muscle up

Invicible from DTroit. A smaller carbon footprint than the Pontiac TransAm and the ablity to shapeshift.

money shot

Surprisingly, none of the pundits who were cheering for a Michigan State victory over North Carolina in Monday's National Championship as a metaphorical symbol that Detroit was on the road to recovery and that a State victory might mark the beginning of a much needed turn around of the US auto industry, have gone on record to reinterpret the meaning of a loss. Carolina, which in two games this season, drubbed State by a total of 52 points, drove the symbolic last nail in the good-old-days coffin. If folks were hoping to find a Spartan dancing around a pot o' gold at the end of the financial rainbow Monday evening, it did not happen. Although, a small miracle did occur near the end of the celebration. Rainbow Head John 3:16 was there as the trophy was hoisted and managed to find his way into the money shot.

pounded in the low post

Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser was the lone dissenting vote in yesterday's budget approval by the city council. Since finances are supposed to be the Mayor's strong suit, his failure to have much of an impact on the budget process is another sad illustration of his inability to lead the council. They pretty much decided after some of his earlier shenanigans to just go ahead and make decisions without him. Should the Mayor move to veto the budget, given that the council is solidly stacked in opposition, the council would quickly override it and this action could only serve to further weaken what little power the Mayor has left.

council pounds budget past mayor.

bracket buster

Many conservative news pundits, who began slinging crap and labels like 'socialist' even before the new administration took office, seem to be disappointed in every thing the administration does these days. Sadly, if you listen to many of them, they seem to be saying the same things that liberals were saying about the Bush administration just a few short months ago. The administration is lying. The administration's plan for solving the war can't and won't work. We'll be mired in the Middle East for decades. There isn't enough money to do the needed tasks.

Last evenings White House news conference proved that it's generally a slow transition from running for office to governance. Running for office, especially if one can cast themselves as an outsider, is often no more difficult than separating oneself from the competition and making the vague promises that voters want and need to hear. If you make anything more than vague promises during an election cycle, you're wasting time and likely unelectable. Governance, however, is much more difficult, if only because more folks are involved in the decision-making process. The new budget process illustrates this quite well.

The Obama administration can offer a road to balanced budgets all it wants, but ultimately Congress has to pass it. And the Congressional process, with its reliance on K street lobbyists and endless re-election financing is still ripe for pillaging the American dream. Everyone hates pork, unless it happens to be in their own district, and then it is a needed infrastructure enhancement.



There a saying in recovery, 'you didn't get in this mess overnight, so don't expect to get out of it overnight.' And it works on many levels. Personal and/or family relationships and/or hardships. The point being is don't expect this administration to solve our problems in the first 100 days. Hell, they'll be lucky if during the first few months of this administration they correctly identify the root cause of our problems and some reasonable approaches on how to solve them.

march madness

You knew it had to happen. Spring is just around the corner and behind that Easter. So here to welcome in another season of life is the inflatable 10-foot tall chick-rabbit.

Forget for a moment that bunnies don't lay eggs, nor have wings and that chicks don't have large, floppy ears. The fact that chicks aren't sexually mature enough to lay eggs, and when they (chickens) are capable, they rarely lay eggs a third the size of their body, seems trivial. Instead, think of it like this. If folks are still spending money on such frivolities, there's hope yet that we can still rely on rebuilding our economy through mindless consumerism.

homer simpson explains the financial crisis

AIG, known affectionately by those who care as American International Group, posted the largest quarterly loss, $62 billion, in history last Friday. If that seems like a lot of money, it is. Total AIG losses for the year were $100 billion. And how much money is that? $100 billion is larger than the gross domestic product of 70 percent of the world's countries. Seventy percent of them!

To prevent the collapse of AIG, the government infused them with another $30 billion today. That money is in addition to another $150 billion already given to AIG in the past year by the US government. According to experts, of which I am not one, we must help AIG lest the entire western way of banking collapses at our feet. Given the way things are happening, maybe it's time it did.

one of the experts?

So the government now owns 80 percent of the assets of AIG and we (read: the government) apparently don't know where the money went in the process because AIG isn't talking. And for those keeping score at home, 80 percent would seem to be sufficient to classify this transaction as 'nationalization'. Now if I only get myself to tell my other self, whether or not nationalizing this company was in my own best interest then I can be satisfied that I made the right decision. Until that happens, I'm placing my trust in Homer.

misplaced priorities

It's interesting to hear Sen. Kit Bond, who never met a pork barrel he couldn't fill with whiskey and drink down, talk against the current economic stimulus package. Sen. Bond, who does not plan on seeking another term, has become the latest Republican bully boy,spouting rhetorical half-truths as though they were policy. But, as everyone, including the Dems suggest, the stimulus package ain't perfect. And we cannot spend money willy-nilly forever- no matter how dire the economy. We do need to spend money on true reinvestment and not on the same-ole same-ole. Friends at Prairie Rivers Network let us onto some of the same-ole same-ole.

PRN Action Alert

The Corps of Engineers section of Title IV of S. 336, the Senate Economic Stimulus legislation, includes a terrible precedent by waiving all existing cost-sharing requirements for construction of Army Corps of Engineers Inland Waterways projects. Such a waiver would reverse 23 years of national policy set in the landmark 1986 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) that the nation’s barge companies are required contribute 50 percent of costs of new construction or major rehabilitation of inland waterway locks, dams or channels. Taxpayers currently pay the entire cost of operations and maintenance of inland waterways. Thus, in 2008 the barge companies already received an enormous 91 percent taxpayer subsidy for all the costs of inland waterways - contributing only $92 million out of total expenditures of $930 million. The Stimulus waiver means all of the costs of operating, maintaining and constructing inland waterways would be borne by U.S. taxpayers as long as the Stimulus funds are applied to waterway construction.

Bill gives inland waterways a 100 percent taxpayer subsidy. No other form of transportation (other than space travel) receives anywhere near such level of taxpayer subsidy. A 1992 CBO study found that “On a percentage basis, the inland waterway system is the most heavily subsidized of the three modes of transportation, although aviation is more heavily subsidized in absolute terms.” The waiver constitutes a narrow earmark for a handful of companies which include a number owned by some of the wealthiest, most profitable corporations in the nation.

read the rest @ PRN
prarie rivers network action alerts

dark days

Dudes and dudettes,

Apparently the country is in a recession - and has been for a whole year! Who knew? And you just thought your socks had holes in them. But don't fret, it took the government a whole year to determine that the economy sucks maybe it'll take you that long to discover you're now broke. Here's to onion soup. And a stimulus package.

runs good; needs work

Things are likely to get worse before they get better. Millions of Americans, especially the most disenfranchised among us, children, the unemployed, and the elderly, are likely to suffer even more in the wake of the deepening economic crisis. Generally, they have little if any cushion to protect them and what cushion exists, is in danger.

It's not just the country as a whole that is ailing financially; a number of states are projecting huge deficits for the current fiscal year. Unprecedented ones. California, 11 billion dollar shortfall; New York, 2 billion dollars. And next year's budgets look even bleaker than the current ones. The solution for states is frequently narrow. In Missouri, for example, 90 percent of state revenues go to 3 programs: education, prisons, and health-care. In a Republican controlled legislature, one adverse to raising taxes and reducing prisons, it pretty much leaves education and health-care to take the brunt of the cuts.

Cities are seeing the fallout as well. The City of New York is looking at a 2 billion shortfall over the next 2 years. Kansas City recently announced that an additional 300 million in cuts could be needed this fiscal year (on top of previous cuts) as revenues continue to fall below projections.

In light of these troubles, the Obama transition team must begin to order the business of the upcoming administration. The economy? Global climate change? Dependence on foreign oil? Growing Russian hegemony? What should be addressed first?

It's still the economy, stupid. It's what brought the O-man to the office and if we can right it fairly quickly, we can more easily solve the other issues. Closely tied to any economic fix is the health of the auto industry. But if renewed growth in the auto industry isn't greener, and much greener than past growth, we'll have squandered a huge opportunity. The new administration must require quick and forceful changes in production models and increased mileage-standards. We must quickly move to very efficient automobiles. This helps to reduce greenhouse gases, create jobs, and move the country away from dependence on the our elixir of death known as oil.

The US economy is still one of the most robust economies in the world. We have an opportunity in the near term to once again lead the world but we must insist that the people's way, and not the lobbyist way, paves the road ahead.

room with a plywood view

We were in Houston not long ago, a city we've always had a hard time grasping exactly what it's about. Banking and oil seem big here, but since we rarely see anything but the advertised face of these conglomerates we have little idea what they really stand for except profits.

Perhaps it's the size of Houston that makes it seem ungainly. Houston has the skyscrapers to prove it to be the 4th largest city in the US, but the spaces between the buildings makes the city feel smaller. The sidewalks aren't crowded, nor are the streets packed with commuters rushing to get into, or leave the city. We were a bit perplexed as to how those buildings were filled each day. During the evening, and especially on the weekend, the downtown was a virtual ghostown inhabited largely by out-of-towners, small gaggles of loft-dwellers, and the homeless. There must be pockets of buzzing action in Houston, we just didn't see it happening downtown.

We did see something that pretty much sums up the Bush II Years. The JP Morgan Chase Bank building in Houston suffered some minor damage from Hurricane Ike. Many of the windows on the lower floors were blown out, only to be replaced by sheets of plywood. Somehow, the windows in the upper floors still remain intact. Until we really change things in this country, the minions will remain locked in a plywood closet staring at a computer screen while the echelon controls the view of the surrounding landscape.

saddam hussein linked to global financial crisis

Isn't there some way we can blame the world-wide economic collapse on Saddam Hussein? or the terrorists? Things have pretty much gone down the crapper once we pulled his sorry ass from the spider hole but let the terrorists escape. Just imagine how bad this mess would be if he would have been able to use all those WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION he was hiding!

a lump of clean-burning coal

There's plenty about the $700 billion dollar rescue bill that finally - after failing on Monday - sailed through Congress on Friday that should concern people. A lot. Not the least of which is the money. Five percent of our gross domestic product is no small change. Sure we'll get something in exchange for the money but it remains to be seen just how much of the investment we can expect to recover from a bunch of risky high-interest loans. The good loans, the one's that people will surely repay, we left with the banks. We, the people, are now saddled with the risk.

Think about it. All loans are risky, some more so than others. Now the government is going to own a bunch of the riskiest loans on Main Street. Face it; most folks on Main Street mean well but some of them have about as much business buying a home as Bush does running the country. Hell, how do you think Bush got elected? Twice, mind you. Main Street. You betcha. Sure some of the good people have been victims of bad luck or poor circumstances, but some of them have been victims of greed and stupidity. Some of the bad loans the government has acquired will turn around, but some will won't and will end up in default. The ones that default will result in more homes being dumped on the market at low rates further depressing home values for at least the next couple of years. This isn't the worst of the deal though.

Unlike the Great Depression when the government spent huge amounts of money to bring our economy back, they used it to make things the country desperately needed, to build up our country, our democracy. They used it to put people to work, writers, artists, laborers - you know - those folks on Main Street everyone loves to talk about.

In Kansas City, the City Hall, the Jackson County Courthouse, and Municipal Auditorium were built with depression-era dollars. I guess it just a coincidence they just a block off Main Street. These are monumental, architecturally significant buildings, full of beautiful, intricate stone and metal work, that have stood the test of time. There are thousands of roads, walls, bridges, parks, lodges, built all across this country during the Depression by the Works Progress Administration and many of them stand today as important, significant, and enduring works.

The current economic rescue plan is different. The whole approach is different. There is only a small amount of money in the bill to rebuild America's aging infrastructure. And we have a lot of it. The nation has something like 3 trillion in back-logged infrastructure projects that need to be addressed. Kansas City alone has 3-5 billion dollars worth of backlogged infrastructure projects waiting for the money to make them happen. Citizens alone can't come up with this amount. Out sales tax rates are already near 10 percent in parts of the city. While we piddle money away in Iraq, our nation crumbles.

There are other things about this bill that should scare people and one of them is Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. In April, 2004, Paulson, then CEO of Goldman Sacs, was instrumental in lobbying for the Security and Exchange Commission to change it's rules to allow investment banks to take on much more credit than before. Up to 30 times more. Two years later Paulson is Treasury Secretary. Two years after that, he tells everyone that Wall is good! and 2 months after that, the sky is falling and he needs $7 billion and no oversight.

But wait there's more. The US lost 159,000 jobs in August. That's 9 straight months of job losses. And more. California wants a $7 billion dollar loan from the government to save itself. The City of Albany, New York is 1.7 billion in debt.

If the Democrats can't win this election then they should join the Green Party.

a view from main street

Here's how some main-streeters reacted to the news of another bailout rescue vote for Wall Main Street.

See how just tweaking the language changed your view of the events? Politicians these days are very quick to learn how to manipulate public opinion with language.

Photo by: Tim Vireo Keating for the Rainforest Action Network

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rainforest action network

financial exotica

Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse for President W., they did. Even backed by Democrats, El Presidento couldn't convince enough members of his own party to vote for the Economic Stimulus Package to Save the US and Beyond. Next stop? Great Depression II? Too early to tell, but Bush's approval rating lost 10 percent of it's value almost instantly.

new influx of federal dollars to city

News from City Hall
City of Kansas City, Mo.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Sept. 26, 2008
CONTACT: Mary Charles, city communications officer, (816) 513-1356
City awarded $7.3 million to combat housing/foreclosure crisis

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development today announced that the recently passed Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 will provide the City of Kansas City, Mo., with $7,323,734 in funding to help stabilize neighborhoods hit hard by foreclosures and sub-prime mortgages. The state of Missouri will receive $42,664,187, and the City will have the opportunity to access a portion of that money for the same purpose.

"This influx of federal money will help us target those neighborhoods especially hard hit by the recent housing crisis by fixing or demolishing blighted property and providing assistance to low- to moderate-income homebuyers," City Manager Wayne A. Cauthen said. "It will not solve every problem in our urban core, but will bring relief to people who have suffered the most."

Housing and Urban Development Department guidelines allow state and local governments to acquire land and property; to demolish or rehabilitate abandoned properties; to offer down payment assistance to low- and moderate-income homebuyers; and to create land banks to assemble, manage and dispose of vacant land for the purpose of stabilizing neighborhoods and encouraging private investment and re-use of that property.
-----------------------
All of this sounds great but read closely. Regardless of the tag line, under current Housing and Urban Development guidelines the money isn't availabe to combat the housing/foreclosure crisis. The money can be used to help those who want to buy a house or demolish properties but isn't available to help refinance high-interest rate loans or restructure existing debt. Programs to help rewrite high-interest rate mortgages into more manageable debt needs to be forthcoming if the Main Street is to see relief.

The City has 18 months in which to spend this money. Congress will have to act quickly, which likely means no sooner than the first of next year, to rewrite HUD policies for real help to trickle down to Main Street. You thought this year was tough, wait till 2009. If we can make through that one, we'll recover.

suitcase girls

The Republicans, school-yard bullies that they are, continue to toy with the Democrats. Within 48 hours they’ve figured out a way to convince much of Main Street that they (the ones largely responsible for the lack of oversight and much of the financial mess) are the ones who can save America from the demon, frivolous spending Dems. Tomorrow they’ll try to convince us that John McCain, and he alone, forged a compromise solution to save capitalism from doom and rescue retirement from the rubble of a collasped economy. Since they don’t take questions from reporters and have even less contact with Main Street it’s hard for them to hear all the mutterings (reporters) and shouts (Main Street) of “you pompous, self-serving jerks!”

cue the bubbling cauldrons of hot oil

"Let's make America the best France ever." -- Brian Unger

Now that the country has decided to embrace Social Democracy (admit it Dems, this is what you've wanted all along) I say GREAT, now let's socialize the oil companies, take the excess profits and use it to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and develop a viable alternative energy plan, one that doesn't involve a million or so causalities every decade or so.

If you're still trying to figure out exactly what all this means to you dear reader on Main Street, it's pretty simply. 99.999 percent of us are fkced. Best case scenario you get to keep tromping along with the day job, have enough money to buy food for the family, and pay your mortgage - if you have one - for the next 20 years. WooHoo! Let's hope you don't need to borrow a wad of cash to send your kids to college, fix the roof, buy a car, or expand your small business. Otherwise things should go on just as before.

Growth industries during the Great Depression.
Radio.
Newspapers.
Cigarettes.
Pulp fiction.
Crime.
Booze.
Illicit drugs.
Fishing in the afternoon.
Poverty.
Black lung.
And the Boy Scouts.
Prepare yourself adequately.

cabin in the woods

A co-worker and I had a conversation about the Unabomber this week spurred by, of all things, the global financial crisis. I asked him, given the current status of the American Dream, was he ready to move his new Japanese spouse into a very tiny house. Bigger than those hotel coal bins the Japanese sometimes sleep in, but small by muscular weight-lifting-dude, of which he is one, standards. Not yet, he said, but he also said something that surprised me given his largely conservation bent.

Perhaps, given the events of this week, Ted was prescient my colleague suggested. Kazynsyki, he informed me, only targeted folks who he (Theodore) felt "were bent on destroying our society. And look where they've taken us."

Granted, I said, there's a lot to be dismayed about, but typically it's not in society's best interest for free speech to extend to the point of deciding who should, and who should not live. Especially if the major beef seems to be the your manuscript wasn't accepted by the journal.

Later, looking at photos of Ted Kazynsyki's cabin stuffed inside a warehouse and hearing that our government plans to buy $700 million dollars of toxic loans (who said pollution doesn't pay?) I began to wonder about the former Berkeley mathematician. Hmmm, if you allow yourself to forget, just for a minute, about the mail bombs, then perhaps there was more to Kacyzinki than your average homeless terrorist with a working knowledge of theoretical physics.

First. He had a home. Albeit it was a very tiny cabin in the wilderness on land he didn't own. Then there was the degree to which he took his hatred. A lot of us get dismayed about what folks are doing to the earth, but how many of us are willing to live in a tree for 2 years so they won't cut it down to build another sports stadium. Not many, especially since one you do leave, the chainsaws appear within 15 minutes. How about completely dedicating yourself to writing your life's work even if it does turn into a manifesto against all of society. All this while subsisting completely off the fat of the land with occasional restaurant dumpster supplements.

Living entirely on principle demands a certain amount of focus and if singular enough in purpose, the myopia becomes its own form of insanity. And Ted was at this long before The Focus Driven Life hit the bookshelves. If we all had such focus, there'd be even more problems, but it's not as though under the status quo we're lacking any evidence of problems.



Maybe there is something we can learn from the man-who-shuns-society-and-lives-deep-in-the-woods. And that is, we can probably learn to live with less. A lot less.

Will we green America or just green-wash the picket fences that line Main Street? There's a small but growing movement at this time, small enough to make the increase in bicycle commuters look like a tsunami by comparison, of people moving to small houses. Really small houses - 100 sq. ft. and smaller. Talk about reducing your carbon footprint, how about that of your home. The home entertainment center doesn't exactly fit into this lifestyle. Stockpiling can goods for the coming Armageddon, is even more impractical than before and without the stockpiles, there can be no weapons race.

Insanity isn't a line in the sand; it's a shifting dune. Only when the dunes encroach on the sawgrass of civilization do we recognize the fragility of the desert landscape and how intertwined both landscapes have become.

fed offers bailouts to every american

Whoa. We found out what happened to the WB. It morphed into the CW back in '06. Sometimes we think we should go back to the rabbit ears. Unlikely and so last century as the candidates like to say. However, according Aaron Barnhart (see below) the WB is back. On the web. Which means totally gratuitous shows like the O.C. are available 23/6. When you're completely sick of hearing about the Wall Street woes, dial in the O.C. Watching it kills almost as many brain cells as smoking heroin but unlike H, this one's legal; be forewarned, it's just as addictive!

Even cooler, if you have the time, is that the WB is encouraging mashups of old WB shows. Someday we'd like to do that, but we'd also like to learn Italian, Spanish, become fluent in French and ride Alpe D'Huez. We'll see. Better things to worry about.

How about the economy? Let's worry about that. Ready to jump from a tall building? Me neither. Not yet, don't have enough to lose. Good thing the melt down didn't happen on 9/11 or you'd have seen replays of the jumpers. Or am I thinking of that video during the RNC?

Do you worry that you don't understand how our economy works? Well, guess what. No one does. Even the gurus in charge. Henry Paulson the Secretary of Let's-Try-Something-For-God's Sake. Not really. If they/he did, we wouldn't be in this mess. Their solution. Throw money at it. Lot's of it. Isn't that what you do when you have a financial problem? Try to find some more money. Give me money. I need money. Your problem loser, is that unlike the government, you can't print it at will. The Treasury can, they can print all they need before throwing it around like confetti. When you do that, it's called a felony counterfeit charge.



But here's what you really have to understand about the economy. If you want to eat, sleep in a house, drive a car, you'll have to get your sad ass to work every day, 'cause the government bailout that's available to each and every hard-working American - welfare - really, really sucks. Your other alternative is to live in a Unacabin. Folks have been know to manage in one of these for as little as $300 a year; however there is that weird side-effect that makes you want to whittle kitchen matches into mail bombs.

Photo: Cabin of Theodore Kaczynski aka the Unabomber by Richard Barnes
elsewhere:
the wb
aaron barnhardt on the wb and the cw

yikes!

The house of cards is shaky. Intuitively, everyone seemed to know that it was a fragile peace. It seemed that most of America, those with jobs and homes, were seemingly on track for early retirement, vacations in the Caribbean, and entrees garnished with foam. Don't think it's only the boomers who've been sucked into believing the good life is available for all. The top 3 shows on the CW (whatever happened to the WB?) are 90210, Gossip Girls (about the Upper East side of Manhattan, and The Privileged.

Don't think the worst is over. Congress is meeting to offer a buyout of many of those bad loans that caused the crisis in the first place. Essentially, Congress and the Federal Reserve will be tyring to keep the big firms afloat so there's money to lend to the minions. Unfortunately, without the money lenders - regardless of how corrupt and greedy they are, it's hard for small businesses to borrow money, harder for those who want to buy a house or car, to buy it. Harder to get a credit card at Sears or Nebraska Furniture Mart to buy applicances for the kitchen makeover. As the money dries up, so does the economy. And eventually jobs.

If Congress, the Federal Reserve, and the Big Money Lenders can reach a deal then just like after the Savings and Loan crisis in the early 80's, the government will be responsible for dealing with the bad loans that begat the whole process. Some in financial straits will be able to recover but many will not. Expect more foreclosures and more properties dumped on the market to be sold at auction at least through the next year. This won't be good for home values but it might mean if you're looking for a home, then the market the buyer's market will extend for several more years to come. All you need to be able to do is find someone to lend you the money to buy it.

Someday's you're really glad for the little things. Coffee. Granola. Yogurt. The day job.

If Sarah Palin isn't blinking then it's only because she's got too much sleep in her eyes.