Our long national pie hangover

Obama must level with Americans: We're disgusting pigs.

By Joel Stein, Los Angeles Times
November 28, 2008

Sure, there probably was some giving of thanks, but that's not what anyone remembers. What we remember is the ugly, vicious, annual Thanksgiving eating contests between me and my cousins. The kind that taught me, and perhaps now the scientific community, that if you consume enough calories, you will actually black out just like you're drunk. Drunk on pie.

We are a nation with a massive pie hangover, waking up after three decades of overconsumption. The great problems facing us -- the economy and obesity -- have the same cause: lack of self-control. We're eating more calories than we burn and spending more money than we earn. Only instead of doing it to impress our cousins, we're doing it in the hopes of getting a reality show on Bravo.

Sure, we have stopped spending for the moment, now that our jobs are in danger, our houses worth less and credit card offers aren't filling our mailboxes. But as soon as things start looking up, we will revert to the overeating, overspending ways.

The first person who pointed out this obvious connection to me was my friend Matt Tupper. He's president of the pomegranate company POM Wonderful, and usually votes Republican solely to lower his taxes. But this year he leaned Democratic, because he figured Barack Obama stands the best chance of breaking the overeating-overspending cycle. Also, Matt has done a lot of troublesome renovations, which required dealing with plumbers. John McCain would have gotten a lot more votes if he'd latched onto Joe the Lawyer Who Threatens Contractors.

"The problem is staring us in the face. Who are the people driving SUVs they can't afford? The ones who weigh 300 pounds," Matt says. Though I'm pretty sure that if Matt left his health food company to be chief executive of McDonald's, he'd place the blame for the recession on the fact that our children weren't eating enough meals that made them happy.

In addition to creating public infrastructure jobs, Matt believes that Obama also will have to level with Americans and tell us that we are disgusting pigs. Only he'll say it more like, "As a great people who have triumphed over tyranny from abroad, over bread lines at home, over our own prejudices that divided and weakened us, we must meet our greatest challenge: to stop being such disgusting pigs."

Sure, the government can combat the obesity epidemic by ending agriculture subsidies for corn and sugar and creating some for fruits and vegetables; it can encourage personal savings with tax incentives and a national sales tax; it might slow global warming with a massive increase in the gasoline tax. But what we really need is a leader who will tell us off. Why Matt thinks Obama is the man for this task confuses me. I would have given this one to the angry old man.

We don't need to ask what our country can do for us, or what we can do for our country, but what we can stop buying for ourselves. We all need to change our behavior away from competitive spending, so that when my mom's husband mocks my 4-year-old computer and CRT television, society makes him feel overindulgent instead of making me feel inadequate. Also, we need to change our behavior so that my dad is my mom's husband again. I'm thinking that once my parents hit their 70s, they'll see the error of their ways.

Obama is going to have to be the mean parent, eliminating adjustable-rate mortgages, zero-percent financing and anything smothered in cheese, deep fried and then smothered in cheese and deep fried again. He's going to have to somehow enable Americans to maintain the unfounded optimism that has made us the richest country in the world, while instilling some long-term thinking that will keep us there. I recommend some kind of song by Justin Timberlake about jogging while picking up coins on the sidewalk in some kind of sexy way, but I'm guessing the president-elect can come up with better ideas.

The truth is, I never feel more lucky to be an American than when I'm gorging myself at Thanksgiving, piling my shopping cart high at Costco, or gorging myself on stuff from my shopping cart at Costco. But Americans can't keep doing that every week.

Of course, that's pretty easy for me to say the day after I double-fisted fried turkey into my mouth just to psych out my cousins. Turkey I didn't even pay for.

jstein@latimescolumnists.com

The true school scandal

By Jonah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times
November 25, 2008

Hypocrisy is an overblown sin. Better to be a hypocrite who occasionally violates his principles than a villain who never does.

I bring this up because the usual, and entirely expected, round of conservative complaints about Barack Obama's public-schools hypocrisy have begun, and I'm finding it all a bit tedious.

The Obamas will send their two daughters to the expensive private school, Sidwell Friends. Yes, that makes him something of a hypocrite because he is a vocal opponent of giving poor kids anything like the same option.

But you know what? Who cares? Personally, I would think less of the Obamas if they sent their kids to bad schools out of some ideological principle. Parents' first obligation is to do right by their own kids.

In Washington, we have these arguments every time a rich Democrat sends his kids to private schools, which is very often. The real issue is why the public schools are unacceptable to pretty much anyone, liberal or conservative, who has other options. Maybe in the rich suburbs of New York or Los Angeles, wealthy opponents of school choice run less risk of being labeled hypocrites; they can skip the pricey private schools because their public campuses aren't hellholes.

But most Washington public schools are hellholes. So parents here -- including the first family -- find hypocrisy a small price to pay for fulfilling their parental obligations.

According to data compiled by the Washington Post in 2007, of the 100 largest school districts in the country, D.C. ranks third in spending for each student, around $13,000 a pupil, but last in spending on instruction. More than half of every dollar of education spending goes to the salaries of administrators. Test scores are abysmal; the campuses are often unsafe.

Michelle Rhee, D.C.'s heroic school chancellor, in her 17 months on the job has already made meaningful improvements. But that's grading on an enormous curve. The Post recently reported that on observing a bad teacher in a classroom, Rhee complained to the principal. "Would you put your grandchild in that class?" she asked.

"If that's the standard," replied the defensive principal, "we don't have any effective teachers in my school."

So if Obama and other politicians don't want to send their kids to schools where even the principals have such views, that's no scandal. The scandal is that these politicians tolerate such awful schools at all. For anyone.

The main reason politicians adopt a policy of malign neglect: teachers unions, arguably the single worst mainstream institution in our country today. No group has a stronger or better organized stranglehold on a political party than they do. No group is more committed to putting ideological blather and self-interest before the public good.

Rhee has been pushing a new contract that would provide merit pay to successful teachers. The system is voluntary: Individual teachers can stay in the current system that rewards mere seniority or opt to join a parallel system that pays for superior performance. Many talented teachers would love the opportunity.

Alas, the national teachers unions insist that linking pay to results is an outrageous attack on the integrity of public schools. They have insisted that D.C. teachers not even be allowed to vote on the contract.

The Democratic Party continues to tolerate this sort of thing because public school teachers continue to be reliably liberal voters. And their unions cut big checks.

Obama, however, bragged about being different during his campaign. He declared himself independent from teachers unions and boasted his support for Rhee. But his recent appointment of Stanford professor -- and teachers union apologist -- Linda Darling-Hammond to head his education transition team is seen by many as a sign that reformers like Rhee can expect little support from the new White House.

And where are the Republicans? Well, if you want a good example of why hypocrisy isn't the worst thing in the world, just look at the GOP. Because the party supports school-choice vouchers, it's simply out of the debate. School choice has much to recommend it. But it's no silver bullet, and vouchers will never gain full acceptance in rich suburbs.

School choice does immunize Republicans from the charge of hypocrisy, however. So rich Republicans can send their kids to ritzy private schools without fear of violating their principles. Good for them. Unfortunately, their principled insulation also makes them largely irrelevant to a debate in which people like Rhee could use all the help they can get.

jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com

Gay Marriage and a Moral Minority

By CHARLES M. BLOW, The New York Times

Published: November 29, 2008

We now know that blacks probably didn’t tip the balance for Proposition 8. Myth busted. However, the fact remains that a strikingly high percentage of blacks said they voted to ban same-sex marriage in California. Why?

There was one very telling (and virtually ignored) statistic in CNN’s exit poll data that may shed some light: There were far more black women than black men, and a higher percentage of them said that they voted for the measure than the men. How wide was the gap? According to the exit poll, 70 percent of all blacks said that they voted for the proposition. But 75 percent of black women did. There weren’t enough black men in the survey to provide a reliable percentage for them. However, one can mathematically deduce that of the raw number of survey respondents, nearly twice as many black women said that they voted for it than black men.

Why? Here are my theories:

(1) Blacks are much more likely than whites to attend church, according to a Gallup report, and black women are much more likely to attend church than black men. Anyone who has ever been to a black church can attest to the disparity in the pews. And black women’s church attendance may be increasing.

According to a report issued this spring by Child Trends, a nonprofit research center, weekly church attendance among black 12th graders rose 26 percent from 1993 to 2006, while weekly church attendance for white 12th graders remained virtually flat. In 2006, those black teenagers were nearly 50 percent more likely to attend church once a week than their white counterparts. And it is probably safe to assume that many of them were going to church with their mothers since Child Trends reported that around the time that they were born, nearly 70 percent of all black children were born to single mothers.

(2) This high rate of church attendance by blacks informs a very conservative moral view. While blacks vote overwhelmingly Democratic, an analysis of three years of national data from Gallup polls reveals that their views on moral issues are virtually indistinguishable from those of Republicans. Let’s just call them Afropublicrats.

(3) Marriage can be a sore subject for black women in general. According to 2007 Census Bureau data, black women are the least likely of all women to be married and the most likely to be divorced. Women who can’t find a man to marry might not be thrilled about the idea of men marrying each other.

Proponents of gay marriage would do well to focus on these women if they want to win black votes. A major reason is that black women vote at a higher rate than black men. In the CNN national exit poll, there were 40 percent more black women than black men, and in California there were 50 percent more. But gay marriage advocates need to hone their strategy to reach them.

First, comparing the struggles of legalizing interracial marriage with those to legalize gay marriage is a bad idea. Many black women do not seem to be big fans of interracial marriage either. They’re the least likely of all groups to intermarry, and many don’t look kindly on the black men who intermarry at nearly three times the rate that they do, according to a 2005 study of black intermarriage rates in the Wisconsin Law Review. Wrong reference. Don’t even go there.

Second, don’t debate the Bible. You can’t win. Religious faith is not defined by logic, it defies it. Instead, decouple the legal right from the religious rite, and emphasize the idea of acceptance without endorsement.

Then, make it part of a broader discussion about the perils of rigidly applying yesterday’s sexual morality to today’s sexual mores. Show black women that it backfires. The stigma doesn’t erase the behavior, it pushes it into the shadows where, devoid of information and acceptance, it become more risky.

For instance, most blacks find premarital sex unacceptable, according to the Gallup data. But, according to data from a study by the Guttmacher Institute, blacks are 26 percent more likely than any other race to have had premarital sex by age 18, and the pregnancy rate for black teens is twice that of white teens. They still have premarital sex, but they do so uninformed and unprotected.

That leads to a bigger problem. According to a 2004 report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black women have an abortion rate that is three times that of white women.

More specifically, blacks overwhelmingly say that homosexuality isn’t morally acceptable. So many black men hide their sexual orientations and engage in risky behavior. This has resulted in large part in black women’s becoming the fastest-growing group of people with H.I.V. In a 2003 study of H.I.V.-infected people, 34 percent of infected black men said they had sex with both men and women, while only 6 percent of infected black women thought their partners were bisexual. Tragic. (In contrast, only 13 percent of the white men in the study said they had sex with both men and women, while 14 percent of the white women said that they knew their partners were bisexual.)

So pitch it as a health issue. The more open blacks are to the idea of homosexuality, the more likely black men would be to discuss their sexual orientations and sexual histories. The more open they are, the less likely black women would be to put themselves at risk unwittingly. And, the more open blacks are to homosexuality over all, the more open they are likely to be to gay marriage. This way, everyone wins.

E-mail chblow@nytimes.com

Washington diary: Obama in charge

By Matt Frei
BBC News, Washington

You could be forgiven for thinking that Chicago is the new Washington, that the president-elect is already running the country from there and that the West Wing has just become the Mid-West wing.

Barack Obama is gearing up for action from day one of his presidency

Even though he assured us again on Tuesday - if assured is the right word? - that he will only take over the reins of power after Inauguration Day on 20 January, Barack Obama talks, decides and reasons as if those reins are already firmly in his hands.

He refers to his weekly radio address like a real president does.

Everything from his body language to his use of the present tense indicates that he already thinks of himself as the commander-in-chief, preparing everything for day one of America's 44th presidency.

The drastic times demand it, he tells us. But then so does his pragmatic and poignant nature, one might add. Compare his behaviour to the unbearable lightness of George W Bush.

Intellect

Mr Obama is not just announcing his cabinet much earlier than most other presidents-elect in transition. He is also telling us in greater detail what his policies will be.

Here's the funny thing: stupidity and incompetence tend to go hand in hand

Earlier this week he announced a plan to get 2.5 million Americans back to work. Then he vowed to have his new director of the congressional budget office go through the existing budgets with a scalpel or an axe, depending on what is needed, to cut out any waste.

Previous presidents-in-waiting have also made such claims. But such is Mr Obama's steely-eyed determination and unsmiling sense of purpose that you actually believe him.

As Mr Obama said, talking about his erstwhile colleagues on Capitol Hill: "Friendship doesn't come into this. That's part of the old way of doing things."

You could hear someone, somewhere, gulping.

I also heard him say something that I have not heard for a very long time. As he introduced the latest members of his cabinet, Mr Obama said that they were individuals who had shown "great intellect" as well as courage and commitment.

Intellect?

Sarah Palin and John McCain built their campaign on the tradition nurtured under George W Bush of ridiculing intellect and articulacy as subversive values that rub up against the wholesome grain of middle America.

Mental agility was deemed less important than honesty, sacrifice and leadership. Perhaps.

But why not demand all four of your president and those who serve him? It turned out that a country in peril yearned for leaders with brains.

Because, and here is the funny thing, stupidity and incompetence tend to go hand in hand. So, darngonnit, why not forgive some high falootin' Harvard guy his best-selling memoirs and correct use of English, if he can get us out this mess? Sounds like a bargain to me.

Clinton legacy

When George Bush introduced members of his team, the highest accolade was that they were great Americans and true patriots. It always struck me as odd that patriotism could bestow competence.

Could the Obama team realise the failed promise of the Clinton years?

Was not allegiance to the flag one quality that could be taken for granted from anyone who had forgone a huge salary in private industry to earn a paltry one in public service?

Barack Obama, one imagines, assumes that the people who are taking on a raft of potentially soul-destroying jobs in tough times are doing so because they care about their country.

So what about the team? Yes, there are an awful lot of faces from the Clinton past.

Larry Summers, the new economic chief strategist used to be President Clinton's secretary of the treasury. Tim Geithner, the new secretary, worked under him. Peter Orszag, the new director of the congressional budget office is only 39 years old but has also worked for the Clintons.

Bill Richardson, expected to be secretary of commerce, is an old Clinton grandee. Susan Rice, tipped to be the new American ambassador at the UN, worked for Mr Clinton.

The list goes on and there is of course Hillary herself, although you could describe her as the only official from the Clinton era who never actually worked for the president.

Squandered potential

At some stage it would be refreshing to see some new faces from Silicon Valley or the Sun Belt brought into the clutches of government.

So here is my take on the matter. Thanks to the multiple distractions of Bill Clinton and his administration, some of America's brightest people were too busy ducking subpoenas or grappling with indecision at the top to perform their best work.

The Obama administration is a chance for them to prove their critics wrong and to live up to past expectations.

As Hillary Clinton used to say: "Let's undo the damage of eight years of George Bush!"

But how about also realising some of the squandered potential of eight years of Clinton? The state of the nation demands it. The state of the nation may render it impossible.

But as the man who still swivels his chair in the Oval Office once put it under different circumstances: "Bring it on!"

Google Seduces With Utility

By DAVID CARR, The New York Times

Published: November 23, 2008

Not long ago, someone invited me out to the Googleplex, the nickname for Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

The fact is, I already live there. And it’s starting to worry me.

Having grown up in the vapor trail of the ’60s, I learned to be wary of large, centralized organizations, and yet Google, a huge enterprise with a market value of $80 billion, is my ever-present wingman.

My increasingly exclusive relationship with Google started with search, of course, when I switched from Yahoo years ago. Eventually I accepted an invitation to Gmail, with its oodles of storage and very granular search function, and it has oddly become my default database — deep, rich and personal.

I added the company’s calendar because I needed one I could share both inside and outside of work. And then the calendar and e-mail started talking to each other — and to me, I guess — by asking whether I wanted to schedule an event that was mentioned in an incoming message. Although it sort of creeped me out, the answer was yes, which it almost always is when it comes to Google.

Google has begun to crowd out other brands. I was a loyal MapQuest guy, but as Google Maps added features, it seemed cumbersome to go elsewhere. And even something as specific as HopStop, an elegant tool I used to navigate the New York subways, is left behind as Google gets smarter about the difference between the N-R line and the A-C-E.

I’m getting ready for the Oscar season, so I needed to set up some relevant R.S.S. feeds, and Google Reader was handy, so there’s that. It’s easy to update my status under my chat icon while I’m on Gmail, so I tend to update that mood ring with more frequency than my Facebook status. When Google acquired YouTube, it gained another chunk of my mindshare.

And then a few weeks ago, I noticed there was a steady march of new little camera icons on the Gmail chat function. I looked around and saw a colored button at the top of my e-mail page that was a link to Google voice and video chat. I clicked it, hit the download button, and within 20 seconds, I was ready to go.

It’s not the first video chatting that I have done, only the first that actually worked well. Within minutes of downloading, I was talking live on my PC to my 11-year-old daughter on a Mac, a process that in the past would have involved everything short of splitting the atom. Then I told my twins away at college and yes, my mother-in-law about it, and before long we were all chatting away in an easy, friction-free future.

Score another one for the Googleplex.

You could credit Google, the largest ad seller in the world, with being a brilliant marketer and advertiser, but when was the last time you saw an ad, not served up by Google, but about Google? Not very often. That’s largely because Google’s Web platform, in all of its high-functioning glory, is its marketing.

“The most powerful form of advertising is to be exceptional,” said Ranjit Mathoda, an investor and technologist who blogs at Mathoda.com. “Google has created an ecosystem that perpetuates itself by being useful.”

Take video chat. Many other companies would take that kind of quantum leap and shout it from the rooftops, but Google just did a smallish blog post about the new feature and left it at that.

“We do have a philosophy that our products should speak for themselves. We tend not to make a lot of noise,” said Jeff Huber, senior vice president for engineering at Google.

As always with Google, the price point is appealing: zero, if you don’t count the amount of personal data that I am trading for all that utility. With Google, it is always simple, and any engineer will tell you that simple is hard. There had been a lot of talk within Google about creating video chat as a PC-only application, a much easier endeavor for the company, but it would not have been simple for the consumer.

If Google owns me, it’s probably because I am in favor of what works.

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, who was in New York last week. “We want a little bit of Google in many parts of your life.”

Mission accomplished, at least on my desktop, but I asked Mr. Schmidt if I shouldn’t be worried that I am putting all of my digital eggs in one multicolored, goofy-lettered basket.

“That depends on what you think of our company and our values,” he said. “Do you believe we have good values?”

Mr. Schmidt seems nice enough, but I sometimes wonder if I will come to regret the easier, softer road I have chosen. A record of my surfing lives on its servers for 18 months — not by name, but still. Google continues to insist that my IP address is not me, but a motivated government with a subpoena in hand could find me, lots of me, on Google’s servers.

Most data privacy experts would call me a fool to index my life into any one company so deeply, and diversification in all matters is just common sense.

Mr. Huber countered that I am free to come and go as I wish.

“The nice thing is that we don’t force you to use only our stuff,” he said. “It is not tied tightly together, and the content is all easily exportable. If you feel like we are letting you down, or you don’t like our products or we are failing to innovate, you can pick up and go where you want.”

But with video chat now enabled in my Gmail, how likely am I to click away? Some people worry that Google will take over the world. Through the sins of competence and innovation, the company has quietly and efficiently surrounded me.

“That’s our business model,” Mr. Schmidt said.

Pastor’s Advice for Better Marriage: More Sex

Erin Trieb for The New York Times

Madeline and Rob Hulsey on Sunday after the weeklong sex challenge for married couples at Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Tex. The evangelical church has 20,000 members.

By GRETEL C. KOVACH

Published: November 23, 2008

GRAPEVINE, Tex. — And on the seventh day, there was no rest for married couples. A week after the Rev. Ed Young challenged husbands and wives among his flock of 20,000 to strengthen their unions through Seven Days of Sex, his advice was — keep it going.

Mr. Young, an author, a television host and the pastor of the evangelical Fellowship Church, issued his call for a week of “congregational copulation” among married couples on Nov. 16, while pacing in front of a large bed. Sometimes he reclined on the paisley coverlet while flipping through a Bible, emphasizing his point that it is time for the church to put God back in the bed.

“Today we’re beginning this sexperiment, seven days of sex,” he said, with his characteristic mix of humor, showmanship and Scripture. “How to move from whining about the economy to whoopee!”

On Sunday parishioners at the Grapevine branch watched a prerecorded sermon from Mr. Young and his wife, Lisa, on jumbo screens over a candlelit stage. “I know there’s been a lot of love going around this week, among the married couples,” one of the church musicians said, strumming on a guitar before a crowd of about 3,000.

Mrs. Young, dressed in knee-high black boots and jeans, said that after a week of having sex every day, or close to it, “some of us are smiling.” For others grappling with infidelities, addictions to pornography or other bitter hurts, “there’s been some pain; hopefully there’s been some forgiveness, too.”

Mr. Young advised the couples to “keep on doing what you’ve been doing this week. We should try to double up the amount of intimacy we have in marriage. And when I say intimacy, I don’t mean holding hands in the park or a back rub.”

Mr. Young, known simply as Ed to his parishioners, and his wife, both 47, have been married for 26 years and have four children, including twins. They have firsthand experience with some of the barriers to an intimate sex life in marriage, including careers, exhaustion, outside commitments, and “kids,” a word that Mr. Young told church members stands for “keeping intimacy at a distance successfully.”

But if you make the time to have sex, it will bring you closer to your spouse and to God, he has said. You will perform better at work, leave a loving legacy for your children to follow and may even prevent an extramarital affair.

“If you’ve said, ‘I do,’ do it,” he said. As for single people, “I don’t know, try eating chocolate cake,” he said.

The sex-starved marriage has been the topic of at least two recent books, “365 Nights” and “Just Do It.” But Mr. Young’s call from the pulpit gave the discussion an added charge.

It should not, in his view. This is not a gimmick or a publicity stunt, Mr. Young says. Just look at the sensuousness of the Song of Solomon, or Genesis: “two shall become one flesh,” or Corinthians: “do not deprive each other of sexual relations.”

“For some reason the church has not talked about it, but we need to,” he said, speaking by telephone Friday night on his way to South Africa for a mission trip. There is no shame in marital sex, he added, “God thought it up, it was his idea.”

Those who attend Fellowship’s location here or one of several satellite churches in the Dallas area and one in Miami are used to Mr. Young’s provocative style. (The real “f word” in the marital boudoir, he says, is “forgiveness.”) But the sex challenge was a bit much for some of his church members, who sat with arms crossed in uncomfortable silence, he recalls, while many in the audience gave him an enthusiastic applause.

One parishioner, Rob Hulsey, 25, said his Baptist relatives raised their eyebrows about it, but he summed up the reaction of many husbands at Fellowship Church when he first heard about the sex challenge — “Yay!”

A week later, he and his wife, who are expecting a baby and have two older children, could not stop holding hands during the sermon. His wife, Madeline Hulsey, 32, said she was just as thrilled to spend a week focusing on her husband. Usually, “we start to kiss, and it’s knock knock knock, Mom!” she said.

Others found that, like smiling when you are not particularly happy, having sex when they did not feel like it improved their mood. Just eight months into their marriage, Amy and Cody Waddell had not been very amorous since Cody admitted he had had an affair.

“Intimacy has been a struggle for us, working through all that,” Ms. Waddell said. “This week really brought us back together, physically and emotionally.”

It is not always easy to devote time for your spouse, Pastor Young admitted. Just three days into the sex challenge he said he was so tired after getting up before dawn to talk about the importance of having more sex in marriage that he crashed on the bed around 8 p.m. on Tuesday night.

Mrs. Young tried to shake him awake, telling her husband, “Come on, it’s the sex challenge.” But Mr. Young murmured, “Let’s just double up tomorrow,” and went back to sleep.

Not A Moment Too Soon

By BOB HERBERT, The New York Times

Published: November 24, 2008

It looks as if the U.S. is about to have a president, at long last, who gets it when it comes to jobs.

There doesn’t appear to be anything faint-hearted about Barack Obama’s plans to stimulate the economy, which hasn’t come this close to flat-lining since the 1930s. The president-elect’s recovery plan emphasizes job creation, and the path to that end winds through the nation’s long-neglected infrastructure.

Some of us have been beating that drum for years.

In a radio address on Saturday, Mr. Obama described his plan as follows:

“It will be a two-year, nationwide effort to jump-start job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy.

“We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children and building wind farms and solar panels, fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.”

The message is many years overdue. The hope is that it hasn’t come too late.

The idea that the nation had all but stopped investing in its infrastructure, and that officials in Washington have ignored the crucial role of job creation as the cornerstone of a thriving economy is beyond mind-boggling. It’s impossible to understand.

Impossible, that is, until you realize that bandits don’t waste time repairing a building that they’re looting.

The question now is whether the nation, in the midst of a full-blown economic emergency, can keep its cool and be smart as it marshals billions of public dollars for a new infrastructure initiative. It won’t be helpful to have sparkling new bridges to nowhere being built from coast to coast.

The smartest step when it comes to infrastructure would be for the new administration to follow through on the president-elect’s campaign promise to create a national infrastructure bank that would not just raise money and invest in the nation’s infrastructure, but would also bring a measure of coherence to the myriad projects that need to go forward.

One of the reasons the U.S. is in such deep trouble is that it has stopped being smart — turning its back on excellence, sophistication and long-term planning — in its public policies and corporate behavior. We’ve seen it in Iraq, in New Orleans, in the fiscal policies of the Bush administration, in the scandalous neglect of public education, in the financial sector meltdown, the auto industry and on and on. We’ve lionized dimwits. And now we’re paying the price.

If we’re going to rebuild the nation, with the hope of putting millions to work in the process, we should do it in the way that makes the most sense and brings the biggest bang for our megabucks.

Right now infrastructure projects go forward willy-nilly. They are often financed haphazardly and are subjected to the worst kinds of political influence.

Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut is sponsoring a bill that would create an infrastructure bank with a bipartisan board of directors and a chief executive to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

The board would streamline the process of reviewing and signing off on major infrastructure proposals. It would determine the value to the public of each project — and its environmental impact. It would provide federal investment capital for approved projects and use that money to leverage private investment.

“Our major economic competitors in the 21st century are spending seven, eight, nine percent of their gross domestic product on infrastructure,” said Senator Dodd. “We’re spending almost nothing at all.”

The U.S. is moving from a period in which leaders spent money on wars and on lavish tax cuts for the rich, but not on investments in the nation’s future. That era of breathtaking irresponsibility must come to an end. Which means that now, with so much federal money soon to be available for infrastructure projects, it’s crucially important to spend the money as wisely as possible.

Investment in infrastructure right now is vital for two reasons. In a New York Review of Books article pushing the idea of an infrastructure bank, Felix Rohatyn and Everett Ehrlich wrote:

“Ultimately, we face a future of mass transit strained beyond capacity, planes sitting on tarmacs, slow traffic and wasteful sprawl, ports that lack the capacity to operate efficiently, and increasing numbers of bridges and dams that are obsolescent and dangerous to the public’s health and safety.”

That’s one reason. The other is that we’re never going to get out of this economic fix if we can’t swing open the doors to millions of new jobs. Infrastructure investment is one of the keys to that objective.

So we’re going to do it. But will we be smart about it?

'Nigerian' money scam: What happens when you reply?

By Will Sturgeon, The Times of London

Published: 18 February 2003

Anybody who has ever received the notorious Nigerian Money Scam will probably have asked themselves the same question - what would happen if I replied?

For those of you unfamiliar with this email scam, the basic idea is simple. Somebody purporting to be a Nigerian banker contacts you, offering a chance to earn some serious money. Often his bank will be looking after the considerable fortune of a deceased millionaire - from shipping magnate to former president. He says he needs a foreign bank account through which to launder the money - and in return for sending him your bank details for this purpose, he will give you a share of the spoils.

Of course those who fall for this scam never see these promised millions. Instead their bank accounts are often cleaned out once they have handed over all their details - which include bank account numbers, copies of their passport and drivers licence and phone and fax numbers - it is a simple identity theft, dressed up with a tempting lure for the gullible.

Over the years silicon.com has received hundreds of these emails. What follows is the transcript of a conversation with one such scammer which began on 20 January 2003.

We received an email from somebody calling himself Mr Madu Frank, promising us 30 per cent of a large unclaimed fund, valued in the region of around $20m. Typically these people will send emails to multiple recipients - hoping somebody will take the bait. Often it is claimed the recipient was recommended to them by 'a friend' or taken from some kind of international directory.

Having received the initial email, silicon.com's Will Sturgeon set up a Hotmail account under an assumed identity, and replied.

Dear Madu Frank, Thank you very much for contacting me with this wonderful offer, it sounds almost too good to be true. It's amazing, only this morning I was saying how I could do with having a bit more money - I must be a very lucky man.

Of course I would be interested in helping, but would also be very interested to hear who recommended me, as you say you have been told that I am a "reliable" and "trustworthy" person. I assure you I am, but would like to know who I have to thank for this wonderful opportunity.

Just to clarify, you say I stand to get 30 per cent of the total money transferred - this is £6.75m, right? Wow!

I look forward to hearing from you.

Overnight a reply from Mr Madu arrived.

Thank you very much for finding time to reply to my mail. We have to begin this transaction fast, so that the fund will be in your account in about 14 banking days. First of all, you have to transcribe the letter below in to your letter headed paper, or plain paper, and send it back to me so that I will submit it to the INTERNATIONAL REMITANCE DEPARTMENT of the bank...

...I will require you to also send me your private telephone and fax numbers, I will submit this also to the bank, and they will contact you directly. When they contact you, I want you to act as the real beneficiary of the fund in question. Do not be intimidated by anybody. I will also want you to send me the front and back photocopy of your international passport or driver's licence, so that I will know who I am having a deal with. For further enquires on what you should do, call me immediately you receive this mail on my telephone number... I will be expecting your call.

He then included the text of the letter he wanted me to transcribe, including helpful blank spaces where I could fill in my name, address and, most importantly, bank details. Of course I didn't oblige... but that didn't mean I was finished with Mr Madu (wasn't he a partially sighted cartoon character?). I still wanted him to answer my question about who recommended me.

So I replied:

Thank you for getting back to me. I am still wondering if you could tell me who recommended me to you, as I asked in my last email.

I do not have a problem with all this, but you said in your original email that you had been told I was a reliable person - I was just wondering if you could elaborate? I am interested in finding this out - as that person may want to share in my good fortune. I should be aware of who has done me this big favour.

I look forward to hearing from you.

So I've posed Mr Madu a challenge here. We know the truth, but surely he won't admit to sending out random emails to all and sundry in the hope that some poor sucker will take the bait. No, instead he comes up with one of the most improbable - yet inventive - lies ever.

I have seen your mail, and understand the surprise that you are still passing through. I got your address from the Hotmail email directory for successful men and women. Please we have to leave out surprises at this point, and deal with the issue that we have at hand right now. Call me as I instructed you for more detail about what this transaction will look like.

Expecting your reply soonest.

I wasn't about to let that one go...

Mr Madu, I didn't know there was a "Hotmail email directory for successful men and women". You live and learn! How do they know I'm successful (I am - but I only set this Hotmail account up on Monday - and they didn't ask me then whether I am successful. Where can I see this directory?)

I hope you can understand my trepidation - I'd hate to blunder into some kind of scam (not that I would ever question your integrity or the genuine nature of this offer).

I suppose, as I said in my earlier email this just sounds too good to be true - are you sure it is all above board?

I am still very keen to help you out, and am really looking forward to getting the money - I just need to be sure it's the right thing to do.

All the best,

My conversational style fell on deaf ears, Mr Madu clearly wasn't keen to hang around chewing the fat...

Please send the transcribed letter, to my fax number... or send it as an attachment to my email box. I will be expecting to hear from you soon.

But, if he can lie, then what is there to stop me?

Mr Madu, OK - I have sent that fax. It should be there now. Let me know once you've got it.

I hadn't. At this point we played a little bit of email tennis. Three times I sent an email saying I'd faxed through the form - three times, on three consecutive days, he replied to tell me it hadn't arrived (that's because I'd not sent it Mr Madu) - each time urging me instead to email it to his inbox. I blamed confusion over the international codes.

My Dear Friend, I have not seen your fax yet... You do not have to add any other code. But I prefer that you send me the letter this time around, through email as an attachment, since you have tried to send it three times through fax.

I will be expecting you to send it through my email box now, so that I can submit it to the international remittance department of the bank, before the close of work today.

In the end I changed tack - suggesting it might be quicker to fax the bank directly - suggesting I might even look up the bank on the internet. I thought this might catch Mr Madu off guard, but it hardly threw him at all. He quickly replied, giving me the "direct telephone number of Dr George Ade, the Director of the international remittance department." He also gave me the department's fax number and implored me to contact them immediately.

Yet, still I resisted... Saturday, Sunday passed and still I hadn't faxed anything. Mr Madu was starting to grow impatient...

Have you faxed the letter to the international remittance department of the Eco Bank? (No) Have you called the director as I instructed you to? (No again I'm afraid Mr Madu) Please you know we have to be fast about this transaction, so I want you to act fast.

I will also require your private telephone number, so that I can communicate with you on phone. I will be expecting your mail immediately.

What's it going to take before this man gives up on me? Surely if he hasn't cottoned on to the fact that I'm winding him up, he must at least think I'm incredibly ungrateful, and more than a little disorganised.

But that's his problem, not mine... This time I replied, telling him I had gone ahead and looked up the proper numbers for the EcoBank in Lagos Nigeria on the internet - and told him that I'd sent my form straight there... Surely this will annoy him - after all, if he really believes that I fell for his scam, then surely he must believe what I've just gone and done is completely idiotic. All along he has stressed the need for secrecy and great caution. Involving the real EcoBank will surely throw a spanner in the works and annoy the long-suffering Mr Madu... and indeed it did.

He wrote:

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? I sent you numbers that you can use to reach particular people because of the confidentiality of this transaction, and you are contacting another number! Well I must inform you at this point, that since you refused to follow my instructions, you have 0 per cent chance of collecting any money from the bank. You have just shown how unconfidential you can be.

I also hope that you did not mention my name in the fax you sent to them, because I don't want to lose my job over a fund that has not been released. The best thing I have to do now is to look for someone more confidential than you are! GOOD DAY!

And so it ended... ...or did it?

Mr Madu, I can't believe I'm going to miss out on this money - but these things happen - and I can see that it was all my fault... but what a shame!!!

Your good - but slightly disappointed - friend.

In truth I expected that to be the last of my dealings with Mr Madu. But he wasn't done yet. He just wanted me to understand the foolishness of what he had done, and clearly rued flying off the handle they way he had.

This transaction is very confidential even in the bank. So all I want you to do at this point, is to contact the telephone number that I gave to you right away. It is the direct line of the Director of international remittance. He knows about this transaction. His name is Dr George Ade...

Do this without delay.

Mr Madu Frank, I thought you'd given up on me.

It is not all over! Please just follow up the instructions that I gave you, and everything will be alright. I want to receive a mail from you tomorrow morning that you have done it. BE POSITIVE!!!

He's changed his tune! He obviously believes there is still a chance I will hand over my passport, bank account detail, phone number and driver's licence.

I wonder how he'll react when I start losing my patience with him - will he spot the irony? I pretend I have made the phone call which he implored me to make...

Mr Madu, What's going on? Dr George Ade is not answering his phone... what time is it there? Why do you tell me to ring him when he's not around to answer his phone?

This is a waste of my time... I want to help you but I will soon lose patience. I do not need the money that badly - $6.75m would have been nice, but I can live without it and will do so if you do not raise your game very soon.

Are you even serious about wanting to transfer this money?

I'm getting frustrated. I expect to hear from you soon.

Me Madu wasn't impressed.

I will not be a party to any kind of funny jokes because I have a very important schedule myself.

I have called Dr George immediately I received your mail, just to find out if he had any missed call, he said no. Please I know that you are getting frustrated, but we have to keep trying. He will definitely pick up your call when you contact him.

It is too early to start giving up.

Mr Madu, You say "I will not be a party to any kind of funny jokes because I have very important schedule myself" - well excuse me, but I'm the one who gets the distinct feeling this all a bit of a botched operation.

Are you suggesting that I'm lying about ringing Dr George Ade. I do not appreciate being called a liar. I called the number you sent me - there was no answer. Why would I waste my time and yours lying about it?

I don't think I want to do business with you any more.

That told him. Within a week we've gone from him cutting me off to me cutting him off. By this stage I was confident that he would still come back for more, almost regardless of whatever I said. Sure enough, Mr Madu replied, this time - giving me the email addresses for Dr George Ade and his department within the bank. Interestingly, like Mr Madu, both used Yahoo.com webmail addresses. Not very professional for a bank, I thought. (Rest assured all addresses being used have been reported to Yahoo!).

So I contacted Dr George Ade. Could this be Mr Madu by another name?

Dr George, I have been in contact with an associate of yours Mr Madu Frank - I'm sure he has told you about our conversation. He has asked me to contact you to move this transaction on.

Tell me please - why does the bank have a Yahoo! email address? It doesn't sound very official - I need to be assured that this is a serious and official operation - not just people setting up Yahoo! mail addresses - which anybody could do. Please send assurances that I am dealing with honest and official people.

I hope you understand my concern.

Let's see what 'Dr George Ade' has to say for himself.

Dear Sir, I wish to acknowledge the receipt of your mail addressed personally to me, Dr George Ade, on this 3rd day of February 2003. I will start by explaining to you, that this bank does not have only one branch, therefore we do not have just one website or just a particular email address. All departments of the bank are allowed to set up contact points, which will be best to access the banking procedures.

So let's get this straight. Dr Ade is telling me that companies can only set up a specific web address when they are based in just one location. This goes against everything the web stands for. What's starting to annoy me at this point is that these people obviously think I'm an idiot. That said... I did reply to the original email, so as far as they're concerned it's probably a fair assumption.

But who would deal with an international bank that uses Yahoo! mail addresses?

At this point it really hits me how foolish the people are who have been duped by these scammers.

Thanks George, Before we go on - I really don't think you are making the most of the opportunities the internet presents you.

You say "this bank does not have only one branch therefore we do not have just one website or just a particular email address".

The internet is supposed to remove such 'location-based' thinking. You sound like a good man, and I trust you, but I really think an international bank would sound far more impressive if it wasn't using free internet mail addresses. You should look into it.

I'm more than happy with Mr Madu's arrangement - but I imagine there are people out there who would be unwilling to hand out important information, such as bank details, to a Yahoo! account.

Anyway, that's just my opinion,

All the best

I included Mr Madu on my reply. I imagine by now there is at least one very frustrated man in Nigeria. Surely after three weeks he's getting fed up of this. After all, he originally said the transaction must be completed in 14 days... we're well over that already, and sure enough Mr Madu is not happy.

Why are you making a joke of this transaction? I have the certificate of deposit of the fund in question, and the Lodgement receipt with me, and can fax it to you if you can give me a fax number. I am not joking, I mean what I am saying.

So send me your fax number, so that I can send you these documents of proof immediately.

Oh dear. I appear to have annoyed him.

I waited a few days before sending my next email. By this stage we're well into the fourth week - Mr Madu wanted this done within 14 days. I thought it best to make my apologies and also make up an excuse for the delay.

Sorry Mr Madu, I wasn't making a joke of this transaction intentionally. Apologies also for the delay, but I have been away on business. As such I didn't want to leave a fax number before I went away as I didn't want this form arriving in my absence as I wanted to keep this transaction quiet - I'm sure you understand.

Anyway, I'm back from my travels now and if you could let me have the certificate of deposit and the Lodgement receipt that would be excellent - why not send them as attachments to this email address.

With the ball back in Mr Madu's court I'm kept waiting for a couple of days, until I next hear from him.

It's nice receiving your mail once again. It was a public holiday for the past two days here in Nigeria, so I will send you the documents through mail, tomorrow morning or on Saturday morning.

But they didn't turn up. Has Mr Madu finally given up the chase? Saturday and Sunday pass, with no forms arriving. For five days there is silence from Mr Madu, I start to suspect he's lost interest but I've one last trick up my sleeves to elicit a reaction.

Since starting this email conversation we've received dozens more of these Nigerian emails. Perhaps it's time to introduce Mr Madu to some of his peers.

Mr Madu, Have you shared my details with colleagues of yours. Just this past weekend I received two emails:

First up is Dr Godfrey Ugo who is offering me a share in the fortune of "a foreign customer who died along with his entire family in a Concord plane crash in the year 2000 in Paris".

Secondly I heard from Sunday Ikechukwu who says he works for the Foreign Remittance Department of the Zenith Bank. He is offering me a share of money held in "an account that belongs to one of our foreign customers who died along with his entire family in November 1997 in a plane crash."

What's going on?

This stirred Mr Madu back into action, though he was hardly phased at all by the revelations in my email. In fact he offered this incredible response.

This is just exactly what I told you about delay in anything you do. I investigated the mails that you sent to me, and found out that the mails where sent to you by some fraudulent officials of my bank, who know about this transaction, but want to send the money through another bank.

Please, let us be fast about this transaction before somebody else will come and claim the fund.

Please do not contact any of those people, because you may end up not even getting anything at the end of the day.

So there it is - in so many words my Nigerian scammer has admitted that these emails are a fraud. The final line of his last email is probably the only truthful thing he's said all along. He has instructed me not to contact these people because he would rather he got the chance to clean out my bank account than one of his peers.

The End

(...or is it?)

Energy panel could limit emissions

By Tom LoBianco, Washington Times

Saturday, November 22, 2008

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner congratulated Rep. Henry A. Waxman upon his election as the new chairman of the House energy panel, and then warned the California Democrat not to let his state stiffen car-emission standards because of the damage that it likely would do to the nation's ailing carmakers.

"This change would effectively bar the American auto manufacturers from competing in the largest market in America, unless they make substantial changes in manufacturing that would increase costs to consumers, making the 'Big 3' even less competitive - and making their collapse even more likely," Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican, wrote in his letter to Mr. Waxman.

Mr. Boehner, who recently won another term as leader of the House Republicans, repeated a familiar point in his letter: Tougher environmental restrictions likely will cost jobs and further harm the nation's economy.

"Mr. Waxman has a different perspective on this issue than Mr. Boehner, but he will give his views full consideration," said Karen Lightfoot, a spokeswoman for Mr. Waxman.

Mr. Waxman's intra-party coup Thursday that unseated Rep. John D. Dingell, Michigan Democrat, signaled a more liberal, pro-environment tilt for the key House Energy and Commerce Committee in the upcoming session of Congress, observers say.

Environmental and industry groups largely lauded Mr. Waxman's selection this week, and his congressional colleagues said the move marks a "sea change" from the past eight years in Washington.

But House Republican leaders criticized House Democrats for upending Congress' informal system of seniority, which largely dictates the ascension to power, by choosing the more junior Mr. Waxman.

California lawmakers have bristled since the Environmental Protection Agency blocked the state's efforts to impose carbon-emission standards tougher than the federal regulations. Mr. Waxman co-sponsored legislation earlier this year which would have granted the state a waiver, allowing it to impose the tougher standards.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday that a special committee investigating global warming would continue its work for two more years.

"I think we do have a need for one more term, because our work is not finished," Mrs. Pelosi said Friday morning. "We do not have the climate-change legislation that I had hoped we might be closer to, at least at this point. The committee serves a tremendous intellectual resource purpose for me to get the scientific basis for how we go forward, and it is a big problem. It is as big as the world, literally and figuratively."

Mrs. Pelosi first impaneled the global warming committee in 2007, shortly after ascending to the speaker's seat. It was widely perceived then as an attempt to do an end run around Mr. Dingell, a longtime champion of the auto industry.

Environmental measures, including cap-and-trade measures to reduce carbon emissions and plans to spend $150 billion on "green" energy projects, are expected to be leading policy initiatives.

The select committee, chaired by Massachusetts Democrat Edward J. Markey, released its final report Friday, squarely pinning the blame for global warming on man-made causes.

"The scientific debate on the cause of global warming is over," the committee report reads. "A clear scientific consensus now holds that global warming is happening, that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are largely responsible, and that failure to dramatically reduce those emissions in the coming decades will result in catastrophic impacts."

If Bankruptcy Hits Detroit

New York Times Editorial

Published: November 22, 2008

Congress has given Detroit’s flailing automakers less than two weeks to come up with a restructuring plan that would justify giving them tens of billions of taxpayer dollars and ensure that they have a reasonable path back to profitability. We hope it is a good plan, because the lame-duck Congress does not have a choice.

Michigan’s three car manufacturers have said that they would go bankrupt this year without an infusion of taxpayers’ money. Failing to provide it would be a truly irresponsible act that could obliterate one or more companies, potentially causing other bankruptcies and costing many hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Unpalatable as it seems to underwrite the proven record of failure of Detroit’s automakers, Congress must provide sufficient money to shore them up until the Obama administration takes office. Then, the new president and new Congress can decide how to manage either a rescue package with tight strings attached or a bankruptcy process that ensures the fallen companies have a reasonable shot at picking up the pieces.

Bankruptcy proceedings are designed to allow ailing companies to be restructured into profitable businesses, but that is by no means guaranteed — and it requires infusions of credit.

In the current financial environment, where even the soundest companies are having trouble getting loans, the government would have to guarantee that financing is available so that any car company under bankruptcy protection could keep operating and paying its workers and suppliers while it is restructured.

A bankrupt carmaker would face another tricky problem: how to keep consumers from shunning its cars out of fear that it might not be around to honor its warranty. Any bankruptcy financing given to a car company should be enough to buy warranty insurance to cover its fleet.

None of this guarantees an orderly restructuring. A company in bankruptcy proceedings could try to avoid making tough choices and coast through on the government dime. Insuring warranties might create an incentive for the company and its workers to relax on quality control. But these concerns might be addressed by tying worker and executive incentives to car quality and establishing a ceiling for government bankruptcy credit.

To get America’s carmakers back on their feet, difficult choices will have to be made — including cutting labor costs and the cost of health insurance. That is likely to mean selling off some product lines, laying off workers and closing the least productive plants. It could mean renegotiating the deal with the auto workers’ union to pay billions into a fund to cover retiree medical costs.

Taxpayers will end up with a big liability even if the company turns around and is able to repay its debt to the government. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is required to cover a substantial portion of the underfunded pension liabilities of any bankrupt company.

Economists Luigi Zingales and Joshua Rauh of the University of Chicago estimated that if General Motors were to collapse, underfunded pension liabilities would cost taxpayers roughly $23 billion.

It would still be our choice that the restructuring of blundering auto companies occur in an orderly way and be combined with a national strategy to deliver more fuel-efficient cars. Congress, so far, has failed in its duty to help make that happen. What must be avoided at all costs is for a big car company to spiral into liquidation.

'No' to Obama's experimental government

By Jonah Goldberg, The Los Angeles Times
Published November 18, 2008

On Sunday night, President-elect Barack Obama told CBS' "60 Minutes" that Franklin D. Roosevelt would be a model of sorts for him. "What you see in FDR that I hope my team can emulate is not always getting it right, but projecting a sense of confidence, and a willingness to try things. And experiment in order to get people working again."

This is a problematic standard. What do you want in a surgeon? One who "gets it right" or who projects "a sense of confidence?" Ditto accountants, defense lawyers, mechanics and bomb-disposal technicians: Cocky and self-assured, or gets it right?

Before you answer that, please ask yourself what your point of view on this question was during the eight years of the Bush administration.

In short, there can be a chasm between being right and merely appearing to be right. Why anyone stakes greater value on the appearance than reality is a mystery to me.

But as Obama clearly recognizes, that was a big part of the FDR magic. FDR came into office promising "bold, persistent experimentation" -- and delivered. Raymond Moley, an early member of FDR's "brain trust," saw the New Deal for what it was. "To look upon these programs as the result of a unified plan was to believe that the accumulation of stuffed snakes, baseball pictures, school flags, old tennis shoes, carpenter's tools, geometry books and chemistry sets in a boy's bedroom could have been put there by an interior decorator," Moley wrote later.

Yet Americans thought it was all part of a plan, even though experimentation and planning are in fact near opposites. Why? Because FDR always projected such confidence, even as he made things worse. But this isn't another column about how FDR prolonged the Depression. Been there, done that. I'd rather be forward-looking.

In fact, I want to be experimental too. So here's my idea: Just stop.

Stop talking about bailouts and stimuli. Stop pondering ever more drastic action. Give it a rest. Let it be.

One of the main reasons there's all of this "money on the sidelines" out there among private investors is that Wall Street doesn't know what the government will do next. Will it bail out the auto industry? The insurance companies? Which taxes will go up? How far will interest rates go down? How long will the federal government own stakes in the banks? Will more stimulus checks go out? If so, how big will the deficit get?

Interventionists, bailout czars and "bold experimenters" in all parties claim to be like firefighters; they can't stop what they're doing until the fire is out. But this analogy only works if you understand the nature of the fire. If it's a credit crisis, that's one thing. If it's uncertainty, it's quite another.

And if the problem right now is uncertainty, then these aren't firefighters, they're arsonists.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson told Congress he'd spend his kitty of tax dollars on bad mortgage-backed securities. Instead, in the spirit of bold experimentation, he's spent much of it to date buying banks.

Obama insisted he had a specific plan for the economy -- but his plan seems to be to "project confidence."

The problem with this "In Obama We Trust" approach is that it makes private-sector decision-making very difficult. If your boss says he will lay off half his employees next month, but he doesn't know who yet, will you buy a new house this month?

In a time of stability and growth, government can afford bold, persistent experimentation. But in a time of uncertainty, the last thing it needs is more uncertainty. Yet Obama's confident pragmatism, like FDR's, is a threat to confidence where it matters -- among consumers, credit markets and investors.

Yes, letting GM go into bankruptcy would be scary. But a GM bailout merely kicks GM's problems down the road while spreading the contagion about where Uncle Sam's big feet will land next. Besides, bankruptcy isn't the end of the world. It's the means by which bad companies restructure to fix themselves. Bailouts are the means by which governments subsidize bad companies.

The engine company in Washington has pumped more than a trillion dollars through the fire hose. It's time to turn off the spigot, not only to see where we are but to let the normal people start fixing things.

By all means, let's hope President Obama will project confidence. But maybe he should express less confidence in the ability of the government to get people working again, and more in the ability of regular Americans to rise from the ashes of any hardship. In short, don't just do something, President Obama, stand there.

jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com

Let Detroit Go Bankrupt

By MITT ROMNEY

Published: November 18, 2008 in The New York Times

Boston

IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

I love cars, American cars. I was born in Detroit, the son of an auto chief executive. In 1954, my dad, George Romney, was tapped to run American Motors when its president suddenly died. The company itself was on life support — banks were threatening to deal it a death blow. The stock collapsed. I watched Dad work to turn the company around — and years later at business school, they were still talking about it. From the lessons of that turnaround, and from my own experiences, I have several prescriptions for Detroit’s automakers.

First, their huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated. That means new labor agreements to align pay and benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Furthermore, retiree benefits must be reduced so that the total burden per auto for domestic makers is not higher than that of foreign producers.

That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota’s Avalon. Of course the Avalon feels like a better product — it has $2,000 more put into it. Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars. But if this cost penalty persists, any bailout will only delay the inevitable.

Second, management as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries — from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations.

The new management must work with labor leaders to see that the enmity between labor and management comes to an end. This division is a holdover from the early years of the last century, when unions brought workers job security and better wages and benefits. But as Walter Reuther, the former head of the United Automobile Workers, said to my father, “Getting more and more pay for less and less work is a dead-end street.”

You don’t have to look far for industries with unions that went down that road. Companies in the 21st century cannot perpetuate the destructive labor relations of the 20th. This will mean a new direction for the U.A.W., profit sharing or stock grants to all employees and a change in Big Three management culture.

The need for collaboration will mean accepting sanity in salaries and perks. At American Motors, my dad cut his pay and that of his executive team, he bought stock in the company, and he went out to factories to talk to workers directly. Get rid of the planes, the executive dining rooms — all the symbols that breed resentment among the hundreds of thousands who will also be sacrificing to keep the companies afloat.

Investments must be made for the future. No more focus on quarterly earnings or the kind of short-term stock appreciation that means quick riches for executives with options. Manage with an eye on cash flow, balance sheets and long-term appreciation. Invest in truly competitive products and innovative technologies — especially fuel-saving designs — that may not arrive for years. Starving research and development is like eating the seed corn.

Just as important to the future of American carmakers is the sales force. When sales are down, you don’t want to lose the only people who can get them to grow. So don’t fire the best dealers, and don’t crush them with new financial or performance demands they can’t meet.

It is not wrong to ask for government help, but the automakers should come up with a win-win proposition. I believe the federal government should invest substantially more in basic research — on new energy sources, fuel-economy technology, materials science and the like — that will ultimately benefit the automotive industry, along with many others. I believe Washington should raise energy research spending to $20 billion a year, from the $4 billion that is spent today. The research could be done at universities, at research labs and even through public-private collaboration. The federal government should also rectify the imbedded tax penalties that favor foreign carmakers.

But don’t ask Washington to give shareholders and bondholders a free pass — they bet on management and they lost.

The American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing. A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs. The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk.

In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.

Part 2: High Hopes

By Andrew Kohut, published in The New York Times

Andrew Kohut is the president of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. (Full biography.)

Barack Obama won only 53 percent of the vote on Election Day, but he is getting a landslide greeting from the American public. Indeed, recent polls by Gallup and the Pew Research Center find the public exuberant about Mr. Obama and optimistic that he will solve the nation’s problems.

A Pew post-election poll taken last weekend finds the voters giving Mr. Obama better grades for his conduct during the campaign than any presidential candidate since 1988. Seventy-five percent of the sample gave Mr. Obama a grade of A or B grade for his performance, while 24 percent gave him a C, D or F.

Source: Pew Research Center

The Gallup Poll also showed Mr. Obama getting a higher post-election favorable rating (68 percent) than either George W. Bush in 2000 (56 percent) or Bill Clinton in 1992 (60 percent).

Looking ahead, Pew found 67 percent of its national sample of voters saying they thought that Mr. Obama would have a successful first term, as many as 39 percent of those voters supported John McCain. The Gallup Poll asked a broader question about the state of the country four years from now, but found a similar result: 65 percent said the country will be better off. In comparison, only 50 percent thought the country would be better off following George W. Bush’s victory in 2000, and about the same number (51 percent) thought the country would be better off following Bill Clinton’s success in 1992.

When Gallup asked about specific problems confronting the new administration, it found majorities saying they expected the new administration to succeed in dealing with 13 of 16 problem areas they tested. Notably large numbers expected that Mr. Obama will increase respect for the United States abroad; improve education, the environment and conditions for minorities and the poor; create a strong economic recovery; and succeed in getting troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan in a way that is “not harmful” to the United States.

The polls also showed the public anticipating a better political environment as well. The Pew survey showed somewhat more voters thinking relations between Republicans and Democrats in Washington would improve under Mr. Obama compared with a survey following the 2006 mid-term election (37 percent versus 29 percent). And Gallup found as many as 80 percent of its respondents thinking that Mr. Obama will make a sincere effort to work with Republicans to find solutions.

Of course, the higher expectations for his presidency are probably a function of the current public concern about the state of the nation. But at least some of that hope has to do with the president-elect emerging from a tough and often negative campaign with his image intact, if not enhanced.

Source: Pew Research Center

The Pew survey found Mr. Obama eliciting far more positive reaction from voters than he did prior to the general election campaign. Sixty-five percent of voters now say Mr. Obama makes them feel proud, up from 42 percent in March. Voters were also much more likely to say the president-elect makes them feel hopeful (69 percent versus 54 percent in March).

And that positive response is not confined to Democrats. Considerably more Republican voters now say Mr. Obama makes them feel proud and hopeful, and many fewer say Mr. Obama makes them angry (17 percent now versus 37 percent in March.)

This is all good news for the new administration. Mr. Obama may have a sweeter and longer honeymoon than most new presidents, but given the problems he confronts he’ll need it. Most Americans expect him to repair the economy, deal successfully with the wars and make progress on key domestic issues.

How long will impatient Americans be hopeful about Mr. Obama as he struggles to deal with the many problems he inherits? That may be the important political question of 2009. Barack Obama will have to summon all of his extraordinary ability to connect and communicate with American citizens to buy himself the time he needs to solve the huge problems that he will confront on Jan. 21.

Part 1: Deep-Red Region Has Obama Blues

Here is a link to a photo essay in The Wall Street Journal about a town in Texas getting used to the new President-elect: Deep-Red Region Has Obama Blues

I guess every story has its flip-side, and this is the one of the Obama victory: the 48% of the country who did not vote for him is now quite anxious. It's strange for me, since basically every politician I've ever supported in my adult life has lost their elections (Gore and Kerry, to name a few, not to mention my U.S. and California representatives). I was just used to Republicans being unbeatable. I remember how let down I was back in 2004 when John Kerry narrowly lost the election to President Bush. It was so close, and yet the Bush team had squeezed out another victory.

This time around, it was such an incredible high to see the person I voted for back in January win the presidency. I almost didn't believe it was true, but once I realized that he'd really won it felt great. I imagine the people who didn't vote for him are getting their first taste of defeat in a while, of course mixed with a huge amount of economy anxiety. I hope that they will give Obama a chance to prove himself and try to tackle the country's problems.

I was thinking that, in some senses, it's a little unfair of Democrats like me to expect the losing Republicans to support the new president, given that we have cried bloody murder at George Bush for much of the last decade. However, the way many people view Bush now is not the same as it was right after he won the election.

Back in 2000, my first reaction at learning the truth about Bush's victory was utter anger that the election had been illegitimate and tampered with in Florida. To this day I am still furious about that, and quite frankly, I can't believe the controversy went away so quickly. There is nothing that will change the fact that Republicans and members of the establishment in the state of Florida deliberately manipulated the electoral system in their favor, placing antiquated and faulty voting machines in counties with large non-white populations, excluding thousands of people from voting at all due to deeply flawed felon lists, failing to count ballots that had been marked improperly but could still be understood, and allowing military absentee ballots with no postmarks and signatures to be counted. In short, it felt like theft, and was. Those of us who did not support Bush were deeply disappointed and perhaps a bit worried, too. We all thought he was a total idiot. That said, once he actually took office and the country got back to business, I gave him a bit of support. I certainly wasn't hoping for him to fail. And I think when September 11th happened, a lot of us were comforted by his leadership.

But the years since then have been difficult, and I have very mixed feelings about his leadership. Though, I wonder sometimes how much influence a president really has. How can we pin all of our woes or triumphs on him when he is only the top of the huge pyramid of businesses, money, politicians, bureaucracy, governments, states, and local communities that make up America? I mean, there are 300 million of us. The president is our most visible leader, of course, but clearly much of our national business is going to proceed in its own way no matter who is in charge. Power and leadership are diffused in our federal republic. That said, a president is enormously influential and his administration's policies have real impact. I think these are more obviously felt when they are negative, but they are there just the same. Just as a plumber's work is never noticed unless it is faulty, a president's policies are not really noticed in detail unless they produce bad results, such as President Bush's have.

This president, though I do not think he is the evil, unfeeling monster he's made out to be at times, has filled his administration with people who have made bad choices. The people he has chosen to run our government have run it into the ground and, what's more, wreaked constitutional and human rights violations on us and citizens from abroad that will not easily be undone. Republicans worry about government intrusion now that Obama has been elected, but people, look at what your own choice has done! President Bush's terrible administration, coupled with his seemingly reckless leadership style are what have made him a bad president. The rest of us, and the rest of the federal government are not off the hook for everything, especially IRAQ, but he has been a bad president nonetheless.

The reason Bush is so deeply unpopular nowadays is that he, simply put, has been a bad chief executive and has not looked after the country well, though I'm sure he meant to. We are tired of him. It makes me deeply sad to see the relationship between the country and the president deteriorate to this level, though. Make no mistake: I wish he had done better. I really do. And, I recognize that he has been faced with a lot of difficult choices and has done things in the name of protecting the country. I take absolutely zero joy in making fun of him. It's just not funny anymore. It always makes me sad to see countries faced with leaders they hate, because it usually means that things aren't going well there. It's a sad thing. I am tired of so deeply disliking my own president, and that is a big part of the reason why the moment that I found out that Barack Obama had won the presidency was so deeply cathartic. It was as if a weight had lifted off my shoulders: I no longer hated the president! It was such a novel, so totally unexperienced feeling that it took hours for me to recognize it and I drove home from volunteering at the polls almost giddy with joy.

Obama's no idiot and I have hopes that he'll try his hardest and will make good decisions. To those who didn't vote for him, I say it's your right to be anxious and disappointed, but give him a chance, as I gave President Bush a chance. Obama won a clean election with a lot of support and it's in all of our best interests to be cooperative and peaceful in this time of national crisis. Surely there are massive disagreements about the best actions to take, but he has won the election and has the prerogative to do his job as he best sees fit within the limits of the law.

Let's give him a chance. It's time to get back to business.