Some Sensible Thoughts on the Housing Crisis

Ann Althouse pointed to this article "I Bought an Expensive House. My Bad, Not Yours" by Joel Stein in Time Magazine. I think it makes a lot of sense.

"The only people affected by plummeting real estate prices are the ones who bought a house that cost more than they could afford, hoping for a spike in value so they could sell at a profit or take out a new loan based on an increased value. Their home wasn't just a place to live; it was an investment they thought they could liquefy at will. If we're saving these poor souls from the 26.7% drop in their investment, we should give twice as much aid to everyone who has lost approximately 50% in the stock market since its peak."

Thoughts On the Solution to the Mess in Greensboro

I don't usually write about politics, particularly on a local level. There are lots of other folks who do a very good job of that. I'm making an exception in this post.

An editorial in the WSJ this morning on a different subject quotes federal judge Laurence Silberman: "I have always thought that the most heinous act in which a democratic government can engage is to use its law enforcement machinery for political ends." He was speaking of some of J. Edgar Hoover's actions at the FBI, but it applies to two more recent events, the Duke lacrosse mess in Durham and the Scott Sanders trial here this week. It also applies to the enter David Wray situation.

I've commented at Gaurino's place about this whole mess, and advocated the removal of Mitch Johnson as Greensboro City Manager. But on further thought, I don't believe that is the real solution to this matter. There are cries from lots of folks that we should just move on now, and I don't think that is the right path either.

I'm reminded of a person who, after having some physical symptoms, visits his doctor and finds he has a serious medical condition. The man has several possible courses of action:

1. He can ignore the symptoms and begin to live a better live-style, perhaps eating more healthily, getting more exercise, cutting back on drinking and smoking, etc. These are all good things to do, but none will help his underlying problem. This is the equivalent of the city "just moving on."

2. He can just treat the symptoms, and with the state of medicine today he may well be able to make them seem to go away, but this doesn't cure the underlying condition either. I think this is the equivalent of replacing Mitch Johnson, and perhaps even Tim Bellemy, and maybe even some political leadership, but the basic problem will still be there.

3. He can take whatever treatment steps are required to cure or arrest the condition causing all the problems. These may be difficult and unpleasant, but it the only way to cure the real problem. I don't know what these actual steps are. I'm not a doctor, or a politician, but I believe the people at the head of our city government, the city administration, and the various other groups and organizations that are interested in making this a better city must identify and implement these solutions.

When the Wray Fray first began, I thought it was basically a labor/management dispute over rotating police work schedules. As time went by, there appeared to be a significant racial tint to that dispute as well. I believe it was Sam Spagnola who first proposed the theory that the Fray was a continuation of the Project Homestead problem and the desire of certain powers-that-be to see Project Homestead just go away not be re-opened and examined. Again, there was a strong racial aspect. Other folks have voiced the thought that there is some other yet untold conspiracy orchestrated by some other unidentified group that is behind all this.

I don't know what the solution is, but I do know that just moving on or just replacing certain management and political leaders is not the right path. We need Leadership – new people with the ability to identify problems, craft solutions, and manage their implementation. If these people aren't currently in the proper roles, we need to find the right people and get them installed. Otherwise we'll still be writing about these problems in five years but to a much smaller audience.

Having Car Trouble?

Maybe this will help, particularly if the trouble involves fiery explosions. "The guys really like fiery explosions."

Want to Go to the ACC Tournament?

Over at Ed Cone's he reports that tickets might be available for mere mortals for this year's ACC tournament in the Georgia Dome. This reminds me of one of Preston's Laws: "Just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you should." I went to the first ACC tourney in Atlanta (1983, I think) at the Omni Center. Our seats weren't great, but they weren't terrible either.

It could have been worse. Here is the view from the upper balcony:

But this year the tournament is not in the Omni, it's in the Georgia Dome a much larger venue. Here is the layout for basketball. Note that this shows just one end of the field, where the court is located.

I went to the SEC football Championship game in the Georgia Dome in 2007, and here are some views to show what the Georgia Dome interior looks like. The basketball court will be at the other end of the field in this view.

This is the view from our seats in section 132, row 31. These would be pretty good seats for basketball. They could be much worse.

Of course, if the games are exciting and some fans stand up, this is what the view will be like.

If you go to the Tournament, I hope you have a good time. I think Keith has a better idea.

Happy Valentine's Day

I was somewhat otherwise occupied this weekend, so I pretty much missed Valentine's day. I missed James Taranto's post about Valentine's Day (scroll down to "Heart Attacks") which references this WSJ article about various protests over St. V's day. Taranto writes mostly about Arab pushback against the Love Holiday and ignores Jewish resistance. On the other hand, at least the blogfather offers an alternative. I hope missing the big day because I was otherwise occupied doesn't disqualify me from the men's version of Valentine's day come March 14.

Happy Friday the 13th

I don't usually worry too much about Friday the 13th's but I may change my mind. I've been having some medical symptoms. A visit with my cardiologist showed everything OK heartwise, so I visited my regular doctor Wednesday to look into other possibilities and he ordered a number of blood tests. At lunch Friday his nurse called and asked me to come by their office late Friday pm. The doctor wanted to discuss my lab results.

No Problem. Except when I got there, they measured my blood pressure and got a reading of something like 87/44 and everybody got a little excited. The doctor reported that a number of my blood enzymes were out of whack (not his precise medical term, but close) and he wanted to admit me to Cone Hospital to do some tests before I died of kidney failure over the week-end (or at least that's what it sounded like he said). I hadn't seen James Lileks' Bleat column on Friday so I'd missed his warning about kidneys, but the doctor had gotten my attention.

I spent two days getting poked, prodded and punctured courtesy of Medicare and AARP (I hope). Everything was normal (except for some catheter excitement) and they found no significant issues, so we'll continue to look into the "symptoms", and I will be much more respectful of Friday-the-13th's in the future.

News & Record Makes Another Big Mistake

The News & Record had another big error in a headline this morning. I'm not talking about the page A-1 head about the Cathy Vance surveillance taping, or the B-1 head on the article about the Scott Sanders trial. I'm talking about the C-2 headline "Lawson to the rescue" headline over the UNC-Miami basketball game article.

I didn't watch the game but I did see the highlights (numerous times) on SportsCenter. Ty Lawson wasn't the key to the game; the key was the performance of officials John Cahill, Sean Hull, and Mike Kitts. The key play occurred with 42 seconds left in the game with Miami down one point and having possession of the ball. Tyler Hansborough drew a charging call which gave the Heels the ball and led to Lawson's last 3-pointer.

My friend Sam Croft used to be an ACC referee and I'd kid him that at least he had a 50:50 chance of getting the block/charge call right. He'd remind me it was worse than that. Actually he had only a one in three chance of being right. The third option was "no call".

I don't pretend to know whether the Hansborough call at the end of the game was correct or not, but I do see that UNC made seven of eight free throws, while Miami was only two for two in free throws. This sounds to me like the headline should have been "Cahill/Hull/Kitts to the rescue".

Party Like It's 1993!

Will Collier at Vodkapundit had an interesting post last week recalling the halcyon days of the early 1990's and the first Bill Clinton term in office:

"After campaigning for a year and a half decrying “the worst economy in the last 50 years”–despite the fact that the mild recession of 1990-91 actually ended in March of ‘91–one of Bill Clinton’s first priorities was to try and ram through (wait for it) a “stimulus package.” Back in those days, politicians hadn’t yet realized that they could add another three zeroes to their raids on everybody else’s pockets, so the Clinton bill was by today’s outlandish standards relatively modest, starting at a mere $30 billion dollars. Most of that was sold as “targeted stimulus,” which meant it was carefully targeted to pay off Democratic grandees and constituencies that had contributed to the 1992 campaign."

and

"The Clinton “stimulus” bill failed, going down to final defeat on April 22, 1993. It was never revived. As we all know, the American economy never recovered–oh, wait, that’s not correct. A year later, despite the non-presence of a federal “stimulus” law, unemployment had dropped from 7.1% to to 6.6%. Tyson’s growth prediction was not quite correct, either; the US GDP positively boomed in the fourth quarter of 1993 to the tune of 5.5%, and rose by 4% in 1994–all without the help of Clinton’s “stimulus” package.

"The boom accelerated in the second half of the decade, with the greatest gains being realized from 1995 onwards–after the Democrats had been swept out of Congressional power, and as a result, Clinton’s penchants for tax hikes and big spending packages were effectively neutered. There were no grand “stimulus” packages from that point on, only good, old-fashioned gridlock that kept the government from raising taxes or spending to outrageous excess."

He concludes "All of this has happened before . . . and if we’re very lucky, all of this will happen again."

"I say let's roll the dice . . ."

A number of folks have talked about the reluctance of local governments to respond promptly and fully to public document requests. During the Ben Holder Show at the recent city council meeting, Mike Barber addressed this subject with a recommendation that the city should be much more pro-active in responding to requests (see about the 8'30" mark in Ben's first video). Mike talked about the need to be more responsive to document requests and suggested the city take more risk in releasing documents.

On Wednesday the Blogfather referenced an article which lead to this where we learned that King County (Seattle) is facing perhaps nearly a million dollars in fines because it delayed in releasing public documents.

"The state Supreme Court has ruled that a $124,000 fine paid by King County for blatant violations of the state Public Records Act isn't nearly enough, and has sent the case back to Superior Court with a recommendation to increase the penalty."

"In 1997, Yousoufian asked the office of County Executive Ron Sims for copies of studies pertaining to the impact of the proposed $300 million Seahawks stadium. County residents were about to vote on a referendum to pay for Qwest Field."

"Yousoufian's attorney, Michael Brannan, said he'll ask the trial court to impose the maximum penalty: $825,200. That would equal $100 a day for each of the 8,252 days the trial court said the county violated the law."

If there is a risk in releasing documents too liberally, as Mike alleges, there is also a risk in the opposite action. Of course, we're a long way from the Seattle stage as of today, but we're getting closer every day the city behaves ostrich-like in reacting to these document requests.

I thought it was also interesting that during this discussion no one on City Council addressed any comment to the one person who could resolve this matter--the person charged with actually running the city: Mitch Johnson. Everyone on Council spoke in support of "getting the truth out", but no one addressed any comment to Mitch, who seemed to just sit there tar-baby-like.

There was considerable discussion about releasing the content of the tapes, but I believe Ben's primary concern was not the actual content of the tapes but the fact the city has continued to say the taping was part of an overt police investigation when subsequent facts have shown that isn't true, but the city won't admit it. Why not?

Whores

Folks say that it isn't your enemies telling lies about you that you should worry about, it's your friends telling the truth. I was reminded of this after I read Powerline's recent attack on Tom Daschle. I don't usually read Glen Greenwald, but the blogfather referenced this article which quotes Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi:

"In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle. Tom Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger. True, he is probably only the second-biggest whore for the health care industry in American politics — the biggest being doctor/cat-torturer Bill Frist, whose visit to South Dakota on behalf of John Thune in 2004 was one of the factors in ending Daschle's tenure in the Senate."

Them's harsh words. Whore, indeed!

To their credit, both the New York Times and Ed Cone have called for Daschle to withdraw. I thought that had happened this morning when I saw this headline: "Tax issues prompt Obama nominee to withdraw" but it turned out to be a different Obama nominee.

I saw this store-front last week on High Point Road. It looks like they are selling them in big-box stores now.

I Forgot!

Sue Polinsky laments having to pay taxes. Doesn't everyone. Perhaps Sue should do what other loyal democrats do: just don't pay them. See Rangel, Geithner, and Daschle for more details.The Daschle case is particularly worrying. According to the WSJ article, he recently paid some $140,000 in back taxes for 2005-2007 that

". . . reflected unreported income from the use of the car service valued at $255,256 for those three years, according to the Finance Committee report. He also amended his returns to cover $83,333 in unreported consulting income for 2007. And he reduced his charitable contributions by $14,963."

Now, that car service averages $7,000 per month which seems pretty ritzy, and forgetting $80,000 in income and fibbing about $15,000 in charitable contributions doesn't seem to be the kind of behavior I'd want someone who is in charge of reforming our health-care mess to exhibit. I'd much prefer an honest man in that position!

Beverly Perdue's Shovel

Piedmont Publicus blog is a little miffed at Gov. Perdue and the phrase "Shovel Ready". Perhaps he needs to take a look at this:

It's from this blog post, and it isn't what it seems.

Dip, Don't Puff

In his on-going battle against mis-information in the News-Record's LTE section, Roch Smith can be forgiven if he misses today's letter from Ted Eaves on the health effects of smokeless tobacco compared to cigarettes. While not factually incorrect, the letter's premise is wrong. Smokeless tobacco is much safer than smoking cigarettes. A quick google search brings up this paper as one source on a study of the relative risks of dipping vs. puffing.

"There is no doubt that Western smokeless tobacco products are substantially less harmful than smoking cigarettes (notwithstanding certain recent high-profile statements by a certain high-profile official from this state). Even with the worst case scenario supported by the research, ST is in the order of 1/100 as likely to cause life-threatening disease, and the best estimates for the true value for modern moist snuff, the most popular product, are lower still. Smoking cigarettes is a well established cause of many diseases and is widely described as the largest theoretically) preventable source of premature mortality. ST, by contrast, has mostly been linked to risk for only one relatively rare life-threatening disease, oral cancer. Even that link is tenuous, based largely on a single study by Winn et al. (1981).

"The negative health implications of preventing people from realizing that smokeless tobacco is relatively safe should not be underestimated. Smokeless tobacco users are told, in effect, that they might as well switch to smoking if they find they enjoy it a bit more or it is more convenient. The much larger population of smokers is told, in effect, that they cannot use tobacco in a relatively safe way, a message that is often characterized as "quit or die." It is extremely difficult for anyone to deliver the harm reduction message in the face of the widespread misperception that is fueled by the misinformation. At this point, we can only speculate about how many smokers would take advantage of this opportunity to reduce their risk by two orders of magnitude or more."

Madam Secretary, Not So Fast

There has been considerable discussion of Hillary Clinton as the new Secretary of State, but I have seen very little discussion about the fact that she may be constitutionally ineligible to be appointed to the post. Eugene Volokh has written about this at the Volokh Conspiracy and there have been references to his articles by several other pundits (Insta- and Vodka-), but I haven't heard anything about this on the TV news. The sticking point is the Emoluments Clause in Article I of the US Constitution: "No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time . . .". It will be interesting to see how the administration addresses this situation to get what it wants despite what the Constitution says.

Add a Favorite Word

Since I'm not a professional writer, hardly anyone ever asks me what my Favorite Word is. (It's sesquipedalian. Interestingly, Blogger lists favorite books, and favorite movies in its View My Complete Profile page, but ignores favorite words.). This morning I saw a new candidate for my favorite word list: antepenultimate. Its father, penultimate, is on my FW list because it doesn't mean what one might suspect, not the best or last of something, but rather the next-to-last. Combined with the prefix ante-, "before", antepenultimate then becomes the third-from-the last of something. The word doesn't seem to have drawn the attention of the folks at Language Log yet.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

You can't make this stuff up. The What Valley high school?

A 15-year-old girl is accused of distributing nude photos of herself to other minors, and one state legislator is questioning whether she should be labeled a sex offender.

The Licking Valley High School student was arrested Friday after school officials discovered the materials and brought in the school's resource officer for a police investigation. After spending the weekend incarcerated, she pleaded deny Monday to both charges: illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material, a second-degree felony; and possession of criminal tools, a fifth-degree felony.

Whole Lotta Remodelin' Goin' On

There are some changes going on in the neighborhood, Last week I noticed that the Burger King on West Market at Muirs Chapel Rd. was closed for remodeling.

Today I went by and saw what kind of remodeling they had in mind.

It looks like a pretty complete remodel doesn't it? By this measure, there is some more remodeling nearby. Here in the foreground is the remodeled ABC store on Muirs Chapel.

Here's the remodeled Shell station that was at the corner of West Market and Muirs Chapel. Another through job.

Not all remodeling in the neighborhood is so complete. The old Rearn Thai restaurant further out West Market is becoming an O'Reilly Auto Parts store in a less drastic remodel.

It's hard to tell, but I think they just built a metal facade round the old building. I haven't been by there in a couple of weeks to see any progress.

Things are changing along Market Street.

Is Trooper Gate Good for Palin?

Friday evening Ed Cone posted about Palin-Troopergate. Ed only cited several other opinions of the subject, without adding his own, but as of this morning there are 79-and-counting comments from many of the usual suspects telling what they think. More interestingly, Roch Smith evokes the Wray fray, and I think he means to insinuate that Palin played the Mitch role. There is some superficial similarity in that the terminee in both cases resigned under pressure rather than being actually fired, but other than that I don't see much similarity.

I started to write a post on this subject yesterday, evoking Mike Dukakis's response to Bernard Shaw's rape question in the 1988 Presidential debate. Conservative pundits have observed that this was a significant gaffe that labeled Dukakis as a timid intellectual unwilling to react strongly rather than a passionate take-charge leader who could handle difficult situations. It's not a huge leap to equate this let-the-law-take its-course approach to seeing the War On Terrorism as a law enforcement problem ratter than a military one. I believe this is the basic error people on the left make in dealing with today's world issues.

Consider Palin's case. A state trooper made a threat toward her family, including a threat to kill her father. She attempted to have the trooper fired, which resulted in one of her cabinet members resigning. This morning Scott Ott, who usually writes satire at Scrappleface.com, has a serious critique of troopergate here. Ott makes a lot of sense. He writes, "Republicans should embrace it as a way of telling the story of why government must be reformed. It is the perfect picture of how government bureaucracies shield the incompetent and immoral among them, and waste taxpayer dollars trying to nail concerned citizens who cry 'foul'." Read the whole thing.

Whether entirely appropriate or not, at worst Palin made an error of action over inaction. I think that is a good thing. I was reminded of Harry Truman's response to the bad review his daughter Margaret received from a Washington Post music critic. Truman sent a threatening letter defending his daughter. Stephen Green tells the story and observes "Truman's aides told him the letter was a mistake; it could only damage his image. "Wait till the mail comes in," Truman said. "I'll make you a bet that 80 percent of it is on my side of the argument." It was"

Is Troopergate good for Palin? History will tell. Personally I prefer errors of action over errors of inaction.

The Truman-Obama Election

I wonder how long it will be before we start hearing more about the 1948 Presidential election.

The upset win of Harry Truman over Thomas E. Dewey in the 1948 election came after leading publications had confidently predicted Dewey's victory (e.g. New York Times headline: 'Thomas E. Dewey’s Election as President is a Foregone Conclusion.'; Life Magazine: cover with Dewey's picture and caption reading, "The Next President of the United States"). Even on election night, the media still had difficulty accepting the fact that Truman could win.

Dr. Joe has a post lamenting Obama's pending election, and other folks seem to be conceding the election already as well. There is some talk about a Wilder/Bradley effect and how a McCain victory would be racist and illegitimate. I don't believe many folks think that about the Truman/Dewey result, so let's not forget 1948 if Obama loses.

End of the World?

Dow down 700.
Wake Forest 12, Clemson 7

Ok, so it isn't the end of the world, but as Adlai Stevenson (or Abraham Lincoln) said,"I'm too old to cry, but it hurts too much to laugh."

(Interestingly, in Googling to find more about the Lincoln/Stevenson quote, I found this reference to Louis Rukeyser's using the quote in his 10/23/87 monologue. See my earlier post.