will go when the state already has a $6 billion pile of unpaid bills. If the additional spondulicks are going to fund operations, shouldn’t vendors and others who have been stiffed get paid before new vendors are paid? If the money is going for capital projects, one has to ask why the state is embarking on $2.5 to $2.7 billion of capital projects when it owes vendors, universities, and other service providers $6 billion. If it’s going to refinance short term borrowing (See the next paragraph.), this might make financial sense but is just a symptom of fiscal irresponsibility. Doubtless Governor Quinn (no relation) will work up some figurative tears over those who “have been hurt by this terrible economy,” his usual justification for ignoring the fiscal peril in which the state finds itself, but, whether this money is being spent for operations, for capital projects, or to paper over some short term borrowing, it is yet one more manifestation of the fiscal mismanagement that Governor Quinn (no relation) continues under the guise of “compassion”…for everyone but the people who pay the bills.
That having been said, at least part of Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes’ assertion that “We’ve had $6 billion of short term borrowing (MQ—by definition, this “short term borrowing” which Mr. Hynes cites is separate and distinct from this week’s bond issue.) under Pat Quinn, and he wants to borrow more. We are over-leveraged. We can’t borrow our way out of this problem.” is disingenuous, and not only because Mr. Hynes signed off on every round of that short term borrowing until the latest, which was proposed after Mr. Hynes began his quixotic primary campaign against Mr. Quinn (no relation) for the governor’s job. It is not a question of being “over-leveraged” or “borrow(ing) our way out of the problem.” The state already owes the money. It is merely a question of whether the state owes it to vendors, universities, and the like or whether we owe it to short term debt, and, presumably, after this bond issue, long term bond, holders. So do we finance state government at no interest by stiffing service providers or do we finance state government honestly by actually borrowing the money we use to run the state and paying interest on it?
One can argue, and I certainly would, that fundamental problems and approaches need to be addressed, that the way, or at least the rate at which, the state spends money has to change. That may even involve reexamining the amount by which the state subsidizes higher education. But we are talking here about money that has already been spent and is already owed, not a basic reexamination of the state’s wastrel ways.
“I’VE SPENT A LOT OF MONEY AND I’VE SPENT A LOT OF TIME…”
1/6/10
A quote in this morning’s Wall Street Journal article about President Obama’s assertion that U.S. intelligence agencies “failed to connect the dots” on the near catastrophe over Detroit told us much about the mindset of politicians and the people who make careers in “public service.” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs reportedly tried to reassures us by asserting
“The president is as frustrated as I’m sure the American people are. We’ve spent a lot of money in the intervening years. We’ve set up new positions.”
Hmm…
This is what all politicians, but especially those in the Bush/Obama Administration, consider “action.” Not applying common sense, like scrutinizing people who have spent considerable time in terrorist hotbeds who pay cash for one way flights and carry no luggage with them, not actually doing something, but, instead, spending a lot of money and hiring more bureaucrats. Your tax dollars at work.
There is, however, an exception to this lethargic attitude of the Bush/Obama crowd toward action of any real substance. When that action involves committing American treasure and troops (oh, sorry…”advisors.” That’s right…18 and 19 year old “advisors.”) to foreign adventures, the Bush/Obama folks snap right to it. After all, there’s plenty of money for favored folks in sending our kids overseas on pointless military expeditions and nation building exercises.
A quote in this morning’s Wall Street Journal article about President Obama’s assertion that U.S. intelligence agencies “failed to connect the dots” on the near catastrophe over Detroit told us much about the mindset of politicians and the people who make careers in “public service.” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs reportedly tried to reassures us by asserting
“The president is as frustrated as I’m sure the American people are. We’ve spent a lot of money in the intervening years. We’ve set up new positions.”
Hmm…
This is what all politicians, but especially those in the Bush/Obama Administration, consider “action.” Not applying common sense, like scrutinizing people who have spent considerable time in terrorist hotbeds who pay cash for one way flights and carry no luggage with them, not actually doing something, but, instead, spending a lot of money and hiring more bureaucrats. Your tax dollars at work.
There is, however, an exception to this lethargic attitude of the Bush/Obama crowd toward action of any real substance. When that action involves committing American treasure and troops (oh, sorry…”advisors.” That’s right…18 and 19 year old “advisors.”) to foreign adventures, the Bush/Obama folks snap right to it. After all, there’s plenty of money for favored folks in sending our kids overseas on pointless military expeditions and nation building exercises.
TALES FROM THE SOUTH SIDE
1/6/10
In my last (or next, depending on how you are reading this blog) post, I informed readers that I will appear on NCTV’s “Authors Discovered” program with Becky Anderson on the following dates:
Monday, 1/11/10 at 10:00 A.M.
Tuesday, 1/12/10 at 11:00 A.M.
Wednesday, 1/13/10 at 10:30 P.M.
with perhaps more to follow. NCTV streams live on the internet at NCTV17.com.
I noticed, while perusing the NCTV’s schedule, that another south side Irish character, George Wendt, whom most of you know as Norm on “Cheers,” will also appear on Becky’s “Authors Discovered” at the following times:
Thursday, 1/7/10 at 7:30 PM and 10:00 PM
Friday, 1/8/10 at 8:30 AM, 4:00 PM, and 6:30 PM
Saturday, 1/9/10 at 1:30 PM and 3:00 PM
Sunday, 1/10/10 at midnight and 10:00 AM,
all times are CST.
While I will be discussing my book and politics, Mr. Wendt will be discussing his book and beer. Beer and politics, by the way, were, and remain, perhaps the two favorite subjects of discussion in the old neighborhood, broadly defined, that George and I share. George grew up in the far northern reaches of the neighborhood, in Christ the King Parish, and I grew up in the far southern reaches of the neighborhood, in St. Walter Parish. George is a more than a few years older than I, so we didn’t know each other in our teen years.
This gives me the opportunity to tell my favorite George Wendt story, which might or might not be all that interesting to my readers:
It is January, 1986, and I am in New Orleans for the first appearance of the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl. (For those purists out there, there was no Super Bowl in 1963.) The Bears were clearly the best team in the NFL that year, with a ferocious defense that had shut out everyone in the playoffs leading up to the Super Bowl and a running back named Walter Payton. That the team had very little offense, besides Mr. Payton and the guys that blocked for him, made little difference. That team, coached by the inimitable Mike Ditka, might have been the best team ever in the NFL, at least up to that time, but I digress. On the night before the game, my friends and I are leaving a restaurant (It might have been K Paul, but I don’t remember; I don’t remember a lot of things about that weekend.), and, as we are leaving, we notice George Wendt (You can’t miss George Wendt.) sitting at a table with a small entourage. As we pass the table, one of the guys at Wendt’s table yells “Hey, Quinn! Quinn!”
First, I am not, nor have I ever been, anything approaching a celebrity. No one would know me in a crowd who didn’t know me from somewhere else. Second, I had no idea who this guy was who was calling my name, though, from the look of him, I felt I should know his name; you’ve all had this experience. This was a mysterious combination of facts. So I feign like I know the guy, but I think he’s onto me. He says “Quinn! It’s great to see you again! You know me; I’m a friend of John Barajas!” Well, to appreciate that comment, you have to know John Barajas. John was, and remains, perhaps the most likeable and well regarded guy in St. Walter Parish. He still lives in the old neighborhood; in fact, he still lives in the house in which he grew up, which he bought from his dad. John was recently in the Chicago Tribune in an article about fanatical Bear fans; John has a blue and orange RV that he drives to every Bear home game in order to tailgate for hours before, and after, the game, almost always with some of the other guys with whom we went to grade school, including John McErlean, whose last name you might recognize from my book, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics. Though the pivotal (and even more pivotal in the upcoming sequel) character Jimmy McErlean in the book is not John McErlean, I would be less than honest if I denied that I wasn’t thinking of John when I named Jimmy. The same can be said for another character in the book, Alderman Ralph Barajas. But I digress. My point is that everyone knows John Barajas; someone saying he knows John does not make that person the least bit unique. So I have no idea who this guy is, which perhaps was attributable to it being New Orleans, Super Bowl weekend, and my being a much younger man indulging at least one vice that I have since abandoned with a degree of recklessness commensurate with the occasion. Further, I was pursuing that particular pastime to a heightened degree at that very moment owing to my discovery that evening of something called a Cajun martini, which I found to be an excellent chaser to beer, which, at the time, I drank in the volumes in which, for those of you who know me, I quaff iced tea today.
At any rate, this guy insists that I sit down and join him and Wendt’s entourage at the table. I demur, saying that I don’t want to intrude on their dinner. But George grabs me by the shoulder and says “Hey, you gotta sit down and have a beer with us! You’re from the old neighborhood! You know John Barajas! We gotta talk about Beverly! C’mon, have a beer with us.” So I sit down and join the guys in a series of often ribald stories from the old neighborhood. At that time, the concept of ONE beer was completely alien to me, so our conversation lasts quite some time, and I gotta tell ya’, Wendt is a hoot. And to this day, I still don’t know who the guy was who called me to the table. But he sure was a good guy.
In my last (or next, depending on how you are reading this blog) post, I informed readers that I will appear on NCTV’s “Authors Discovered” program with Becky Anderson on the following dates:
Monday, 1/11/10 at 10:00 A.M.
Tuesday, 1/12/10 at 11:00 A.M.
Wednesday, 1/13/10 at 10:30 P.M.
with perhaps more to follow. NCTV streams live on the internet at NCTV17.com.
I noticed, while perusing the NCTV’s schedule, that another south side Irish character, George Wendt, whom most of you know as Norm on “Cheers,” will also appear on Becky’s “Authors Discovered” at the following times:
Thursday, 1/7/10 at 7:30 PM and 10:00 PM
Friday, 1/8/10 at 8:30 AM, 4:00 PM, and 6:30 PM
Saturday, 1/9/10 at 1:30 PM and 3:00 PM
Sunday, 1/10/10 at midnight and 10:00 AM,
all times are CST.
While I will be discussing my book and politics, Mr. Wendt will be discussing his book and beer. Beer and politics, by the way, were, and remain, perhaps the two favorite subjects of discussion in the old neighborhood, broadly defined, that George and I share. George grew up in the far northern reaches of the neighborhood, in Christ the King Parish, and I grew up in the far southern reaches of the neighborhood, in St. Walter Parish. George is a more than a few years older than I, so we didn’t know each other in our teen years.
This gives me the opportunity to tell my favorite George Wendt story, which might or might not be all that interesting to my readers:
It is January, 1986, and I am in New Orleans for the first appearance of the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl. (For those purists out there, there was no Super Bowl in 1963.) The Bears were clearly the best team in the NFL that year, with a ferocious defense that had shut out everyone in the playoffs leading up to the Super Bowl and a running back named Walter Payton. That the team had very little offense, besides Mr. Payton and the guys that blocked for him, made little difference. That team, coached by the inimitable Mike Ditka, might have been the best team ever in the NFL, at least up to that time, but I digress. On the night before the game, my friends and I are leaving a restaurant (It might have been K Paul, but I don’t remember; I don’t remember a lot of things about that weekend.), and, as we are leaving, we notice George Wendt (You can’t miss George Wendt.) sitting at a table with a small entourage. As we pass the table, one of the guys at Wendt’s table yells “Hey, Quinn! Quinn!”
First, I am not, nor have I ever been, anything approaching a celebrity. No one would know me in a crowd who didn’t know me from somewhere else. Second, I had no idea who this guy was who was calling my name, though, from the look of him, I felt I should know his name; you’ve all had this experience. This was a mysterious combination of facts. So I feign like I know the guy, but I think he’s onto me. He says “Quinn! It’s great to see you again! You know me; I’m a friend of John Barajas!” Well, to appreciate that comment, you have to know John Barajas. John was, and remains, perhaps the most likeable and well regarded guy in St. Walter Parish. He still lives in the old neighborhood; in fact, he still lives in the house in which he grew up, which he bought from his dad. John was recently in the Chicago Tribune in an article about fanatical Bear fans; John has a blue and orange RV that he drives to every Bear home game in order to tailgate for hours before, and after, the game, almost always with some of the other guys with whom we went to grade school, including John McErlean, whose last name you might recognize from my book, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics. Though the pivotal (and even more pivotal in the upcoming sequel) character Jimmy McErlean in the book is not John McErlean, I would be less than honest if I denied that I wasn’t thinking of John when I named Jimmy. The same can be said for another character in the book, Alderman Ralph Barajas. But I digress. My point is that everyone knows John Barajas; someone saying he knows John does not make that person the least bit unique. So I have no idea who this guy is, which perhaps was attributable to it being New Orleans, Super Bowl weekend, and my being a much younger man indulging at least one vice that I have since abandoned with a degree of recklessness commensurate with the occasion. Further, I was pursuing that particular pastime to a heightened degree at that very moment owing to my discovery that evening of something called a Cajun martini, which I found to be an excellent chaser to beer, which, at the time, I drank in the volumes in which, for those of you who know me, I quaff iced tea today.
At any rate, this guy insists that I sit down and join him and Wendt’s entourage at the table. I demur, saying that I don’t want to intrude on their dinner. But George grabs me by the shoulder and says “Hey, you gotta sit down and have a beer with us! You’re from the old neighborhood! You know John Barajas! We gotta talk about Beverly! C’mon, have a beer with us.” So I sit down and join the guys in a series of often ribald stories from the old neighborhood. At that time, the concept of ONE beer was completely alien to me, so our conversation lasts quite some time, and I gotta tell ya’, Wendt is a hoot. And to this day, I still don’t know who the guy was who called me to the table. But he sure was a good guy.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
CHAIRMAN’S PROGRESS
1/5/10
As I mentioned in my 12/10/09 commentary, I was interviewed on 12/9/09 by Becky Anderson of Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville for a segment of her “Authors Revealed” program on Naperville Community Television. Becky is a great interviewer, a voracious reader, and an obvious bibliophile; the segment went very well. In that post, I promised my readers that I would notify them when the interview on my novel, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics, aired. Naperville Community Television streams live at NCTV17.com.
While schedules on television, and perhaps especially on community television, are subject to change, here are the tentative air times: (All times are Central Standard Time.)
Monday, 1/11/10 at 10:00 A.M.
Tuesday, 1/12/10 at 11:00 A.M.
Wednesday, 1/13/10 at 10:30 P.M.
I will, of course, let you know if anything changes or if there are additional airings.
Thanks; I hope you have enjoyed or will enjoy The Chairman.
Mark
mightydad@wowway.com
As I mentioned in my 12/10/09 commentary, I was interviewed on 12/9/09 by Becky Anderson of Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville for a segment of her “Authors Revealed” program on Naperville Community Television. Becky is a great interviewer, a voracious reader, and an obvious bibliophile; the segment went very well. In that post, I promised my readers that I would notify them when the interview on my novel, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics, aired. Naperville Community Television streams live at NCTV17.com.
While schedules on television, and perhaps especially on community television, are subject to change, here are the tentative air times: (All times are Central Standard Time.)
Monday, 1/11/10 at 10:00 A.M.
Tuesday, 1/12/10 at 11:00 A.M.
Wednesday, 1/13/10 at 10:30 P.M.
I will, of course, let you know if anything changes or if there are additional airings.
Thanks; I hope you have enjoyed or will enjoy The Chairman.
Mark
mightydad@wowway.com
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