The industrial era is dying. It has given the planet a fever, it is starving to death as oil runs out, and people are questioning the assumptions on which it is based.
But when the industrial era dies, many aspects of our life go with it. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross characterised five stages that people go through when faced with the death of a loved one, or their own death. You can look at some of the reactions to the state of the world in terms of these five stages
1. Shock/denial – Global warming does not exist – we are not polluting or running out of resources dammit.
2. Anger – Global warming exists and it’s their fault!
3. Bargaining – if I just change my lightbulbs can I keep my international air travel…
4. Depression/despair – Oh god there is nothing we can do…
5. Acceptance – the industrial era is dead, I’ll get my gardening gloves…
Obviously I’ve oversimplified this – there is more going on than global warming, and gardening is not the only activity in the post industrial (or Anthopocenic era – where human activities are recognised as being the major influence on geological and planetary processes).
For me the mourning analogy is useful. It helps me have more compassion for myself, as I see myself at various stages in the process. I remember being angry at evil industrialists, I’ve done my fair share of bargaining, and spent time in despair.
It also helps me extend the compassion to all the climate sceptics who can really piss me off. What they really need is a hug
In case there is a climate sceptic who reads this – I don’t really want to hug you.
I owe the Kubler- Ross analogy to my friend Roger spent years working as a coach and consultant in large industries, while keeping his perspective larger than their bottom lines.
US consumer confidence falls backShoppers in ManhattanUS consumers are worried about job prospectsUS consumer confidence fell unexpectedly in September, suggesting Americans are not as convinced as US policymakers of an economic recovery.The closely-watched Consumer Confidence Index from the Conference Board business organisation slipped to 53.1 from a revised 54.5 in August.Economists were expecting confidence to improve after it rose in August.Separately, a leading US index has shown a better-than-expected increase in house prices in July. link
Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.
It was, after all, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s brilliant “brains trust” advisers whose policies are now increasingly recognized as having prolonged the Great Depression of the 1930s, while claiming credit for ending it. The Great Depression ended only when the Second World War put an end to many New Deal policies.
“The Pew Research Center Social and Demographic Trends survey of daily activities found that people who were unemployed were more likely to nap during the week than on weekends and that those with jobs were only slightly more likely to nap on weekends. The survey also asked whether people had trouble sleeping, presumably at night. Women were more likely to, as were people who make less than $20,000 a year and those who, regardless of their income, were dissatisfied with their personal financial situation. The survey did not precisely define what constitutes a nap. Some people claim they are just resting their eyes when they are really snoozing. Others may doze momentarily when reading articles about demographic trends. Still others are driven to nod off briefly by the swaying of their bus or commuter train.”
Gordon Brown has proved on almost every measure that he has failed to govern the UK.
How can New Labour fight an election based on what Cameron ‘might do‘ when Brown has proved without dispute that he unable to govern the UK and has put us into recession and given us years of high taxes and reduced services to pay back the debts!
How badly does a labour leader have to perform before the Labour hierarchy decide that he (or she) cannot do the job? If Brown was a managing director of a company he would have gone a long time ago!
It astounds me that there is even a discussion about Gordon Brown being capable of running the country for the next five years. It is not as though he was simply unlucky with events completely outside of his control taking place around him.
Brown inherited a fantastic economy from the Conservatives. The ‘Golden Inheritance’ allowed Blair and Brown a wonderful opportunity and they totally failed to take advantage of it!
One of Brown’s early actions was to tax pension funds, so now most ordinary people will not be able to retire as expected, they will have to work for longer because their pension has been devalued.
Labour would point to new schools and new hospitals, but most of these would seem to have been built on borrowings – the PFI debt is huge and we still need to pay it back. I can only assume that the PFI debt levels are kept hidden from the public to protect the Labour government!
The British rail expansion/ rebuild is also on borrowed money. These two debts, and some others, are not even included in the UK debt level figures!
So how much debt is the UK in? Redefining the UK debt levels to exclude some large debts would seem to indicate that we are allowed to know!
There is one thing that is quite amusing with New Labour’s attempts to stay in power. They are continually claiming that Cameron would do worse running the UK than New Labour would. I don’t believe that anyone could do worse that Blair and Brown have done over the last 12 years!
Many people wonder about all of Obama’s Czar’s…what can they do? what power do they have? what are they held accountable to? Dictionary.com states that a ‘czar’ is: “an emperor or king; any person exercising great authority or power in a particular field.”
Czars in our current case are a set of special advisors that have the president’s ear on specific issues. There are currently 33 czars with 4 open positions. President Bush had 13 czars in his presidency after Congress passed laws that said that President Bush could show classified information to anyone of his choosing.
Czars do not need to answer questionnaires like cabinet or secretary positions, nor do they need to have FBI background checks, Supreme Court confirmations, or Congressional hearings. It is not really clear what they do or what they get paid for.
Legally speaking, they are technically Presidential advisors. A president can put advisors on payroll and can essentially have as many as he wants. If they do things that should be done by other Federal officials that clearly have that responsibility or who’s work is accountable to Congress, it could violate the Constitution and Federal law. Further, if President Obama has his czars do things in his own name, it would also be a violation because he cannot delegate that power to czars.
For TARP (Trouble Asset Release Program), Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner was given discretion to spend over $700 billion. One of the czars that had the privilege of whispering into the ear of Geithner was Ron Bloom, the manufacturing czar. Bloom is a special assistant to the president of United Steelworkers union and a former executive with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.
During the Crystler/GMC bankruptcy, the United Auto Workers got large stakes in the business. If Bloom was sharing his thoughts to Geithner, that is lawful. However, if he was bypassing Sec. Geithner to negotiate the deal in favor of the UAW, that would be unlawful. We will never know.
I propose that congress vote out the bills passed during President Bush’s era. All people who are giving direction should be held accountable to the people via Congress. This is not a red vs. blue issue, it’s an American one.
For over 3 decades, the only time the Sherwood Diner closed was Christmas. The door would be locked, the parking lot empty — and everyone remarked how weird that was to see.
Starting October 4, those days — well, those nights — are gone forever.
The diner will now be 24/7 on Fridays and Saturdays only. Weeknights, they’ll close between 1:30 and 6 a.m. On Sundays they’ll lock up at midnight.
Though the place still packs ‘em in all weekend long — Staples students, Cedar Brook Cafe goers and everyone in between — late night/early morning weekdays have turned lifeless. Westporters’ choices for pre-dawn munchies now dwindle to a couple of gas station mini-marts — no comparison at all.
“It’s a sign of the times,” a Sherwood waitress said, referring not to the sign itself but to the cause.
She’s right. But is it a sign of the economy? Of a further deadening of Westport night life?
**UPDATE** Politico: NBC Vehemently Denies Allegations Over Anti-Semitic Email
**UPDATE 2** ALG Statement in Response to Alleged NBC Email
**UPDATE 3** NBC News Statement
**UPDATE 4**Group Stands Ground Over Claims That NBC Employee Issued Anti-Semitic Email
Apparently NBC “Dateline” producer Jane Stone or someone else who has access to her Blackberry has a problem with groups that oppose ACORN and with an ethnocultural minority.
When Stone received an email urging Congress to defund ACORN from Alex Rosenwald, director of media outreach for Americans for Limited Government, the following sentence came back to Rosenwald from Stone’s account: “Bite me, Jew Boy!”
See the emails and the “rest of the story”: http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/25/nbc-to-anti-acorn-group-bite-me-jew-boy/
As you all will get to know, I really only have a few main interests in my life. When I’m not spending time with my lovely girlfriend, when I’m not in school or doing work, you can find me relaxing on my couch playing video games. I wouldn’t call myself a “gamer” because gamers like to play all kinds of games and jump from one to another when they’ve beaten it. Personally, I like first person shooters, but I’m very open minded about any game.
__Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare
The reason why I wouldn’t call myself a gamer is not because I’m fixated on one type of game, it’s because lately I have been only playing one game for the past 2 years. That game is Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warfare. This is possibly the greatest game made in the past 5 years. According to CNet.Com, since it was released in late November of 2007, COD4 Modern Warfare has sold over 10 Million Units spread over 3 main outlets; the Xbox360, Play Station 3, and the PC version. Assuming all units sold for the listed retail price of $60, that’s over $600,000,000 (six-hundred MILLION) of revenue over the past two years. So why did this game do so well? For those of you who know the Call Of Duty franchise, you know that COD has been based on the recreation of historical wars. Well, COD4 Modern Warfare had the chance to deviate from that saturated reputation that the Call Of Duty franchise was known for and they hit it out of the ball park.
COD4 was the first of the Call of Duty games to have a modern take on it. The guns were modern (M-16, AK-47, P90, MP5, SAW, 50 Cals, etc.), no more single-shot-reload guns. Because this was a new concept for the COD franchise, creators at Infinity Ward had the opportunity to create a completely hypothetical story line. Of course, considering the current status of the world, it was only appropriate that the story be based on terrorism. Clearly self-evident, the Infinity Ward staff recognized that a clean slate meant a huge opportunity to revolutionize the Call of Duty franchise. Not only is the story line captivating, but so is the multi-player mode. That’s the main factor that took COD4 so far; multi-player.
Modern Warfare 2__
With COD4 Modern Warfare still being played be hundreds of thousands everyday, the guys at Infinity Ward are releasing Modern Warfare 2 this November 10th. The story sounds just as amazing as the first MW and multi-player looks to be as smooth as the single player game mode (based on the MW2 Trailer). According to Infinity Ward’s community manager, Robert Bowling (twitter @fourzerotwo), that is because the MW2 staff started on the multi-player mode the very first day the single player game-play went into development.
Modern Warfare2 Trailer via YouTube. (youtube.com/infinityward)
If you ask me, Modern Warfare 2 looks like a combination of the first Modern Warfare and Killzone2 (another great game). There is no doubt that this sequel from Infinity Ward will live up to the hype.
Hope you guys enjoyed reading. This one was a bit longer, but if you’re a fellow gamer, you understand I made it as short as I could considering the many great things there are to say about this game. I am in no way endorsing this game or other products of Infinity Ward. I am simply giving my honest opinion as a consumer. There is more to come. I wanted to address a bit on PS3 vs. Xbox360, but I think I’ll save that for another time. This post is long enough!
Civil works of the P7.8 billion Laguindingan Airport Development Project (LADP) is expected to attain 65-percent compliance by yearend, two months ahead of schedule, Gov. Oscar Moreno of Misamis Oriental said on Thursday.
“In March next year, the runway shall have been completed so that the presidential plane would be the first aircraft to have landed on it”, Moreno said in gist during meeting of members of the Regional Development Council two days ago.
To date, the 4.3-kilometer access road has already been completed, relocation of affected residents already in placed, while the construction of the passenger terminal and taxi-way are on underway, Moreno added.
He admitted though that prior to the ocular visit of Presidential Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to the airport site in January 2006 he was cynical of the project since there were several ground-breaking rites in the past yet it had not taken off.
“It’s her (Arroyo) baby…she must be credited for this airport project. It’s a dream come true for her,” Moreno said.
As a tribute, the president’s presidential plane should be the first to land on the airport, he said.
The regional development council is a regional policy making body composed of local chief executives, heads of regional line agencies, and representatives of the private sector and civil society groups.
Last Thursday meeting was the 83rd full meeting for RDC members presided over by Camiguin Governor Jurdin Jesus M. Romualdo, RDC’s chairperson. The meeting was hosted by Department of Transportation and Communication’s presidential management office.
By F. William Engdahl, author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order
23 September 2009
President Obama just made a melodramatic appeal at the United Nations for global measures to dramatically curb what he called “the climate threat,” current euphemism for what is more popularly known as Global Warming, the theory that man-made CO2 emissions from cars, coal plants and other man-made sources are causing the earth to warm to the point the polar icecaps are irreversibly melting and threatening to flood a quarter or more of the earth’s surface. There’s only one thing wrong with Mr. Obama’s dramatic scenario: it is scientifically utterly wrong. Since 2007 the polar icecaps have been growing not melting and the earth has been cooling, not warming.
If the fear of death from a fictitious Swine Flu were not enough, the scare stories on world media such as BBC or CNN, showing melting icebergs are dramatic enough to cause one sleepless nights. The Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon even made a recent appeal while standing on an Arctic ice-flow, claiming that man-made CO2 emissions were causing “100 billion tons” of polar ice to melt each year, so that in 30 years the Arctic would be “ice-free”. One organization, the WWF, claimed that the Arctic ice was melting so fast that in eighty years sea-levels would rise by 1.2 meters, creating “floods affecting a quarter of the world.” Wow! That’s scary. Goodbye Hamburg, New York, Amsterdam…
The publicity stunt of Ban Ki-Moon was carefully orchestrated. It was not said that his ship could only come within 700 miles of the North Pole owing to frozen ice. Nor that he made his stunt in the summer when Arctic ice always melts before refreezing beginning September.
The reality about Arctic ice is quite different. Although some 10 million square kilometres of sea-ice melts each summer, each September the Arctic starts to freeze again. The extent of the ice now is 500,000 sq km greater than it was this same time last year – which was, in turn, 500,000 sq km more than in September 2007, the lowest point recently recorded (see Cryosphere Today of the University of Illinois, http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ ).
By next April, after months of darkness, it will be back up to 14 million sq km or likely more. As British science writer Christopher Booker remarks, “even if all that sea-ice were to melt, this would no more raise sea-levels than a cube of ice melting in a gin and tonic increases the volume of liquid in the glass.”
Sunbeams from cucumbers?
The current global warming propaganda scare is being hyped by politicians and special interests such as Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street financial firms that stand to reap billions trading new carbon credit financial futures. They are making an all-out effort to scare the world into a deal at the December Copenhagen Global Warming summit, the successor to the Kyoto agreement on CO2 emission reduction. It’s been estimated that the Global Warming bill supported by Barack Obama and his Wall Street patrons, passed by the House of Representatives but not by the more conservative US Senate, would cost US taxpayers some $10 trillion.
In the UK, where Prime Minister Gordon Brown is fully on the global warming bandwagon, the BBC, the Royal Society are proposing wild schemes for “climate engineering,” including putting up mirrors in space to keep out the sun’s rays, or lining the highways with artificial trees to suck CO2 out of the air, to be taken away and buried in holes in the ground. Perhaps it would provide make-work for a few thousand Britons unemployed by the ravages of the recent financial collapse, but it would do nothing else than waste taxpayer money already stretched to the limits in bank bailouts. The entire farce has been compared to satirist Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver who meets a fictional character trying to extract sunbeams from cucumbers.
A major new study published in the respected Journal of Geophysical Research of the American Geophysical Union, Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature, by scientists Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature
J. D. McLean, C. R. de Freitas of the School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science, University of Auckland in New Zealand and R.M. Carter (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD011637.shtml), confirms that over the past fifty years, since 1950, fully 81% of tropical climate change can be linked to the Pacific weather phenomenon known as El Nino. And the remaining 19% they linked to increased solar radiation. No man made emissions played a role.
El Ninos, termed by scientists El Nino Southern Oscillations or ENSOs, are believed by climatologists and astrophysicists to be related to eruptions in solar activity which occur periodically.
Dr. Theodor Landscheidt of Canada’s Schroeter Institute for Research in Cycles of Solar Activity, says ENSO is the “strongest source of natural variability in the global climate system. During the severe ENSO event 1982/1983, when the sea surface off Peru warmed by more than 7° C, it was discovered that there are strong links to weather in other regions as, for instance, floods in California and intensified drought in Africa.”
Landscheidt adds, “El Niño and La Niña are subjected to external forcing by the sun’s varying activity to such a degree that it explains nearly all of ENSO’s irregularities and makes long-range forecasts beyond the 1-year limit possible. This is no mere theory. My forecasts of the last two El Niños turned out correct and that of the last one was made more than two years ahead of the event…” (Solar Activity Controls El Niño and La Niña, in http://www.john-daly.com/sun-enso/sun-enso.htm.). Even James Hansen, one of the outspoken protagonists of the Global Warming idea admits, “The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change…The natural forcing due to solar irradiance changes may play a larger role in long-term climate change than inferred from comparisons with general circulation models alone.”
El Ninos are linked to floods, droughts and other weather disturbances in many regions of the world. In the Atlantic Ocean, effects lag behind those in the Pacific by 12 to 18 months. They tend to occur every three to eight years. La Ninas are the associated cooling phase of the Pacific Ocean cycles.
According to the US National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration, in North America, El Niño creates warmer-than-average winters in the upper Midwest states and the Northeast. California and the southwestern US become significantly wetter, while the northern Gulf of Mexico states and northeast Mexico are wetter and cooler than average during the El Niño phase of the oscillation. In Asia and parts of Australia El Nino causes drier conditions, increasing bush fires.
This sounds remarkably like what the Global Warming scare chorus claims is the result of manmade CI2 emissions or as they now slyly term it, “climate change.”
Warmer 1000 years ago?
In Sweden a new study (, in published by Haakan Grudd of the University of Stockholm’s Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology confirms that the Arctic today is not warmer than in previous historical periods centuries ago before coal power plants or automobiles. Grudd’s study concludes that “The late-twentieth century is not exceptionally warm in the new record: On decadal-to-centennial timescales, periods around a.d. 750, 1000, 1400, and 1750 were equally warm, or warmer. The 200-year long warm period centered on a.d. 1000 was significantly warmer than the late-twentieth century and is supported by other local and regional paleoclimate data.” (H. Grudd, Torneträsk tree-ring width and density ad 500–2004: a test of climatic sensitivity and a new 1500-year reconstruction of north Fennoscandian summers, Climate Dynamics, Volume 31, Numbers 7-8 / December, 2008, in http://www.springerlink.com/content/8j71453650116753/?p=fcd6adbe04ff4cc29b7131b5184282eb&pi=0.) Put simply, the earth was warmer one thousand years ago than today. And there were no records of SUVs or coal plants belching CO2 into the atmosphere back then.
The only problem with these serious scientific studies is that mainstream media entirely ignores them, preferring dramatic scare story scenarios such as Barack Obama presented in his UN speech or the UN’s Ban Ki-Moon in his staged Arctic ice drama.
Strangely enough, none of the Global Warming proponents that I am aware of have tried to correlate ENSO activity with global temperature changes. Should we instead be proposing to outlaw El Ninos or forbid solar eruptions? It makes as much scientific sense as banning or capping CO2 emissions. Global Warming as a new religion is one thing, but we should be clear that the high priests are the same Gods of Money who brought us Peak Oil religion a few years ago and the current trillion dollar financial meltdown known as asset securitization. The reality is that Global Warming like Peak Oil and other scares are but another attempt by powerful vested interests to convince the world to sacrifice that they remain in control of the events of this planet. It’s a thinly veiled attempt to misuse climate to argue for a new Malthusian reduction of living standards for the majority of the world while a tiny elite gains more power.
At another conference, Mr. Lloyd spoke about the need to remove white people from powerful positions in the media to give minorities a fairer chance.
“There’s nothing more difficult than this because we have really truly, good, white people in important positions, and the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions,” he said.
“And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions, we will not change the problem. But we’re in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power.”
He added: “There are few things, I think, more frightening in the American mind than dark-skinned black men. Here I am.”
Andrew Breitbart published the audio of the conference on his Breitbart.com Web site on Monday. Mr. Breitbart said the recording was made during a conference on media reform and racial justice in May 2005.
Other bloggers are questioning Mr. Lloyd’s commitment to free speech based on a line in his 2006 book, “Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America.”
“At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies,” Mr. Lloyd wrote. “The purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance.”
The FCC was asked about the passage, but a spokesman was unable to provide an explanation late Tuesday.
Rep. Greg Walden, Oregon Republican, asked FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski about Mr. Lloyd during a hearing last week.
“There are comments – video comments about Hugo Chavez,” Mr. Walden said. “I mean, there’s some pretty outrageous things being said, having been written in the past. And that troubles me that somebody that’s that opinionated, to the extreme element that he is – from my perspective, is not going to bring balance to that diversity position that you’ve created.”
Mr. Genachowski said Mr. Walden’s worries were misplaced. “Mark Lloyd is not working on these issues,” Mr. Genachowski said. “He’s not working on Fairness Doctrine issues. He’s not working on censorship issues. He’s … working on opportunity issues, primarily now on broadband adoption, focusing on making sure that broadband is available to all Americans.”
See Amanda Carpenter’s article at: http://theconservatives.com/2009/09/24/diversity-czar-takes-heat-over-remarks.html
1. BBC și Arstechnica reproduc concluziile unei studiu din Trends in Cognitive Science, al profesorului irlandez Shane O’Mara, concluzii ce nu fac decât să confirme ceea ce se știa încă de pe vremea Inchiziției: tortura nu dezvăluie adevărul. Datorită unui nivel foarte mare de hormoni de stres – cortizol și nu numai – creierul este suprasolicitat, iar memoria, de scurtă și lungă durată, este afectată. Asta pe lângă impulsul firesc de a minți pentru a scăpa de mai repede de suferință.
2. Din ciclul Prostie fără frontiere, Live Science relatează decizia stupidă a unui comitet de părinți și educatori, din Texas, de a retrage cărțile lui Neil Armstrong de pe standul științific al unei biblioteci școlare, pe motiv că acesta n-ar fi om de știință. Neil Armstrong este de formație inginer. Asta pe fondul eforturilor ce se fac de către capetele-pătrate din SUA de a submina teoria evoluționistă în școli. Citind despre astfel de acțiuni mă întreb dacă nu cumva cea mai bună dovadă că există viață inteligentă în univers este aceea că nu ne-a contactat.
3. Statele Unite și China par, în sfârșit, să se fi decis să acționeze coordonat în vederea limitării– și eventual stopării – încălzirii globale. Lucru normal de altfel, având în vedere că cele două țări sunt sunt cei mai mari poluatori.
4. Marea Britanite pare dispusă să-și reducă flota de submarine purtătoare de rachete balistice intercontinentale Trident, de la patru la trei. Cu atât mai bine, trei sunt la fel de bune pe post de nuclear deterrence ca și 4.
5. Tot BBC prezintă un colaj de fotografii din Coreea de Nord, tărâmul fericirii conform propagandei oficiale, de fapt o țară înfometată sistematic de mai bine de cincizeci de ani de comunism. Aviz apologeților marxismului.
6. Se pară că, până la urmă, există apă pe Lună.
7. Și, în sfârșit, Arstechnica vorbește despre cinci noțiuni esențiale care trebuie avute în vedere când discutăm despre evoluție. Lectura este cu atât mai interesantă cu cât temele abordate au soluții (date de către evoluție) aparent antiintuitive, de la rezolvarea problemelor în paralel până la lungile intervale de timp implicate în desfășurarea procesului evolutiv. De asemenea, descoperiri recente arată că evoluția este ireversibiliă, la nivel molecular. O lectură recomandată celor ce încă mai cred în capacitatea creatoare a duhului sfânt.
WASHINGTON DIARY: Behind the scenes (sugar crisis)
by Dr Manzur Ejaz, USA
Courtesy: Wichaar.com, September 23rd, 2009
In Pakistan, the same people or families produce goods, make laws about the production of those goods and then implement them. Therefore, the system is not structured for a free market economy
Nipat gia dohan da jhag’ra, wichon nikal pia koi hor
(At one place, his name is Ramdas, and at another, Fateh Mohammad. This is the ongoing dispute since antiquity. When their dispute was dealt with, something else emerged.)
Following Bulleh Shah’s wisdom, every Pakistani thought that once terrorism was dealt with and the jihadis and Taliban suppressed, Pakistan would again become a paradise. But now that the terrorists are being pushed back, Pakistanis are discovering that their problems lie elsewhere too. Newspapers are reporting every day cases of land-grabbing by the rich and powerful and corruption cases being dropped by the accountability authorities, among other things.
Bulleh Shah’s verses haunted me while thinking about the crisis related to sugar shortages. The prices of sugar skyrocketed overnight and the government did not take any notice. When Lahore High Court took suo moto notice and fixed the price at Rs 40 per kilo, sugar producers refused to accept the court verdict. They challenged the LHC’s decision in the Supreme Court of Pakistan and when the highest court refused to reverse the decision, federal and provincial governments came out to protect the sugar producers. The government’s behaviour has exposed the ruling elites, who are not only running the government, but sugar mills too.
The question about courts’ jurisdiction is highly debatable. Similar questions were raised when the Lahore High Court was asked about its authority to fix commodity prices, and which institution was responsible for it. If I was asked this question by the court, I would have said that in free capitalism, being practiced in Pakistan, the market under the rules of supply and demand, determines prices. The honourable judge would then ask me why there are shortages, in a market-led system, when sugar is plentiful; how can a few players hoard and manipulate the market?
The answers are complicated.
In a free market, hoarding becomes impossible because of multiple reasons. First, producers cannot form cartels and collude to fix prices because of anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws. Second, if a few producers start hoarding, other suppliers jump in to grab market share forever. Third, by the time the producers take their goods to the market, they will have paid every factor (raw materials, supplies, labour, middlemen etc) and borrowed capital from the banking sector. They would be under pressure to pay back the banks and therefore would be keen to sell their products as soon as possible.
In Pakistan, hoarding is easy because producers can delay payments to suppliers, labourers and distributers. In addition to the piles of money they already have, they can get millions from banks and then have it written off. Therefore, producers in Pakistan have immense power to hold back supplies and manipulate the market.
There are no effective institutions against collusion and price-fixing. In short, Pakistan lacks the legal framework that is necessary for the smooth functioning of the free market system. Even the United States ran into problems in the last two decades because the Republicans killed or watered down the regulation regime necessary to guard against market manipulators. Nonetheless, the markets corrected themselves in the US by crashes in the real estate, commodity and financial markets. Such corrections are not possible in Pakistan.
In Pakistan, apart from capitalism and socialism, all kinds of ‘isms’ exist. The same people or families produce goods, make laws about the production of those goods and then implement them. Therefore, the system is not structured for a free market economy. The exploitative classes have started playing their games again and very openly. In addition, sections of the ruling classes that were out of favour with the Musharraf regime or were suffering during that period are trying to make up for their losses, and have jumped head-first into the markets to plunder. It is not clear how the courts will deal with this army of dragons.
I have stated several times in this space that the Taliban have provided the perfect shield for the exploitative classes of Pakistan by hogging attention: no one was looking at what the rich were up to during the time when religious extremism was on the rise.
Now that Ramdas and Fateh Mohammad’s dispute is settled, something else has started to emerge.
The Federal Reserve, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, The Central Bank of France, and the Central Bank of Germany are spreading false data of economic improvements with the main target of cheating the public to regain “confidence” on the archaic liberal capitalist system. For a year now no substantive regulations on liberal capitalism have been instituted. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernarke is at it again; he said lately “We should not attempt to impose on credit lenders heavy restrictions that might prevent the development of new financial products and services in the future. We all know that the improvement of easier access to credit has reduced costs and widened the range of choices.” Are not the liberal new financial gimmicks for easier credit that brought on the crash of 2008 and the several crashes before it?
What “confidence” is these great illusionists trying to resurrect from the tomb without a clear alternative financial system? So far, bonuses are extended to the financial acrobats crossing dry rivers while employees are sinking in troubled water and not finding decent jobs. The USA is experiencing an official rate of unemployment of 10% and the European States even higher rates. For 2010, the International Organization of Labor (IOL) is expecting an additional 60 millions of unemployed and an additional 200 millions of people earning below two dollars a day.
The States of California, Illinois, and New Jersey have declared bankruptcy; they lost over 30% of their assets during the financial crash. These States refused to increase taxes for decades and they are no longer able to increase taxes because of their restricting legislative structures. The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) is allocated a budget of one billion dollars to spend on 3,500 employees. The same SEC that failed to uncover Madoff’s practices for over 30 years and even asked for his expertise many times! There is this joke in the financial circle of Shadock maxim “The more you fail the higher the odds for success in the future”.
There are several economic time bombs strewn around; they may blast one after another or all together. Among these time bombs we can explain the following: Obligatory Crash, Effective increase of interest rates, Refinancing of public dept, Monetary over valuation, and Newer and botoxed up (lifting) exotic financial derivatives.
The public debts of the USA, France, and Britain are expected to reach 90% of the GNP in a couple of years; Japan will hit the 200% mark. Obligatory Crash is more imminent than forecasted previously. The real values of the treasury bills of these nations designed to refinance the public dept will collapse abruptly. Chinese households have been saving for two decades and accumulated three folds during the last 7 years; these savings are re-invested in purchasing treasury bills of the developed States. Pretty soon, the citizens of the developed nations will start bypassing their State middlemen and purchase directly Chinese treasury bills for higher returns; especially that the Chinese currency is endemically undervalued and cannot but goes up. Then, what will happen? Would the USA declare the Chinese treasury bills illegal or not marketable in the US market? The USA did that previously but antagonizing China is a different ball game.
Effective increase of interest rates has been eating up any economic improvement in the indebted nations. The price of obligations has been decreasing. Let us say if an obligation returned $30 on the thousand and it is re-purchased at half the price for the same return then the State is effectively paying $60 for the thousand. Thus, with the doubling of the interest rate States will not find takers for new issues of obligations but by offering the higher interest rate.
When allowed, central banks of States may refinance public debts by purchasing titles on the open market and thus sustain the prevalent interest rate. This process is in fact creating new money printing and devaluing the currency value.
The developed nations have over valuated currencies because they are unable to compete in other emerging markets like China, India, and Brazil. The exterior balance of commerce is thus in deficit and the currency keeps over valuating; it is a vicious cycle unless the developed nations reduce drastically the price of their products to be able to compete. China is able to keep its currency under valued simply because it can afford to sell at competitive prices.
Before WWI the economic principle was “Demands carry the economy”. Then this principle was upturned; it now states “Offers carry the economy” which means “We produce and then we find ways to encourage consumers to purchase. We entice the consumers by promotional gimmicks, by much lower prices, by creating new trends of standards of living, and by lavishing plenty of credits.” It worked for a while until what is being produced is getting too expensive, of lower quality, and basically not that essential in tight financial downturns. How about educating the consumers of what is essential for resuming a decent life without the faked propaganda of what constitute a “high standard of living”?
Note: I read lately that 48 States in the US are bankrupt and the real deficit is 56 trillion instead of the official 13 trillion.
…as long as it does not conflict with new FCC fairness doctrine.
Following Obama’s whirlwind “Teach the World to Sing” television spree—ending with a Monday night David Letterman appearance where he announced that he was black before the election—Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll puts his Presidential approval rating at -8 with 31% of the nation’s voters strongly approving of the way he is performing his role as President.
Support for the health care priority has risen among Democrats; up 11 points to 45%, but overall, support for the plan has dropped to a new low. 56% of voters now oppose health care, but among the uninsured, 58% approve of the plan.
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of U.S. voters believe that the current level of political anger in the country is higher than it was when George W. Bush was president, according to another Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. The poll found that only 22% think the level of political anger is lower now, while 16% rate it as about the same.
Despite frequent Republican complaints about the vitriol leveled at President Bush, 69% of GOP voters say the level of anger is higher now, a view shared by 53% of Democrats and 56% of voters not affiliated with either party.
Just 12% of voters nationwide say that the opposition to President Obama’s health care plan and other initiatives is racist, as some prominent Democrats, including former President Jimmy Carter, have charged.
Sixty-six percent (66%) of voters nationwide say they’re at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. That figure includes 36% who are very angry.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 30% are not angry about the government’s policies, including 10% who are not at all angry.
Adding to the voter frustration is the fact that 60% believe neither Republican nor Democratic political leaders have an understanding of what is needed today.
The frustration probably stems from the fact that, though Bernake announced a recovery because he still has his job, jobs are still being lost and homes are still being foreclosed. This after trillions of dollars of bail-out money being cast to the wind as if we were the Weimar Republic. Of course, if Ron Paul has his way, you might just be standing in the unemployment line next to Bernake in the future.
Obama sort of kept his promise to appoint an uncontroversial Supreme Court Justice. He did line up a list of totally left-wing extremist, however, to ensure her confirmation. As for the rest of his appointments, they appear to be the cast of some bad horror movie with a eugenicist as “Science Czar” and a fervent anti-hunter in a position where he can do the most damage.
Adding to the list of growing unrest is CIFTA, a back-door gun control move, and giving Eric Holder the opportunity to prevent Americans from exercising their God-given Second Amendment right to buy a gun. His administration has labeled a majority of the American population “domestic terrorist.” They have even begun to attack non-profit thrift stores and yard sales to ensure they do not sell anything on the “recall” list.
With this list and Internet censoring and monitoring, cap-and-trade taxation and so on, it is becoming increasingly difficult for even the most ardent conspiracy debunker to call Alex Jones a nut. If these polls are an accurate reflection of public opinion, it is almost certain—If we make it to another election cycle—voters will probably tell Obama to keep the change.
Yesterday I finally got around to watching “The Story of Stuff.” Even at its totally ADHD-digestible 20 minutes, I hadn’t made it a priority because some part of me kept thinking, “I already know that.” But Annie Leonard’s disarmingly simple presentation hits home the message that our linear, unsustainable relationship with Stuff is coming apart, for better and for worse, and that we have a fundamental opportunity right now to redefine that relationship, close loops, create sustainable cycles, and change the way we do business. If we don’t, the results will cause (and to some extent already are causing) cultural indigestion and crises of gargantuan proportions in the health of human society. Alarmist? It only sounds alarmist to anyone who’s addicted to the functioning of the linear model of Stuff and who, like an ostrich, pretends not to see what comes out the back end.
Click here to watch The Story of Stuff, and please leave a comment with your thoughts and impressions.
While there is considerable disagreement regarding the value of low-skilled immigrants (especially with regards to whether illegals deserve amnesty), almost everybody agrees that the United States is a big beneficiary when highly skilled workers, investors, and entrepreneurs from around the world come to America. So it is a bit troubling that USA Today is reporting that many Indians and Chinese are deciding that they can achieve more by going back home. It is too soon to make sweeping pronouncements about the public policy implications of this demographic shift, but this preliminary evidence of a reverse “brain drain” certainly suggests that the big-government policies of Bush and Obama have made the American economy less vibrant and less dynamic:
More skilled immigrants are giving up their American dreams to pursue careers back home, raising concerns that the U.S. may lose its competitive edge in science, technology and other fields. “What was a trickle has become a flood,” says Duke University’s Vivek Wadhwa, who studies reverse immigration. …”For the first time in American history, we are experiencing the brain drain that other countries experienced,” he says. Suren Dutia, CEO of TiE Global, a worldwide network of professionals who promote entrepreneurship, says the U.S. economy will suffer without these skilled workers. “If the country is going to maintain the kind of economic well-being that we’ve enjoyed for many years, that requires having these incredibly gifted individuals who have been educated and trained by us,” he says. …Multinational companies that belong to the American Council on International Personnel tell Executive Director Lynn Shotwell that skilled immigrants are discouraged by the immigration process, she says. Some can wait up to a decade for permanent residency, she says. “They’re frustrated with having an uncertain immigration status,” she says. “They’re giving up.”
There was concern about significant worldwide infection and death shortly after the swine flu was discovered in Mexico earlier this year. That concern tailed off as it because clear, perhaps prematurely so, the strain was infecting many people but killing few. Even predictions that one-third of the world’s population might come down with the disease were not so frightening if the disease was rarely fatal.
The pendulum of swine flu concern is now swinging back toward panic.
A United Nation’s report leaked to the Guardian says that the flu could kill millions of people in the world’s poorest nations and cause political anarchy in some of them. The document calls for rich nations to put 900 million pounds toward buying vaccines for these regions. That does not seem like a lot of money but the “rich” nations mentioned are usually facing tremendous budget deficits.
The news will spark concern about both human suffering and the role that poor countries play in the global economy. While some of these nations are consumers of imports from larger nations like China and the US, their GDPs are typically too small to make this terribly meaningful. That leaves the problem of what some of these nations export. Many of these poor nations are major producers of commodities, especially metals and crude. Deadly epidemics could cause interruptions of those supplies triggering another slowdown in the world economy or commodities-based inflation.
The threat of a pandemic among poor nations raises the threat of a pandemic in richer countries. The swine flu’s spread is not confined by borders. The specter of tens of thousands of hospital beds in the US and Europe filled with victims and the disruption to productivity is being raised as an issue, again. The effects of the disease could still be economically insignificant, but it looks less and less like that as each day passes.
Here we have report about a home owner whom defended his home and wife. Yet the ‘Spokeswoman’ for the Sheriff’s Depart ment did not know if the homeowner had a carry permit?? He was on his property! Defending himself and his wife!! What the heck kind of comment is that?? What the heck kind of question was that and who was the idiot asking it? Did the homeowner have a carry permit?? What about the punk with the shotgun?? Homeowner: 2 shots+2 hits + Good Gun Control!! Punk with shotgun: 2 shots – 0 Hits= Lousy Gun Control and one dead punkClassless Eagle fans…
Classless Eagle Fans
At least some in the media get it!!
Dear OneBigAAssedMistakeAmerica!
Say what? Another bail out!?!
What is George Soros up to? Obama gives Brazil 10 Billion dollars to develop and drill their offshore oil find! Yet what do we get here in the US of A? A bunch of special interest Dumbocrats listening and believing the idiot environmental groups screaming NO DRILL NO DRILL and what is that going to do to our economy? Well first off Obama and his thugs are to stupid to figure that out!
I can’t live this life anymore. Something’s got to give. My children are being raised by strangers. I am tired and drained all the time. My priority list’s a mess. I make too many choices based on the expediency of the moment and not on my value system. The stress and pressure of raising 2 kids on my own, of trying to meet all their needs, all the time, all by myself is killing me.
I’ve pushed myself too hard for too long. I’m cracking up inside. I’ve held myself together with nothing more than stubborn will power for 5 years. I made it through school by keeping my eyes on the light at the end of the tunnel . But this tunnel has no light. I can find no way out. There is no choice but to keep going, to keep doing the best I can. But my best is getting worse and worse.
I can meet my kids’ physical needs now. Barely, but I can. But there is nothing left for there emotional and mental needs. Thus, I am a rotten mother. Now, I have always believed that all the love in the world won’t provide a full tummy and a warm place to sleep at night. I have managed to provide a basically stable home for them. All of their basic needs are met. But to what end?
The things I sacrifice may be too great. Perhaps it would be better if I went on wellfare and was actually there for them when they needed me. But I know that life, too. The life I had when PB was born, the scrapping by on nothing, the trying to stretch every cent. The hours I spent chopping wood and hauling water to save a few bucks.
I’m thinking about the values I want my children to learn. I want them to know that people are always more important than things. To learn mature, intelligent ways of expressing themselves. I want them to know that they can succeed in anything they want if they go after it with hard work and passion. I want them to know that they are capable and worthy. I want them to be both respectful and respectable. I want them to be caring and kind but still tough enough to stand up for what’s right. I want them to know right from wrong and to live their lives with a code of ethics.
But I don’t think that I can do it all on my own any more. I’m at a loss. I’m used up and worn out. I’ve given my all to everything every second for half a decade. Something’s got to change but I don’t know how to go about it, how to shift my life to line up with my own values. I need help just learning how to ask for help.
Just the other day, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said, Iit is very likely that the recession has ended.”
Well, let me just suggest to Mr. Bernanke that today we have about 17 percent of our workforce – 26 million Americans – who are either unemployed, have given up looking for work because they no longer think a job is possible, or they are working part time when they want to work full time. That’s 17 percent of our population.
For those folks, I don’t think they believe this recession is over.
In fact, what they believe is that they are mired in the worst economic mess since the Great Depression.
One of the really disturbing statistics out there is that it is taking unemployed people a lot longer to find a job than used to be the case. On average, it’s taking about six months.
But it’s not just losing your job or working part time. People are losing health insurance, losing their homes, losing their pensions. What it’s about is slipping out of the middle class and into poverty and not having the capability of sending your kids to college. That’s what the economy is about today.
So to my mind, most importantly, we have got to stay focused on the reality that because of the greed, the irresponsibility, and the illegal behavior of people on Wall Street, we are plunged into a real economic mess, and we’re going to have to work together and we’re going to have to think real hard about how we get out of that mess.
I’ve talked before about some of the ideas we’re working on, but let me just reiterate what some of them are.
We need to get a handle on Wall Street so that they do not go back to the horrendous ways of the past. They are spending millions of dollars right now on lobbying and campaign contributions to make that happen. What we must demand – and this is enormously important – is a new Wall Street, not designed to make hundreds of millions of dollars for their CEOs, but a Wall Street designed to help increase manufacturing in the U.S., create decent jobs, help small businesses, do something for the productive economy.
Another area that we need to return to is our disastrous trade policies which allow corporate America to throw American workers on the street, move to China, pay people 50 cents an hour, and then bring those products back into the country.
So there is a lot of work ahead of us in terms of the economy. Let’s stay focused on this issue, and don’t believe anybody who’s telling you “the recession is over.”
By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer – Fri Sep 18
WASHINGTON – The long-term economic costs of a climate bill being considered in Congress would be “comparatively modest” in light of expected overall economic growth over the next 40 years, according to a congressional report released Friday.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill, which would impose a “cap and trade” system to reduce greenhouse gases, would cause the economy, or GDP, to be a quarter to three-quarters of 1 percent lower in 2020 than it otherwise would be.
The economic impact would increase in later years as emissions reductions are tightened further and a system of providing free emission allowances is phased out.
By 2050, when greenhouse gas emissions would have to be 80 percent lower, the hit on the GDP would be 1 percent to possibly as much as 3.5 percent, compared to what it is projected to be without action on global warming, said the CBO in a report provided to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
“By way of comparison … real inflation-adjusted GDP will be roughly two-and-a-half times as large in 2050 as it is today, so those changes would be comparatively modest,” the CBO report said.
It said the long-term cost to American households would be less than the overall economic impact.
The report estimates the purchasing power of the average household would be reduced by $90, or one-tenth of 1 percent, in 2012, when the emission reduction requirements would go into effect and by $925, or eight-tenths of 1 percent, in 2050. Over that period, the average cost to households would be $455 a year.
The bill passed by the House this summer calls for a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020 and an 83 percent reduction by 2050, all starting from 2005 levels. It would accomplish the pollution reductions by imposing a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
There have been a wide range of economic cost estimates attributed to the House-passed climate bill.
Several government studies have concluded that costs to households would be relatively low in 2020. The Environmental Protection Agency projected costs at $84, while the Energy Information Administration put it at $134. Meanwhile, a number of studies done at the request of business groups have projected a much more severe impact, from $985 to as much as $1,539 in 2020.
Republicans have characterized the climate legislation as a huge tax because it will increase energy costs. Democrats who support the bill acknowledged the cost of energy will increase but contend the impact on consumers can be mitigated by increased energy efficiency and other measures included in the legislation.
De burócrata municipal a constructor multimillonario, la historia de Jorge Pérez fue el gran sueño americano, estilo Miami. El inmigrante cubano convirtió al sur de la Florida en el lienzo sobre el que desarrolló sus creaciones, construyendo rascacielos desde Miami hasta West Palm Beach.
Pero ninguno se puede comparar con su última obra, el ICON Brickell, una suntuosa miniciudad de cristal y hormigón de $1,000 millones, que incluye tres rascacielos, una piscina enorme, 1,640 apartamentos, un hotel boutique y cinco restaurantes.
Es el complejo de apartamentos más espectacular de la Florida, la obra maestra de Pérez, prácticamente su legado a la posteridad.
Y ahora tal vez su ruina.
Pérez batalla por sobrevivir uno de los momentos más turbulentos en la historia del sector inmobiliario de la Florida. Su compañía –The Related Group– ha perdido más de $1,000 millones durante los últimos 12 meses y tiene una deuda de casi $2,000 millones. el ICON, responsable de buena parte de esa deuda, sigue prácticamente vacío, mientras que los que pagaron depósitos de preconstrucción del 20 por ciento se retiran o no consiguen que les aprueben un préstamo hipotecario.
El mes pasado, Pérez se reunió con docenas de banqueros en el Hotel Hilton del centro de Miami para pedirles un plazo mayor para pagar la deuda, buena parte de la cual debía pagarse este año. Mientras aguarda la decisión de los banqueros, el destino de su histórico proyecto es incierto.
El “hundimiento que vemos hoy”, dijo Pérez, es mucho peor de lo que podía imaginar.
“Para salir adelante necesitamos ayuda de nuestros financistas”.
Es un momento aterrador y desconocido para el Rey de los Condominios de Miami. Pero apostar en grande, y perder a veces en grande, ha sido siempre parte fundamental del juego de azar que es el mercado inmobiliario del sur de la Florida.
En los años 20 George Merrick creó Coral Gables y entonces tuvo que enfrentar una crisis inmobiliaria, el huracán de 1926 y el inicio de la Gran Depresión.
Carl Fisher, el marqués de los terrenos de Miami Beach, le vendió la idea de un paraíso tropical a los norteños y se hizo fabulosamente rico, para acabar también en la ruina.
El hundimiento del mercado inmobiliario es el ciclón de Pérez, pero afirma que nunca acabará en la ruina.
Durante tres años ha estado en la lista de las 400 personas más ricas de la revista Forbes. No obstante, cuando Forbes lo llamó el mes pasado para incluirlo en la próxima lista, Pérez les dijo: “Olvídense de eso”.
Pérez era director económico de urbanización del municipio de Miami antes de tomar el rumbo de la urbanización. En 1979 creó The Related Group con el urbanizador neoyorquino Stephen M. Ross, que recientemente compró los Miami Dolphins.
Al principio Pérez se hizo rico construyendo apartamentos para personas de bajos ingresos en todo el estado, luego construyó apartamentos para alquilar y finalmente se hizo el constructor más prolijo de rascacielos de lujo en todo el país.
Mostró una habilidad particular en identificar mercados antes que se pusieran de moda y de actuar con rapidez. Pérez y Ross construyeron City Place en West Palm Beach, un proyecto de uso combinado de residencias, tiendas, oficinas y espacios públicos. (Ross es el principal ejecutivo de su propia firma, Related Companies en Nueva York, y es accionista minoritario de The Related Group en Miami, que opera por separado).
U.S. household net worth rose by US$2 trillion to reach US$ 53.14 trillion in Q2 2009, the first increase in net worth after seven consecutive quarters of decline. However, as of Q2 2009, household net worth remains depressed by 12.28% y/y. The increase was largely driven by financial assets, with the net worth related to corporate equities rising US$1.12 trillion. With home prices showing signs of moderation during Q2 2009, the value of real-estate related household assets rose by US$323.4 billion after declining steadily since Q1 2007. The value of homeowners’ equity as a share of real estate assets rose to 43% in Q2 2009, from the record low of 41.8% in Q1 2009. (Federal Reserve Board)
Households continued to shed debt at a faster rate as total household debt declined by 1.7% in Q2 2009 after declining 1.1% in Q1 2009. Household mortgage debt fell by 1.4% in Q2 2009 after falling 0.1% in Q1 2009. The decline was the sharpest in consumer credit, which fell by 6.5% in Q2 2009, after falling 3.7% in Q1 2009. (Federal Reserve Board)
“tough it out, America.” – Momentum Conference As President of the Economic Policy Institute, Lawrence Mishel is a nationally recognized economist. He has researched, written and spoken widely on the economy and economic policy as it affects middle- and low-income families. His areas of expertise include income distribution and poverty, labor markets, industrial relations, technology and productivity, education, wages, unions and collective bargaining. Mishel is regularly called on to …
Former President Jimmy Carter, whom some say is even a worst ex-president than he was a president, has become an expert on white people in America and pronounced them to be basically racists at heart whose real goal is the removal of Obama BECAUSE of the pigmentation of his skin.
This kind of EVIL tactic has been used by the Democrats in EVERY ELECTION CYCLE since they gave up trying to enslave blacks by force, instead of by their own free will.
This all came to a head when Joe the Congressman shouted out “You lie!” to President Obama as he was deceiving the American Peoplein a joint session of Congress concerning illegal immigrants being able to access Obamacare.
Then a vicious woman named Maureen Dowd, a Radical Leftist ideologue from the New York Times whose only goal, it seems to me, is to spread Leftist Propaganda while trashing and slandering her opponents, started a racial smear campaign against Representative Joe Wilson by saying that what she really heard him say to the President was, “You lie, BOY!”
Dowd wrote: “Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t. But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!”
Then Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia said something that is so unbelievable, only a person who seriously troubled could believe it.
“I guess we’ll probably have folks putting on HOODS AND WHITE UNIFORMS,” said the clearly carked Congressman to reporters about Mr. Wilson’s outburst. “That’s the logical conclusion if this kind of attitude is not rebuked.”
Finally, we have the former President of the United States of America, Jimmy Carter, impugning the American People who happen to have light-colored skin pigmentation by saying they are mad at Obama because of the color of his skin pigmentation.
“There is an inherent feeling among many people in this country that an African-American ought not to be President and ought not to be given the same respect AS IF HE WERE WHITE,” the disastrous former President told ABC News on Tuesday.
Then on Wednesday, Carter decided to really tell the American People how he really feels about them – really.
“When a radical fringe element of demonstratorsand others begin to attack the president of the United States as an animal or as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, or when they wave signs in the air that said we should have buried Obama with Kennedy, those kinds of things are beyond the bounds,” the Democrat, who gave us the Islamofascism we enjoy today by allowing radicals to overthrow the Shaw of Iran, told students at Emory University.
“I think people who are guilty of that kind of personal attack against Obama have been influenced to a major degree by a belief that he should not be president because he happens to be African American,” the race-baiting ex-president said of his fellow Americans.
So, according to how I read Mr. Carter, anyone who is vocal in their opposition to President Obama MUST BE A RACIST. Period.
“It’s a racist attitude, and my hope is and my expectation is that in the future both Democratic leaders and Republican leaders will take the initiative in condemning that kind of unprecedented attack on the president of the United States,” Carter said.
It’s called DEMOCRACY IN ACTION Mr. Carter. Maybe you should re-read the Constitution where it says the public has a RIGHT to petition it’s government, and are GUARANTEED the RIGHT of free speech. But then again, where was he when Leftists were saying and doing all kinds of evil and wicked things against, about, and towards President Bush?
The wrath against this asinine, warped attack against Joe the Congressman and The American People was swift and pointed.
“I don’t think there’s any REASONABLE or RATIONAL person who could say you are racist for CRITICIZING President Obama,” said Juan Williams, a Fox News Contributor said on the Fox News Channel. “ALL PRESIDENTS – I don’t care what their color – are subject to INTENSE CRITICISM. And we-re in the midst of a VERY INTENSE DEBATE about healthcare in the country,” said liberal Mr. Williams.
“I think Jimmy Carter is working for the Republican National Committee,” complained Mara Lliasson of National Public Radio. “I mean, I really think until…comments like that, in this particular dust-up, the White House had the upper hand. Joe Wilson was clearly out of line…it was inappropriate…I think that he’s really hurt the President,” the liberal Lliasson flatly stated.
“Look, in the Bush years, we were told that DISSENT WAS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTISM,” explained Charles Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist. “And now it’s the lowest form of racism. Look, this charge is SO STUPID…it’s so OFFENSIVE – and it’s LACKING in ANY EVIDENCE of ANY KIND,” Krauthammer said.
“This only helps Republicans,” continued Krauthammer. “It will increase the intensity of the opponents of Obama health care and the policies because PEOPLE DON’T wanna be told – when they genuinely disagree with a policy - that the reason is the lowest of all reasons, namely racism.”
“There’s ABSOLUTELY ZERO EVIDENCE that saying “You lie!” to the President of the United States has ANYTHING TO DO WITH RACE WHATSOEVER,” explained Steve Hays of The Weekly Standard. “And it is a DISGUSTING SMEAR for anybody to suggest that.”
“All this is AN ATTEMPT TO SILENCE PEOPLE,” explained David Horowitz. “You have to come back in their face. The Democrats Party is the PARTY OF SLAVERY, of segregation, of race preference. And it’s the Party that CONTROL ALL THE MAJOR FAILING SCHOOLS in th inner cities that are CRUSHING the life out of black children and Hispanic children. There is where the racism is,” continued the expert on Leftist Politics.
Michael Steel, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, came out fighting for the right of all people to dissent in this country against someone of another skin color.
“What the heck is that,” asked Steel, who happens to have dark pigmented skin, if anyone cares about such things. “Where did that come from? Because I disagree with your policies, that all of a sudden now people are going to be donning white hoods and robes? That’s the LEVEL OF STUPIDITY in this argument, that I think, confuses people, distracts us from the discussion on healthcare, and IT NEEDS TO STOP,” said the obviously upset Steele.
“The accusation of racism is a SIGN OF DESPERATION by people who KNOW THEY ARE LOSING the national debate, and then want to hurl the ULTIMATE CHARGE IN AMERICAN POLITICS,” further explained Krauthammer. “I agree that it is a DISGUSTING TACTIC. It’s done as a way TO END DEBATE. The minute you call someone a racist, THE DEBATE IS OVER. Accusations of racism are the LAST REFUGE OF THE LIBERAL SCOUNDREL,” continued the regular Fox News Contributor. “It’s a DELIBERATE ATTEMPT AT CHANGING THE SUBJECT and DISCREDIT THE OPPOSITION with UNPROVABLE AD HOMINEM.”
Hayes seemed to sum up what some think of the aged ex-president.
“Jimmy Carter…is a tired old man who DOESN’T MAKE SENSE ON MOST ISSUES,” Hayes explained.
“One note on Jimmy Carter,” continued Krauthammer. “He’s basically the only PERSON ON THE PLANET that has not one, but two, books on the Bin Laden ‘Must Read List.’ I’m not makin’ it up.” Krauthammer also said that the “worst element” of this race-baiting tactics by Democrats and Leftists is the “the promise of the Obama Presidency – bringing us into a post-racial America – and that hurts the Democrats GRAVELY.”
As far as Joe the Congressman is concerned, his son explained what kind of man he is.
“There is NOT A RACIST BONE IN MY DAD’S BODY,” wrote Alan Wilson. “He doesn’t even laugh at distasteful jokes. My brothers and I were raised by our parents to respect everyone, regardless of background or race.”
Steele warned that Obama would have to deal with the race issue.
“I think he has to deal with it,” explained Steel. “I’m standing here right now again asking the President of the United States…DO YOU AGREE WITH PRESIDENT CARTER?”
As far as the White House is concerned, spokesman Robert Gibbs said that he wasn’t “sure” he sees this as a “large, national conversation going on right now.” Maybe he’ll see the light soon.
BTW, Rasmussen Reports came out with a poll (Sept. 14-15)showing only 12% of people asked thinking that the Obamacare protestors were racist, while 67% said they were not, and 21% said they were not sure.
Please continue to fight for Truth and for the future of America and it’s people.
A regional board took over Cobo Center Tuesday. This is a win for the aging convention center, the city of Detroit, and the metro region. This is a major step at dismantling decades of city-suburban mistrust and animosity.
Make no mistake, getting to this point was not without its challenges. And it was iffy until Detroit City Council chose not to torpedo the latest Cobo deal. Council President Kenneth Cockrel Jr. said:
I know this has been an emotional issue and a controversial issue. But it’s real simple: We don’t have the money to do this on our own. This thing is a go, and it’s something they should be happy about. It’s going to allow us to re-position Cobo to make it competitive, to secure the [North American International] Auto Show and attract other kinds of convention business.
But, the road ahead isn’t without its potholes. Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson doubts revenues will cover expansion costs. Still, the very fact there is a regional convention center board is major progress for metro Detroit.
It’s taken 42 years to get to this point. I hope metro Detroit continues to move forward.
“An early draft of the proposal set the penalty at $750 or $950 per year for single people, depending on income,” ….MSNBC.com
Meanwhile there was an armed foray into Somalia, killing and capturing a few folk, drones are dropping missiles in Pakistan, Afghanistan is a losing proposition and there are still troops and expensive mercenaries in Iraq.
If I was a young person I would look at this little problem.
I would ask, why did the big boys get bail outs and those banks going down for the count now, not?
Why did Chrysler and GM get all that money, screw over creditors and shareholders and Ford was able to survive so far on its own?
If I was a young person I would ask, “Now they want to fine me if I don’t have health insurance?”
If I were young, and even now, I would tell congress to take a hike.
The only people benefiting from these bills are lobbyists, politicians and of course, insurance companies who are laughing all the way to the bank, where they can deposit their new found wealth with Goldman Sachs or CitiGroup or Bank of America, which taxpayers have already bailed out.
Lately, I am getting quite enamored with this thing called Growth. Certainly there are different ways of looking at growth, when it comes to an economy, corporation, community, household or an individual. In a capitalistic soceity where free markets have reigned supreme, Growth represents prosperity, economic development or profits – sometimes it seems based on recent events from financial crises, at all costs.
Perhaps, some leaders are taking notice – there is a greater need for sustainable growth, one that will pull in all participants of driving growth to take responsiblity in their decisions and actions. Here are some thoughts on the Changing face of Growth…
From Edison's Desk Blog: http://www.grcblog.com/?p=434
From the New York Times:
“Two miles or so from this tiny town in the southernmost corner of the United States, across ranches where cattle herds graze beneath the distant Mauna Loa volcano, the giant turbines of a new wind farm cut through the air…
Sixty miles to the northeast, near a spot where golden-red lava streams meet the sea in clouds of steam, a small power plant extracts heat from the volcanic rock beneath it to generate electricity.
These projects are just a slice of the energy experiment unfolding across Hawaii’s six main islands. With the most diverse array of alternative energy potential of any state in the nation, Hawaii has set out to become a living laboratory for the rest of the country, hoping it can slash its dependence on fossil fuels while keeping the lights on.
Every island has at least one energy accent: waves in Maui, wind in Lanai and Molokai, solar panels in Oahu and eventually, if all goes well, biomass energy from crops grown on Kauai. Here on the Big Island of Hawaii, seawater is also being converted to electricity…
…Each of the state’s six electric grids belongs to its own island and is unconnected to the others. And according to state figures, Hawaii still relies on imported oil to generate 77 percent of its electricity, a level of dependency unique in the United States. Coal-fired power provides 14 percent, and 9 percent comes from renewable sources like the wind or the sun…
…“The goals are very, very aggressive,” said Debra Lew, a senior project leader for the federal National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Three decades ago, Hawaii mapped out a similar vision, if in less detail, that came to nothing. But this time, planners say, failure is not an option. “We don’t have anywhere else to go,” said Ted Peck, the point man for the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, overseen by the State Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism…
…
…For all the optimism, planners studiously remind themselves of the detritus of past failures, like the dismembered and rusting wind turbines of a defunct wind farm near the southern end of the Big Island.
“This transformation is going to take a generation,” said Ted Liu, director of the state economic development department. “There are no short-term easy solutions.”
Full Article: Hawaii Eyes Green Tools in Remaking Power Grids
CAIRO: The Egyptian government and its Petroleum Authority have decided to increase the total amount of natural gas exported to Syria, with the beginning of the implementation of an agreement to increase gas deliveries to Lebanon, which will be operation in a few days, the authority said on Sunday. Official data from Egypt’s Petroleum Authority revealed that the country exported some 15 Billion cubic feet of natural gas to Syria through the Arab gas pipeline in 2008 -2009, and its revenues reached 48 million dollars.
The data that were published by Al-Masry Al-Youm, estimated the rate of the Egyptian gas exported to Syria at about $3.12 per million British thermal units, including the cost of transport and delivery. Controversy has erupted in recent times over deals with Israel and last week, the Spanish deal.
A senior government official said that the Egyptian side plans to pump more than 600 million standard cubic meters of natural gas annually to the Syrian-Jordanian borders, increasing the quantities allocated to Syria, according to the gas sales contract signed with Jordan. The official added that the nations “will adopt the principle of exchange of the received Egyptian gas to generate electricity in the southern region of Syria and to deliver the Lebanese an equivalent of 600 million cubic meters of gas produced in the Syrian or Middle Eastern region, the Syrian-Lebanese border, to be offset by side Egypt.”
Under the agreement, the cost of delivery and transport of the Egyptian gas to Lebanon through Syria are determined according to business rates internationally recognized in the industry and transport of natural gas. The cost of the transport will be reviewed on a regular basis every three years on the agreement of the parties to the agreement, the official said.
The agreement should continue for a 15-year contract, and can be extended for further periods according to the prior mutual written agreement between the parties, no later than 18 months before the end of the agreement.
Remember last month when some of us were wondering whether Cash for Clunkers was actually just restoring the market, as some argued, and not stealing sales from the future? And the auto guys all said “don’t worry about it”? Well, C4C is over now so there is no spoiling the party. And suddenly folks are worried about it.
While most dealers are grateful for the boost, they’re paying for it now with fewer customers. The government rebates drew people into the market who otherwise would have kept driving their clunkers due to uncertainty over the sputtering economy. Those customers might have made their purchases later in the year.
“It was good while it lasted,” said Phil Warren, sales manager at Toyota Direct in Columbus, Ohio. “Now we’re a little bit concerned about what happens next. The program may have just taken a lot of people out of the market.”
Making matters worse, many dealers depleted their stocks with clunker sales, and automakers have been slow to ramp up production to replenish the lots. Grahl says Ford has built the cars he ordered but mysteriously hasn’t shipped them. So the selection isn’t very good for people who do want to buy.
No real surprise. And certainly most dealers are probably happy for the boost even if it does cost them some sales now, because there is no way the rest of the year would have provided as many sales as the C4C stimulus. Rather this is just a reminder that despite what advocates always say at the time, there are consequences to actions taken to juice any part of the economy. There is a price to be paid.
I am still more worried about what will become of some of the buyers who took advantage of C4C if employment does not recover quick or if there is a double dip. My bet is that is the real black hole created by the program. But for now dealer bliss has turned into the blues again. This is a great time to buy a car if you have the cash, and you can find anything left on the lot.
In a particularly intelligent article in today’s Telegraph, Frank Field declares that the forthcoming general election will be wholly different from all other post-war elections, in that the parties will be judged on their proposals to cut the public deficit, and not on how they plan to “bribe voters with their own money”.
Pointing out that the recession has detroyed five per cent of our national wealth, Field observes that, even when the economy is growing again, there will be a monstrous gap of £80 billion between revenue and expenditure by 2013.
So the rules of the game have changed, says Field:
Here is the basis of the next decade’s politics. Whoever wins the election will have to plan to hand over an increasing share of our national wealth, first to meet interest payments, and then to repay the debt itself. These transfer payments will cut our country’s living standards.
Hence the importance of spelling out the nature of those public expenditure cuts. The sooner they start, the lower the long-term interest rates, and the smaller the amount of our future income that will have to be impounded for debt repayment.
Field’s analysis is correct; furthermore, evidence of growing public support for expenditure cuts appears in today’s Times, which carries details of a YouGov poll’s findings that, by a majority of almost three to one, voters support cuts in public spending, rather than increased taxation, as the preferred means to address the deficit.
Alistair Darling, too, understands that the rules have changed; in his speech in Cardiff this week, the Chancellor confirmed that his pre-Budget report will contain measures to reduce the deficit and went on to say:
Public spending is not a goal in itself. What matters is the results, what you get with your money – and how they help people meet their aspirations and ease their concerns.
The first priority has to be to look for areas where we can achieve greater efficiency. Some seem in a hurry to cut services. We are focussing on cutting costs.
So what the electorate will wish to know in the approach to the next election will be: how do the two principal parties propose to cut the deficit and restore budgetary rectitude? David Cameron and George Osborne know that; Alistair Darling has shown that he now gets it, too.
Sadly, however, Gordon Brown still doesn’t get it; in his speech to the TUC on Tuesday, the Prime Minister is likely to repeat the familiar fiction that yet further “investment” – his favoured euphemism for borrowing – is the only way to ride out the recession.
In doing so, the Prime Minister will demonstrate beyond doubt that he is still in the old business of seeking to bribe voters with money the country hasn’t got. But voters, if the YouGov poll is anything to go by, have decisively rejected that approach.
They, also, understand the new politics; Gordon Brown doesn’t.
The global financial crisis began in Manhattan, and its effects are being felt far more strongly there than elsewhere. Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the situation is critical. Millions are fighting to keep their jobs. Is what is happening in New York today a harbinger of the fate of the rest of the world?
They still remember how things used to be. That’s part of the problem. New York’s heroes, the men and women who only yesterday considered themselves the knights and conquerors of Manhattan, remember all too well what New York was like in the 1970s — the era before seven-figure salaries came to the Big Apple.
They remember — and they see the signs. That’s why they’re afraid.
Cathy used to be a banker. Today she is homeless and living in Tompkins Square. She thinks about the heroin and the stench. In the 1970s, Cathy had a small apartment not far from here on Orchard Street. It was broken into three times. She remembers the burning cars and broken glass, the plumes of smoke and the cops who shouted “Fuck you!” every time they lashed out.
Restaurateur Fred Austin says he had the doors taken off the toilet stalls at Katz’s restaurant because of the junkies. If they were going to shoot up in front of all his guests, he at least wanted them to feel embarrassed.
Tom Birchard, the owner of the Veselka diner, says he adopted the New York walk in the 1970s: fast, determined, always scanning two blocks ahead, looking behind you every 10 steps or so, staying more than arms-length away from doorways, and crossing the street or even turning around altogether if two or more black men came towards you.
Aside from the murders, the whores and the knowledge that areas like Harlem and the Bronx were strictly out-of-bounds for whites, Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the subway was the worst thing about New York. “The subway was hot and never on time. Everything was damp and grimy, and full of trash,” that is how he recalls the days when people went in and never came out again. “It was an inferno”.
Only Grace on Wall Street says she isn’t afraid of becoming poor again. That was during our first conversation, six months ago. Grace Dolan Flood said her fear lay elsewhere. “I’m afraid I may have lived the wrong life,” she said. “You spend so many years, put so much energy in, and suddenly you’re out. And then what?”
It’s the New York 2009 feeling: A mixture of doubt, worry, and fear. Fear that it won’t be worth all the investment, the effort, the constant battles. Fear of drugs in schools, of playgrounds becoming crime scenes again, of broken windows, of decline. Fear of a future that feels like the past.
If you go looking for the New York feeling in southern Manhattan, on Wall Street, in the East Village, on the Lower East Side, or in Tribeca, you’ll come away with more than your fair share of doubt about the city. New York City consists of five boroughs and thousands of districts. It’s simply too big for gross generalities.
Epicenter of the Crisis
I speak to billionaire realtor Donald Trump is on the phone. “My friend!” he says in greeting, “New York’s doing great. We have a splendid police chief, a splendid mayor, we’re in splendid shape”.
But Donald Trump’s opinions are those of the minority this summer. Jamie Johnson sits in a café on Union Square. The 30-year-old pharmaceuticals heir and documentary filmmaker (”Born Rich”) says, “The whole city is seriously in danger of losing its meaning. People feel vulnerable. An entire generation that never witnessed hardship are now realizing they’ll never fulfill their dream that things will keep on getting better: Cool school, cool grades, cool job, cool money. And that scares them”.
Why is this? Because since September 2008 New York has been the epicenter of the global financial crisis. This is where it all began, and this is where the effects were first seen. And felt.
Stores are closing or barely scraping by, offering “three suits for $250.” No one is buying. “Food traffic” — taxis ferrying people straight across Manhattan to the coolest restaurants — has dwindled to a trickle. Theft, violent and drug crimes are on the rise. There are New Yorkers who pretend to be surprised if a bar only accepts cash, say they’re going to an ATM, and never return. “Impulse shopping,” the practice of popping down to a boutique over lunch, has died a death. 6.5 percent of all the stores in Manhattan are now vacant: a 20-year high. On Fifth Avenue, the Western world’s premier shopping district, 15 percent of the shops between 42nd and 49th Street have closed. Even Brooks Brothers has left nothing but boarded-up windows. And scaffolding. And signs: “For sale,” “for rent,” “for free”.
The city’s restaurants are advertising “recession dinners”: A hot dog and a beer for $5. Suddenly you can get tables again — anywhere, anytime — and the concierge will often ring you back and make you an offer. It feels like the end of snobbery.
Empty Apartments, Big Discounts
The potholes are getting bigger. And could it be there are more rats since the collapse of Lehman Brothers? Garbage sacks pile up because restaurants and hotels have to pay for them to be taken away, but would rather save their money. Homeless people wander the streets, apartments remain empty, landlords offer discounts — unthinkable circumstances just a short time ago, at least here in Manhattan and over in Brooklyn.
People react differently to crisis. When Andre Wechsler from Düsseldorf lost his job on Wall Street, he opened up a hot dog stand selling German currywurst on First Avenue. City magazines praised him for his smart, tasty, “so German” idea.
A hundred yards further on, Cathy sits on a bench. “I’m exhausted,” she says. “I have no insurance, no job, no place to live.” Cathy sleeps in subway carriages or on the benches in Tompkins Square Park. She’s a bag lady now in a raincoat, with all her belongings in a shopping cart. Cathy used to be a broker at Merrill Lynch, but she never put anything aside. Now she has nothing. When people like Cathy lose their jobs in a city without a welfare net, they fall rapidly — and far.
It’s a chain reaction. Wall Street was the city’s engine, and since 1990 New York has been a monothematic metropolis. If a bankrupt Lehman Brothers puts 25,000 people out of work, it robs the city of millions in taxes, revenues that are desperately needed for education, the police force and road repairs. Children are taken out of private schools, cleaners and gardeners are let go. This affects the real estate market and all consumer activity, and taxis drive around empty save for the driver, desperately hunting for the few tourists who still have money to spend. And then AIG and Merrill Lynch cut thousands more jobs.
So could New York’s current woes beset Berlin and the rest of the world tomorrow? As so often, New York could become a standard, a model, only this time of fear; a new weltschmerz in the true sense of the word?
Part 2: A Bubble Develops Every Ten Years
Grace Dolan Flood thinks fast and talks fast. She used to be a saleswoman, after all. Her job was to build relationships, trust. Grace called companies and private customers and tried to convince them to invest their money in Swiss investment bank UBS. Her colleagues invented new investment models, Grace found investors to fit the model. For this she traveled, forgot about her family, vacations, private life, like so many New Yorkers she just worked, she says. For a decade-and-a-half, Grace worked on Wall Street earning at least $300,000 a year, often more.
It bought her an apartment on Chambers and Greenwich with a great view over a relaxed neighborhood. And the Jaguar in the garage. And the status of a Wall Streeter. Fancy clothes, too — including a $800 Prada dress Grace never got around to wearing.
Grace drank tea during our first conversation. Her skin is freckly, her hair red. She wore an Aston Villa jersey.
Of course Flood knew the market. She knew the cycles and she knew that a bubble develops every 10 years “when everyone gets too excited again about exactly the same thing,” as she puts it. Grace bought when others were selling. That’s how she got this apartment shortly after 9/11, when it cost just $435,000 because everyone else was fleeing Lower Manhattan. Today it is worth $900,000.
Grace saw the crisis coming, braced for it, bought some stock in falling markets, and hoarded cash to keep her options open. She thought a storm was coming. She hadn’t anticipated the end of the world.
In May 2008 Grace lost her job. So she started looking for another. But the Wall Street Grace knew inside out no longer existed. At first she reacted the same way she had always done: She called headhunters who got her interviews. She leaned on her network, but it was over. No-one could help anyone anymore.
Grace says she has an excellent reputation: “I can build relationships, I’m well-educated, a team-player, customer-oriented. That’s my reputation”. But no-one was interested in her reputation any longer, and her interviews were always followed by silence. Grace gets herself a cardigan and a beer, stepping over a packing case in the process.
‘The Best Days Lie Ahead’
The effects of the crisis are plain to see in Manhattan. Virgin has closed its largest outlet worldwide on Times Square, and the ladies on the Upper West Side ask for their purchases to be put in plain, unmarked brown paper bags. Economist Colin Camerer told New York magazine that behavior considered glamorous in good times is seen as revolting when times are bad.
Where is all this leading? The mayor finds himself espousing conflicting views, claiming the situation is worse than ever — and yet not as bad as people think.
The reasons for this contradiction are clear. On the one hand Michael Bloomberg has to explain why he wants to be re-elected for a third term in November. That used to be impossible and against the rules of the game. Until, that is, he got the municipal authorities to change the rules. Bloomberg says New York is in a state of emergency and needs him because he alone can lead the city out of the crisis.
On the other hand, Bloomberg has put $90 million of his own money into his election campaign. And when you accompany him on the campaign trail visiting first the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Queens, then a carpenters’ and cabinetmakers’ association meeting at the Sheraton on 53rd Street, and finally an award ceremony for a Jewish businessman, you often hear him enthusing about New York being “the most amazing city in the world” whose “best days lie ahead” because it will “beat this crisis” just as it has others.
100,000 Lost Jobs
Bloomberg seems to epitomize New York. His staff say he is quick and intelligent, manic, quick-tempered, and a little megalomanic. For instance, he prefers to live in his townhouse on Central Park rather than the mayor’s official residence, a white-and-yellow villa on the East River, because he thinks Gracie Mansion is too small for his needs. Yet he pretends to take the subway just like his voters — even though his chauffeur drives him to the subway. But when one of his citizens accuses the mayor of bending the democratic rules to allow him to seek a third term in office because no-one could match his media influence or spending power, Bloomberg replies, “you’re a disgrace!”
The Michael Bloomberg who opens every conversation with the words “Call me Mike” is a small man. He is independent. He once was brave. Manhattan reporters say Bloomberg had a splendid first term in office in the years before business was stifled by bureaucracy, then sacrificed his second term to his ambition of running for president. His best joke is “It only rained twice last week: Once for three days, once for four”. He cracked it six times the day I spent with him, though his followers insist he’s a funny guy. They also claim he has lots of ideas for how to save New York from demise.
The mayor denies New York depends entirely on Wall Street. “We are the fashion capital of the world, the medical capital, the media capital,” Bloomberg gushes.
His municipal government estimated 75,000 jobs would be lost in the financial industry and a further 300,000 elsewhere in New York. So far, only about 100,000 have been lost. The city has set up a fund to issue small business loans for startups. There is also a retraining program for jobless Wall Streeters. “We’re pumping $7.5 billion into public schools,” says Bloomberg the campaigner. “We will emerge from this crisis stronger than we entered it”.
Tom Birchard drinks a latte in front of the Veselka, a veritable New York institution founded by Ukrainian immigrants on the corner of Second Avenue and 9th Street in East Village. Birchard took over the place from his father-in-law. He has white hair, blue eyes and wears what every New Yorker wears in summer: shorts, a T-shirt and sneakers.
Part 3: “Everyone Around Here Was on Welfare or Drugs”
Like so many others before him, Birchard came here seeking work. His father, a staunch Republican, worked for the Campbell soup company before teaching airmen how to drop bombs accurately. Tom wanted to get out of Pennsylvania, so he moved to the East Village in 1967. “It was crazy here, and it became my home overnight,” he recalls. Here there were blacks, lesbians and gays, and Andy Warhol would come by in the evening from his place further up on Central Park. At the time, Tom Birchard didn’t know what he wanted to do in life. It didn’t matter. He ate breakfast at the Veselka, met his first wife, his father-in-law died, and Birchard finally realized where he would spend the rest of his life: at the Veselka.
Back then, kids used to play lacrosse on Second Avenue. Car repair men would grease engines on the sidewalk. Painters painted, writers wrote, musicians rehearsed, and hippies watched, read, listened and got stoned. Manhattan was a different place, a good place to be in those pre-70s days. There was a Polish woman at the Veselka who took your order, set the tables, cooked the borscht, served the borscht, took your money and washed up. And she wasn’t fast.
But then the city ran out of money, couldn’t pay its bills, bureaucracy and construction projects became too expensive, and tax revenues couldn’t cover the costs. The subway ground to a halt, the potholes were covered with sheets of steel, the rats came out, and the district turned bad.
Birchard says the “Mafia clubhouse” used to be over there on the corner of First Avenue. Its runners went around collecting money for the numbers game racket. Heroin replaced hash, the hippies became pimps and prostitutes, break-ins and murder shot up. It happened right here, around the corner, in front of the door, even inside the restaurant, which was only half as big as it is now. The people of the East Village carried knives, and Birchard recalls that every apartment got robbed. They stole the TV out of his place, which cost him 125 dollars a month. “East of Avenue A landlords burned their own houses down because no-one was paying rent anymore. Everyone round here was either on welfare or on drugs,” he says.
A City at a Junction
And then — doesn’t it always? — the pendulum swung back. Cheap housing attracted young artists, chess-piece carvers, and designers, cafés opened up and students from New York University over on Washington Square flocked to the Veselka after the Village Voice wrote about Tom Birchard’s blini, a kind of Eastern European sweet pancake.
Then came the 1990s; the decade of money. Wall Street took over New York, and the East Village was taken over by those who could afford $2,000 rents. Next to arrive were the fast-food chains: Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and the like. “Give me a break,” Tom says. “Stop! That’s enough now!”
And now?
The city is at a junction. Everyone can sense it. Will the 70s return, ushering the past back in? History rarely repeats itself, and it certainly never ends. Nor will this city ever stop developing. It is changing simply because immigrants will continue to come to New York, changing entire blocks, and with them the rules.
A new, once unimaginable, New York under Mayor Bloomberg is coming to terms with global warming and cycle paths on Times Square, Ninth Avenue, from east to west, and only the taxi drivers still veer from left to right across six lanes of traffic, mowing down cyclists in the process. White bicycles, so-called “ghost bikes,” are tied to lampposts as memorials to the victims.
Safety More Important Than Money
The New York of the Wall Street era was a city of egoists. Now rich unemployed people offer to help serve poor unemployed people in soup kitchens, the “city meals-on-wheels” service is growing, and former bankers now want to coach school baseball teams. If money makes people narcissistic, does a lack of it make them better?
Seminaries are reporting a rise in intake. Sociologists claim the new New Yorkers are starting to appreciate the value of regular work again. “In the past people didn’t give a damn about safety. Safety was something for low-fliers,” says Barry Schwartz, a psychologist at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. But now more and more people are realizing that “safety is more important for our happiness than wealth”.
In years gone by, urban researchers described New York as a “hedonistic treadmill,” the city of “maximizers”. Everything had to be perfect, then even better, and everything was constantly being questioned because there was too much choice. New Yorkers were never content. Is this changing? Will calm come, composure even? Will what you do become more important than what you buy?
The same sociologists say aid organizations don’t need more helpers because they’re running out of money. The same sociologists say the worst thing that could happen to an urbanite is to lose his job because the failure and disappointment plunges them into the abyss here as in all other major Western cities.
Perhaps the city will soon be divided anew — here the new communities, there the new ghettos — and return to the rough New York of Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” a New York of cheap rents, trash and murder. Another incendiary issue is that black men, an above-average proportion of whom are poorly or under-educated, are far more likely to lose their job than any other socioeconomic group.
Grace Dolan Flood says the city is spiraling downward, but New York is not a place that gives up, nor is America a powerless nation. “We’re not just going to roll over and die,” she says defiantly.
Grace would like to buy real estate. Right now. She could live off 10 or 12 apartments. But banks aren’t handing out loans. She applied to become a New York City schoolteacher. She was invited for an interview — that was the first hurdle. Teachers in New York earn $46,000 a year. She got through the entire application procedure before the program was axed. The city wouldn’t be hiring any new teachers. “Sorry,” they said. They had to cut costs.
“Winding down my upper-class lifestyle won’t be hard,” Grace says, pointing to her Irish heritage. Her family came to New York when Ireland was the poorest country in Western Europe. The Dolans lived in Brooklyn before it became fashionable. Her father unloaded cargo planes at Kennedy Airport, but he was also a janitor and cleaned offices. Sometimes he took his kids along. “I can still clean any bathroom in five minutes flat,” Grace says. Her parents were determined all five of their children would have middle-class lives. They succeeded, and all five went to college. “I wanted my parents to be proud of me,” Grace says. “Immigrants will lead this country out of the crisis because immigrants don’t assume they have a right to a better life. They fight for it”.
Grace has rented out her apartment. She can no longer afford the once paltry sum of $3,500 she needs to pay off her loans and feed herself every month. She found a cheaper place for herself. Grace no longer spends $2 every morning buying theNew York Times. And who needs a $5 latte from Starbucks?
In the past, Wall Streeters went out to eat every day. Today former Wall Streeters go out for a meal on Saturdays, skip the appetizers and drink beer instead of wine.
Part 4: ‘We’re at a Watershed. Everyone Knows That’
Fred Austin knows Lower Manhattan well; the people, the “New York feeling”. He grew up here. Austin sits at the back of Katz’s, the restaurant he runs on Houston. Over there is where Meg Ryan showed Billy Crystal how women fake an orgasm in the famous scene from the movie “When Harry Met Sally”. Here’s where Bill Clinton ate. It’s a room full of photos; a museum that renews itself every day. The pastrami sandwich is its specialty.
The humor is Jewish: How many people work here? “Half of them,” Austin replies.
Austin says New York is and remains the center of the creative world: “All the creative, smart money comes here. That’s not going to stop all of a sudden. Young people are moving to New York, and they want to live, not suffer. Thirty years ago, people were predicting that cities would eventually die out. But no longer. We’re a long way from the New York of the 70s. The crisis may be depressing and its effects wide-reaching, but urban culture — a blend of ideas, strength, and energy — simply can’t be replaced. We’re making a comeback”.
Fred eats a pickle and sips his coffee. He has a bald head and a goatee, and wears a red checked shirt. Then he says, “The entire city now understands there’s too much at stake, and none of us wants New York to break apart. We’re at a watershed. Everyone knows that”.
It’s August in New York in a rainy summer. Months have passed since our first conversation, and Grace Dolan Flood has found a job. She now teaches young Wall Streeters about investment banking. “It’s great to be back,” she says.
Will Things Get Worse?
Are there any signs of improvement? The Bloomberg administration seems to think so. Grace Dolan Flood agrees. “Crises come and crises go,” she says.
The figures show that more stores are closing and fewer people are spending their money. The fact that Goldman Sachs is making billions again — just like before the crisis — won’t save the rest of the city. The figures show that things are going to get worse in the coming months and possibly years.
The people of New York want to beat the crisis, of course. They speak of their courage, their imagination. The Big Apple is still a dynamic city of 8.3 million. But didn’t the crisis come about because so many Americans ran up huge debts so unthinkingly in the belief that they deserved another car or another house? Is it because the story about the extraordinary country with the world’s best workers has been exposed as a myth or a lie? Could it be that the United States and even the New York of 2009 are too sluggish to change quickly in the face of such a crisis?
Tom Birchard, the owner of the Veselka, says he hasn’t forgotten the watchful walk he adopted in the 70s. Yet he hopes New York will bounce back, as always. “We’ve had lots of practice in survival,” he says. “As long as there’s a way to survive, we’ll survive”.
Then he grins and adds, “So many of the really funny, crazy guys that said Manhattan had lost its cool because they couldn’t afford to live there anymore: They’re all coming home”.
Birchard is sure he can detect some sort of a cleansing effect. Speculators are going, artists are returning. Although it’s still quite quiet and subtle, he can sense the city humming again, a kind of buzz that almost feels like 1969 again. Not quite a new New York feeling, but something’s definitely happening.
Perhaps a city like New York needs a crisis like this every 10 years or so.
