Author: bill

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Political Ads for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama

Recently I have been overwhelmed with cynicism towards Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Living in Ohio we have been inundated  with political ads for these two candidates. What some may view as entertaining and thought provoking last week is extremely annoying after you have seen the same ad for the hundredth time. My son and I are so annoyed with the ads that we embark on impromptu parodies of the ads whenever they appear. I guess our parodies are pretty bad. My wife just grimaces. She does not share our sense of humor. I cannot overlook the amount of the money being spent by these two candidates so that they can talk about social change. They have this hypocrisy thing going on under this veil of ultra-competitiveness. The irony is that this political excess is detracting from charitable giving and “real” social change. This is not hard to figure out. Political contributions are discretionary spending just like charitable giving. I am guessing that Habitat for Humanity could have funded a new house for a needy family with the “excess” ads from just one news hour in the Cincinnati market. I try not to think about how big an impact this competitive campaign has had on charitable giving in the United States as a whole.

Finally I found a little creativity in this over-hyped campaign. Thank you Jack! I think I am doomed to get re-runs until Tuesday but this personal ad by Jack makes the campaign a little bit more tolerable.

 

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Trying to understand the foreclosure crisis in low income neighborhoods

Foreclosure map for Lincoln Heights, OHPreviously I had speculated in a post, Trying to get a grip on the impact of subprime mortgages on low income families, on what I thought was going to be the impact of subprime mortgage crisis. Yesterday I decided to see what the folks at RealtyTrac said for a low income area I am interested in. The numbers are not pretty. Lincoln Heights is the triangle in the middle of the map where most of the pushpins are located. There are around 1600 occupied houses in the Lincoln Heights community according to City-Data.com and something like 125 houses in foreclosure. This means that about 8% or 1 in every 12 houses in Lincoln Height are in foreclosure. The folks at foreclosurepulse say that it is likely to get worse. Read it and weep!

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Seeing coyotes for the first time

Coyote picture from Wikipedia

Several years ago a neighbor said one of her horses had been attacked by a pack of coyotes. We were concerned since we had young horses. Coyotes do not normally hunt in packs. We looked and looked but we never saw the coyotes. Occasionally we would hear them at night. They have a distinctive sound and it can sound pretty eerie when you are alone in the country at night. Last week I saw two coyotes near our lake. They looked like the picture but a little grayer. I was returning home after dropping off my son at school. It was a clear, cold winter morning and the ground was covered with an inch of crusty now. The pair were checking out the lake. The lake was frozen over and the geese had left several days ago. I guess the coyotes were hungry and hoping to get lucky.  My presence startled them. They jogged off with a sly smile on their face. I was intruding on them. I was surprised to see them since we have two Great Pyrenees dogs. The dogs hang out at the barn but the lake is only a hundred yards away. The lake is was well within the dogs territory and the dogs have not been shy about chasing off dogs encroaching on their territory. These are farm dogs who have lived outside and roamed free their entire lives. Our female dog regularly catches possums and raccoons during the warmer months. It would appear that the dogs and the coyotes should have a territory conflict. Coyotes and Great Pyrenees are reported to not get along. I suspect this will be the last time I see these two. In a couple of weeks these coyotes should find enough food outside of our dogs territory and they will not take this risk again.

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Emotions raw over FISA bill — Security Bytes

It is my understanding that the primary purpose of this bill is to “allow the intelligence services to conduct surveillance of communications between persons located outside of the United States when the communications happen to pass through domestic networks”. With this bill the NSA can go up the road to AT&T and run a wiretap program to monitor the phone call between Osama in Pakistan and a suicide bomber in London. Without this bill the NSA or CIA has to get the cooperation of Pakistan or England to install the wiretap program in their countries. Several years ago a federal judge ruled that his court had jurisdiction over this area even though it involves communications that would not normally be under his jurisdiction because the router is located in the United States. This bill was designed to satisfy the requirements of the court and address the challenges posed by technological advancements. The legal jurisdiction of wiretaps was so much simpler to explain twenty years ago. The bill does not authorize monitoring internal communications within the United States. Monitoring internal communications within the United States falls under the jurisdiction of federal wiretap laws and the FBI.

Emotions raw over FISA bill ”” Security Bytes

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Lamp lit by gravity wins Greener Gadget award

thumbnailBLACKSBURG, Va., February 19, 2008 — A Virginia Tech student has created a floor lamp powered by gravity.

Clay Moulton of Springfield, Va., who received his master of science degree in architecture (concentration in industrial design) from the College of Architecture and Urban Studies in 2007, created the lamp when he was an industrial design graduate student. The light-emitting diode (LED) lamp, named Gravia, has just won second place in the Greener Gadgets Design Competition as part of the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City.

This is a pretty cool story from my alma mater. Click here to read the rest of the story Lamp lit by gravity wins Greener Gadget award.

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OBAMA ON POLICY: A roundup….

A 1942 essay by George Orwell offers a highly qualified appreciation of the then (and still) politically incorrect Rudyard Kipling.

To govern is to choose, a Democrat of an earlier generation, John F. Kennedy, famously remarked. Is this generation of Democrats capable of governing?

Op-Ed Columnist
Democrats Should Read Kipling

By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Published: February 18, 2008

My guess is that Obama and Clinton have the best chance of the remaining candidates in becoming the next president. Recently I read the economic policy statement from the Obama web site and I was left a little confused. I expected the “change” candidate to advocate some major economic changes but I only saw only minor changes. This leaves me a little uncomfortable on his ability to govern. He sounds good on his sound bites but am I being sold the sizzle instead of the steak. I suspect that he will adopt Clinton’s plans if he wins. Although I am not a fan of Clinton’s plans, the Clinton folks have at least have put some thought into their plans. Since neither candidate has any significant political experience at this level and they look like they are going to be Democratic party conformists, it looks like they will have difficulty governing for a couple of years. They do not have to look far for the source of the problems. I think both candidates will be viewed as weak presidents and it is doubtful that either candidate will be able to unify their party.

In my peculiar view of the world, John McCain looks like he will have better relations with the Democratic party than either Obama or Clinton. This may not please some conservatives but it continues to make him appealing to independents who would like to see a president who could work with a House and Senate controlled by the Democratic party.

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Bush Admin Shuts Down Website Tracking U.S. Economic Data

Forbes has awarded EconomicIndicators.gov one of its “Best of the Web” awards for compiling data across govt agencies and making it publicly accessible. But as of March 1, the Bush admin has announced that it is shutting down this site due to “budgetary constraints.”

Bush Admin Shuts Down Website Tracking U.S. Economic Data
Thu, 14 Feb 2008 05:20:04 GMT

I actually went to the site and tried to use it. I have a curiosity about Housing Vacancies and Homeownership. I was immediately disappointed when that link did not go anywhere. It quickly became apparent that the site was re-packaging news releases from the Census and Bureau of Economic Analysis sites. After a little investigating I figured out that all of the data I was interested in was already available on the Census site. At least for me the economicindicators.gov site is redundant. If I am going to link to a site as a reference I am going to link to the source of the data. I am pretty disappointed that Forbes awarded it one of its “Best of the Web”. What were they thinking? From my short browsing experience I do not think economicindicators.gov adds any value to the web. I can probably create my own web page in five minutes with the correct links.

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Mortgage Crisis Spreads Past Subprime Loans

The emphasis of the article was that “even borrowers with stong credit are the pinch”. The part that interested me was this:

Banks are responding to the rise in delinquencies by capping home equity lines of credit in areas with falling real estate prices. A few credit card companies have also moved to reduce the credit limits of customers they deem more risky.

Mortgage Crisis Spreads Past Subprime Loans
VIKAS BAJAJ and LOUISE STORY
Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:06:57 GMT

I am beginning to see more articles talking about the relationship between credit card debt, equity lines of credit, and mortgages. I think the next sign to look for is weakness in the stock price for companies with a large exposure to credit card debt due to increased amounts of debt being written off. This could snowball. With the very high interest rates existing on credit card debt there is no where for the credit card companies to go. I have already seen increased consumer activism to lower credit card rates because other rates have declined. The longer the real estate market declines, the more likely that this financial crisis is going get even uglier.