------------
Every week has its own flavor of remarkable events, whether political or otherwise.
This week has been no exception, with 2 major speeches from our new President.
The address to a joint session of Congress was an unqualified success that served to inspire, define policy and set new goals and directions.
Of special note is that for the first time, the costs of war in Iraq and Afghanistan were actually included in the budget!
That is a very good start, because if we can't even understand our obligations, how can we possibly gain control over them?
On such a difficult and daunting subject, that President Obama was able to show such leadership bodes well for our country.
But, this is just the beginning and many battles remain to get from where we are to where we want to be.
Not the least of these battles will be over spending priorities, and resistance from Democrats will likely be every bit as strong as that coming from the Republicans.
I wish the President well in exerting more discipline in federal spending, because that is an area that legislators, bureaucrats and other power brokers will not easily give up control.
The President's address about the Iraq war at Camp LeJeune was yet another unqualified success that seemed to rally our troops in a way they must have been hungry to hear.
It seems that most Americans are quite willing to let our volunteer military personnel bear the complete brunt of brutal conflict and tough assignments.
Meantime, we take it for granted that all we need to do is let others do this hard job, while we continue to live lives of ease and pursuit of comfort.
Time will tell how these twin speeches become manifest in our national policy and influence our financial recovery, but they are a good start in the right direction.
Suffice to say, I took great pleasure in hearing our President's well-considered new direction, which most assuredly are ambitious but necessary.
---------------
A few years ago, the City sponsored a training course designed to help focus on and achieve worthwhile goals.
It was called the 'Systematic Development of Informed Consent', a course developed and taught by an older couple named Bleiker.
The lessons of this methodology are valuable, based as they are on real life examples.
Without going into too much detail, a simple, 4-step 'Bleiker Life Preserver' summarizes the essential parts of the method;
1. A serious problem exists which requires immediate action to address it.
2. It is our job to address this problem and bring it to satisfactory resolution as soon as practicable.
3. Our plans will be developed carefully and reasonably and then be presented clearly before implementation.
4. In developing these plans, we will listen to people's concerns, because we do care and value their input.
Pretty simple, huh?
Not necessarily, because no problem is ever easy to solve.
But, at least this method is an honest and inclusive one that enhances the chances of success to stated goals.
I think this is similar to the process being proposed by our President on matters of great national concern.
Let's all wish him well, whether we agree with every detail or not.
That is what it will take to extract ourselves from the gridlock we are in now.
There is only one way we can go from here, and that is up, so why not climb as high as possible?
Friday, February 27, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Greenways: Lies, Damn Lies & Plain Levy Language
--------------
I must say that I got incensed all over again last Saturday when a friend confirmed a recent public admission made by Gene Knutson that he had -after 3 years of denial - actually agreed to collude with 3 other Council members to spend $8 million of Greenways funds on that pricy and dicy piece of real estate known as Chuckanut Ridge.
Are you kidding me Gene?
Please say it isn't so!
But then, who'd believe you now?
It is going to take much more than a gratuitous admission of lying, or an apology to the public to put this wrong right!
For starters, how about a public statement that you will henceforth recuse yourself from voting on any Greenways measure or proposal that directly impacts the south side of Bellingham.
Then, follow that up by announcing you will not be seeking re-election.
That ought to do it, at least as far as the public is concerned, but maybe not your own credibility.
I'm sorry to sound so harsh in condemning the lie you have kept silent for so long, but how else can it be truly corrected?
---------------
Like a lot of things, the roots to my concern go back a ways.
I always liked Gene despite some differences, because he is a likable person.
I know Gene got really frustrated at me sometimes, either because of my penchant for examining the pros and cons of issues too thoroughly for his liking, or by simple differences in opinion or style.
That's OK, because legislative debate is healthy.
I got exasperated with Gene at times because of his habit of always seeming to test the political winds before casting a hard vote.
And, I don't remember many -maybe any- occasions in which Gene supported tax or rate increases without the need for a public vote.
Yet, once funds were made available, he was glad to spend them, even from rainy day funds or reserves.
But, these types of differences are as normal as treating complicated things as simple and making hasty, uninformed decisions.
Hey, no one ever said that being a good elected representative ought to be easy!
And, if they did, I didn't buy it.
---------------
One moment in time that I remember so well happened back when the Council was trying to name an Interim Mayor to replace the suddenly departed Mayor Mark Asmundson.
Gene wanted that job badly and campaigned for it vigorously.
But, much to his embarrassment, he was unable to garner the 4 votes -including his own- to win that appointment, which instead went to former Mayor Tim Douglas.
Right after that vote, Gene, who was Council President, called a short recess.
He came up to me and said that he wanted me to know that I was the only Council member who had not lied to him that week.
What a remarkable observation!
I think that whatever lies Gene had heard that week, did hurt him deeply.
But, being a grown-up who loves serving in public office in his home town, Gene endured.
And I'm glad he did, at least until the moment he decided to lie himself about Chuckanut Ridge.
--------------------
The second defining moment in time came as the Council was desperately trying to reach agreement on a third Greenways ballot measure, in time for the ballot.
Because of the considerable heated differences between the two competing Greenways proposals, attempts at any sort of unanimously supported measure seemed slim to none.
Such stalemates leave little room for maneuver, often leading to a take it or leave it vote, or worse, nothing at all.
Fortunately, a compromise ballot proposal was reached, thanks largely to the efforts of Joan Beardsley, who facilitated a meeting between Barbara Ryan and me that produced a measure that Council immediately approved unanimously.
This measure went to the voters, who in turn approved it by 59%, thereby voluntarily taxing themselves for what they believed was a good cause to benefit our entire community.
What a relief!
A true 'win-win-win' solution, or so I and many others believed!
-------------------------
Now fast forward a bit;
The late Councillor Joan Beardsley made a remarkable admission during a public meeting of the Greenways Advisory Committee.
Beardsley stated that she and 3 other Council members HAD ALREADY COMMITTED to vote $8 million for Chuckanut Ridge, before the ballot was passed!
Although she later retracted her statement, the damage was done.
Barbara Ryan openly admitted there had been an agreement reached with south side supporters to that effect.
The two other Council members implicated -Messrs Bornemann and Knutson - denied they had done any such thing!
Who was lying?
There is no proof, of course, at least at the time, so what to do?
Wait and see.
Now comes Mr Knutson with his confession. [Note Bornemann remains strangely silent, but watch what he does]
This year, Both Ryan and Bornemann volunteered for the Parks & Recreation Committee, where they hope to mount a last-ditch stand to rescue their pet Greenways acquisition, Chuckanut Ridge.
Already, they have delayed adoption of the South Side portion of the Greenways Strategic Plan, in hopes that somehow, someway, they can finagle more money for Chuckanut Ridge!
Now, that is truly remarkable!
And sad.
Barbara & Terry will likely fail in these efforts, as they richly deserve to do.
But, hope springs eternal with Gene Knutson's new memory.
Gene, wants to please every one, but he risks pleasing no one if he continues to support his previous collusion with Barbara & Terry.
And, Gene does love Greenways, Bellingham and being in office as long as possible!
There is no denying any of those things.
I would not be surprised if Gene thought he could still become a hero on acquiring Chuckanut Ridge
After all, Barbara's attempt at promoting the so-called 'Knutson Kompromise' was a brazen, if clumsy, attempt to involve his ego in this nefarious collusion.
And, it nearly worked!
That is why Gene Knutson needs to step away from this sorry business and re-establish his own credibility!
-----------------
As the title promises,
"lies' were the fictions pre-sold to wild-eyed southside Chuckanut Ridge advocates, who will not be mollified if these are not delivered.
'damn lies' refer to those foisted upon the voting public in a deception of truly troubling proportions.
'plain levy language' means just that; what the public was told, what they believe and what they voted for.
You tell me which of these three concepts deserve to be sustained, and which need to be severely dealt with!
Do the right thing, Gene, and recuse yourself from these stupid shenanigans!
If you'll do that, I might even vote for you again.
Of course, there may be no choice, unless you voluntarily take a break from local politics.
Such is the power of incumbency in little ole Bellingham.
Hey, you 2nd Ward folks; isn't there someone out there who is willing to run for this important office, and treat it as such?
-----------------------------
I must say that I got incensed all over again last Saturday when a friend confirmed a recent public admission made by Gene Knutson that he had -after 3 years of denial - actually agreed to collude with 3 other Council members to spend $8 million of Greenways funds on that pricy and dicy piece of real estate known as Chuckanut Ridge.
Are you kidding me Gene?
Please say it isn't so!
But then, who'd believe you now?
It is going to take much more than a gratuitous admission of lying, or an apology to the public to put this wrong right!
For starters, how about a public statement that you will henceforth recuse yourself from voting on any Greenways measure or proposal that directly impacts the south side of Bellingham.
Then, follow that up by announcing you will not be seeking re-election.
That ought to do it, at least as far as the public is concerned, but maybe not your own credibility.
I'm sorry to sound so harsh in condemning the lie you have kept silent for so long, but how else can it be truly corrected?
---------------
Like a lot of things, the roots to my concern go back a ways.
I always liked Gene despite some differences, because he is a likable person.
I know Gene got really frustrated at me sometimes, either because of my penchant for examining the pros and cons of issues too thoroughly for his liking, or by simple differences in opinion or style.
That's OK, because legislative debate is healthy.
I got exasperated with Gene at times because of his habit of always seeming to test the political winds before casting a hard vote.
And, I don't remember many -maybe any- occasions in which Gene supported tax or rate increases without the need for a public vote.
Yet, once funds were made available, he was glad to spend them, even from rainy day funds or reserves.
But, these types of differences are as normal as treating complicated things as simple and making hasty, uninformed decisions.
Hey, no one ever said that being a good elected representative ought to be easy!
And, if they did, I didn't buy it.
---------------
One moment in time that I remember so well happened back when the Council was trying to name an Interim Mayor to replace the suddenly departed Mayor Mark Asmundson.
Gene wanted that job badly and campaigned for it vigorously.
But, much to his embarrassment, he was unable to garner the 4 votes -including his own- to win that appointment, which instead went to former Mayor Tim Douglas.
Right after that vote, Gene, who was Council President, called a short recess.
He came up to me and said that he wanted me to know that I was the only Council member who had not lied to him that week.
What a remarkable observation!
I think that whatever lies Gene had heard that week, did hurt him deeply.
But, being a grown-up who loves serving in public office in his home town, Gene endured.
And I'm glad he did, at least until the moment he decided to lie himself about Chuckanut Ridge.
--------------------
The second defining moment in time came as the Council was desperately trying to reach agreement on a third Greenways ballot measure, in time for the ballot.
Because of the considerable heated differences between the two competing Greenways proposals, attempts at any sort of unanimously supported measure seemed slim to none.
Such stalemates leave little room for maneuver, often leading to a take it or leave it vote, or worse, nothing at all.
Fortunately, a compromise ballot proposal was reached, thanks largely to the efforts of Joan Beardsley, who facilitated a meeting between Barbara Ryan and me that produced a measure that Council immediately approved unanimously.
This measure went to the voters, who in turn approved it by 59%, thereby voluntarily taxing themselves for what they believed was a good cause to benefit our entire community.
What a relief!
A true 'win-win-win' solution, or so I and many others believed!
-------------------------
Now fast forward a bit;
The late Councillor Joan Beardsley made a remarkable admission during a public meeting of the Greenways Advisory Committee.
Beardsley stated that she and 3 other Council members HAD ALREADY COMMITTED to vote $8 million for Chuckanut Ridge, before the ballot was passed!
Although she later retracted her statement, the damage was done.
Barbara Ryan openly admitted there had been an agreement reached with south side supporters to that effect.
The two other Council members implicated -Messrs Bornemann and Knutson - denied they had done any such thing!
Who was lying?
There is no proof, of course, at least at the time, so what to do?
Wait and see.
Now comes Mr Knutson with his confession. [Note Bornemann remains strangely silent, but watch what he does]
This year, Both Ryan and Bornemann volunteered for the Parks & Recreation Committee, where they hope to mount a last-ditch stand to rescue their pet Greenways acquisition, Chuckanut Ridge.
Already, they have delayed adoption of the South Side portion of the Greenways Strategic Plan, in hopes that somehow, someway, they can finagle more money for Chuckanut Ridge!
Now, that is truly remarkable!
And sad.
Barbara & Terry will likely fail in these efforts, as they richly deserve to do.
But, hope springs eternal with Gene Knutson's new memory.
Gene, wants to please every one, but he risks pleasing no one if he continues to support his previous collusion with Barbara & Terry.
And, Gene does love Greenways, Bellingham and being in office as long as possible!
There is no denying any of those things.
I would not be surprised if Gene thought he could still become a hero on acquiring Chuckanut Ridge
After all, Barbara's attempt at promoting the so-called 'Knutson Kompromise' was a brazen, if clumsy, attempt to involve his ego in this nefarious collusion.
And, it nearly worked!
That is why Gene Knutson needs to step away from this sorry business and re-establish his own credibility!
-----------------
As the title promises,
"lies' were the fictions pre-sold to wild-eyed southside Chuckanut Ridge advocates, who will not be mollified if these are not delivered.
'damn lies' refer to those foisted upon the voting public in a deception of truly troubling proportions.
'plain levy language' means just that; what the public was told, what they believe and what they voted for.
You tell me which of these three concepts deserve to be sustained, and which need to be severely dealt with!
Do the right thing, Gene, and recuse yourself from these stupid shenanigans!
If you'll do that, I might even vote for you again.
Of course, there may be no choice, unless you voluntarily take a break from local politics.
Such is the power of incumbency in little ole Bellingham.
Hey, you 2nd Ward folks; isn't there someone out there who is willing to run for this important office, and treat it as such?
-----------------------------
Sunday, February 22, 2009
America: A Place You Can Rant!
Is this a great country or what?
Folks can rant over whatever they want with relative impunity.
Hey, it's our right, isn't it?
Now, even a two-bit wall street TV personality, with a penchant for ranting has created what may be his 15 minutes of fame, as Andy Warhol might say.
In a selfish tirade about imagined injustice to himself, this particular ranter chose to zero in on the home foreclosure rescue plan, saying he didn't want to pay for his neighbor's supposed advantage in maybe qualifying for a home loan renegotiation.
Huh?
Some neighborliness!
Who wants a neighbor like that?
While this particular rant does resonate among many who have been more prudent or fortunate, its very mean spiritedness undermines what its message may be.
It's too bad that political demagogues actually rise to echo this rant because that is not helpful to the home loan rescue plan's success, or its perceived chances for success - which at this stage is just as important.
I suspect White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs may have been right when he opined this particular ranter had not bothered to even read what he was ranting about.
And, the offer to help him through the plain language of the measure was accompanied by an offer of a cup of coffee - decaf.
That last element is instructive in analyzing many tirades that come to be called rants.
That is because they often contain equal parts of ignorance and emotion.
But, you know, our democracy is actually built for this kind of abuse and questioning, ironically because of the very wide-spread publicity it attracts.
A moderating effect usually transpires as calmer heads evaluate such rants and relegate them to whatever recycle bin is appropriate.
During times of such dire national concern it is a comfort to know that most Americans remain the caring human beings they are and have always been!
Lord knows, I've had a rant or two myself, and sometimes it does help to let off steam on some matter of frustration.
But, to do that kind of rant in what amounts to hollering 'fire' in a crowded building, seems mainly irresponsible and reprehensible.
I hope our society evaluates this particular rant that way, because that is richly deserved!
Certainly, this ranter should not benefit from his 15 minutes of fame, and thereby encourage other such stupid -but legal- acts.
But, who knows what evil lies in the heart of men/
Only the Shadow knows.
Folks can rant over whatever they want with relative impunity.
Hey, it's our right, isn't it?
Now, even a two-bit wall street TV personality, with a penchant for ranting has created what may be his 15 minutes of fame, as Andy Warhol might say.
In a selfish tirade about imagined injustice to himself, this particular ranter chose to zero in on the home foreclosure rescue plan, saying he didn't want to pay for his neighbor's supposed advantage in maybe qualifying for a home loan renegotiation.
Huh?
Some neighborliness!
Who wants a neighbor like that?
While this particular rant does resonate among many who have been more prudent or fortunate, its very mean spiritedness undermines what its message may be.
It's too bad that political demagogues actually rise to echo this rant because that is not helpful to the home loan rescue plan's success, or its perceived chances for success - which at this stage is just as important.
I suspect White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs may have been right when he opined this particular ranter had not bothered to even read what he was ranting about.
And, the offer to help him through the plain language of the measure was accompanied by an offer of a cup of coffee - decaf.
That last element is instructive in analyzing many tirades that come to be called rants.
That is because they often contain equal parts of ignorance and emotion.
But, you know, our democracy is actually built for this kind of abuse and questioning, ironically because of the very wide-spread publicity it attracts.
A moderating effect usually transpires as calmer heads evaluate such rants and relegate them to whatever recycle bin is appropriate.
During times of such dire national concern it is a comfort to know that most Americans remain the caring human beings they are and have always been!
Lord knows, I've had a rant or two myself, and sometimes it does help to let off steam on some matter of frustration.
But, to do that kind of rant in what amounts to hollering 'fire' in a crowded building, seems mainly irresponsible and reprehensible.
I hope our society evaluates this particular rant that way, because that is richly deserved!
Certainly, this ranter should not benefit from his 15 minutes of fame, and thereby encourage other such stupid -but legal- acts.
But, who knows what evil lies in the heart of men/
Only the Shadow knows.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Gristle: Excellent GMA Article
---------------
I think Tim Johnson's take is one of the best I've seen.
It argues to the heart of the matter of land use planning, illustrates bad things that have happened because of poor past policy, and does all of this succinctly and clearly..
Of course there are always some who will disagree, so I will merely reprint this Gristle with the author's permission, so that others may read it for themselves.
-------------------
Wednesday, Feb 18, 20009
The Gristle: Exurbia
EXURBIA: The syllogism underlying the hot debate on population growth euphemized as Whatcom 2031 goes something like this: The public is compelled to pay some portion—by way of infrastructure (roads, etc.) and costly, ongoing support services (police, etc.)—for growth that is lawfully authorized. The public in general doesn’t care to fund any expansion of these costly services (and, moreover, vehemently dislikes the impacts of growth). Therefore, the smallest amount of growth that is lawful should be authorized.
The Gristle won’t debate the wisdom or appeal of this logic, except to note that, at some level, it misses the point. The point of forecasting population growth is (or should be) to best prepare the community for what is likely to occur.
Set the growth forecast large, and you do compel the unwilling public to pay large; set the forecast small, and you may fail to best plan the places where, and the densities at which, larger numbers might reasonably go. Here we enter the sunlight of informed land use policy.
Alas, actual population growth is not entirely ours alone to know—people elsewhere are mobile and able to move here to the extent of their interests and means. Our distant forecasts neither encourage nor discourage their interests; and we must expect that whatever forces drew us to Cascadia by turns in the numbers in which we arrived will continue to operate similarly on others.
Population forecasts therefore inform but are no substitute for effective land use policy.
Dick Morrill, emeritus professor of geography at the University of Washington and an expert in urban demography, observed recently that the population of the Pacific Northwest has quadrupled since 1950, a bursting expansion unseen elsewhere in the United States in the same period.
“The pattern of growth 2000-2009 is the same as from 1990-2000, overwhelmingly suburban,” Morrill writes.
“These 50 years of expansion are viewed by critics as classic ‘urban sprawl,’ but this is not mainly true,” Morrill cautions. “Rather it has mostly been urban growth necessary to accommodate a population four times as large, another 2.3 million people. Perhaps surprising to some, the average density, which did decline from 1950 to 1970, in the postwar suburban boom, has risen over the last 30 years.”
Ever the laggard, Bellingham continues to off-gas some of the lowest urban densities in Western Washington, fueled less—the Gristle’ll argue—by what we’ve planned than by forces we’ve ignored. Whatcom growth bounds past the suburbs to favor disconnected, widely separated development clusters requiring endless and costly support services.
Perhaps the most distressing piece of information from the Whatcom 2031 process is that while growth has lagged projection targets in the county’s urban centers and designated urban growth areas, it has exploded in the county’s incorporated rural areas, mushrooming more than 20 percent over the past two decades, four times the rate anticipated—the very definition of unplanned, unsupported, unconnected leap-frog development. We’ve lost an average of 1,200 ag land acres per year over the same period, the most egregious loss of agricultural capacity in Western Washington. What the community wished to preserve, we’re quickly losing.
This is exurbia at its most absurd; and the Gristle will argue it occurred not because we did not understand all-too-well that it might, but because the land use policy intended to address it was either ineffective or in some cases outright sabotaged. Now Bellingham neighborhoods begin to gird themselves for a protracted rebellion against COB’s toolkit to create urban densities, released last week—a struggle that may only exacerbate exurbia.
The situation is positively perverse.
Planners understand, all-too-well, the tools for land use reform. For the county, the biggest reform arrives from downzones (actually a restoration—a reset, if you will—of rural zoning as it existed before a County Council of knife-fighting, bomb-throwing property rightistas decided to repurpose our ag lands in the early ’90s). This would restore thousands of acres to original rural character.
Next, impact fees that not only help pay for required infrastructure and essential services, but help equalize the costs of development so that it is no longer cheaper to build in the county than in the cities. Perverse incentives in land use might then recede.
From a developer’s perspective, why suffer the restrictions of the cities when the county offers none? With these reforms in place, you’ll begin to see the infill and density strategies proposed for Whatcom’s urban centers begin to pencil as they should.
To this we’ll add Whatcom needs to effectively challenge—perhaps as a class-action with other Western Washington counties—the state’s absurd vesting privilege so that vesting laws begin to look more like those in other states. This could purge hundreds of asinine, unfortunate and inappropriate land-use proposals, some decades old, from the books. The Gristle can think of no better place to begin this legal challenge than against properties around Lake Whatcom, an impaired waterway by federal listing.
Unfortunately, as we do a head-check of the current County Council, the Gristle finds neither the will or inclination or capacity to move quickly on controversial reforms. What’s worse, we don’t see candidates stepping forward to effectively create what could be a council majority in an election year.
To their credit, the council’s planning and development committee finally, after years of wrangling, proposed during their Jan. 13 meeting to bring a discussion of transportation impact fees in front of the full council… but their measure addresses only one (and not the most costly) of development impacts. It does little to help equalize development costs in order to jumpstart city infill strategies.
But will even this reform arrive as quickly as growth appears to be arriving? And will it make a difference if it does?
----------------------
I think Tim Johnson's take is one of the best I've seen.
It argues to the heart of the matter of land use planning, illustrates bad things that have happened because of poor past policy, and does all of this succinctly and clearly..
Of course there are always some who will disagree, so I will merely reprint this Gristle with the author's permission, so that others may read it for themselves.
-------------------
Wednesday, Feb 18, 20009
The Gristle: Exurbia
EXURBIA: The syllogism underlying the hot debate on population growth euphemized as Whatcom 2031 goes something like this: The public is compelled to pay some portion—by way of infrastructure (roads, etc.) and costly, ongoing support services (police, etc.)—for growth that is lawfully authorized. The public in general doesn’t care to fund any expansion of these costly services (and, moreover, vehemently dislikes the impacts of growth). Therefore, the smallest amount of growth that is lawful should be authorized.
The Gristle won’t debate the wisdom or appeal of this logic, except to note that, at some level, it misses the point. The point of forecasting population growth is (or should be) to best prepare the community for what is likely to occur.
Set the growth forecast large, and you do compel the unwilling public to pay large; set the forecast small, and you may fail to best plan the places where, and the densities at which, larger numbers might reasonably go. Here we enter the sunlight of informed land use policy.
Alas, actual population growth is not entirely ours alone to know—people elsewhere are mobile and able to move here to the extent of their interests and means. Our distant forecasts neither encourage nor discourage their interests; and we must expect that whatever forces drew us to Cascadia by turns in the numbers in which we arrived will continue to operate similarly on others.
Population forecasts therefore inform but are no substitute for effective land use policy.
Dick Morrill, emeritus professor of geography at the University of Washington and an expert in urban demography, observed recently that the population of the Pacific Northwest has quadrupled since 1950, a bursting expansion unseen elsewhere in the United States in the same period.
“The pattern of growth 2000-2009 is the same as from 1990-2000, overwhelmingly suburban,” Morrill writes.
“These 50 years of expansion are viewed by critics as classic ‘urban sprawl,’ but this is not mainly true,” Morrill cautions. “Rather it has mostly been urban growth necessary to accommodate a population four times as large, another 2.3 million people. Perhaps surprising to some, the average density, which did decline from 1950 to 1970, in the postwar suburban boom, has risen over the last 30 years.”
Ever the laggard, Bellingham continues to off-gas some of the lowest urban densities in Western Washington, fueled less—the Gristle’ll argue—by what we’ve planned than by forces we’ve ignored. Whatcom growth bounds past the suburbs to favor disconnected, widely separated development clusters requiring endless and costly support services.
Perhaps the most distressing piece of information from the Whatcom 2031 process is that while growth has lagged projection targets in the county’s urban centers and designated urban growth areas, it has exploded in the county’s incorporated rural areas, mushrooming more than 20 percent over the past two decades, four times the rate anticipated—the very definition of unplanned, unsupported, unconnected leap-frog development. We’ve lost an average of 1,200 ag land acres per year over the same period, the most egregious loss of agricultural capacity in Western Washington. What the community wished to preserve, we’re quickly losing.
This is exurbia at its most absurd; and the Gristle will argue it occurred not because we did not understand all-too-well that it might, but because the land use policy intended to address it was either ineffective or in some cases outright sabotaged. Now Bellingham neighborhoods begin to gird themselves for a protracted rebellion against COB’s toolkit to create urban densities, released last week—a struggle that may only exacerbate exurbia.
The situation is positively perverse.
Planners understand, all-too-well, the tools for land use reform. For the county, the biggest reform arrives from downzones (actually a restoration—a reset, if you will—of rural zoning as it existed before a County Council of knife-fighting, bomb-throwing property rightistas decided to repurpose our ag lands in the early ’90s). This would restore thousands of acres to original rural character.
Next, impact fees that not only help pay for required infrastructure and essential services, but help equalize the costs of development so that it is no longer cheaper to build in the county than in the cities. Perverse incentives in land use might then recede.
From a developer’s perspective, why suffer the restrictions of the cities when the county offers none? With these reforms in place, you’ll begin to see the infill and density strategies proposed for Whatcom’s urban centers begin to pencil as they should.
To this we’ll add Whatcom needs to effectively challenge—perhaps as a class-action with other Western Washington counties—the state’s absurd vesting privilege so that vesting laws begin to look more like those in other states. This could purge hundreds of asinine, unfortunate and inappropriate land-use proposals, some decades old, from the books. The Gristle can think of no better place to begin this legal challenge than against properties around Lake Whatcom, an impaired waterway by federal listing.
Unfortunately, as we do a head-check of the current County Council, the Gristle finds neither the will or inclination or capacity to move quickly on controversial reforms. What’s worse, we don’t see candidates stepping forward to effectively create what could be a council majority in an election year.
To their credit, the council’s planning and development committee finally, after years of wrangling, proposed during their Jan. 13 meeting to bring a discussion of transportation impact fees in front of the full council… but their measure addresses only one (and not the most costly) of development impacts. It does little to help equalize development costs in order to jumpstart city infill strategies.
But will even this reform arrive as quickly as growth appears to be arriving? And will it make a difference if it does?
----------------------
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Stimulus: Show Us The Money
All the rhetoric whether there ought to be a stimulus package or not continues, despite the fact there now is a stimulus bill that provides billions in Federal Funds.
It seems incredible that some folks seem to have missed this news.
And, if the news wasn't missed, their denial continues.
So it is with a few Republican governors, who are threatening to turn down any Federal funds that might come their way.
Can't blame them for wanting to actually' walk their talk', can you?
We'll see just how far this will go, especially since the respective state legislatures also have a say in the matter.
Maybe that will just provide those highly vocal ideological individuals with the best of both worlds; claiming they would have preferred to turn down the funds, but couldn't because that pesky legislature took the money anyway.
A few days ago Paul Begala wrote a CNN column that challenged these Republican ideologues to actually 'walk their talk' by turning down the money.
Now, at least a few of them are at least talking about it.
And, with no fewer than 43 states in desperate fiscal crisis, if a few do turn down the money there would be more for other states to gratefully accept it.
Lord knows the money is needed and no other source is available.
Just in the case of Washington State, deficits are being projected in the range of $7 to $8 billions.
I've seen some estimates that say WA may become eligible for maybe $2.5 billion, a big help.
But, for those states that do accept the funds, please -please- make sure they are well-spent!
It seems incredible that some folks seem to have missed this news.
And, if the news wasn't missed, their denial continues.
So it is with a few Republican governors, who are threatening to turn down any Federal funds that might come their way.
Can't blame them for wanting to actually' walk their talk', can you?
We'll see just how far this will go, especially since the respective state legislatures also have a say in the matter.
Maybe that will just provide those highly vocal ideological individuals with the best of both worlds; claiming they would have preferred to turn down the funds, but couldn't because that pesky legislature took the money anyway.
A few days ago Paul Begala wrote a CNN column that challenged these Republican ideologues to actually 'walk their talk' by turning down the money.
Now, at least a few of them are at least talking about it.
And, with no fewer than 43 states in desperate fiscal crisis, if a few do turn down the money there would be more for other states to gratefully accept it.
Lord knows the money is needed and no other source is available.
Just in the case of Washington State, deficits are being projected in the range of $7 to $8 billions.
I've seen some estimates that say WA may become eligible for maybe $2.5 billion, a big help.
But, for those states that do accept the funds, please -please- make sure they are well-spent!
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Obama's Home Foreclosure Plan
-----------------------
Did any one get the remarkable irony inherent in the President's announcement of a $75 billion plan to benefit up 9 million borrowers for their primary homes from foreclosure?
First, the news aanouncement was made in Phoenix, Arizona -John McCain's home ground- and the state with the 3rd worst such problem.
Second, the President clearly stated the plan's guidelines, just at the time that Republicans were again questioning the whole idea.
Obama's clear response to critics:
The plan will not support irresponsible homeowners.
It will not rescue the unscrupulous or irresponsible by throwing good taxpayer money after bad loans.
It will not help speculators who took risky bets on a rising market and bought homes not to live in but to sell.
It will not reward folks who bought homes they knew from the beginning they would never be able to afford."
That sounds pretty clear to me.
But I expect this plan is way more complex than these statements can adequately cover.
----------------
There is much right with asking tough questions and that should certainly be done, as it probably has been and will continue to be.
But, there also comes a time when just asking questions doesn't accomplish very much that actually helps anyone.
These 6 questions are found in a letter from Republican Representatives Cantor and Boehner to Obama:
You decide whether these are designed to basically help -or hinder- the plan.
------------------
We'll see how this plays out and whether Congress will approve it in some version.
The point is, as much as the foreclosure problem has been described as the 'heart of our financial problem', nothing until now has actually been proposed to remedy it.
Will it work?
Probably, for those that qualify under the guidelines, but it will certainly leave many people without the help they hope for.
But, if it helps a significant number that will be worth the effort.
In the meantime, Obama again gets credit for trying something that many people seem to need and want, which is something no one else has bothered to touch.
I respect him for that, and the public should too..
----------------------
Did any one get the remarkable irony inherent in the President's announcement of a $75 billion plan to benefit up 9 million borrowers for their primary homes from foreclosure?
First, the news aanouncement was made in Phoenix, Arizona -John McCain's home ground- and the state with the 3rd worst such problem.
Second, the President clearly stated the plan's guidelines, just at the time that Republicans were again questioning the whole idea.
Obama's clear response to critics:
The plan will not support irresponsible homeowners.
It will not rescue the unscrupulous or irresponsible by throwing good taxpayer money after bad loans.
It will not help speculators who took risky bets on a rising market and bought homes not to live in but to sell.
It will not reward folks who bought homes they knew from the beginning they would never be able to afford."
That sounds pretty clear to me.
But I expect this plan is way more complex than these statements can adequately cover.
----------------
There is much right with asking tough questions and that should certainly be done, as it probably has been and will continue to be.
But, there also comes a time when just asking questions doesn't accomplish very much that actually helps anyone.
These 6 questions are found in a letter from Republican Representatives Cantor and Boehner to Obama:
You decide whether these are designed to basically help -or hinder- the plan.
• What will your plan do for the over 90 percent of homeowners who are playing and paying by the rules?
• Does your plan compensate banks for bad mortgages they should have never made in the first place?
• Will individuals who misrepresented their income or assets on their original mortgage application be eligible to get the taxpayer funded assistance under your plan?
• Will you require mortgage servicers to verify income and other eligibility standards before modifying mortgages? Watch more on the home foreclosure crisis »
• What will you do to prevent the same mortgages that receive assistance and are modified from going into default three, six or eight months later?
• How do you intend to move forward in the drafting of the legislation and who will author it?
------------------
We'll see how this plays out and whether Congress will approve it in some version.
The point is, as much as the foreclosure problem has been described as the 'heart of our financial problem', nothing until now has actually been proposed to remedy it.
Will it work?
Probably, for those that qualify under the guidelines, but it will certainly leave many people without the help they hope for.
But, if it helps a significant number that will be worth the effort.
In the meantime, Obama again gets credit for trying something that many people seem to need and want, which is something no one else has bothered to touch.
I respect him for that, and the public should too..
----------------------
Monday, February 16, 2009
Presidents Day Observations
---------
I thought these 2 cartoons from the NYTimes expressed events of the last few days pretty well:
---------------
A few somewhat dated headlines already relegated to the trash heap of faded propaganda posing as 'news'.
"... the presidential spotlight was not enough to win over [US House Representative] Schock.
“Ultimately, I listened to my constituents and I looked at what I knew about the bill and determined it was not in the best interests of my constituents,” the freshman Republican said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.
“It was not really a stimulus bill with the majority of the money going towards stimulating the economy.”
Note: the 27-year old Schock was given a courtesy plane ride to western Illinois by President Obama, who also tried to convince Schock to support the 'stimulus' package. He was obviously unsuccessful, since the bill passed with absolutely NO Republican support in the House.
One wonders just how Schock's 'constituents' really differ from Obama's; aren't both elected to serve the entire US?
------------------
GOP senators say Obama off to bad start
• STORY HIGHLIGHTS
• Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham say stimulus bill wasn't bipartisan
• Spokesman: President made "unprecedented effort to reach out to Republicans"
• Congress passes $787 billion stimulus bill with support of three Republicans
• President Obama expected to sign bill on Tuesday
With the memory of McCain's suggestion that he 'suspend' his political campaign for President until AFTER a bail-out plan could be determined, it doesn't take much sense to figure out that he was as clueless then as he is now about the kind of trouble it is a President's job to avoid -or try his damnedest to resolve!
Thank God McCain wasn't elected!
He, and his whiny SC sidekick haven't moved an inch from their neanderthal ideological positions, even when America is so desperately crying out for solutions that might be found.
What was it Nero did when Rome was burning?
Oh, one other thing.
Sufficient bipartisanship can be assumed when enough members of the 'opposition' are attracted to support a measure that may have otherwise failed!
----------------------
But, the best of the bunch I found was this from the NYTimes:
They Sure Showed That Obama
By FRANK RICH
Published: February 14, 2009
----------
AM I crazy, or wasn’t the Obama presidency pronounced dead just days ago? Obama had “all but lost control of the agenda in Washington,” declared Newsweek on Feb. 4 as it wondered whether he might even get a stimulus package through Congress. “Obama Losing Stimulus Message War” was the headline at Politico a day later. At the mostly liberal MSNBC, the morning host, Joe Scarborough, started preparing the final rites. Obama couldn’t possibly eke out a victory because the stimulus package was “a steaming pile of garbage.”
-----------
Less than a month into Obama’s term, we don’t (and can’t) know how he’ll fare as president. The compromised stimulus package, while hardly garbage, may well be inadequate. Timothy Geithner’s uninspiring and opaque stab at a bank rescue is at best a place holder and at worst a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the TARP-Titanic, where he served as Hank Paulson’s first mate.
But we do know this much. Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again.
On Wednesday, as a stimulus deal became a certainty on Capitol Hill, I asked David Axelrod for his take on this Groundhog Day relationship between Obama and the political culture.
“It’s why our campaign was not based in Washington but in Chicago,” he said. “We were somewhat insulated from the echo chamber. In the summer of ’07, the conventional wisdom was that Obama was a shooting star; his campaign was irretrievably lost; it was a ludicrous strategy to focus on Iowa; and we were falling further and further behind in the national polls.” But even after the Iowa victory, this same syndrome kept repeating itself. When Obama came out against the gas-tax holiday supported by both McCain and Clinton last spring, Axelrod recalled, “everyone in D.C. thought we were committing suicide.”
The stimulus battle was more of the same. “This town talks to itself and whips itself into a frenzy with its own theories that are completely at odds with what the rest of America is thinking,” he says.
Once the frenzy got going, it didn’t matter that most polls showed support for Obama and his economic package: “If you watched cable TV, you’d see our support was plummeting, we were in trouble. It was almost like living in a parallel universe.”
For Axelrod, the moral is “not just that Washington is too insular but that the American people are a lot smarter than people in Washington think.”
Here’s a third moral: Overdosing on this culture can be fatal. Because Republicans are isolated in that parallel universe and believe all the noise in its echo chamber, they are now as out of touch with reality as the “inevitable” Clinton campaign was before it got clobbered in Iowa. The G.O.P. doesn’t recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started. That obliviousness gives the president the opening to win more ambitious policy victories than last week’s. Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill.
A useful template for the current political dynamic can be found in one of the McCain campaign’s more memorable pratfalls. Last fall, it was the Beltway mantra that Obama was doomed with all those working-class Rust Belt Democrats who’d flocked to Hillary in the primaries. The beefy, beer-drinking, deer-hunting white guys — incessantly interviewed in bars and diners — would never buy the skinny black intellectual.
Nor would the “dead-ender” Hillary women. The McCain camp not only bought into this received wisdom, but bet the bank on it, pouring resources into states like Michigan and Wisconsin before abandoning them and doubling down on Pennsylvania in the stretch. The sucker-punched McCain lost all three states by percentages in the double digits.
The stimulus opponents, egged on by all the media murmurings about Obama “losing control,” also thought they had a sure thing. Their TV advantage added to their complacency. As the liberal blog ThinkProgress reported, G.O.P. members of Congress wildly outnumbered Democrats as guests on all cable news networks, not just Fox News, in the three days of intense debate about the House stimulus bill. They started pounding in their slogans relentlessly. The bill was not a stimulus package but an orgy of pork spending. The ensuing deficit would amount to “generational theft.” F.D.R.’s New Deal had been an abject failure.
This barrage did shave a few points off the stimulus’s popularity in polls, but its approval rating still remained above 50 percent in all (Gallup, CNN, Pew, CBS) but one of them (Rasmussen, the sole poll the G.O.P. cites). Perhaps the stimulus held its own because the public, in defiance of Washington’s condescending assumption, was smart enough to figure out that the government can’t create jobs without spending and that Bush-era Republicans have no moral authority to lecture about deficits. Some Americans may even have ancestors saved from penury by the New Deal.
In any event, the final score was unambiguous. The stimulus package arrived with the price tag and on roughly the schedule Obama had set for it. The president’s job approval percentage now ranges from the mid 60s (Gallup, Pew) to mid 70s (CNN) — not bad for a guy who won the presidency with 52.9 percent of the vote. While 48 percent of Americans told CBS, Gallup and Pew that they approve of Congressional Democrats, only 31 (Gallup), 32 (CBS) and 34 (Pew) percent could say the same of their G.O.P. counterparts.
At least some media hands are chagrined. After the stimulus prevailed, Scarborough speculated on MSNBC that “perhaps we’ve overanalyzed it, we don’t know what we’re talking about.” But the Republicans are busy high-fiving themselves and celebrating “victory.” Even in defeat, they are still echoing the 24/7 cable mantra about the stimulus’s unpopularity. This self-congratulatory mood is summed up by a Wall Street Journal columnist who wrote that “the House Republicans’ zero votes for the Obama presidency’s stimulus ‘package’ is looking like the luckiest thing to happen to the G.O.P.’s political fortunes since Ronald Reagan switched parties.” There hasn’t been this much delusional giddiness in these ranks since Monica Lewinsky promised a surefire Republican sweep in the 1998 midterms.
Not all Republicans are so clueless, whether in Congress or beyond. Charlie Crist, the moderate Florida governor who appeared with the president in his Fort Myers, Fla., town-hall meeting last week, has Obama-like approval ratings in the 70s. Naturally, the party’s hard-liners in Washington loathe him.
Their idea of a good public face for the G.O.P. is a sound-bite dispenser like the new chairman, Michael Steele, a former Maryland lieutenant governor. Steele’s argument against the stimulus package is that “in the history of mankind” no “federal, state or local” government has ever “created one job.” As it happens, among the millions of jobs created by the government are the federal investigators now pursuing Steele for alleged financial improprieties in his failed 2006 Senate campaign.
This G.O.P., a largely white Southern male party with talking points instead of ideas and talking heads instead of leaders, is not unlike those “zombie banks” that we’re being asked to bail out. It is in too much denial to acknowledge its own insolvency and toxic assets. Given the mess the country is in, it would be helpful to have an adult opposition that could pull its weight, but that’s not the hand America has been dealt.
As Judd Gregg flakes out and Lindsey Graham throws made-for-YouTube hissy fits on the Senate floor, Obama should stay focused on the big picture in governing as he did in campaigning. That’s the steady course he upheld when much of the political establishment was either second-guessing or ridiculing it, and there’s no reason to change it now. The stimulus victory showed that even as president Obama can ambush Washington’s conventional wisdom as if he were still an insurgent.
But, as he said in Fort Myers last week, he will ultimately be judged by his results. If the economy isn’t turned around, he told the crowd, then “you’ll have a new president.” The stimulus bill is only a first step on that arduous path. The biggest mistake he can make now is to be too timid. This country wants a New Deal, including on energy and health care, not a New Deal lite. Far from depleting Obama’s clout, the stimulus battle instead reaffirmed that he has the political capital to pursue the agenda of change he campaigned on.
Republicans will also be judged by the voters. If they want to obstruct and filibuster while the economy is in free fall, the president should call their bluff and let them go at it. In the first four years after F.D.R. took over from Hoover, the already decimated ranks of Republicans in Congress fell from 36 to 16 in the Senate and from 117 to 88 in the House.
The G.O.P. is so insistent that the New Deal was a mirage it may well have convinced itself that its own sorry record back then didn’t happen either.
-------------------------
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts;
if wishes were horses, beggars might ride.;
ifs and ands were pots and pans, then we would need no tinkers.;
if wishes were fishes, there'd be no room in the river for water.
I thought these 2 cartoons from the NYTimes expressed events of the last few days pretty well:
---------------
A few somewhat dated headlines already relegated to the trash heap of faded propaganda posing as 'news'.
"... the presidential spotlight was not enough to win over [US House Representative] Schock.
“Ultimately, I listened to my constituents and I looked at what I knew about the bill and determined it was not in the best interests of my constituents,” the freshman Republican said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.
“It was not really a stimulus bill with the majority of the money going towards stimulating the economy.”
Note: the 27-year old Schock was given a courtesy plane ride to western Illinois by President Obama, who also tried to convince Schock to support the 'stimulus' package. He was obviously unsuccessful, since the bill passed with absolutely NO Republican support in the House.
One wonders just how Schock's 'constituents' really differ from Obama's; aren't both elected to serve the entire US?
------------------
GOP senators say Obama off to bad start
• STORY HIGHLIGHTS
• Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham say stimulus bill wasn't bipartisan
• Spokesman: President made "unprecedented effort to reach out to Republicans"
• Congress passes $787 billion stimulus bill with support of three Republicans
• President Obama expected to sign bill on Tuesday
With the memory of McCain's suggestion that he 'suspend' his political campaign for President until AFTER a bail-out plan could be determined, it doesn't take much sense to figure out that he was as clueless then as he is now about the kind of trouble it is a President's job to avoid -or try his damnedest to resolve!
Thank God McCain wasn't elected!
He, and his whiny SC sidekick haven't moved an inch from their neanderthal ideological positions, even when America is so desperately crying out for solutions that might be found.
What was it Nero did when Rome was burning?
Oh, one other thing.
Sufficient bipartisanship can be assumed when enough members of the 'opposition' are attracted to support a measure that may have otherwise failed!
----------------------
But, the best of the bunch I found was this from the NYTimes:
They Sure Showed That Obama
By FRANK RICH
Published: February 14, 2009
----------
AM I crazy, or wasn’t the Obama presidency pronounced dead just days ago? Obama had “all but lost control of the agenda in Washington,” declared Newsweek on Feb. 4 as it wondered whether he might even get a stimulus package through Congress. “Obama Losing Stimulus Message War” was the headline at Politico a day later. At the mostly liberal MSNBC, the morning host, Joe Scarborough, started preparing the final rites. Obama couldn’t possibly eke out a victory because the stimulus package was “a steaming pile of garbage.”
-----------
Less than a month into Obama’s term, we don’t (and can’t) know how he’ll fare as president. The compromised stimulus package, while hardly garbage, may well be inadequate. Timothy Geithner’s uninspiring and opaque stab at a bank rescue is at best a place holder and at worst a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the TARP-Titanic, where he served as Hank Paulson’s first mate.
But we do know this much. Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again.
On Wednesday, as a stimulus deal became a certainty on Capitol Hill, I asked David Axelrod for his take on this Groundhog Day relationship between Obama and the political culture.
“It’s why our campaign was not based in Washington but in Chicago,” he said. “We were somewhat insulated from the echo chamber. In the summer of ’07, the conventional wisdom was that Obama was a shooting star; his campaign was irretrievably lost; it was a ludicrous strategy to focus on Iowa; and we were falling further and further behind in the national polls.” But even after the Iowa victory, this same syndrome kept repeating itself. When Obama came out against the gas-tax holiday supported by both McCain and Clinton last spring, Axelrod recalled, “everyone in D.C. thought we were committing suicide.”
The stimulus battle was more of the same. “This town talks to itself and whips itself into a frenzy with its own theories that are completely at odds with what the rest of America is thinking,” he says.
Once the frenzy got going, it didn’t matter that most polls showed support for Obama and his economic package: “If you watched cable TV, you’d see our support was plummeting, we were in trouble. It was almost like living in a parallel universe.”
For Axelrod, the moral is “not just that Washington is too insular but that the American people are a lot smarter than people in Washington think.”
Here’s a third moral: Overdosing on this culture can be fatal. Because Republicans are isolated in that parallel universe and believe all the noise in its echo chamber, they are now as out of touch with reality as the “inevitable” Clinton campaign was before it got clobbered in Iowa. The G.O.P. doesn’t recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started. That obliviousness gives the president the opening to win more ambitious policy victories than last week’s. Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill.
A useful template for the current political dynamic can be found in one of the McCain campaign’s more memorable pratfalls. Last fall, it was the Beltway mantra that Obama was doomed with all those working-class Rust Belt Democrats who’d flocked to Hillary in the primaries. The beefy, beer-drinking, deer-hunting white guys — incessantly interviewed in bars and diners — would never buy the skinny black intellectual.
Nor would the “dead-ender” Hillary women. The McCain camp not only bought into this received wisdom, but bet the bank on it, pouring resources into states like Michigan and Wisconsin before abandoning them and doubling down on Pennsylvania in the stretch. The sucker-punched McCain lost all three states by percentages in the double digits.
The stimulus opponents, egged on by all the media murmurings about Obama “losing control,” also thought they had a sure thing. Their TV advantage added to their complacency. As the liberal blog ThinkProgress reported, G.O.P. members of Congress wildly outnumbered Democrats as guests on all cable news networks, not just Fox News, in the three days of intense debate about the House stimulus bill. They started pounding in their slogans relentlessly. The bill was not a stimulus package but an orgy of pork spending. The ensuing deficit would amount to “generational theft.” F.D.R.’s New Deal had been an abject failure.
This barrage did shave a few points off the stimulus’s popularity in polls, but its approval rating still remained above 50 percent in all (Gallup, CNN, Pew, CBS) but one of them (Rasmussen, the sole poll the G.O.P. cites). Perhaps the stimulus held its own because the public, in defiance of Washington’s condescending assumption, was smart enough to figure out that the government can’t create jobs without spending and that Bush-era Republicans have no moral authority to lecture about deficits. Some Americans may even have ancestors saved from penury by the New Deal.
In any event, the final score was unambiguous. The stimulus package arrived with the price tag and on roughly the schedule Obama had set for it. The president’s job approval percentage now ranges from the mid 60s (Gallup, Pew) to mid 70s (CNN) — not bad for a guy who won the presidency with 52.9 percent of the vote. While 48 percent of Americans told CBS, Gallup and Pew that they approve of Congressional Democrats, only 31 (Gallup), 32 (CBS) and 34 (Pew) percent could say the same of their G.O.P. counterparts.
At least some media hands are chagrined. After the stimulus prevailed, Scarborough speculated on MSNBC that “perhaps we’ve overanalyzed it, we don’t know what we’re talking about.” But the Republicans are busy high-fiving themselves and celebrating “victory.” Even in defeat, they are still echoing the 24/7 cable mantra about the stimulus’s unpopularity. This self-congratulatory mood is summed up by a Wall Street Journal columnist who wrote that “the House Republicans’ zero votes for the Obama presidency’s stimulus ‘package’ is looking like the luckiest thing to happen to the G.O.P.’s political fortunes since Ronald Reagan switched parties.” There hasn’t been this much delusional giddiness in these ranks since Monica Lewinsky promised a surefire Republican sweep in the 1998 midterms.
Not all Republicans are so clueless, whether in Congress or beyond. Charlie Crist, the moderate Florida governor who appeared with the president in his Fort Myers, Fla., town-hall meeting last week, has Obama-like approval ratings in the 70s. Naturally, the party’s hard-liners in Washington loathe him.
Their idea of a good public face for the G.O.P. is a sound-bite dispenser like the new chairman, Michael Steele, a former Maryland lieutenant governor. Steele’s argument against the stimulus package is that “in the history of mankind” no “federal, state or local” government has ever “created one job.” As it happens, among the millions of jobs created by the government are the federal investigators now pursuing Steele for alleged financial improprieties in his failed 2006 Senate campaign.
This G.O.P., a largely white Southern male party with talking points instead of ideas and talking heads instead of leaders, is not unlike those “zombie banks” that we’re being asked to bail out. It is in too much denial to acknowledge its own insolvency and toxic assets. Given the mess the country is in, it would be helpful to have an adult opposition that could pull its weight, but that’s not the hand America has been dealt.
As Judd Gregg flakes out and Lindsey Graham throws made-for-YouTube hissy fits on the Senate floor, Obama should stay focused on the big picture in governing as he did in campaigning. That’s the steady course he upheld when much of the political establishment was either second-guessing or ridiculing it, and there’s no reason to change it now. The stimulus victory showed that even as president Obama can ambush Washington’s conventional wisdom as if he were still an insurgent.
But, as he said in Fort Myers last week, he will ultimately be judged by his results. If the economy isn’t turned around, he told the crowd, then “you’ll have a new president.” The stimulus bill is only a first step on that arduous path. The biggest mistake he can make now is to be too timid. This country wants a New Deal, including on energy and health care, not a New Deal lite. Far from depleting Obama’s clout, the stimulus battle instead reaffirmed that he has the political capital to pursue the agenda of change he campaigned on.
Republicans will also be judged by the voters. If they want to obstruct and filibuster while the economy is in free fall, the president should call their bluff and let them go at it. In the first four years after F.D.R. took over from Hoover, the already decimated ranks of Republicans in Congress fell from 36 to 16 in the Senate and from 117 to 88 in the House.
The G.O.P. is so insistent that the New Deal was a mirage it may well have convinced itself that its own sorry record back then didn’t happen either.
-------------------------
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts;
if wishes were horses, beggars might ride.;
ifs and ands were pots and pans, then we would need no tinkers.;
if wishes were fishes, there'd be no room in the river for water.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Jim Webb's Great New Book
-----------------
"There is a time to pray and a time to fight. This is the time to fight." - Pastor John Peter Gabriel Muhlenburg:Sermon at Woodstock, Virginia, 1775.
-----------------
I received a most thoughtful gift for my last birthday, a book entitled "A Time to Fight', published in 2008 by Doubleday.
Readers may recognize the author, an independent minded Democrat who is now a US Senator from Virginia.
Webb comes from a military family, has degrees from the US Naval Academy and Georgetown Law School, and has served in Vietnam as a Marine Corps infantry officer, where he earned a Navy Cross, the second highest decoration in the Navy and Marine Corps for heroism in Vietnam.
Webb also earned the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts.
He is an established journalist with a straightforward and distinctively direct [blunt] writing style.
In addition to 8 previous books, Webb has authored a number of articles in various journals and newspapers, including the Marine Corps Gazette, Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute, USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.
Webb also wrote the story and was the executive producer for the 2000 movie Rules of Engagement, which starred Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson.
Older folks and students of modern US government may recall that James H. Webb also served as the Secretary of Navy under Casper Weinberger in the Reagan administration.
That post, plus lingering memories from the Vietnam era caused Webb to distance himself from the Democratic Party for 30 years, returning only after witnessing the egregious harm being caused by our last President, his administration and its ruinous policies.
Suffice to say, he was motivated to run for the US Senate in 2006 as a result, and narrowly defeated the incumbent Republican, George Allen, son of the famous Washington Redskins football coach.
Readers may also recognize Webb from his Democratic Rebuttal of President' George W. Bush's State of the Union address in 2007.
Webb has much to say that will resonate with most readers, and his unique perspectives make this book not only informative but timely and interesting.
-------------------
Sunday, February 1, 2009
America: A Fair to Middling Place
First, let me thank those folks who have been so kind in their condolences in response to my need for treatment, and also to Sam Taylor, who reported my last blog in the local paper. Sam didn't have to do that, but I appreciate him helping to get out the 'word'.
---------------------------------
Back in the days I was growing up in North Carolina, I can recall the excitement that always seemed to surround the many tobacco auction warehouses.
Tobacco, for all its bad attributes, was -and may still be- the main money crop for NC farmers.
Auction time was the pay-off for a year of hard work, and the time of reckoning for finding out whether any profits produced would be sufficient to feed and clothe families, pay off loans on seed, fertilizer and farm equipment and continue rural family businesses.
The auctioneers were invariably colorful fellows, each with his own style of rapid-fire auction talk and technique, designed to keep the transactions flowing and attract the best possible prices for the various lots of cured tobacco that were being offered for sale.
Because tobacco production was very strictly controlled, not only the yield produced, but the quality of it, were critical to its profitability.
The best tobacco always commanded the best prices, and the best prices were highly prized by the producers.
In all such auctions a range of quality was displayed for purchase, and these ranged from superior down to barely passing.
Most offerings ranged somewhere in the middle, with the phrase 'fair to middling' often used to describe it.
In other words, it was good enough to sell and use, but not the very best available, and as such it did not command the highest prices.
I got to thinking about how the 'fair to middling' phrase might be applied to our own situation here in America.
This country was actually created for everyone, even though the founders were mostly landed and wealthy white men.
And, nowadays, much talk and concern is about the so-called 'middle class' and its viability during the current recession and its projected awful consequences.
------------------
The 'stimulus' package now being debated in Congress is a good example of trying to help the middle class.
There are big differences of opinion about what measures should be included in it, and which may actually work in the way intended.
That debate is healthy, because no one really knows what might work best, or the amount needed, although there does seem to be agreement that whatever is done needs to be done without undue delay.
The 'undue delay' part amounts to an early deadline which one might consider the time a trigger is pulled; as in 'Ready, Aim, Fire'.
But, before that trigger is pulled, the Ready and the Aim parts need to be carefully hashed out and agreed upon.
That big hurry is causing lots of headaches, disagreements and consternation.
And, it doesn't help that all this vital thinking and machinations are being conducted in a fishbowl swimming with all sorts of political animals.
But, that is our system, and we need to use it to best advantage.
As much as I support President Obama and his ultra-competent administration, it won't do to just ask Congress to 'trust us' on this big initiative.
We did that the first time around with the Wall Street crowd and it hasn't worked in any way that most of us can recognize.
If the current administration is as smart and savvy as I think it is, they will actively work to create the kind of trust needed to pass such legislation, as well as insure it has the best combination of features possible.
That type of approach is the one most likely to not only gain bipartisan support, but actually work as it is intended.
If a high profile, early action like this can pass these tests, it will bode well for future ideas and initiatives as well.
-----------
Now, back to the concept of 'fair to middling' for a minute:
Any stimulus package ought to be directed, fairly at the 'middle class', not everyone who sticks their hand out.
Just like our Founders definitely decided against any more tyrannical rulers, the Govt ought to decide against gifts to the wealthy.
After all, they were the ones so caught up in short term greed -which they actively marketed on the masses- that they largely created the problem we're having.
Our current tax laws and incentives are loaded so heavily in favor of the very wealthy that it would be unconscionable to further favor that relatively small class of people.
Besides, the Bush policies have failed so miserably that to continue the same approach would border on insanity!
As far as helping the very poor with Govt assistance, that should always be a priority for improvement, regardless of any recession.
So, any 'stimulus' oriented in that direction ought to be of the long-term, sustainable type.
Here in America the 'middle class' actually represents, by far, most of our population, a fairly broad spectrum of people ranging from below the very wealthy to above those most in need.
And, that is as it should be in our type of society, which unlike countries like India have tried, hasn't fallen into a rigid 'class system' that assigns limits to what people can do with their lives.
Using a so-called 'Bell Curve' distribution, our goals ought to be having a broad curve of moderate height and steep sides, which would leave room for exceptional success and some abject failure, but mostly well-being for the vast majority of citizens.
And, there is no reason America can't achieve that kind of model somewhere in its future.
So, we ought to be clear what our ultimate objectives are before we try to fix things real quick, don't you think?
I know this idea will attract some strong disagreement, and that's OK, too.
But, consider the report not long ago that attempted to rate various countries by their relative 'happiness' based upon interviews with their people.
The result, which surprised many, was that tiny Denmark, with its exceptionally high taxes to support its social systems, rated at or near the top!
Upon inspection, most Danes felt their taxes were being well-spent by their government, as evidenced by a feeling of general satisfaction with their lives.
And this despite their less than ideal climate, high prices and modest sphere of influence in the world's affairs.
Think about it.
The Danish system has many marks of what political philosophers like to disparagingly call 'socialism', yet if the people of a country allow that to occur and actually are HAPPY with it, what is wrong with that?
It will be a long time before America ever gets close to where Denmark is on a capitalism-socialism scale, but we will likely get there anyway because that's a fairer system to most people, yet it certainly doesn't disallow capitalism and phenomenal financial success.
What better way to get the broadest possible middle class?
Plus, if people LIKE IT, what's wrong with that?
Globalization makes it harder to recognize these possibilities, because of the fierceness and urgency of competition, but in the end the very concept of sustainability will come into inevitable play and force a more realistic and rational approach to how the world -not just America- lives.
It's time to bring this semi-rant to a close, but before that I want to add that proper attention to our vital 'middle class' -of which most of us are members- is so critically important that it ought to always be uppermost in mind.
That is because the toil, production, service and caring of our middle class is the fuel that keeps America moving!
That, in turn, supports the less fortunate as much as it enables the top achievers in this country.
In the end -as it was in the beginning- we are all joined together in this experiment called 'democracy'.
Messy as hell, contentious and fraught with frustration, it is till the best system around, and all those attributes just come with the territory.
Let's don't forget that, or give up our ability to influence the outcomes we want!
---------------------------
---------------------------------
Back in the days I was growing up in North Carolina, I can recall the excitement that always seemed to surround the many tobacco auction warehouses.
Tobacco, for all its bad attributes, was -and may still be- the main money crop for NC farmers.
Auction time was the pay-off for a year of hard work, and the time of reckoning for finding out whether any profits produced would be sufficient to feed and clothe families, pay off loans on seed, fertilizer and farm equipment and continue rural family businesses.
The auctioneers were invariably colorful fellows, each with his own style of rapid-fire auction talk and technique, designed to keep the transactions flowing and attract the best possible prices for the various lots of cured tobacco that were being offered for sale.
Because tobacco production was very strictly controlled, not only the yield produced, but the quality of it, were critical to its profitability.
The best tobacco always commanded the best prices, and the best prices were highly prized by the producers.
In all such auctions a range of quality was displayed for purchase, and these ranged from superior down to barely passing.
Most offerings ranged somewhere in the middle, with the phrase 'fair to middling' often used to describe it.
In other words, it was good enough to sell and use, but not the very best available, and as such it did not command the highest prices.
I got to thinking about how the 'fair to middling' phrase might be applied to our own situation here in America.
This country was actually created for everyone, even though the founders were mostly landed and wealthy white men.
And, nowadays, much talk and concern is about the so-called 'middle class' and its viability during the current recession and its projected awful consequences.
------------------
The 'stimulus' package now being debated in Congress is a good example of trying to help the middle class.
There are big differences of opinion about what measures should be included in it, and which may actually work in the way intended.
That debate is healthy, because no one really knows what might work best, or the amount needed, although there does seem to be agreement that whatever is done needs to be done without undue delay.
The 'undue delay' part amounts to an early deadline which one might consider the time a trigger is pulled; as in 'Ready, Aim, Fire'.
But, before that trigger is pulled, the Ready and the Aim parts need to be carefully hashed out and agreed upon.
That big hurry is causing lots of headaches, disagreements and consternation.
And, it doesn't help that all this vital thinking and machinations are being conducted in a fishbowl swimming with all sorts of political animals.
But, that is our system, and we need to use it to best advantage.
As much as I support President Obama and his ultra-competent administration, it won't do to just ask Congress to 'trust us' on this big initiative.
We did that the first time around with the Wall Street crowd and it hasn't worked in any way that most of us can recognize.
If the current administration is as smart and savvy as I think it is, they will actively work to create the kind of trust needed to pass such legislation, as well as insure it has the best combination of features possible.
That type of approach is the one most likely to not only gain bipartisan support, but actually work as it is intended.
If a high profile, early action like this can pass these tests, it will bode well for future ideas and initiatives as well.
-----------
Now, back to the concept of 'fair to middling' for a minute:
Any stimulus package ought to be directed, fairly at the 'middle class', not everyone who sticks their hand out.
Just like our Founders definitely decided against any more tyrannical rulers, the Govt ought to decide against gifts to the wealthy.
After all, they were the ones so caught up in short term greed -which they actively marketed on the masses- that they largely created the problem we're having.
Our current tax laws and incentives are loaded so heavily in favor of the very wealthy that it would be unconscionable to further favor that relatively small class of people.
Besides, the Bush policies have failed so miserably that to continue the same approach would border on insanity!
As far as helping the very poor with Govt assistance, that should always be a priority for improvement, regardless of any recession.
So, any 'stimulus' oriented in that direction ought to be of the long-term, sustainable type.
Here in America the 'middle class' actually represents, by far, most of our population, a fairly broad spectrum of people ranging from below the very wealthy to above those most in need.
And, that is as it should be in our type of society, which unlike countries like India have tried, hasn't fallen into a rigid 'class system' that assigns limits to what people can do with their lives.
Using a so-called 'Bell Curve' distribution, our goals ought to be having a broad curve of moderate height and steep sides, which would leave room for exceptional success and some abject failure, but mostly well-being for the vast majority of citizens.
And, there is no reason America can't achieve that kind of model somewhere in its future.
So, we ought to be clear what our ultimate objectives are before we try to fix things real quick, don't you think?
I know this idea will attract some strong disagreement, and that's OK, too.
But, consider the report not long ago that attempted to rate various countries by their relative 'happiness' based upon interviews with their people.
The result, which surprised many, was that tiny Denmark, with its exceptionally high taxes to support its social systems, rated at or near the top!
Upon inspection, most Danes felt their taxes were being well-spent by their government, as evidenced by a feeling of general satisfaction with their lives.
And this despite their less than ideal climate, high prices and modest sphere of influence in the world's affairs.
Think about it.
The Danish system has many marks of what political philosophers like to disparagingly call 'socialism', yet if the people of a country allow that to occur and actually are HAPPY with it, what is wrong with that?
It will be a long time before America ever gets close to where Denmark is on a capitalism-socialism scale, but we will likely get there anyway because that's a fairer system to most people, yet it certainly doesn't disallow capitalism and phenomenal financial success.
What better way to get the broadest possible middle class?
Plus, if people LIKE IT, what's wrong with that?
Globalization makes it harder to recognize these possibilities, because of the fierceness and urgency of competition, but in the end the very concept of sustainability will come into inevitable play and force a more realistic and rational approach to how the world -not just America- lives.
It's time to bring this semi-rant to a close, but before that I want to add that proper attention to our vital 'middle class' -of which most of us are members- is so critically important that it ought to always be uppermost in mind.
That is because the toil, production, service and caring of our middle class is the fuel that keeps America moving!
That, in turn, supports the less fortunate as much as it enables the top achievers in this country.
In the end -as it was in the beginning- we are all joined together in this experiment called 'democracy'.
Messy as hell, contentious and fraught with frustration, it is till the best system around, and all those attributes just come with the territory.
Let's don't forget that, or give up our ability to influence the outcomes we want!
---------------------------
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