Vote tomorrow!

Don't forget to go to the polls tomorrow.

Hilarious campaign ad ...

Late radio notice ...

I'll be on The Samantha Clemens Show around 10:40 a.m. this morning talking about the Frank vs. Brown debate, other primaries, burning Korans, 9-11, and whatever else comes up in 15 or 20 minutes. Tune in at 1510 AM in Boston or online at http://www.revolutionboston.com/

Former NM guv considering prez run

Hmm, a relatively unknown Republican and former governor who wants to slash defense spending (as well as entitlements), legalize pot, legalize civil unions, and is thinking about making a run for president: ["Former NM gov is little known but has big ideas"].
Wow. Let's be completely honest - he won't be nominee. His chances are very slim. He'll get creamed in Iowa where religious conservatives rule the process. But in New Hampshire, he would get a fair hearing and might even have a shot at it.
Is it worth his time? After looking at the current crop of Republicans, indeed, it's definitely worth his time.

The full debate ...

Here's a link to the full Brown vs. Frank debate: ["Video: Barney Frank debates Rachel Brown"]. Note to self: Stop waving your hands around!

Moderating the Brown vs. Frank debate

I was invited to moderate the only Democrat debate between Rachel Brown and U.S. Rep. Barney Frank. It was a pretty interesting debate, which I will talk about at a later date. However, here is a news clip from the debate:



Here is the link to the WickedLocalNewton.com story: ["Frank meets LaRouche candidate Brown in only primary debate"].

A couple of interesting posts about the economy ...

Two interesting posts about the economy in recent days.
First this, from the Atlantic via Yahoo: ["5 Doomsday Scenarios for the U.S. Economy"].
If the pessimists are right, things are going to get pretty crazy. I still don't understand why the government can't just take the houses over from the banks put people in them. Stop selling stuff to rich people at bottom dollar and start putting people in homes.
Then, there is this:

You, the American consumer, are reloading savings after a debt-fueled decade. But as any general will tell you, when an entire squad reloads at once, it leaves everybody vulnerable. It's the same with the economy.

Well, that's true. But that would make the case for lower taxes - not higher ones - so that whatever consumer spending there is out there doesn't become depressed. If anything, government should become less expensive, so it is less expensive to pay for, so taxes can be lowered so more people can spend money, etc. Expensive government doesn't do anything but take the money out of the private sector economy or create more debt.
Then, there is the European debt bomb:

In a flight to quality debt, the dollar appreciates. This hurts our exports even more. As the trade deficit gapes open and manufacturing's good run dead ends, the stock market plummets, taking household wealth down with it. Families looking to restore balance sheets cut back on spending, and the American producer loses the American consumer and the European buyer. Growth turns negative.

Ahhh, but not if there are American producers producing goods for American consumers. Exports hurting is not a problem if imports are hurting. That is the key. For decades, it has been "exports hurting, imports booming," and that's a good chunk of the reason we are in this mess. And, if you don't have anything in the stock market, you don't really have to worry about "household wealth" plummeting. Most folks, hello?, don't have any wealth. But, are we able to buy a little extra at the store each week for food, clothing, school supplies, etc.?

Another good post about the economy is this one, specifically targeting Paul Krugman and how he is wrong on so many levels: ["New Job Opportunity - Spitting at the Moon"].
Regular readers know I'm not the biggest fan of Krugman's (or Keysnesian economics either). Anyone who says, 'Yeah, undocumented workers depress American worker wages but that's OK,' paraphrasing, is a complete idiot. I don't completely agree with Mike either, but I like some of the things in this post, especially when it comes to debt and stimulus spending. Spit at the Moon, indeed.
Mike's key points to propping up the economy? Creating "genuine demand":

What will get the economy humming is better tax policy, scrapping Davis-Bacon, dumping public union workers wherever possible, slashing defense spending, and letting home prices bottom.
Real demand for housing will step up as soon as there are bargains. Instead we have policies to prop up home prices.

Almost exactly correct. Better tax policy is badly needed. Millionaires are getting away with murder while regular folks get creamed. That's always been the case. Better tax policy doesn't mean tweaking what we have, arguing over divisive tax cuts expiring or not, it means just that: Better tax policy. Period. Let's actually have a discussion about scrapping the existing code, simplifying it, and replacing it.
Dumping public union workers wherever possible and the Davis-Bacon Act. Well, I don't completely agree with that but I do agree with some of it. First, let's deal with the pension debt explosion. Scrap the current system and put all government employees on Social Security like the rest of us. Figure out how much SSI money is owed to the system for these employees and pay into that system while slowly refunding pension money back to the employees, so they can get their money back. Second, some tasks and jobs municipal and state government performs should not be paid the prevailing wage (hence Davis-Bacon). Cops should not be making $40 an hour, with a four hour minimum, to drink coffee and stare into holes when flaggers can do that for $10 an hour. Earnings for government workers should reflect a community's ability to pay. That means that in a town where people make $30,000 on average, neither the town manager nor the school superintendent should be making five or six times that (obviously, more affluent towns can decide if they want to pay more or not). Education expenses are a huge problem, noted by the recent federal jobs grant program which was approved to save teaching jobs while not asking the question, Should kindergarten teachers really be making $94,000 a year? There is also the issue of contracts and whether or not teacher pay should be based on the education level a teacher attains or performance of the individual teacher and the results of student achievement (which sometimes has nothing to do with the teacher's actions at all). All very complicated and not easy to fix but right-sizing municipal employee costs needs to happen (especially when considering what property taxes are these days).
The big one on this list though is defense spending. It just doesn't need to be cut, it needs to be slashed down to 20 or 30 percent of what it is now. Stop going into all these foreign countries and killing people for no reason while creating enemies for a thousand years. Enough already, we have debt to pay down and people to feed with that money.
On the home price front, again, correct. Similar to letting the banks collapse after the financial crisis, like any other business, the government should not be propping up home prices in the hopes of creating another boom and creating more construction jobs. Again, retail sales are 70 percent of the economy. The housing sector is a tiny one. And yet, everything is being shoveled at the housing sector. If we want people in homes, the prices of homes and property taxes, needs to drop (like I said before, about right-sizing property taxes). Yes, it's cheaper to buy than to rent sometimes, until you add on the $400, $500, $1,000 per month property tax bill.
There is an article in TIME Magazine this week called "The case against home ownership" which is very interesting. I'm only halfway through it and even if the evidence is overwhelming, I will never agree with what they are saying. But the data is pretty shocking and it should make us all think about jobs and the economy and whether we come together as a nation to try and fix things or continue to yell at each other because we are registered Republicans or registered Democrats or because of our preconceived notions of what should be done.

Is Ayotte cruising to victory?

It looks like it: ["Hampshire GOP Primary Survey (9/1/10)"].
Inside the poll, there is this:

Among all Republican voters, Kelly Ayotte leads Ovide Lamontagne by 16 points, 37% to 21%. Among independent voters, Kelly Ayotte has a 2 point lead on Bill Binnie, 26% to 24%, and Ovide Lamontagne is a close third with 21%.

In other words, the whole "Ayotte isn't conservative enough for Republicans" memo is totally out the window. She is cleaning Ovide's clock, by 16 points.
Interestingly, indie voters, who tend to trend a bit more liberal than Republicans up here, are virtually split evenly among the top three candidates. Ayotte even leads among "fiscal conservatives." Wow.
Unless some bomb is dropped during the next 10 days, Kelly Ayotte is probably going to be the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate. And if she wins, it's going to be a bloodbath match against Paul Hodes, with indie Chris Booth and Libertarian Ken Blevens, along for the ride.

Chris Young, Providence's next mayor?

I haven't really been watching this race, or a lot of races these days. But I did stumble upon this guy, Chris Young, who is running for mayor of Providence, the beautiful city in Rhode Island.
Young is a long-shot candidate there but has been garnering headlines for the usual things - being a "gadfly," and perennial candidate, etc., the typical media cheapshot comments that pigeonhole creative people who try to win political races. Having said that though, talk a look at these two clips and answer this question: Isn't this guy the best person to be the next mayor there?:





Sure, he's a bit off-key in his song. But what's wrong with having someone who is a bit quirky lead a city? Can he do a worse job than most career politicians? Answer? No, probably not. And the city would have nothing to lose by electing this guy.

September 2010 Top 30 Noise Chart

Reporting: 13 different radio stations and Internet programs

1. Oranjuly – Oranjuly
2. Pernice Brothers – Goodbye, Killer
3. John Shade – All You Love is Need
4. Ad Frank & the Fast Easy Women – Your Secrets Are Mine Now
5. Guillermo Sexo – Vivid Nights
6. Hallelujah the Hills – “That Ticking Sound You Hear”
7. Gene Dante & The Future Starlets – “The Love Letter Is Dead”
8. Endless Wave – City Walls EP
9. Taxpayer – Photo EP
10. Mean Creek – “The Comedian”
11. Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys – Steam Ship Killers
12. The Weisstronauts – In Memphis
13. Ketman – Ketman A Go-Go
14. Jenny Dee and the Deelinquents – Keeping Time
15. Spirit Kid – Spirit Kid
16. One Happy Island – One Happy Island
17. Big Big Bucks – Crucial Schmooze
18. Corin Ashley & The Chocolate Olivers – The Abbey Road Session
19. Monique Oritz – When The Pigeon Flies
20. Kristen Hersh – Crooked
21. Needy Visions – Needy Visions
22. Bodega Girls – “We Are Losers”
23. The Acrobrats – Hair Trigger
24. Deer Tick – The Black Dirt Sessions
25. Hooray for Earth – Momo EP
26. Sool – A Touch of Sool
27. Kingsley Flood – Dust Windows
28. The Diamond Mines – 12345
29. Tree Frog Avengers – Doodles
30. The Doom Buggies – “Dying”

For whom the bell tolls

Guest perspective by Ralph Nader
Bell, California, a working-class town of some 38,000 ten miles outside of Los Angeles, is a unique place. Its local government has proven to be citizen-proof, media proof, city-council proof and even leak-proof from inside its self-enriching top officialdom.

Get this: Bell city manager. Robert Rizzo resigned a month ago after a Los Angeles Times exposé revealed that he was being paid $800,000 a year, plus 28 weeks of vacation and sick time worth $386,000. He was also expecting to make $600,000 a year in guaranteed pension payouts. Mr. Rizzo also borrowed $160,000 from the city.

Mr. Rizzo had clever political protection. The Police Chief was getting $457,000 a year and members of the City Council of this small city were making, for very part time work, about $100,000 each per year.

Mr. Rizzo’s assistant manager was making a $376,288 base salary a year with a total compensation package substantially larger.

The average per capita income in Bell is $25,000 a year. More than a quarter of its population lives below the poverty line.

Expressions of shock and dismay erupted from the expected quarters—state legislators, other city officials of much larger cities, and the president of the League of California Cities, Robin Lowe. He said: “the reported abuses are an embarrassment to the thousands of hard-working men and women in city government,” and offered the League’s assistance to the Los Angeles County District Attorney and the California State Attorney General in their investigations.

The League should start by explaining to the two prosecutors why it did not know about the staggering pay scale of its member town, especially since there is a state Open Meetings and Public Records Act for ready utilization.

Bell Mayor Oscar Hernandez unpersuasively tried to make the best of the multiple pay bonanzas. He told the Los Angeles Times that: “Our streets are cleaner, we have lovely parks, better lighting throughout the area, our community is better. These things just don’t happen, they happen because he had a vision and made it happen.”

Let’s pause momentarily to observe the variety and depth of abdication by the governmental and civic culture in beleaguered Bell. The city has fallen behind on its bond payments, and acknowledged it overcharged its residents’ property taxes by $3 million to pay for those exorbitant pensions.

At least a dozen employees in City Hall had to know of these excesses and chose not to talk or leak the news over the years. The nearby newspapers, TV and radio stations did not dig it out. The city council knew but was compromised by its own huge payments. Still, political gossip is supposed to be irresistible. None of the citizens, including the usual town gadflies or skeptics, bothered to find out. All that was needed to bring this to light was one or two people blowing the whistle. After all, this information is not opinion. It’s arithmetic—crisp numbers that invite everyone’s howl.

The greater Los Angeles area is the very definition of sprawl: a lack of community that promotes more citizen slackers. It is inconceivable that such outrageously bold and self enriching formal compensation could escape the notice of citizens of a New England town—even one without a town meeting type of government. Ask them in Lowell, Mass., Torrington, Conn., Newport, R.I., Portsmouth, N.H., Burlington, Vt. and Bangor, Maine. I’ll bet their reply would be a version of: “Are you kidding?”

Californian largesse also resides in Vernon, California (pop. 91) an industrial-commercial center of 5.1 square miles of territory and nearby to Bell. It is now revealed by the Los Angeles Times, whose reporters have found a new exciting town-by-town beat, that the city administrator, Eric T. Fresch, was paid $1.65 million in total compensation in 2008. Last year was a bummer; Mr. Fresch, who calls himself an experienced finance attorney, received nearly $1.2 million.

Granted, Vernon’s businesses have over 50,000 workers and the town owns its electric utility. But getting paid four times the salary of the President of the United States, who has considerably greater supervisory responsibilities, seems to be an over-reach.

Last year, the Vernon city administrator, Donal O’Callaghan, was paid nearly $785,000, but that included being the director of the municipally-owned utility. Still, together they were just one full-time job. He also had help. The city attorney, Jeffrey A. Harrison, earned $800,000 last year, down from $1.04 million in 2008, while the City Treasurer/Finance Director, Roirdan Burnett had to make do with $570,000.

The former city administrator, Bruce Malkenhorst Sr., made $600,000 in 2005 and is awaiting trial on public corruption charges. He still draws a $500,000 a year pension.

All this information about salaries and benefits is public information, but no one in the public was interested enough to find out why nobody was minding the store.

The saving grace in Bell is that, once they found out, some folks were outraged, rushed in protest to the crowded city council meeting and, around town, handed out 10,000 leaflets to engage more residents.

This local movement calls itself BASTA (Bell Association To Stop The Abuse), which means “enough” in Spanish. They strive to arouse the citizenry about where their tax dollars are going, and recall the Council members, if necessary to clean house. They have had enough, finally, at last!

The BASTA organizers must believe there is a limit to the anomie caused by the disintegration of a community’s standards of conduct and norms.

McCain vs. Hayworth ... check out these ads ...

Anyone watching the McCain vs. Hayworth primary in Arizona has to be both giddy and appalled by some of these advertisements:





Simply, wow.

What if you had steel wool hands?

This ad was emailed to me. It's actually pretty funny (viewer discretion is advised):

Cool new feature in the UL

The Union Leader unveiled a cool new feature this morning, an Ask The Expert column: ["Ask the Expert: New expert knows news"]. The column will be dedicated to helping small businesses understand the difference between advertising, marketing, and promotion. There is so much confusion and clutter out there, with so many advertising outlets vying for fewer and fewer marketing dollars. This seems like a great opportunity for the newspaper to educate folks about the differences and, hopefully, help small businesses succeed.

European shrimp found in Mass. waters

Yesterday afternoon, over the State House News Service wire, there was a little story about how Massachusetts officials with the help of MIT have discovered the first European shrimp to appear in North American waters.
SHNS is subscription only and don't have the link (readers probably wouldn't be able to open it) but I find this completely fascinating.
According to the story, researchers are inspecting docks and shores all over the state, taking an inventory of all the marine species. Officials are calling the shrimp a "new non-native invasive species" and believe that global shipping lanes are spreading the species around the world.
Imagine for a second that the shrimp has held onto the boat for that long, to go from say England to Massachusetts. Crazy.