'A pen warmed up in hell' | Reality-based commentary about Phoenix, Arizona, and the nation.
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1Seattle is so generous to the homeless that it’s known as "Freeattle." So it’s not surprising that in this lovely, liberal city there would be protests over recent sweeps to remove homeless camps from greenbelts and underpasses. The city claims the camps are unsanitary and unsafe. The protesters say there are not enough shelters.
To be sure, the homeless here are not as obnoxious as in San Francisco. Even the People’s Republic of Berkeley has had second thoughts about doing nothing to address panhandling and defecating on sidewalks. Phoenix, which offers a harsh minimum of services, eased somewhat in recent years by a services campus pushed by some business leaders, still attracts a huge homeless population.
My personal reaction to this has changed in recent years. Based on my street experience as an ambulance medic, I knew panhandlers would just go buy drugs or booze. So I never gave money. Once I started reading the Bible with more diligence, I changed my behavior. Now I always give money. This is just me. And it doesn’t represent a societal answer.
1The Wall Street Journal took a look at what it calls a "big daily’s hyperlocal flop," as the Washington Post poured resources into creating a "local-local" product for an affluent county.
For believers in the power of rigorous local coverage to help save
newspapers, the Washington Post’s launch of LoudounExtra.com last July
was a potentially industry-defining event. It paired a journalistic
powerhouse with a dream team of Internet geeks to build a virtual town
square for one of Virginia’s and the nation’s most-affluent and
fastest-growing counties.Almost a year later, however, the Web site is still
searching for an audience. Its chief architect has left for another
venture in Las Vegas, and his team went with him. And while Post
executives say they remain committed to providing so-called hyperlocal
news coverage, they are re-evaluating their approach.
This was sadly predictable, and indicative of the group-think that is causing newspapers to commit suicide.
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1Alan Greenspan is worried about his reputation and is trying to set the record straight in an interview with Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. I was prepared to be sympathetic after reading this quote:
"I was praised for things I didn’t do," Mr. Greenspan said during one
of three interviews at his sun-drenched office in downtown Washington,
D.C. "I am now being blamed for things that I didn’t do."
But then the reporter tells us that the former Federal Reserve chairman "doesn’t regret a single decision." This makes my bullshit detector go off. How could any thinking person live a full life, especially one at the pinnacle of international leadership, and say with a straight face they have no regrets. Even Frank Sinatra had a few.
Greenspan wants us to draw the correct lessons from his tenure and the current market disaster, so that we don’t implement the wrong policies. But what if the wrong policies are the very ones implemented on Mr. Greenspan’s watch?
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No CommentsOnce again people with 401(k)s are getting hammered by the stock market. The Dow may be up one day, down the next and up yet another day, but it’s been a bad year for most people’s portfolios. As Congress talks about long overdue regulation of Wall Street, you can bet that the artifice of 401(k)s won’t be on the table.
That’s too bad, because America is headed for a wave of impoverished baby boomers. It may not be a big one, because many will inherit the wealth of their parents. But each succeeding generation will be a little poorer. There may be more wealthy, too, but the majority will see declining living standards. It’s all so Gilded Age. And few have thought through the consequences.
No Comments“How are you supposed to know? Fucking men like you built the hydrogen bomb. Men like you thought it up. You think you’re so creative. You don’t know what it’s like to really create something; to create a life; to feel it growing inside you. All you know how to create is death…and destruction.”
These are the lines Linda Hamilton speaks in Terminator 2. Change a few words and she could be speaking of the current financial disaster. Now it’s out of control. Make no mistake: the extraordinary steps by the Federal Reserve in the past few days, including a Sunday night fire sale of Bear Sterns and an interest rate cut, are being taken out of fear.
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No CommentsStagflation is the worry of the moment. Talk about a ’70s flashback. The term refers to the combination of high inflation, high unemployment and weak growth — trends that weren’t supposed to go together. As Robert Samuelson has pointed out, the current troubles likely won’t be a repeat of the disco age, unless the Fed overreacts. Recessions are natural economic phenomena and sometimes trying to avoid them can make the eventual reckoning worse.
But we shouldn’t stop thinking there. As long as the popular conversation is on stagflation and the 1970s, it’s a chance to follow those themes to some provocative and disturbing questions.
1Forbes has published its first list of "miserable cities." Like all such magazine lists, it’s fairly arbitrary, somewhat silly and, in the case of Forbes, informed by its ideology. Thus, "high" tax rates help make a place "miserable." The deferred infrastructure, education, healthcare, environmental and social costs of such low-tax sprawlbergs as Las Vegas and Phoenix are not included.
If those places are so great for business, why do "miserable cities" like New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia remain capitals of commerce, culture and talent? I’m waiting for Wall Street, rather than some bottom-feeder related to the housing industry, to move to Phoenix.
No matter. There are some things to be learned in the misery list.
No CommentsOklahoma City is the latest place to pin its hopes of becoming a "big league city" on a taxpayer financed arena to land a professional sports team. The team is the Seattle Supersonics, acquired by an Oklahoma ownership group that has barely concealed its intentions to move the team, especially after Seattle balked at another taxpayer-financed renovation of Key Arena.
These are two cities passing each other in the night.
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