September 25, 2006 at 11:14 pm
(Social/Economic)
Ok, that’s the only thing I can think of right now to indicate a New Orleans-themed post.
Ok, so the Saints are playing football on national TV tonight and this is being played as sort of a showcase of the “healing” of New Orleans and the work that still remains a year after a devastating hurricane. I can’t pass up a chance to critique the show in terms of the presentation of the social aspects as well as ESPN’s handling of Monday Night Football in general.
First, I heard that there were going to be a couple of good musical acts on at halftime. And nothing says New Orleans like…Green Day and U2? And Allen Touissant played the national anthem. Look, I respect Green Day and U2, but I think they should have insisted that a New Orleans artist or artists had the honor. It’s not as if they’re in short supply.
Next. As long as were talking about the Superdome, let’s talk about the Superdome. In August of last year, the crowds that were living in the Superdome were primarily poor blacks. the people in the dome tonight are primarily white (and one assumes, not poor. Otherwise, how would they justify season tickets?) Why is so little being made of this division?
Finally, I was a little amused by the interview with Spike Lee. Don’t get me wrong. I thought is was a good move–they made positive comments about his documentary and gave him a chance to talk about the social issues…kind of. Judge for yourself:
Tony Kornheiser: …But you’ve seen the depressing elements as well. Fourteen months later, houses not just not rebuilt, not even gutted yet. Are you optimistic or pessimistic with everything you’ve seen tonight as opposed to what’s outside?
Spike Lee: [chuckles]
TK: Go ahead, Spike, tell the truth. C’mon
[laughter]
SL: I’m not going to pull a Kanye [referring to Kanye West's comments at a Katrina relief telethon in September 2005 (details here.)]
[laughter]
TK: Put it out there…
SL: No, no Kanye West tonight for me. America!
TK: Politically correct Spike Lee. I didn’t know that I’d ever say that.
Joe Theismann: I’m assuming that you’d like to see more done. Is that ok?
SL: Yes.
JT: Alright.
SL: I mean, it’s a great city and I just can’t understand why we could not help our own American citizens. Why it took five days to come help our own American citizens. So…
JT: And yet a year later, there are still lots of things to do. When you look at the downtown area–
Mike Tirico: Right.
JT: –The business people want everybody to come, business to come back, conventions to come back. This is what the dome can be. It can be the center of economics.
MT: Needless to say, it’s a very split and a very complex story without black and white answers and issues to be resolved…
After this, they wrapped up the interview with a little harmless small talk and let Spike Lee leave.
But it’s interesting…Lee’s comments weren’t terribly strongly worded. He didn’t denounce the President directly. And yet Theismann stepped in quickly with some comments that certainly seem to be directed toward diffusing a strongly worded response to Kornheiser’s question. Why? So it can look to an uncritical audience as if they are allowing Lee a chance to speak out when in fact they are strictly moderating what he says?
As far as the announcing…well I’m not convinced that a three-man team is a good idea unless the chemistry is there…and I just wasn’t convinced that this group had that chemistry. It took awhile for the cadence to develop. It’s better now, but these guys just don’t have the the timing of some of the great announcing teams. You’d expect a little more with all the hype.
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September 24, 2006 at 6:05 pm
(Political)
My company once again is promoting a particular political agenda, posting a link to a self-labelled “pro-business” get-out-the-vote website on its employee homepage.
I’m troubled by this. I’d like to think of myself as independent, that a link to an ostensibly leftist website would bother me about as much. But this site seems to try to bend a moderate conservative agenda into “pro-business” terms even this sometimes results in statements that contradict each other.
Their first bullet point is “fiscal responsibility.” Right away, our friends at BIPAC begin to make exceptions–”…a balanced budget within the context of a safe and secure America.”
Next, they move to tax policy. I think they’re stretching a little here. They talk about simplifying the tax code (I agree with this) but then talk about tax credits and exemptions…in other words, adding complexity. They also talk about making the Bush “tax relief” permanent, suggesting that this will spur savings and investment. I’m still not sure how this works. Don’t we expect to get more benefit from spurring savings and investment in people with lower income levels? Then why is the Estate tax so important that it is singled out?
Then it’s off to Global Competitiveness and further complications. First, they suggest “Prudent and timely policies that promote free and open trade,” but they then move quickly to recommending “enforcement of U.S. trade laws…to ensure that U.S. manufacturers can compete on a level playing field…” The first is a play from the free-trade liberal playbook; the second is from the protectionist playbook. For those of you following along at home, they are different teams.
There is less hemming and hawing when they discuss Defense spending, but I still don’t think they present their argument convincingly–strong defense and homeland security is crucial to the success of business? Surely we can think of a strong company from a country with a relatively smaller defense budget than our own.
The conservative argument is predominant again when BIPAC discusses education–clearly they support a particular mindset when it comes to education. Which is fine, but what exactly makes it particularly “Pro-Business” as opposed to simply “Conservative.” However, they do a better job indicating why their particular energy policy is pro-business.
They stretch again by arguing against universal health care. Presumably, universal health care could take away some of the burden of health care costs that is hurting companies like Ford. I agree that a market-driven should help drive down prices, but when a minimum level of coverage isn’t guaranteed by the state, we begin to look to employers to fill that gap. This isn’t good for either group; companies become responsible for the burden of health care while employees become locked into jobs that may not be the best use of their skills to avoid the prospect of insurance gaps while they search for a new job.
Their initial immigration argument is sensible–we definitely need to oil the wheels of the visa approval process. But suggesting that only skilled workers are in demand is ludicrous. Again, supporting reasonable immigration levels is good for businesses (which should get access to a fuller labor market;) putting limits on it while recognizing that this contradicts the economic liberalism this group calls forth can only be seen as xenophobic.
I can see the pro-business side of their arguments on lawsuit abuse, transportation and, for the most part, “sustainable growth and technology.” (Although I’m not sure they understand the concept of sustainable growth.) I also disagree with their statement that “Costly regulatory actions that do not have prudent empirical foundations should be avoided.” Of course, they are talking about regulations on carbon dioxide emissions. Naturally, business owners would prefer not to have to deal with costly regulations. But I would think most decision makers in a business setting would prefer to take a cautious approach if they feel they don’t have enough information. Hey, we all have to live here.
I’m disappointed that this pro-business “platform” is really conservative because I’d like to think that one could be pro-business without supporting the more horrific things the Republicans have done over the last six years: the Iraq war, the elimination of rights we once considered sacred and the elimination of programs that helped Americans in favor of defense spending. I hope my company can come to the same realization–in many ways I’m proud of it’s pro-people policies. It would be a shame if the good that our leaders do was erased because of their irresponsible support of this group.
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September 24, 2006 at 4:46 pm
(Personal)
The aforementioned Cleveland trip has become a bit of a continuing saga, unfortunately.
If you remember, the primary purpose of the trip was for me to show my wife around the town I’d spent four years in. Part of this involved taking her to various restaurants that I’d enjoyed during my time there. Now, while I was living in Cleveland, I was a college student and I didn’t need a car (after all, that’s what I had roommates for). Alas, this meant that I rarely drove and, perhaps more importantly, rarely parked. So despite the fact that it was raining, we parked at one end of the campus and walked to the other end (and back). At the end of this, we were not terribly interested in the relatively short walk from where we had parked to the restaurant I had planned to take Mel, which is located on Coventry road. But, aha!, I remembered that there is a parking garage nearby.
The parking garage is unusual in that it uses parking meters. The parking meters say “First 30 minutes free. Turn handle only.” Once we parked, I turned the handle on the meter and it showed, as expected, that we had thirty minutes. The Violation flag disappeared. We figured we were in the clear. Twenty-nine minutes later we returned to the car to find a parking ticket, which had been written a mere thirteen minutes into our brief visit.
I called the Cleveland Heights police department (yes, the police hand out parking tickets in that town) to contest the ticket. They promised to “check the function of the parking meter” and then sent us a letter to say that their investigation revealed that the parking meter was working fine. They did offer us a chance to appeal the ticket. As much as I’d love to waste their time, I’d prefer not to waste mine in the process. It will be easier to simply avoid Cleveland Heights businesses on our subsequent trips to the area.
And it won’t break my heart. The restaurant we visited, the burrito joint Que Tal?, was disappointing. Ok, it was better than Illegal Pete’s, but they seemed to have lost the charisma they had five or ten years ago–it was like they’d burned out. Many of the other places I’d visit have relocated or disappeared. In fact, maybe it was the rain, but the whole neighborhood seemed a lot less vibrant.
Perhaps a parking ticket is part of the Cleveland Heights experience. But it’s always going to burn me a bit. We followed the rules and were penalized anyway. And part of me is going to think that we got that ticket because we had out-of-state plates and they knew it would be harder for us to fight it. But they picked the wrong car to ticket. I’m pretty certain it’s going to cost their businesses more, in terms of lost business on our subsequent visits, than the $10 in revenue they’ve managed to squeeze from us.
1 Comment
September 24, 2006 at 1:04 am
(Personal)
Yikes…
Sump pumps? Sandbags? People swept away by floodwaters? To corrupt a quote from Butch Cassidy, What is this place?
Anyway, I’m happy to report that officially, 8″ of rain is scarier than 36″ of snow. The mountains win again.
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September 16, 2006 at 9:48 pm
(Personal)
…while stumbling through the dark corners of my hard drive for the rest of the photos I want to put online, I came across an interesting file.
During my freshman year, (as I mentioned recently) I spent long hours surfing the internet. This was before it became boring and commercialized, you see. At one point, I stumbled across an implementation of a chatterbot known as A.L.I.C.E. This particular implementation, if I remember, had a camera that you could move around, and it would talk in that Stephen Hawking computer voice. It “called” me “cwru-person” (presumably because of a lookup of my ip address.)
I think I tried to get it off track and finally elicited this response.
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September 16, 2006 at 9:36 pm
(Personal)
I’ve been playing with an online “photo management system” called smugmug. I haven’t really come any closer to what I’ve been trying to accomplish. But the good news is that I’ve posted some photos from the recent Cleveland trip (as well as some older trips) on the site at cellusd.smugmug.com.
1 Comment
September 15, 2006 at 8:47 pm
(Uncategorized)
Earlier in the week, the New York Times featured an article on Neuroeconomics. I don’t think the post is terribly interesting but it does provoke interesting questions…why do people make irrational decisions, sometimes even with good information?
It makes some things perhaps maddeningly unpredictable (have you noticed how touchy oil prices have been–the market swinging wildly to compensate (or perhaps overcompensate) for news that is often inconsequential in terms of the macro scale of the market.
But the unpredictability of human nature is a good thing, too. It gives us a chance to differentiate ourselves. Two comparably intelligent people may choose completely different lives for themselves, for example.
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