Letters to the Editor
number1laing
Published Letters: 112 Editor's Choice: 9
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Econ 101
[Read the article: The corporate financiers are wrong]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Righties like to talk about the leftist domination of academia but they seem to be okay with Economics 101 as it currently stands. Right now walk into any Econ 101 class and its all pro-corporate, anti-government, invisible hand, ultra free market, ultra deregulation propaganda fests. They throw up some supply demand curves on the chalkboard and then draw a line through it to show the evils of rent control and liquor licenses.
The problem is that most people's only exposure to economics theory is Econ 101 (and maybe Econ 102, for macroeconomics) and they end up living their whole life with this simplistic worldview. They don't learn the theories in Econ 201 that show the world is much more complex than they learned before. So the right wing pleas to the "free market" and "invisible hand" take root.
Econ 101 needs to be taught in a different way.
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got what they deserved
[Read the article: Historic Yankee futility]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I saw a show on ESPN the other night (and read about it here on Salon) about how the Yankees (with the help of Bloomberg and Steinbrenner's bootlick Rudy Giuliani) took the playgrounds of the poorest kids in the country to build their new monument to themselves, all rammed through the government with little time for debate and opposition. Plus there was the usual shenanigans about taxpayer cost and sweetheart deals. All built for a stadium with less seats and much higher ticket prices than the old one.
Then you throw in the way the Yankees studiously kicked Joe Torre to the curb and this is the first year without him and I'd say the Yankees flat out got what they deserved. What a flat out mess of a team. If Mike Mussina didn't have such a ridiculously out-of-character year for this era of his career they wouldn't even have gone .500. Let this be the start of another decade of futility, please.
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@btdenver
[Read the article: Historic Yankee futility]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Oh yes, and the current salary tally: Yankees, $2.45 million per win; Rays, $478,000. Fire someone, George, you'll feel better.
George isn't even in charge anymore, which is more funny. Now his sons, who are even more annoying and grumpier, are running the show. This was clear when they decided to go with Joe Girardi as manager over George's personal choice, Don Mattingly.
All indications are they chose not to go with Donnie Baseball because he was too much like Joe Torre. Indeed Donnie was being groomed to be manager from day one (and he followed Joe to LA; what else could he do? He had ties to no other team). Instead they went with Joe Girardi who went 78-84 with a $15M Marlins team, the Yankees will finish this year with about 10 wins more than that team, at a cost of only $185 million more.
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Buffett
[Read the article: Warren Buffett to the rescue?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Buffett is called an oracle with good reason, and when he says something a lot of influential people (and a lot of wannabes) listen! So I assume Buffett saw the risks in using these "financial weapons of mass destruction" and avoided them, and as such has stayed out of trouble. So, if he did it, why didn't the smarty pants running Lehman, Bear, Morgan, Merrill, etc. do the same? I know they have to show growth every quarter, and need short term profits, but isn't this a fundamental flaw of Wall Street? This need for greed in the present killed off these companies for the future.
I listened to a smidge of Bernanke's testimony today and it worried me. He kept saying it was important to get the credit markets working again because that is crucial to the economy. I understand its crucial to the economy, but the way he was framing it, its imperative for this to happen so Americans can keep feeding endlessly from the credit trough. More auto loans, more credit cards, more big mortgages. I realize these guys operate on a plane of existence above us all and we are just lowly serfs meant to consume as much as possible, but is this really what a strong American economy is? An economy where an American can load up on as much debt as humanly possible and beyond?
I don't think so.
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Iraq
[Read the article: Dick Morris: A sign of the times ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The McCainiacs have to be kicking themselves -- they thought that the "success" of the surge would turn their biggest liability into a decisive plus. In fact, all the surge has done is demote the Iraq issue in the minds of voters.
It goes beyond a "well the surge has helped us win, let's get out of there" type of thing. Americans really hate this war and want to leave. The reason Democrats were voted into office in 2006 was to get us out, and the reason the 110th Congress has such low poll numbers is because they haven't ended the war. This has been the attitude of the country for years, probably since about 2005.
The fact that McCain still trumpets how awesome the hated surge is and how Americans want to "win" (without defining what "win" is) is really dysfunctional. The hatred of the war cuts across party lines, race, class, etc. In a functioning system, a candidate would see this and race to give people what they want: an exit. But, this is not a functioning system, because not only has McCain ran to this losing issue, but the media has praised him for doing so and said it is his "strength".
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The DHS
[Read the article: How to fix the Department of Homeland Security]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]DHS was created as a monument to the contractor state, a shell of an agency that has armies of hacks and cronies designate private (and usually Republican) companies to do the actual work. It was never designed to be efficient, nimble, clean, or competent. It was designed to propel the contractor state through the 21st century, providing a rich pipeline of taxpayer money to Republican donors and cronies.
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I was thinking...
[Read the article: Who did Sarah Palin vote for?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]that she was referring to the Senate race. Not so good to admit she voted for a convicted felon. But yea, I chucked when I heard her say she believes in a right to privacy. What a dingbat.