Monthly Archives: February 2009

Raising the Roof

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Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R-VT) has spent several hours as President Obama’s special guest; this state expects to receive about $900 million as details of the G.R.A.F.T. Act payouts to the states trickle into public view. The President and the U.S. Congress expect some of those funds to shore up “revenue shortfalls” in the states.

Vermont has a TWO hundred million dollar deficit looming over the next two budget years so the Democratically controlled legislature has decided to spend THREE hundred million dollars of our portion of the G.R.A.F.T. Act windfall to “stabilize” the budget.

The Speaker of the Vermont House has proposed a three-man oversight committee to assure the money is spent wisely.

Apparently that is not enough. The Democratically controlled legislature decided today to RAISE taxes by $24 million dollars in order to make up for the revenue shortfall.

Hello?

I think we just fell into Fiddler on the Roof.

“Alms for the poor, alms for the poor,” called Nahum, the beggar.

“Here, Reb Nahum, is one kopek.” Lazar Wolfe gave him the coin.

“One kopek? Last week you gave me two kopeks.”

The butcher shrugged. “I had a bad week.”

“So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?”

Vermonters are having a bad day. The unemployment rate here was 6.4% in December, before the latest round of layoffs at IBM and other Vermont companies. My wife, like so many other American workers, has had her “full time” job cut to just three days per week.

Vermonters are having a bad day but the legislature has voted itself two kopeks.

I have some (small) hope that Vermont will do the right thing on the state budget. After all, a few million is a small enough number that people will notice. I have absolutely no hope that Washington will do the right thing. Congressional action to fix the proposed 1.3 trillion dollar Federal budget comes under rule, It is easier to sell a big lie than a little one.

Watch and learn. The largest Federal budget ever proposed will be bigger when it passes.

friending

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I will admit it first: I have just the smallest touch of fuddy duddyness about me when it comes to the language.

Nancy told me that she had friended her son on Facebook.

Say what?

“‘Friending’,” she said, “is FB-speak for inviting someone to join your Friends list.” North Puffin is remote. Sometimes it takes a while for new word usage to make it here to the end of the world. Especially when we already have a really good word that does the job.

No one on FaceSpace apparently knows how to BEfriend anyone.

encarta defines befriend as to “make friends with: to be friendly to somebody, especially to somebody who has no friends and needs help.”

Friends help their friends. I like that.

The O.E.D. notes that someone cobbled befriend together in the mid-16th Century, long enough ago that most of us should know the word by now. I guess if it ain’t brandy new bright and shiny, it ain’t cool.

So what. I wear khakis and button down shirts. I am cool all the time but every couple of decades the world comes around again. And I do use social networks.

OTOH, I don’t much like verbification (heh) and I don’t much like misuse of perfectly good words. The folks on FaceSpace are people we sorta kinda know; we typically do not invest enough time in them to make them real friends.

FaceSpace is a communications tool for we who are cool. It occurs to me that we should ban from FaceSpace those who don’t know that befriending takes more than a quickie email.

Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs Related To Gaza

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President Obama has sent a memorandum to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to wit, “that it is important to the national interest to furnish assistance under the Act in an amount not to exceed $20.3 million … for the purpose of meeting unexpected and urgent refugee and migration needs … of Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza.

The rug-chewing right-handed blogdom has jumped on the initial days of the Obama presidency. They note that his first call to any head of state was to Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine, his first interview was with Al Arabia, he ordered Guantanamo Bay closed, and more. This memorandum adds to their ammunition when they say the order provides a “free ticket [here in these United States] replete with housing and food allowances to individuals who have displayed their overwhelming support of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).”

Which doesn’t appear to be the case. Having read the actual Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 , I do wonder if the rug-chewing right has choked on a piece of Persian carpet that was never intended to fly here.

The MRAA sets U.S. policy for the involuntary return of refugees and for whatever overseas assistance to refugees and displaced persons we will grant.

We have, after all, put a fair amount of money out in the past to help refugee succor and resettlement all over the world for peeps who stayed if not in their own countries at least on their own continents. The Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and the Boxing Day Tsunami it caused are a case in point. Our response to the humanitarian needs in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand added billions of dollars to our own deficit.

Interestingly, Obama did not need to sign the order in the first place. Then-President Clinton delegated the functions and authorities conferred upon the President by the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act to the Secretary of State, who he further authorized to redelegate those functions and authorities.

On the other hand, the rug chewing right has a serious point. We have a long history of admitting likely enemies to the U.S. under our open doors policy to accept and care for the World’s sick, the poor, the downtrodden wherever they may be. This isn’t even the first time we’ve paid for them to come here and paid for them to live (c.f. Mariel). It is, however, an expansion of the liberal belief that the reaching out of hands, the mere exposure to U.S. culture will change an enemy to a friend.

Of course, that would be the same liberal belief that encourages the segregation of peoples within the U.S. so that their cultures not be lost or assimilated here.

Press “1” for English.

In this case, I hope I am indeed right although other political prognosticators are so often not and I may have fallen into the trap of believing the Administration would follow the law rather than some cherished liberal wish. If we do indeed relocate thousands of armed insurrectionists to poor enclaves in American cities, it will be treason.

And it might very well kill you and you and you.

And me.

In an interesting coincidence, Bablefish is sure today is “FATTY Tuesday.”

ADD?

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Attention to Deficit Disorder.

The 800 pound gorilla put on a wee bit of weight last week when Congress added the G.R.A.F.T. Act to the TARP payments.

Now that President Obama has hit his bailout and stimulus balls right over the fence, he needs something else to do. See, the economy is fixed. People are back at work, the Iraq war is over, American highway bridges have all been replaced, and New Orleans is completely rebuilt.

The President announced his new goal of the week yesterday. He will cut the deficit at least in half by the end of his term.

We owe an eye-popping $10.8 trillion in gross national debt; that amount will sooner or later come due on our personal and corporate income taxes, half of which already pay solely for the military and the interest on the debt. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the national debt has just about doubled since 2000. The AP reported that the $700 billion bailout alone will send the national debt over $11 trillion. The U.S. Government has never been debt free; we have owed money every year since 1791. In fact, only in the boom years of 1835-1836 has the debt been only $35,000 or so. Every other year but 1837 we have paid interest on millions, billions, or trillions of dollars of debt. I am not Carl Sagan, R.I.P.

NBC News reported yesterday that President Obama acknowledged there is a deficit and that it is as large as it has ever been. Mr. Obama’s budget outline, which he will release on Thursday, will include deficit reduction as a centerpiece in his plans to deliver national health care and national energy changes.

The mechanism to cut the deficit? No more spending in Iraq and higher taxes.

Oh, and by the way? We’re not cutting the actual deficit. We’re cutting the rate at which the deficit increases. You might say we’re sort of reducing how much we borrow. I guess the 800 pound gorilla is still in the corner after all.

My friend “Bob” suggested that we call this piece “DAD” for Deficit Attention Disorder. I would except that sounds so paternalistic. The Obama Administration would never be paternalistic, would it?

Change. It’s what we do™.

Andy Rooney talked about The Times US presidential rankings on 60 Minutes last night. “Democracy is a great idea,” he said, “but I have always thought we have a great president hidden somewhere in the United States and we’ve just never found him. Or her.”

Uplifting? Not.

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The Arts should uplift us in times of trouble and they do. Sometimes the Arts also needs to clothe the Emperor. Or to point out that he is naked.

This is one of those times.

Unlike less than 28% of Americans polled and 60% of the United States Senate, I recognize the Stimulus Package as the Generations Ransack America’s Financial Trust Act.

Many experts, including Congress’ own Congressional Budget Office, say the stimulus bill will at best do no good.

Many experts, including me, say the stimulus bill will hurt the economy in the long run.

Apparently common sense makes more cents in the Arts than in Washington. I had some infinitesimally small hope that Congress would do what Congress does best: lock the grid and spend the remainder of this session worrying about Alex Rodriguez’ steroid use. Nonetheless the House vote was 246-183 and the Senate voted 60-38 to spend more in a single bill than the total cost of the War in Iraq. Interestingly, the G.R.A.F.T. Act is expected to cost less than the total cost of World War II, adjusted for inflation. President Obama signed the measure in Denver today.

The bill includes some potentially good news for the Arts since the $50 million of National Endowment for the Arts funding dropped earlier was preserved in the final version of the package approved by both houses on Friday.

Truth be told, I’d rather give up the stimulus and go back to the normal funding scramble. After all, the NEA appropriation is not “new” money; it is simply a restoration of an item that was cut.

The New York Times reported that Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-NY and Congressional Arts Caucus co-chair, said, “If we’re trying to stimulate the economy, and get money into the Treasury, nothing does that better than art.”

Arts advocacy groups report that every dollar of NEA money generates an additional seven dollars from public and private supporters. And every dollar in the local Creative Economy improves life here in Franklin County.

That means the NEA appropriation could have stood on its own merits as it has in past budgets.