EmX doesn't really cost money, cuz its federal

On Sunday, Andy Vobora, a spokesman for the Lane Transit District wrote in the Register-Guard that the cost of new EmX bus station at Gateway was only $2 million and, most importantly, none of it was local money. It was being paid for by the federal government.

It's true in the sense intended, that the local transit budget is not being drained for pay for construction. But, just as all politics is local, so are excise taxes, and the federal dollars provided for mass transit are due to some driver filling up at some gas station. Or more accurately, it's a penny each from 200 million drivers, none of whom is specifically aware of the fact.

The same newspaper editorialized earlier that the impact of RideShare, which is LTD's program to provide public transit services to people who can't ride buses, should not fall on local taxpayers, even though the disabled are Lane County residents. Since the federal government noted the problem and required a solution, the argument goes, they should pay for it.

A reasonable idea on the assumption that the feds have unlimited cash. That seems to be the popular belief. It underlies the notion that we can run a trillion dollar deficit and it won't matter. The LTD money is a little different, since it comes from a designated source, but in fact that source is rapidly running out of cash. The treasury overall is broke and borrowing madly to cover Iraq and Wall Street, stealing the money that Social Security will need in future years for current consumption.

Foreigners are not amused. Which is too bad because we need $2 billion daily from them to stay afloat. The US dollar is in decline, and it has a lot farther to fall.

Impoverishment at the highest levels

It seems that one of the sticking points in our bailout of Wall Street is how much should we pay the bankers who come asking for help. John McCain is on record that bankers who ask for our tax money to get themselves out of their pickle should not expect to earn more than the highest paid person in the federal government. That being the President, who takes in $400,000 per year.

Secretary Paulson has responded that we can't make this work if we include "punitive" provisions like this. Punitive? There are no government employees in America, outside of college athletic coaches, earning that much. Are the banks pretending they couldn't get the talent they need? That you can't make ends meet, after years of 7 and 8-figure salaries, if you're reduced for one year to $400,000? Punitive?!

It should be clear now that the people running the financial world are not amazing geniuses. They just had really large sums of other people's money to gamble and, although they often did well, they once too often have done badly. They are probably reasonably bright and some of them may be good technicians, but they are not irreplaceable.

The free market advocates are all keen on Darwinian selection in the corporate world. Let's see it work. Let's see which banks are willing to throw some of their bloated executive salaries out in order to survive. Those that aren't, won't. Sounds good to me.

A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon ...

Older people will remember when Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois said (or was supposed to have said): "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money." We've moved into a new era; when we talk about government disasters, the unit is trillion rather than billion. First the Iraq War, now housing and mortgages.

The figure of 700 billion is now being used for the bailout of Wall Street, but these are always low ball at the outset. It comes on top of $200 billion for Fanny and Freddie, plus 85 further billskis for AIG, plus whatever for Bear Stearns and sundry. Detroit wanted 25 billion, but they now probably realize that such an amount is chump change in the new landscape of public subsidies.

The long term impact on America is going to be horrendous, as people with real economies decide that we are addicted to government spending without taxes and that the dollar will become, if not worthless, then greatly depreciated. This will be unfortunate, as the American economy depends on such people exchanging their own hard currencies for greenbacks still damp from the printing press, at a rate of some $2 billion daily.

In the short term, I can only predict that the Democrats will pile on, asking for more unemployment benefits and other middle-class benefits. Oh, and I think I can safely predict that no politician will suggest the anyone should actually pay for any of this with taxes.

Here's hoping Ike hits New Orleans

People are worried about Ike making landfall somewhere along the Gulf Coast. In general, this would be a bad thing but there's a possible silver lining. It might hit New Orleans and take the city out of its misery. It wouldn't need to be a direct hit, just something close enough to cause another evacuation and perhaps a minor breach of a levee.

It's not that I don't like New Orleans. On the contrary, I've been there, enjoyed myself, and look forward to a city named New Orleans, on essentially the present site, continuing long into the future. But the premises behind all reconstruction conversations I've heard are foolish.

Much of New Orleans lies below the level of the surrounding waters of the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. Until Katrina, it contained many poor people. Their homes have been devastated and now the theory seems to be that there should be some way in which New Orleans can be rebuilt so as to house a lot of poor people.

Sorry, but building a city below sea level is intrinsically expensive and nobody is going to do it on behalf of poor people. Nor should they. Many more poor people could be given decent housing elsewhere for the cost of doing so in New Orleans, assuming that the package included enough civil engineering to ensure that the new housing would not be flooded like the old.

The lowest portions of New Orleans should never be rebuilt. We should stop thinking of New Orleans in terms of the Florida Everglades and switch to Amsterdam or Venice. This is prime land for development, both residential and commercial, provided that some of it is moved up and surrounded by sturdy walls and the rest excavated to a level that would allow small craft to ply the newly created lakes and waterways.

This wouldn't be cheap, but we're the country that built the Grand Coulee Dam and this is certainly doable. And the result would be fabulously valuable. People will pay tons of money for waterfront, and New Orleans could have oodles of it.

What about the poor people? Well, what about the poor people? Is anyone building their housing today? Will they tomorrow? Let's get real, build subsidized housing somewhere on naturally-occurring dry land, and get over the sentimental attachment. Subsidence happens.

The Real Message about McCain and Palin

I don't normally pay much attention to Andrew Sullivan but his comments on Sarah Palin, coming from a conservative, are on point. It's not whether Sarah Palin actually will ever turn out to have the talent for the job. It's that nobody has any reason to believe she does. We'll skip the fact that there are reasons for a progressive, or just somebody who thinks teen pregnancy is not a desiderata, to be actively skeptical. Even those who think she may pan out must admit that she hasn't proven anything. Yet, the GOP has nominated her to be VP. For no reason except that a large portion of their followers, who vote based on litmus tests rather than ability, love the idea.

Sitting out here in Florence, on the Oregon Coast, I have come to know a number of elected city officials. We have about the same population as Wasilla AK. I like these guys, but I wouldn't nominate any of them to be President of the United States.

And governor of Alaska? That's been for 20 months. When you're an executive, you make decisions and time tells whether they were right. There hasn't been enough time. Alaska has a budget surplus and worries mostly about who to give it away to, although they are not shy about asking the lower 48 to subsidize them. Put simply, there has been nearly nothing about her resume that demonstrates her ability to handle the job she's running for.

So first, it's scary that McCain might croak and she'd replace him. Then it's scary that he might not and this is the sort of considered judgment we can expect from him. Either way, it's Obama '08.

Sarah Palin is not riveting

Writing for Newsweek, Howard Fineman suggests that Sarah Palin's performance tonight will be riveting, because we'll have a complete unknown in a situation where she will sink or swim and nobody knows what to expect.

I know what to expect. She'll be coached that she doesn't need to capture the right wing, which is hers already, so she'll use the opportunity to talk about silly things and make herself more human and appealing. None of this will have any real bearing on her ability to lead the world's largest economy, nor will it truly reflect anything that would be likely to result from her eventually becoming president. Remember the W. ran as a compassionate conservative, only to turn out in reality to be just another frothing-at-the-mouth fascist. Likewise the lovely Sarah, regardless of what sugar-coating she applies to her scanty resume in the speech.

Someone has remarked that Ms Palin is probably the first national candidate ever to know how to dress a moose. I can't speak specifically about moose, but I'll wager that some of the early 19th century candidates knew how to handle a knife to dress game. It was once an important qualification for dealing with life.

She may, however, be the first candidate for national office for whom that ability ranks high on the list of qualifications to hold the office.

Appalachia, the Ozarks, and evidently Alaska

Levi Johnston's mom, commenting on the marriage plans of the children, said that they had planned to get married all along and that the pregnancy was a "bonus."

There are certain attitudes towards life that we have come to identify, fairly or unfairly, with hillbillies. Mrs. Johnston shows that they are alive and well in Alaska. Levi, a fine strapping youth, is not evidently attending high school. His mother says she doesn't know whether he graduated. We deduce that he's not planning on college. Apart from hockey, there's no evidence of an ability to support a wife. Yet he will be trotted out in St. Paul at the convention for everyone to cheer.

The Republicans must be just busting their buttons with pride.

Sarah Palin is the .... Words fail me.

It seems that Sarah Palin's problems are all due to the liberal media. Reminds me of the line, that no girl ever got pregnant from reading a book. It seems to me that Bristol Palin didn't get pregnant from watching CNN. However, more relevantly, she may have got pregnant because in the Palin family nobody talks about how to avoid pregnancy and in schools in Alaska, if it happens, it happens against the opposition of Sarah Palin and her ilk.

I wasn't going to get involved. I was just going to write in Paris Hilton and let it go. It seemed like I could handle either candidate and with neither candidate saying anything I particularly liked with respect to war, this was going to be one that I could sit out.

Not anymore. Sarah Palin opposes everything I believe, which is that the world needs to be managed on the basis of evidence. She's George W. Bush without the deep intellect. There aren't a lot of people that I would not be happy to take over the White House after W. but given the decent statistical prospect that if we elect McCain, it will be her in less than four years, I find her frightening. What are we frightened of, the right wing asks querulously. You wouldn't understand, I reply. I'm sending a check to Obama.