Letters to the Editor
Mr. Jones
Published Letters: 102 Editor's Choice: 10
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Regarding Hearings and accountability.
[Read the article: The role of political reporters]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I would love to see some Congressional hearings dissecting political reporting/coverage and what drives it. Then, I'd like to see these "reporters" fired and replaced with professionals.
So you want elected politicians to investigate how the press reports election politics? Don't you think there might be some conflict of interest issues here? Besides that, can't you imagine some obvious major drawbacks to this scheme?
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How does one know how this debt is spent?
[Read the article: The plastic ATM machine]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Unexpected health care costs may be the primary cause of non-discretionary credit card debt. Second on this list is home repairs. The rising costs of homes has pushed inflation higher into the home repair business. A new roof is simply going to cost you more than it did ten years ago. There is element of necessity in this, spending to repair a leaky roof, or adding a granny flat, because granny cannot afford a decent health facility.
This is an excellent point. But how are we to know the degree to which non-discretionary spending forms a major portion of borrowing? In my personal experience, out of the 20 or so neighbors that I know personally, one bought a Cadillac Escalade, another bought a new power boat, and the other is adding an entertainment room onto his house; all paid for by credit cards! I was dumbstruck.
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I'm sorry to argue numbers but I don't get it.
[Read the article: The plastic ATM machine]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You may put up the money for a Cadillac using a credit card, but you aren't going to carry it on your balance.
This particular neighbor claims to have walked into a used-car dealer and put a late model $25k Cadillac on his two credit cards. Aside from the fact that he would be a fool to carry it at such a high interest rate, why isn't this possible? Incredibly, his rationale was that he's been wanting one during the housing boom but he waited too long to re-finance. But he wanted it so what the heck, he got it anyway.
Rising home asset prices in this enviroment actually punish the homeowner. Assuming home prices drop 50% and your employment situation doesn't change, (as they didn't change much on the way up) your percentage of equity, assuming you have some skin in the game, goes up.
Sorry for being dense but how is this again? If I owe $100k on a house that's worth $400k, that's $300k equity @ 75%, right? If prices drop 50% and I now owe $100k on a $200k house my equity is $100k or 50%. Seems like my percentage of equity goes down when prices drop, as expected.
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I suppose that I'm hopelessly naive.
[Read the article: Oh no, is Apple's movie rental plan going to suck?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The vast, vast majority of people I know are interested in seeing a movie once and that's about it. Plus, in spite of half the people I know being Netflix members, we haven't yet hatched a scheme to save on monthly fees by secretly sharing disks among ourselves. That's because the price is so reasonable for the service they provide this kind of malfeasance is more trouble than it's be worth. Given these facts, would it be so terrible to just be able to download a movie and watch it without any of these paranoid restrictions at all? Wouldn't such a service immediately trump all others and increase the provider's market share. Wouldn't movie studios make more money as the royalties from a larger customer base roll in? Sure some pathetic cinemaphile somewhere would get the 5000 title library of his dreams for a pittance but so what? Those guys are a molecule in the bucket.
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More similar to the flight 655 incident.
[Read the article: The U.S. military inflicts more damage on its own credibility]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The first thing I recalled wasn't the Gulf of Tonkin but when the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988. Iranian gunboats had been behaving similarly, putting the ship's inexperienced crew on edge. They mistook the radar blip for an incoming fighter and launched missiles. What a disaster.
Anyway, I'm reluctant to place the blame on the military in this case. When you have large US forces maneuvering around in semi-hostile waters, with 20-year olds manning the stations, how can you not get into these situations. A midshipman mistaking a foreign voice on the radio as Iranian and coming from the boats seems far less serious than mistaking a passenger jet from an incoming fighter and shooting it down, yet that is exactly what happened. I could believe that this was the crew's initial determination. I'll save my criticism for the people who put them in this situation.
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Speedboats are the only thing that has worked so far.
[Read the article: The U.S. military inflicts more damage on its own credibility]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You really have to be a kool-aid drinker
to entertain the idea that five Iranian speedboats could credibly threaten a US Navy warship.
No, no. You'd have to be nuts to fly an attack aircraft or sail a large ship at the US Navy because that's the threat they're designed for. The only thing that's done any serious damage to US Navy in the Gulf was the speedboat attack on the USS Cole. You can bet that has been drummed into the young sailor's heads.
And it isn't obvious from the shots I've seen that the boats are Iranian at first. It's the confusion that takes over.
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The surreal part is...
[Read the article: The grave Iranian threat to world peace]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sabers are being rattled in the Middle East. The most interesting and important election in my memory is in full swing. The economy is close to a serious breaking point. And CNN's lead story is...
"Police: Missing Marine bought, never used bus ticket"
Holy Moley.