Selective choice of topics

In Maine, there’s a local storyteller named, John McDonald. McDonald, who has acquired a measure of fame, spinning tales about life in the Pine Tree State, also hosts a Saturday/Sunday morning talk show on WGAN, Maine’s right-wing, AM blowtorch. He's done so for over a decade.

I’m assuming his show is popular, otherwise it wouldn’t stay on the air. McDonald, who bills himself as a politically independent, more often than not, comes down on the side of conservatives, at least that’s my take. In addition, the callers to his show, which are made up of a stable of the faithful, tend to be Bush-loving, gun-toting and I’d say, TABOR-worshipping.

I like McDonald. He’s funny, never takes himself too seriously and always manages to interject some story, or anecdote from Maine, which makes listening to his show worthwhile. Having said that, I do find many of the callers a tad over the top.

Take for instance today. I didn’t catch the start of his show, but the topic must have been Hillary Clinton, because when I tuned in after 8 am, caller, after caller, was offering their own version of Clinton-bashing, taking potshots at both the former president and his wife, who aspires to be president.

Personally, I’m no fan of Hillary. I think far too many Democrats are making a big mistake thinking that Mrs. Clinton has a chance against any Republican that gets the GOP nod. My problems with Senator Clinton, however, have nothing to do with her being a powerful woman, the fact that she’s running for president, or that she’s married to Bill. I also don’t go apoplectic when I hear her name, like most conservatives do.

My issues are with her policies on Iraq, the fact that I don’t think she’s far left enough and that she tries too hard to outflank conservatives on many issues. With that said, I don’t understand the vitriol and hatred that this woman (as well as her husband, for that matter) engenders from those self-identfying as conservative Republicans.

I found it interesting that while McDonald considers himself politically neutral, why he didn’t choose for his Saturday topic, the news about Rudy Giuliani?

What news am I referring to? Well, let’s start with the story that was reported a few years ago and subsequently disappeared down the memory hole, about then Mayor Giuliani’s expenses associated with maintaining an extra-marital affair with the current Mrs. Giuliani, while he was still married to wife #2. There were also some expenses "tucked away," related to his aborted Senate run, in 2000.

Back in 2000, the New York papers broke the story that the city had provided a security detail for Nathan, who became Giuliani's third wife after his divorce from Donna Hanover, who also had her own police security detail at the same time. Furthermore, it appears that many of the security expenses were initially billed to obscure city agencies, effectively hiding them from oversight, at least according to politico.com.

These costs involved overtime and per diem costs for officers traveling with Giuliani to secret weekend rendezvous with Nathan in the fashionable Hamptons resort area on Long Island.

The Office of Comptroller first noticed these curious additional expenses back in 2001 and made repeated requests throughout 2001 and 2002 for records and information, but the Mayor’s office, under the guise of “security,” failed to turn these over.

Giuliani is claiming the release of this story is a “hit-job.” While that might fly with his acolytes, the former mayor of the nation’s largest city has this and numerous other “problems” from his days of running the city with an iron fist. These and the fact that he has real fascist tendencies makes me a little worried that he might get the GOP nod and end up running against Mrs. Clinton.

If you thought Bushworld is problematic, wait ‘til you see what a Giuliani presidency looks like.

Hillary Clinton is unelectable

As we get deeper into the never-ending march to November 2008, various polls tell us different things. The Democrats, aka, “the gang who couldn’t shoot straight,” have a front-runner, in Hillary Clinton that couldn’t beat any of five selected Republican candidates.

A new interactive Zogby survey shows that Senator Clinton would lose to anyone of the following five GOP candidates; Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, or John McCain.

Consequently, both Barack Obama and John Edwards would beat all of the same five candidates, with the exception of an Edwards-McCain bout, which ends tied, 42-all.

I’m wondering why Zogby didn’t extend this out to include Ron Paul, who continues to raise money at an astounding clip and seems to be getting more truck from the mainstream.

It’s curious to me how often we hear candidates being framed as “electable,” or “unelectable.” According to this Zogby poll, Hillary Clinton falls into the latter category. Of course, I doubt this will change many minds on the Democratic side, since they seem to be comfortable in their role as America’s second party.

[Thanks to A True Believer's Weblog for the Zogby info.--JB]

Turkey Day, Tryptophan and Politics

I hope readers experienced a festive and bountiful Thanksgiving, like I did. The long weekend from work (our office was closed, Friday) allowed me to enjoy some downtime with family, a good book and also afforded the opportunity for some needed relaxation.

While this space isn’t always filled with writing that aims at uplift (I prefer the term, “realism”), I felt fortunate during my own celebration to be breaking bread around a table with 17 other people, mostly family, but also, a few friends. Given the opportunity to reflect a bit, 2007 has been a good year for me personally.

Our son came home from Boston, arriving with his two roommates via Concord Trailways. My wife picked them up Wednesday afternoon and they were home when I arrived from work. Life changes when our children grow up and leave the nest. Mark is doing well and his two friends, both pursuing Ph.D’s in economics, were a wonderful addition to the Baumer household during their stay. While the news can be mixed when it comes to Millenials, these three make me optimistic for the future. Listening to Samson (who hails from Dubai) and Adam discussing economic theories with unbridled enthusiasm was refreshing. In fact, our extended family has a good mix of younger people, all in their 20s, who are engaged, articulate and care about the state of the world that they live in.

I spent most of my free time yesterday and today, engaged with Robert Draper’s hard-to-put-down, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush. Draper’s book, a literary narrative of the Bush years in the White House, provides an arc and a portrait of our nation’s forty-third president that I think is truly unique.

Draper describes his idea to pen a straightforward narrative as nothing particularly novel, or so he thought. However, it is the only one that has been done and I think it captures Bush in a way that the partisan backbiting on the left and the sycophantic cheerleading on the right fails miserably at.

I’m slightly more than halfway through the book, which clocks in at over 400 pages, but reads very easily. I’ll have more to say on this, I’m sure.

Having taken an interest in presidential hopeful, Mike Huckabee, I watched Wolf Blitzer’s interview (on Late Edition) with the former governor of Arkansas, curious to see how he performed. I thought Huckabee was warm, articulate and answered all of Blitzer’s questioned confidently, including charges being leveled by Mitt Romney that Huckabee isn’t a “true” conservative.

As Iowa’s January 3rd caucus draws closer, Huckabee is hard charging according to the latest ABC/Washington Post poll and trails Romney by only four percentage points, 28 to 24.

If Huckabee can manage to finish a strong second in Iowa, anything could happen in New Hampshire, a state that operates at the grass roots. I’m not sure what kind of team Huckabee has on the ground in the Granite State, but I might be tempted to make a road trip soon, for some firsthand reporting of my own.

Speaking of New Hampshire, Secretary of State Bill Gardiner has announced a January 8th date for the state’s primary, keeping the tradition of being first in the nation with its primary.

The decision ends months of speculation, including the possibility that the state might actually move its primary into December to keep its spot at the head of the line.

New Hampshire stands to lose half of its delegates to the Republican convention, reducing the number to 12, because it moved earlier than party rules allow. But state officials are not concerned, considering it a small price to pay for the attention New Hampshire gets from its leadoff spot. Democratic rules allow New Hampshire to hold an early primary, so the state will keep all of its 30 delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

I’m pleased that New Hampshire was able to maintain its role as a leader in the primary field, particularly because it’s a state that forces candidates to get out and meet the voters, rather than relying on huge war chests of corporate contributions. Still, its days may be numbered, as the machinations of modern politics continually discount grass roots populism, pancake breakfasts and VFW rallies, in favor of videogenic presentation and not varying from the script.

Bush tells poor to "Piss Off!"

[Editorial note: Richard S. of the excellent blog, Commie Curmudgeon once again applied his razor sharp editor's eye and made a suggestion about my original first paragraph (written too early) being ambiguous. I've rewritten it and hopefully it clears up the confusion that he had with it when he read it. Make sure you add him to your blogroll--JB]

George Bush, whose administration has relied upon deficit spending throughout his term, has suddenly turned deficit hawk. Bush vetoed a bill Tuesday that would have increased funding for LIHEAP, an essential federal program that provides heating assistance to those in need.

While partisan politics often result in hyperbole and over-the-top statements from members of the loyal opposition, comments like Representative Carolyn McCarthy's is much more in line with the reality of those struggling to pay rapidly escalating oil, electric and natural gas bills this winter.

Congresswoman McCarthy (D-NY) is quoted as saying, "With energy costs consistently on the rise, more and more families must make the tough decision whether to heat their homes or put food on the table." She went on to say that, "We'll fight for the money."

If you don’t know what LIHEAP is, you probably aren’t one of those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, clinging to the bottom two rungs, hoping you don’t finally fall off into the abyss.

LIHEAP stands for Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, a federal assistance program, which helps low-income residents with energy costs associated with heating their homes during the winter. LIHEAP will provide a one-time benefit to eligible households and must be used solely to pay energy bills. The amount of the benefit is determined by income, household size, fuel type and geographic location. Recipients don’t have to be homeowners, but must be primarily responsible for heating costs. The source of heat isn’t limited to natural gas or electricity in order to receive assistance.

With last season’s high energy costs, the program was stretched thin and with 2007/2008s skyrocketing energy costs pushing ever higher, many of our neighbors and fellow Americans are facing being cold, sick and possibly, even worse.

I know that conservatives hate the thought of helping anyone with handouts, other than corporations and the very rich, but is this what you’ve come to philosophically? Feeling superior about your ideology that chooses to let fellow American freeze to death over the winter, just so a few of the well-heeled can have their tax cuts?

There’s much more to this issue than just tax cuts. The continued cost of the war in Iraq, which our President wages with pride, isolated and ignoring the will of the people, is also having a profound affect on the federal government’s ability to deliver domestic assistance programs. Once again, he’s asking for additional funding to the already criminal $470,000.000.000 we’ve pissed down a rat’s hole thus far. Please, all you lunatics out on the right-wing fringe; drug-addled Rush Limbaugh, the psychotic Michael Savage, the smarmy Glen Beck and Mr. Hair, Sean Hannity—what benefit has the war visited on the U.S.? Please don’t revert to your usual clichéd responses about “fighting them over there, so we won’t have to fight them over here,” either. We’re fighting a war over here, my rich right-wing friends and it’s called poverty, something you are fortunate to be isolated from. Savage, at least, ought to have a better sense of how working class people struggle, because he comes from that class, although something happened in that man’s brain (or heart) long ago that’s made him one of the most hateful of this pack of ideological freaks.

I know Senator Snowe spent yesterday at the PROP office, in Portland, listening to the stories of Mainers who depend on LIHEAP and will go without heat if funding isn’t reinstated and increased. The senator, who fought last year for increased funding, has once more stated that she will be aggressive in advocating for more funding for Mainers again.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner and Christmas not far off, it’s going to be a Dickensian holiday for many Americans, I’m afraid.

It might be time for a reality check

For younger Americans, the Great Depression means little, or nothing to them. Yes, for those who actually read their history books (if in fact history is still taught in our public schools), this was an actual historical event that happened over 75 years ago. The beginning of this economic downturn is associated with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929.

Those of us who are older have never experiencing a catastrophic economic downturn like that one, but we’ve heard the stories from our parents and grandparents about what that period of time was like. When you’ve met people who have been through hard times, particularly the kind of economic straits suffered during the Great Depression, you are haunted by their stories and it leaves an impression.

My father’s philosophy of frugality towards money and finances was no doubt shaped by being born during this economic slump. Born in the early 1930s, most his youth was spent growing up in the shadow of one of the nation’s most difficult economic periods. Ironically, when he reached adulthood after WWII, his generation was part of a long period of economic prosperity and a sense that things would be better, but I’m not sure he ever recovered from that previous sense of deprivation.

Born in the early 60s, I was 11 and regularly reading a daily newspaper and very interested in the news of the day, when the the oil embargo hit, in 1973. OPEC declared that they would no longer ship petroleum to nations sympathetic to and supportive of Israel in their ongoing conflict with Syria and Egypt.

This resulted in immediate affects upon the U.S. economy; gas prices quadrupled, rising from just 25 cents to over a dollar in just a few months. Many filling stations across the country had no fuel for a week..In other places, drivers had to wait in line for two to three hours to get gas. I remember seeing a gas line of a ¼ mile in Lewiston, at the Gibbs Station on Lisbon Street.

U.S. consumption of fuel dropped twenty percent, as Americans began to practice conservation, by carpooling, walking and using public transit, where available. Homes that utilized gas heat began switching to other forms of energy that were more affordable. My father installed a wood stove in our home, for the first time.

The federal government imposed a 55 mph speed limit, which helped to decrease consumption and the number of fatalities dropped. Gas stations imposed fuel limits of ten gallons and many closed voluntarily on Sundays.

The national mood shifted, for a brief period of time. Americans regained a sense of reality, not make believe, recognizing that the prosperity many took for granted, could disappear. The ease of motoring, perpetuated by cheap oil, was no longer viewed as a right and some even predicted that this shortage of oil could continue.

The oil embargo of the mid-70s is now just a memory. Jimmy Carter found himself voted out of office, because he dared to tell Americans that they needed to continue to conserve. Looking back, Carter’s prescience is obvious and even admirable. In 1976, however, Americans, much like we are today, were in denial about a lifestyle that might not be as conspicuously consumptive.

Here in the latter days of 2007, signs are obvious to some that we are headed for another dark period, economically. While we may not plunge to the depths of financial despair that Americans alive in the 1930s did, it seems quite possible that the economic doldrums of the 1970s are quite possible and more likely, probable. Interestingly, if you tell this to your co-worker over lunch, or mention it at the next family get together, see what kind of reaction you receive.

Americans refuse to face the obvious realities that are apparent if one takes a long hard look. On the other hand, however, these realities aren’t necessarily receiving wide dispensation from our mainstream media. Shouldn’t our leaders be helping Americans prepare for some bumps in the road, instead of insisting that we gather up our plastic and head to the shopping malls for Christmas?

Some of the financial spin that I’ve listened to for much of the past two our three weeks is utterly ridiculous and inane. Where is the analysis in various stories about high gas prices, the rollercoaster ups and downs on Wall Street? There is no connecting of the dots and little or no context to any of the news stories I've heard, or read. The shrinking dollar, soaring gas prices, housing slump and stock market fall, though inconvenient, are not the biggest threats to the economy. These are symptoms caused by deeper systemic problems. We need to learn from these events and begin to think about how are we going to build a more sustainable society.

Bad news, however, continues to seep through the denial and subterfuge. Wells Fargo CEO, John Stump, said Thursday that the nation’s housing slump is the worst since the Great Depression and is far from being over.

"We have not seen a nationwide decline in housing like this since the Great Depression," Stumpf said at a Merrill Lynch & Co banking conference in New York.

"I don't think we're in the ninth inning of unwinding this," he continued.

Today, Goldman Sachs announced that the mortgage wipeout could result in a $2 trillion cutback in lending and have dramatic implications for the U.S. economy, according to Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs.

The housing slump is expected to end up costing banks, hedge funds and other lenders an estimated $400 billion as defaults on home loans rise, according to Goldman economist Jan Hatzius. Meanwhile, the dollar continues to take a beating on the world currency market.

While this kind of blogging freaks some people out, there are those who believe that economic troubles might be exactly what Americans need. In a land that has become increasingly superficial and overly narcissistic, fueled by steroids, plastic surgery and conspicuous consumption, reconnecting with one another and recognizing what’s really important in life wouldn’t be a bad thing for most of us, in my opinion. It might even reacquaint some of us with the values espoused by our forebears and fixate less on the trials and tribulations of Barry Bonds.

Learning how to make due without a facial, or a visit to the nail salon, requires some depth of personality. Not driving an expensive sports car, or letting that overprice health club membership lapse, in favor of splitting your own wood is probably better for your constitution, if not your washboard abs. Then again, having a ripped body isn’t a prerequisite for survival.

I’m not necessarily hoping for economic hard times, but I’m not thinking about jumping off a cliff, either. Instead, I’m making sure I’ve got some things in order should things take a turn for the worse.