Headline Lifelines

 Bash the Messenger  No Responses »
Dec 202008
 

“U.S. Throws Lifeline to Detroit”

That’s the miserable, Murdochized headline on the lead story in the weekend issue of the Wall Street Journal. It’s typical Murdoch — uninformative and opinionated, telling us things that nobody could possibly know.

I googled for other stories on what happened Friday to see if other newspapers did a similarly wretched job in describing the action of the Bush administration. I selected stories that purported to tell what the Bush administration did and omitted any that seemed mainly about peoples’ reactions. If there seemed to be two such stories from any particular news agency, I picked what seemed to be the main and best one.

Here are the results:

  • Bush throws lifeline to US automakers (Reuters)
  • Automakers grab loans, look to Obama White House (The Associated Press)
  • Auto bailout plan rolls in (Lake Expo, MO)
  • Chrysler, GM win a federal lifeline (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
  • Bush approves $17.4 billion in aid to automakers (Los Angeles Times)
  • Loans give GM, Chrysler 3 months (Detroit Free Press)
  • GM and Chrysler Will Get $13.4 Billion in US Loans (Bloomberg)
  • Bush announces auto rescue (CNNMoney)
  • Bush Approves $17.4 Billion Auto Bailout (New York Times)
  • Bush’s lifeline offers car firms the fuel to survive (The Age, Australia)
  • Bush orders auto bailout (London Free Press, Canada)
  • Bush unveils $17.4bn carmaker rescue (Rediff, India)
  • $17.4B bailout will halt automakers’ hemorrhaging (Indianapolis Star)
  • After Congress Refuses, Bush Gives $17.4 Billion Loan To US Carmakers (RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty, Czech Republic)
  • Bailout approved: Automakers to get $17.4B (Salt Lake Tribune, United States)

I hate to have to say anything good about these two, but the Los Angeles Times and New York Times both had headlines worthy of the news profession. So did the Salt Lake Tribune, Radio Free Europe, and Rediff of India.

Note to the Indianapolis Star: You can stop the sales pitch and wild promises now. It’s a done deal.

Were any of these headlines worse than the WSJ’s? No, but Reuters and the Minneapolis Star and Tribune were just as bad. Maybe The Age of Australia should be in there, too.

Only one

 Bash the Messenger  1 Response »
Dec 192008
 

I had thought that whatever else you might say about Barak Obama, you had to acknowledge that he was an Internet-savvy guy. He used the Internet to raise tons of money. He used his Blackberry while John McCain was oblivious to such technologies.

Well, it turns out that Obama’s transition team has been Google-deprived, or it would have known better than to communicate something like this:

Only one outside economist contacted by Obama aides, Harvard’s Greg Mankiw, who served on President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, voiced skepticism about the need for an economic stimulus, transition officials said.

They contacted only one. What a narrow, cramped world they live in, as they and their media groupies are about to find out.

Those of us who ARE internet-savvy know it already. Representative John Boehner is compiling a list of economists who are stimulus spending skeptics.

HT to economist King Banion at SCSU Scholars

Geniuses who want your retirement savings

 Free markets  2 Responses »
Dec 182008
 

It’s bad enough that one of these years I’ll have to retire from my day job. But to make it worse, there is the existence of things such as Boston College’s “Center for Retirement Research.” That in itself isn’t the worst of it. The worst is that it’s led by a director, Alicia Munnell, who has this to say in last weekend’s WSJ:

The 401(k) system has had a chance, and in my view, it has failed. As a major shource of retirement income, it has shown itself unreliable–a point the financial crisis has driven home.

For the record, my own retirement savings are not in a 401K, but in TIAA-CREF. But TIAA-CREF is similar in that it’s another defined-contribution system. Those plans are hated by people who hate markets and human choice. Here’s an example of the attitude you find, from the same WSJ article.

We’ve shifted the risk and responsibility for retirement onto individuals. The evidence is at best mixed on how well this is working out.

Somebody has a government-centric outlook on life, it would appear, if he views individual risk and responsibility as an aberration.

To be sure, not all of the WSJ article is anti-choice. There are some pro-choice proposals to make 401(k)s better and more available. But there are plenty of people who just don’t like humans taking over the government’s job of running their lives.

Their solution? Turn investment decisions and planning over to the financial geniuses who now want to invest in GM and the Big Three.

France Credits Deregulation

 Bash the Messenger  No Responses »
Dec 182008
 

It’s a good thing the WSJ buried this story on page A13: “France Credits Deregulation for Cushioning its Economy.”

It’s a sacrilege. It’s heresy. Will the reporters (Sebastian Moffett and David Gauthier-Villars) ever get any of those awards that journalists give each other if anyone finds out what they’ve done?

Speaking of the incestuous system of journalistic awards, here‘s from the latest issue of The Weekly Standard:

We mention this not so much because of our admiration for Leonard Downie Jr.-more about him in a minute-but by virtue of our interest in the ancient journalistic practice of logrolling, back-scratching, mutual admiration, or whatever it is you want to call the business of news insiders shamelessly awarding prizes to each other. Downie, as we mentioned, was editor of the Washington Post from 1991 until this year; his predecessor at the Post (as readers might have guessed) was the same Benjamin C. Bradlee for whom the Benjamin C. Bradlee Award is named. Which, of course, was just awarded to Leonard Downie Jr.

THE SCRAPBOOK infers a couple of things from this. First, it explains why, year after year, Pulitzer prizes in journalism are equitably divided among deserving recipients at, oh, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Second, it gives THE SCRAPBOOK some measure of hope. If this year’s Benjamin C. Bradlee Award goes to Benjamin C. Bradlee’s successor as editor at the Post, it stands to reason that, somewhere down the line, the coveted William Kristol Award might go to THE SCRAPBOOK! Of course, the fact that there is, at the moment, no William Kristol Award is not an obstacle: We’ll just establish something called the Scrapbook Foundation, and make its principal business the yearly presentation of the William Kristol Award, complete with a thousand-dollar-per-table banquet, C-SPAN coverage, and celebrity comedian/speaker.

Mine is bigger than yours

 Tax policy  No Responses »
Dec 172008
 

Is this a “mine is bigger than yours” contest?

Anxious to jolt the economy back to life, President-elect Barack Obama appears to be zeroing in on a stimulus package of about $850 billion, dwarfing last spring’s tax rebates and rivaling drastic government actions to fight the Great Depression.

stimulus

If they want to play games, how about instead making it a “mine lasts longer than yours” contest? The way to do that is with permanent tax relief. Nobody is going to make long-term plans based on a short-term stimulus. In fact, this kind of wild stimulus behavior only adds to the uncertainty that is killing the economy now.

Close but Separate

 Bash the Messenger  No Responses »
Dec 122008
 

There used to be the practice of “separate but equal.” Now we have “close but separate.”

NY Times headline: “Ex-Obama Fund-Raiser Was Close to Illinois Governor, but Kept Ties Separate.”

I presume it’s something like the old practice of bundling. In that case it wasn’t politicians in bed with each other, but young people who were given a chance to have “intimacy without sexual intercourse.”

BTW, the name Obama is in the headline, but the person the headline is talking about is Tony Rezko.

Coffee choice

 Coffee  3 Responses »
Dec 112008
 

Speed Gibson prodded me into using the Internet to find Caribou Coffee locations. I like to know where one can find a decent cup of coffee along our route from southwest Michigan to north-central Minnesota, where my parents live.

It had been some time since I tried using the Internet to do this. As I looked up the site I thought to myself, Sure, you can put in the name of a town and find the Coffee places within so many miles. But I want it to tell me where I can find coffee along our route.

And then I saw it on the Caribou Coffee page: Under “Find a Location,” there are the choices: “By City,” “By Address,” and “Along a Route” (!). Just what I wanted!

Now if only Caribou Coffee could make better coffee. I usually prefer it to Starbucks (too burnt), though the Starbucks quality is probably more consistent. But the last time I got a Caribou cup at Hudson, WI, I had to throw it out as undrinkable. There ought to be a rule that a person who doesn’t drink coffee shouldn’t be allowed to stand behind a counter and sell you coffee. (I don’t actually know that it was a non-coffee-drinker, but I can’t imagine someone who drinks coffee selling something that has gone bad.)

And coffee that might be OK with milk, ice, and whatever is not necessarily going to be good to drink straight. Not all coffee shops realize that.

Here is a quick summary of some memorable places where I’ve gotten coffee.

  • The best coffee I’ve ever had was a cup of Zimbabwe coffee in September 2003 at a coffee house in Millersburg, Ohio that has since gone out of business. My wife agreed. I don’t know if it was fresh roasted but it was ground fresh for us.
  • We just picked up an order today at Upson’s in Kalamazoo. Roasting day is Tuesday. I like the way Linda roasts, though some people might like it roasted not quite as dark. Unfortunately she doesn’t carry as big a variety as she used to. I get Sumatra and Costa Rica coffee there. I used to get Kenya AA as a special treat, and an Ethiopian until she said I was one of only two customers for it and she wouldn’t be getting more. This is where I get most of my beans.
  • Once in a while I order coffee from the Great Northern Roasting Company in Traverse City. The variety is not great, but Jack produces some exquisite roasts. He roasts just before shipping. I just finished a great cup of Tanzania Peaberry from his beans.
  • I get the coffee of the week from Sweet Maria’s now and then. It’s also where I order my french presses and other supplies. Maybe someday I’ll order a roaster from them, too. Roasting my own is probably the only way I’ll get some of that excellently complex Yemen coffee on a regular basis.
  • Last summer we stopped at Canterbury Coffee in Bellefontaine, Ohio. They have a big variety to choose from. (How come places like Caribou and Starbucks don’t offer choices of regular brewed coffee?)
  • Bella Caffe’ in Park Rapids MN will let you order a fresh-pressed coffee in a french press. I’ve long thought coffee houses should offer this. I’ll gladly wait 5 minutes for coffee to be fresh ground and fresh brewed to order. I discovered this place several weeks ago. But they serve you the press. Well, that’s not necessary. The thing to do is push the plunger after 3 minutes and immediately pour it into cups — not let the coffee sit in the press. But at least one can get fresh brewed coffee there.
  • Most Panera Bread places sell decent-to-good coffee, though I’ve found 1-2 places that try to skimp. Skimping on the coffee makes it bitter. I’ve had decent cups of coffee at MacDonalds, too, and have also had good coffee at Arby’s and Tim Hortons. But some people in these fast-food franchises shouldn’t be allowed to make coffee. I suspect they are non-coffee-drinkers.
  • At gas stations I sometimes put a little in a cup and sniff it before deciding whether or not to buy a cup. I’ve had really good gas-station coffee, but it tends to be a crap shoot where you lose more often than not. Coffee can be ruined by people who are too cheap and who skimp on the grounds, or who don’t clean their equipment properly, or who let the brewed coffee sit too long and let it go rancid. But at least there is the possibility of getting good coffee on the road these days. Most coffee nowadays is better than what you used to find 20-30 years ago. It’s certainly a lot better than the stuff I used to drink then.

Time to go brew another cup. What should it be? My personal blend of Sumatra-Costa Rica from Upson’s? Or should I break open the “Terruno Nayarita Mexican Natural” from Great Northern? Decisions, decisions.

Donations to a non-profit for his benefit

 Regulation  No Responses »
Dec 112008
 

Who cares which people were Senate Candidates No. 1 through 5? What I want to know is the name of the non-profit that would have benefited Governor Blagojevich.

Everyone already knows that politicians are bought and sold. What might be new is the ways by which non-profit organizations can be profitable to politicians.

The affidavit states that Senate Candidate 1 was likely to be supported by Obama for the seat, and that the Illinois governor was mulling a variety of ways to capitalize on such an appointment. Blagojevich allegedly wanted a corporate board appointment for his wife or millions in donations to a non-profit organization for his benefit, or even an appointment as secretary of health and human services, in exchange for appointing Senate Candidate 1. (Obama nominated former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle for the Cabinet post Blagojevich wanted on Thursday.)

—Fox News article [Emphasis mine]

Refute

 Bash the Messenger  No Responses »
Dec 112008
 

Here’s the word “refute” in the lead sentence of a Fox News article:

Patti Blagojevich’s father, sister and brother are refuting the foul-mouthed portrait that’s been drawn of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s wife since his arrest, saying the first lady has been living in a pressure cooker.

Here’s what dictionary.com has to say about the meaning of the word “refute”:

Refute – verb (used with object)

  1. to prove to be false or erroneous, as an opinion or charge
  2. to prove (a person) to be in error

I read that whole article. In it I learned that Patti Blagojevich is “a mother, a sister, and a devoted wife.” I learned that “she is particularly protective of her family.” I learned that she is “loyal to a fault.” She will sometimes “jump down [our] throat” if you argue with her husband. She is going through a rough time. Her family is angry about the scrutiny she is getting.

But nowhere did I find the slightest refutation of the “foul-mouthed portrait that’s been drawn” of her. In fact, her father even corroborated it somewhat.

You’d think that a news article that starts off with an assertion like this one did would then try to back it up.

Non-infrastructure spending program

 Uncategorized  1 Response »
Dec 082008
 

President-elect Obama is lucky that his media followers don’t think carefully about what he says:

“Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) — President-elect Barack Obama said the U.S. recession will worsen before a recovery takes hold and that he will offer an economic stimulus plan “equal to the task” without worrying about a short-term widening of the budget deficit. Dealing with the loss of jobs, frozen credit markets, falling home prices and other signs of economic turmoil is “my number one priority,” Obama said on NBC today. Later at a Chicago news conference he said “more aggressive steps” are needed to cope with the housing crisis.”

  1. So short-term the economy will get worse.
  2. In the short-term the deficit is going to get worse.
  3. His stimulus plan that we’ve been hearing about lately? A long-term infrastructure spending program.
  4. And what is his long-term spending program going to do to the deficit? Something to worry about, maybe?

I had hoped that at this point I would be able to switch to saying something good about Obama’s idea of a long-term infrastructure plan. Yes, it will do more harm than good. Going into debt to solve a problem created by too much debt does not seem like a winner. But things like roads and bridges would give him something to show for our money in the end, even if it makes the financial situation worse and more drawn-out.

Unfortunately, I took the trouble just now to read beyond the headlines. It looks like he is using a very expansive definition of the term “infrastructure.” With the direction he’s taking, it’ll be a program to spend massive amounts of money on every special interest represented in Congress.

Saying something nice about Obama will have to wait for another time.

Computers in classrooms? I thought by now we had gotten over that fad and had been chastened by the results. And something that becomes obsolete in 5 years is not exactly infrastructure.

Greater broadband availability? Yes, that could be called infrastructure. But why should the government build this, when municipality after municipality has failed financially in its efforts to provide government-sponsored internet. Why not instead fix the tax and regulatory climate (including an abolishing or reform of the E-rate program) so that private companies will be motivated to build broadband services. Then local governments will have services to tax and so increase their revenues. And there will be obscene profits to tax, too, which will provide revenue. Why would government want to shut off its income-producing sources?

Technology in doctor’s offices? Spending on all this technology stuff may be a way to pay back all the high-tech workers and industries who spent so much money on his campaign. But why not instead create an economic climate in which doctors will be able to adopt the technology when it proves its ability to improve efficiency and make more money for them?

Sigh.

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