PLAYING THE
REAL ESTATE BUBBLE (IF THERE IS ONE)
Doug Simpkinson: “My wife and I played the
real estate bubble by selling our house in the Silicon Valley and buying one
slightly farther away (but bigger, in 3 acres of forest) for $100,000
less. This way we still own our (nicer)
house, but we've extracted six figures from the bubble. Sort of like selling half of your TiVo stock after it shoots up, but imagine the remaining
half of your TiVo stock has a mountain view. Or some other horribly
strained metaphor.”
REASONS NOT TO
FEEL STUPID KEEPING SOME OF YOUR MONEY SAFE
Click
here.
Very entertaining and frightening at the same
time.
Note
that our accumulated National Debt since 1776 will have reached $10 trillion or
so by the time President Bush leaves office – up from under one trillion when Ronald
Reagan took office. Of the $10 trillion,
$8 trillion or so will have been racked up under just three presidents: Ronald
Reagan, George Bush, and George Bush. (Of course, with inflation, it's
natural that 21st Century deficits would dwarf 19th
Century deficits. What really matters is
the size of the Debt in proportion to the size of the economy – and which way
that ratio is headed. The debt was about
30% of GDP when Reagan took office, will be about 75% when Bush leaves – and is
headed in the wrong direction.)
Meanwhile,
the ratios of consumer debt are higher also.
Our homes “appreciate” (even though they grow no bigger) and we borrow
and spend that newfound “wealth.”
It
may all work out fine. It generally
does. But not always.
[So? So? So, as expensive as they are, I’m not selling
my TIPS or my oil stocks or my PCL, all of which might be good hedges against
inflation.]
And now, just in case you’ve
not already read them . . .
TWO VOICES ON
THE TRAGIC CHIAVO MATTER
The
first was Congressman John Conyers on the floor of the House Sunday:
By passing this bill, in this form, we
will be intruding in the most sensitive possible family decision at the most
ill-opportune time. It will be hard for this member [of Congress] to envision a
case or circumstance that Congress will not be willing to involve itself in
under this precedent.
By passing legislation which takes sides in an ongoing legal
dispute, we will be casting aside the principle of separation of powers. We
will be abandoning our role as a serious legislative branch, and take on the
role not only of Judge, but of Doctor, Priest, Parent and Spouse.
By passing legislation which wrests
jurisdiction away from a state judge and sends it to a single preselected federal court, we will abandon any pretense of
federalism. The concept of a Jeffersonian Democracy as envisioned by the founders, and the states as "laboratories of
democracy" as articulated by Justice Brandeis will lie in tatters.
By passing this legislation, in the
complete absence of hearings or a committee markup, and with no opportunity for
amendments, in complete violation of what we used to call "regular
order," we will send a signal that the usual rules of conduct and
procedure no longer apply when they are inconvenient to the Majority Party.
By passing this legislation, and taking this sensitive decision
away from a spouse and giving it to a federal court, we will make it abundantly
clear that all the talk last year about marriage being a "sacred trust
between a man and a woman" was just that – talk.
My friends on the other side of the
aisle will declare that this legislation is about principle, and morals and
values.
But if this legislation was only about
principle, why would the Majority party be distributing talking points in the
other body declaring that "this is a great political issue"
and that by passing this bill, "the pro-life base will be excited."?
If the president really cared about the issue of the removal of
feeding tubes, why would he have signed a bill in Texas that allows hospitals to save money by
removing feeding tubes over a family's objection?
If we really cared about saving lives, why would the Congress
sit idly by while 40 million Americans have no health insurance, or while the
president tries to cut billions of dollars from Medicaid – a virtual lifeline
for millions of our citizens?
When all is said and done, this bill
is about taking sides in a legal dispute. Last year, the Majority passed two
bills stripping the federal courts of their power to review cases involving the
Defense of Marriage Act and the Pledge of Allegiance because they feared they
would read the Constitution too broadly. Last month, the Majority passed a
class action bill that took jurisdiction away from state courts because they
feared they would treat corporate wrongdoers too harshly. Today we are sending
a case from the state courts to the federal courts even though it is the most
extensively litigated "right to die" case in our nation's history.
There is only one principle at stake
here - manipulating the court system to achieve pre-determined substantive
outcomes. By passing this law, it should be obvious to all that we are no
longer a nation of laws, but have been reduced to a nation of men. By passing
this law, we will be telling our friends abroad that even though we expect them
to live by the rule of law, Congress can ignore it when it doesn't suit our
needs. By passing this law we diminish our nation as a democracy and
ourselves as legislators.
The
second is my pal and classmate Jesse Kornbluth, in
his blog . . .
.
The Passion of Terri Schiavo
March 21, 2005 | 6:00 p.m.
The first thing you do
when you are waging war against law and reason is to ratchet up the language. . . . [C]onsider
the words of Randall
Terry, former leader
of Operation Rescue – and now the spokesman for Terri Schiavo's
parents:
Yes, hate is good ... if a Christian voted for Clinton, he sinned against God. It's that
simple. Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty,
we are called by God to conquer this country...
There it is, right out in
the open. The kind of country they want is everything our Founding Fathers
labored to avoid.
A Few Facts You May Not Know
March 21, 2005 | 6:00 p.m.
1) The bill passed by Congress and signed by the President
applies ONLY
to Terri Schiavo.
2) The President's decision to cut short his vacation and rush back to Washington made no
medical difference to Terri Schiavo:
White House officials acknowledged that the final bill could
have been flown to Mr. Bush in Texas,
a round trip of six or seven hours that probably would have made no difference
in whether Ms. Schiavo lives. Doctors say she can
survive for up to two weeks without the liquid meals that have sustained her
for 15 years.
Where George Bush Really Stands
March 21, 2005 | 6:00 p.m.
Just last week, the Houston Chronicle reports, Texas
pulled the plug on an indigent African-American baby who seemed considerably
more "alive" than Terri Schiavo. Who signed that bill? Then-Governor
George Bush. Read on:
The 17-pound, nearly 6-month-old boy wiggled with eyes open, his
mother said, and smacked his lips. Then at 2 p.m. Tuesday, a medical staffer at
Texas Children's Hospital gently removed the breathing tube that had kept Sun
Hudson alive since his birth Sept. 25. Cradled by his mother, he took a few
breaths, and died.
How does this Texas
law work? Hospitals can stop life-sustaining care – no matter what the
patient's family wants. It just takes a doctor's recommendation and approval by
a hospital's ethics committee. The family then has 10 days to find a facility
that will take the patient. For a poor patient with little or no insurance,
this is, in essence, a death sentence.