Letters to the Editor
aveutter
Published Letters: 198 Editor's Choice: 32
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Plenty of water in the West, but more politics than anything
[Read the article: How to solve America's water problems]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Each and every time we have a dry year, the prognosticators in California are sure it will last, and it never does. Our source of water has been consistently ample, the snowpack in the Sierras, and the Colorado River. The problem in California is that the agricultural interests get first interest, and they sell what they don't need to the coastal municipal districts. This also creates a sitution in which the central part of California, where most of the growing is done, is technically water wealthy. That encourages urban sprawl.
Claims that California is going to dry up and blow away are false. The decimated Owens Valley is coming back, after LA stole their water nearly a hundred years ago, and Mono Lake is returning to life. Of course one of the secrets of water management is that each time a new subdivision goes in one of these areas, prime farmland is covered over. Agriculture uses more water than the homes which replace it. The secret to making it all work, is fruits and vegetables imported from foreign countries, but how long can that last? Meanwhile it's a cheap way of getting their water...
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The Free Gasoline for Everybody Party
[Read the article: Time for an economic steroid shot?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Rather than invading Iraq, we should have taken the 1 billion dollars that war will cost, and given it to the American consumer to spend on their energy needs. That subisdy would have rippled through the economy, naturally. It would have also added new tax revenues to government, since most people pay more in sales tax in a year than they pay in income tax.
What are the comparative cost benefits of having Uncle Sam borrow $100 for Joe Consumer, instead of making Joe C go out and borrow the money himself? The first advantage is that payment can be deferred indefinitely, after a time inflation will have reduced that debt to nothing. Secondly rates are much lower, the government need only issue bonds at the prime rate, plus half a percent, and give the proceeds to Main Street.
We all know inflation is a good thing, which is why the Fed has inflation targets. Deflation is the enemy.
While promising to protect the American people, this government went to war in Iraq, creating a trillion dollars of new spending. Check the chart of the DJIA in 2003 when the index bottomed, at exactly the time the war started. Half a million Iraqis died so that the Bush economic team could force feed a trillion dollars into the coffers of the military and defense companies which call Wall Street home. Very little of it trickled down to Main Street.
That's the old Plutocracy at work.
It's not too late for Democrats to advocate deficit spending for goods and services vital to the health and well being of the American people. It would have made a lot more sense to make a meaningful fiscal stimulus package before Bush went off on his crusade, and they drove the price of oil to $100. As a sidelight, Congressional Republicans were considering a $500 energy subsidy as a campaign ploy, in 2004. Why stop there?
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Graft and corruption are still the story
[Read the article: The Bush legacy: No fat for the lean years]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There were a number of pundits who remarked that Clinton had left Bush with the money to conduct a great deal of mischief. And while Iraq seems like the primary culprit, that was a smokescreen for the graft and corruption that put defense dollars directly into Republican Campaign coffers. Cunningham, Delay, et al. There are rumors to the effect that a sizable quantity of this ill gotten cash has been parked in offshore banks, primarily in the Caribbean, outside the purview of US authorities, as well as Congressional investigators. Does it matter if the name on the account is Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, or Citibank?
Before the advent of CDO's, there were Venture Capital Groups, which set up online casinos offshore, and other dummy corporations, which became fronts for laundering dirty political campaign money, and Jack Abramoff. The story of Wilkes and Cunningham is a story of these fronts, one of which received a lucrative Defense contract. More than half of their alleged corruption involved black, or (still) classified contracts.
Is anyone going to even suggest we throw open the books, on these black contracts, on Citibank and all its shady offshore operations, or is joe taxpayer just supposed to shut up and pay for it all. No, it's all going to be very convenient when Wall Street goes bust, convenient for them. And at the given moment, when the liars have all figured it out, Bernanke will step aside and let the market fall like a stone. His banker pals will get on the sell side, liek Goldman Sachs has already done, by shorting the same toxic mortgage paper that it helped to underwrite.
I would guess that right now the money center banks, and hedge funds are shorting the very stocks they bought for your retirement fund. Cheer up, they might craft a fiscal stimulus package, out of a sense of guilt, and pay us back with our own money, after they take out their fees.