AnnotatedOpinions.com

With unemployment stuck around 10 percent, President Obama has pledged “to take every responsible step to accelerate the pace of job growth.” Here’s a thought: Instead of trying to “create” jobs by tweaking this tax break or increasing that spending program, why not stop doing things that destroy jobs?  

. . . End federal protectionism and price supports for sugar. . . In 2006, the Commerce Department estimated that the sugar program cost three confectionery manufacturing jobs for each job it saved in sugar growing and harvesting.  

. . . Repeal the Davis-Bacon Act. Passed in the 1930s to “stabilize” the construction industry . . ., this law requires employers to pay the “prevailing” local wage on federally funded projects.

  . . . Reduce the federal minimum wage.  

[AO: It is true that President Obama has pledged to take every responsible step to accelerate the pace of job growth. However, job growth without an attention to attendant effects is not wise.   

The latter two suggestions, repealing the Davis-Bacon Act and reducing minimum wage, may well create more jobs. But it does so at the cost of lowering the salary of existing workers. This will not necessarily lead to an economic recovery.   

As has been explained on this site and by economists elsewhere, a key missing ingredient in the recovery is consumer spending. It’s down . . . way down. Consumers are not spending because many consumers are unemployed and others are concerned that they may loose their jobs. The latter two suggestions would slash consumers’ salaries. The effect will be to split a salary that would otherwise go to one person between multiple employees. This will not lead to increased spending by consumers. Indeed, the effect of the latter two suggestions may be increased employment numbers attended by no change in consumer spending because the economy is effectively not being grown. What we need is to create jobs without slashing the salaries of existing workers.  

The first suggestion, ending sugar policy, is more likely to be successful. However, one must be careful. Just because the price of raw materials (here, sugar) is reduced doesn’t mean that business owners will necessarily employ more individuals. They might simply save the increased profits. If this happens, the economy will not receive the short-term boost in spending it needs. One reason employers may not employ more individuals is that they already are producing the maximum amount of product that the economy will purchase.]

“There is no normal anymore.”  

That statement, it seems to me, goes a long way toward explaining why so many Americans are angry, confused and worried today. . .   

There is nothing normal about an economy in which the federal government takes over giant automakers, bails out too-big-to-fail banks, buys up nearly all mortgages, keeps short-term interest rates at zero and prints over a trillion new dollars. . .  

There is no normal in American politics anymore, either. Both major political parties gravitate toward their extremes . . .  

It is not normal for our soldiers to endure three, four, five deployments to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our military is stretched to the breaking point and our wars are unwinnable. . .  

. . . our culture has gone alien. Hollywood churns out a gutter-flow of violence, vampires and video sex. . .   

The 2008 presidential election was about “change.” The elections of 2010 and 2012 could be about getting control of too much change and returning to normal.  

[AO: The writer, James Gannon, makes a determined plea for a return to normalcy. But this begs the question: What is normal. At one point, Gannon suggests that before the 2008 elections, things were normal. According to him, in 2008 we voted for change and everything became abnormal. What we need is for the 2010 and 2012 elections to focus on “getting control of too much change” and we’ll be on the right track back to normalcy, Gannon tells us.  

But what is normal? The signs of “change” the writer list include “an economy in which the federal government takes over giant automakers, bails out too-big-to-fail banks . . .,” “Both major political parties gravitate toward their extremes . . .,” “our soldiers [] endure three, four, five deployments to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan . . .,” and “Hollywood churns out a gutter-flow of violence, vampires and video sex. . ..” These all were with us long before 2008. In fact, few to none of these are the result of the vote in 2008 for “change” as they predate it.  

But has America or the world ever been normal? Before Iraq and Afghanistan, there was Vietnam and Korea and the World Wars  before those. Were those times normal? Before terrorism there was the war on drugs, war on organized crime and others. There were upheavals in the markets and numerous depressions and recessions in our past. Were those times normal?   

The fact is, the world is constantly changing. What the writer cites as signs of recent change are changes that predate the Obama Administration and reflect long-term reality that is anything but normal.  

America and the world will never return to normalcy. The world will continue to change. We must do what we have always done. We must embrace change and work to thrive on it. ]

Health care polling reveals uncertainty [Chicago Tribune]

Health-care rationing: The honest solution to an out-of-control system. [Washington Post]

Obama’s Afghanistan strategy must be more than more troops: A plan that doesn’t also deal with the Karzai problem and economic development is doomed to failure. [LA Times]

Lonely superpowerdom: Obama may soon discover that there are no allies with which to work. [Washington Post]

Signs of Hope: The U.S. has the intellectual resources and expertise to lead in the development of clean energy. It just needs the will to make it happen. [New York Times]

Biotech bills give drugmakers too many years of exclusivity: The long-awaited Biotech bills emerging from the House and Senate give too many years of exclusivity to the original makers of biotech drugs [Boston Globe]

No ‘No More Wilderness’: The interior secretary, Ken Salazar, should reclaim the authority to identify wilderness study areas and protect them. [New York Times]

What do scientists think about religion? Members of the scientific community are often seen as doubting Thomases, but the reality is more complex. Even Charles Darwin may have made room for God. [LA Times]

An Obama gray: Where is the man who once demonstrated keen moral clarity? [Washington Post]

Turkey and the Kurds: Turkey’s plan to grant long-denied rights to its Kurdish minority, despite opposition from nationalist politicians, is a show of courage and good sense. [New York Times]  

The relentless ghost of Christmas future: In this holiday season, Charles Dickens would find that his own little ghost story, ”A Christmas Carol,” is still very much alive. [Boston Globe]

Television: Two standards, or too racy? There’s beauty in restraint. [Boston Globe]

The NFL tackles concussions: There’s nothing like being compared negatively to the tobacco industry to get a business’ attention. And so it is with the NFL. [USA Today]  

CNN: Doubling down on straight news: Lou Dobbs’s departure from CNN is a welcome event, and the network deserves credit for replacing him with John King. [Boston Globe]

A Farewell to Lou: Lou Dobbs calls himself Mr. Independent, but he is closer in style and method to the right-wing ranters who mold the facts to shape the argument. [New York Times]

Calling the filibuster bluff: Democrats should force a real filibuster, make Joe Lieberman bring the business of the Senate to a screeching halt. [Boston Globe]

A false choice in health care battle: Where exactly do you draw a line when the opposition keeps moving it? [Boston Globe]

Close, but no cigar: The House’s health-care bill was put to the fiscal test, and it failed. [Washington Post]

Invisible wounds: Returning soldiers with mental health problems are ill-served by their country. [Houston Chronicle]

Vet Day memories: From heaven to hell. [USA Today]

Bring the troops home: Without clear goals, Obama shouldn’t be sending more soldiers to Afghanistan. [Washington Post]

Free to Lose: With long-term unemployment at its highest levels since the 1930s and on the rise, the U.S. should consider policies that address job growth directly. [New York Times]

No more ‘too big to fail’: The term must be excised from our vocabulary, says the chairman of J.P. Morgan Chase. [Washington Post]

Intel’s $1.25 Billion Settlement: Intel may have reached a deal withAdvanced Micro Devices, but that does little for consumers hurt by anticompetitive practices. [New York Times]

Sudan needs boldness: Will Obama insist on a policy that stops the rapes and the murders in Darfur? [Washington Post]

Saving the bluefin tuna: The industry may not want to hear it, but a complete ban on commercial fishing of the Atlantic bluefin tuna is called for. [LA Times]

Planetary heat and trade chill: How we can treat the problems together. [Washington Post]

The ‘Highly Qualified Teacher’ Dodge: Recent decisions in Washington continue to allow poorer schools to be disproportionately staffed by unqualified teachers. [New York Times]

Bad examples: Selling grades. [USA Today]

Fidel Castro’s long goodbye: The ailing former leader of Cuba remains true to his word: ‘I am a revolutionary, and revolutionaries do not retire.’ [LA Times]

Recall the Marshall Plan: With creative adaptation, the aid program that worked in Europe can work in Pakistan. [Washington Post]

Of Fruit Flies and Drones: President Obama has shown a quiet predilection for drone warfare, but the U.S. should not be targeting people for killing without a public debate. [New York Times]

Soaring pay for coaches throws academics for a loss: Beyond the elite teams, football ‘arms race’ too often a futile game. [USA Today]

What’s ‘Good Hair’? Rock confronts taboo [USA Today]

Here’s a radical notion: Let’s rethink the cult of homeownership in America. . .  

We are a country still in the thrall of homeownership.   

Nearly a decade ago, a colleague and I edited a book about the promotion of low-income homeownership, with the subtitle “Examining the Unexamined Goal.” Study after study pointed out the risks of homeownership. One used repeat sales data to look at what properties bought from 1982 through 1999 sold for in Boston, Denver, Philadelphia and Chicago. In Chicago — which never had much price fluctuation, even in 1995, its worst year — only 9% of houses on the market sold at a loss. But in Boston, which had a larger price correction, 45% of houses sold in 1993 and 1994 sold at a loss. Worse still, 69% of houses in Denver sold in 1988 and 1989 sold at a loss.   

In places such as Los Angeles, which was not part of the study but where house prices cycle a great deal, high percentages of owners during periods of decline have had to hand the keys back to their lenders to get out of underwater mortgages, or fork over a lot of cash at the closing table when they sold.  

[AO: According to the writer, we ought to rethink the cult of homeownership in America. I agree. We should. During the last boom, too many people purchased homes who couldn’t afford it. They did this based on the mistaken assumption that prices would continue to increase and their mortgages would remain affordable. They were wrong and have had to pay the price. But the
writer, Eric Belsky, selects an odd example make his argument in favor of rethinking homeownership. As he tells it, because housing prices decrease during times of housing price correction, we should rethink the cult of home ownership. That’s odd. This oddity becomes more obvious when you make analogies to other purchases. For example, his argument could be extended to say that because stock prices decrease during economy downturns, we should rethink the cult of stock ownership. Or, because the value of art/jewelry/you-name-it decreases during downturns, we should rethink the cult of art/jewelry/you-name-it ownership.  

This line of argument is not convincing. The point is that the value of most things decreases during a correction. However, that cannot be the basis for rethinking ownership of that thing. ]

Let’s instead consider programs that aggregate ownership of properties, especially two- to four-unit ones, in the hands of nonprofits that can rent them out. These small complexes are estimated to account for up to two in five foreclosures. It might make more sense to get these properties into the hands of nonprofits that own many properties, so that a single rental vacancy constitutes the loss of only a small fraction of rental income.

[AO: This is a good idea. But I have a number of concerns. The first concern is how to get the properties into the hands of the nonprofits without going through all of the economic mini-turmoils that accompany property sales under conditions the writer seems interested in addressing. In other words, if an owner currently owns a two-unit property and cannot afford to pay the mortgage, how does she get the property into the hands of a nonprofit without going through foreclosure, etc. On the other hand, if she does have to go through foreclosure, why would having a nonprofit as the buyer be batter than a for-protit entity? If our goal is simply to aggregate multiple properties perhaps we can give incentives to nonprofits and for-profits alike to acquire multiple properties. ]

Muslims, mass murder after Fort Hood. [Chicago Tribune]

Zero tolerance for extremists — regardless of religion: The U.S. response should be zero tolerance for political cultists who try to achieve their goals through violence. [LA Times]

Hasan’s erratic work was a sign: Investigators are looking for ties to Islamist extremists. But the problem may be closer to home. [Boston Globe]

In plain sight? Unheeded red flags surrounding Maj. Nidal M. Hassan. [Washington Post]

Fixing foreign aid: A Cold War-era system with too many agencies and not enough coordination needs an upgrade. [LA Times]

America’s Defining Choice: What’s the best way to spend $100 billion per year? Health reform or troops for Afghanistan? Simple, because lack of insurance kills far more Americans than the Taliban does. [New York Times]

When it comes to healthcare reform, doing nothing does harm. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

An abortion skirmish: Health reform’s negotiating nightmare. [Washington Post]

Vietnam’s lesson for Afghanistan: With memories of Vietnam still in their minds, many in Congress are obsessed with defeat in Afghanistan. But history does not necessarily repeat itself. [Boston Globe]

Vietnam, Afghanistan and learning from history: What can Obama learn from the Vietnam War, and how can he apply it to the war in Afghanistan? [LA Times]

Giving hedge fund investors a full accounting: Congress should require hedge funds, which are largely unregulated, to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission. [LA Times]

More Foreclosures to Come: Unless the Obama antiforeclosure plan is modified, it has little chance of making a meaningful dent in the housing crisis. [New York Times]

The other side of the wall: East Berliners had their advantages as well as their troubles. Now, they have ours. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Take a Deep Breath: Right now we citizens have quite a lot on our plate and there is no reason to go completely crazy about the least little thing. [New York Times]

Bad start to U.S.-Japan relationship: Both countries should put an end to old habits. [Washington Post]

·       ABCs of change: On Sesame Street, ‘E’ was for equality [Houston Chronicle]

·      ‘Sesame Street’ turns 40: The iconic children’s show broke the mold on educational programming. [LA Times]

The Ban on Abortion Coverage: The House health care reform bill passed with a steep price. The Senate should work to preserve a woman’s right to abortion services. [New York Times]

Why preventive care is critical: Congress should not focus on how much preventive health care will cost, but on how much it will earn. [Washington Post]

Historic, but unaffordable: The Democratic-controlled House took a historic step in passing a health-care bill over the weekend, yet the measure – unless it’s modified – could mean the death knell for health reform this year. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

The wall after the wall: Unlike the old militarized geopolitical wall of the Cold War, the new heavily policed wall between rich and poor regions of the world is designed to keep people out rather than in. [Boston Globe]

Sick day, sick pay: Congress is considering a mandate that would require employers to pay five sick days if they send a worker home or advise him to stay home. [Chicago Tribune]

The U.S. needs to teach Hamid Karzai a thing or two: The Afghan leader needs to learn how to act as a wartime leader. [LA Times]

Cutting our losses: Leave Afghanistan to the drones and the Special Forces. [Washington Post]

A Word, Mr. President: Health care reform is important, but President Obama’s priorities should be putting Americans back to work and ending the war in Afghanistan. [New York Times]

Bailing out GMAC: Its health is key to helping U.S. automakers rebound. [LA Times]

Needle exchanges: New law, same bad policy – The federal bill allowing needle exchanges to prevent transmission of HIV was a step forward, but includes a punishing restriction: No exchanges can happen within 1,000 feet of a school or park. [Boston Globe]

Guarding the ranks: Religious tolerance in the military does not trump security concerns. [LA Times]

Ticking bomb at Fort Hood: The Army failed the thousands of Muslims who serve with honor and distinction. [Washington Post]

Don’t let the shooters win: My beloved Virginia Tech again is linked to a mass murder. But Fort Hood, too, can heal by rejecting our torturers’
hate-filled scripts [USA Today]

The Rush to Therapy: The well-intentioned public commentary that followed Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s rampage at Fort Hood denied any possibility of evil in his actions. [New York Times]

The ‘closure’ myth: The ‘Beltway sniper’ will be put to death, but will it help the victims move on? [Washington Post]

Counting Forward: The approval of an election law by Iraq’s Parliament is good news, but neither Baghdad nor Washington should be complacent about power-sharing issues. [New York Times]

You Don’t Want to Be Downwind: Now that the House has passed a bill to shore up security at chemical plants, the Senate should pass a parallel bill and the president should sign it. [New York Times]

No medals for hiring vets: Public and private efforts to employ ex-military aren’t what they claim. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

‘Greeters’ give troops the homecoming they deserve [USA Toay]

The lesson from the streets: Big money is not the answer [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Without family planning . . . poverty will spread across the globe, and children will die [USA Today]

·       Op-Classic, 1989: Freedom Danced Before My Eyes [New York Times]

·       The rusting and fall of the Iron Curtain: Today is the 20th anniversary of the event that proved the realists wrong. When joyous citizens breached the Berlin Wall with rock music and dancing instead of guns and tanks, the Cold War was over. [Boston Globe]

·      After the wall fell: Too many of the commemorations treat the past two decades as a foregone conclusion. [Washington Post]

·       Cold War nostalgia: In the former East, there is ostalgie. In the West, we too look back in longing: for the symbol of moral clarity and superiority the wall was to us. [LA Times]  

·       After collapse, jubilation, fear, and uncertainty [Boston Globe]

·     Hungary was the first rip in Iron Curtain: Months before the Berlin Wall fell, Hungarians had marched to demand  democracy. [LA Times]

A 2d chance at freedom for juvenile offenders: The United States stands apart from its European allies in sentencing minors to languish in prison until they die. [Boston Globe]

Imprisoning a Child for Life: Sentencing children to life without the possibility of parole for a nonhomicide violates the Eighth amendment. [New York Times]

Healthcare’s hurdles: Democrats in the House get their way, but what we need is real debate. If only the Republicans would oblige. [LA Times]

Why is reforming health care so hard? Broad satisfaction and deep divides hinder change. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

House-passed health plan mixes good ideas, deep flaws [USA Today]

The next bubble? There’s a thin line between promoting recovery and the next crash. [Washington Post]

Who’s afraid of the big, bad Fairness Doctrine? If Rush Limbaugh and his ilk were forced to engage in a reasonable debate, rather than ad hominems, they would forfeit the moral surety — and the seductive rage — that is the central appeal of all demagogues. [Boston Globe]

Climate change bill is in trouble: Political tactics tie up the Senate version, and efforts to salvage it may be too little too late. [LA Times]

Government-haters lose: Apparently some voters think government is necessary — and good. [Washington Post]

Mickey goes rogue [Chicago Tribune]

Disney: The mouse that bored – In some ways, the effort to revitalize Mickey seems sad and desperate [Boston Globe]

Paranoia Strikes Deep: If the G.O.P. essentially shrinks down to a rump party across America, the country could become ungovernable in the idst of a continuing economic disaster. [New York Times]

Letting big money in: Supreme Court watchers are growing anxious about an imminent legal ruling that could open the floodgates of money in politics like never before. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Red flags at Fort Hood [USA Today]

Voters thinking about jobs, not Obama [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

The smell test: Canine witnesses need tighter judicial leashes [Houston Chronicle]

Guinness got it: The company’s 250-year legacy of God-inspired good provides myriad lessons for today. Among them: A benevolent corporate vision is good for business, for its employees and for the world. [USA Today]

Let’s end the War on Drugs [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

Growth, at last [Chicago Tribune]

Too Little of a Good Thing: The Obama stimulus plan is helping, but it not nearly enough. Unless something changes, high unemployment will continue for years to come. [New York Times]

Six Tests for Equality and Fairness: Political battles in six jurisdictions could have a profound impact on whether the United States will extend the right to marry to same-sex couples. [New York Times]

So what if they promote it? Let’s suppose, for a moment, that conservative critics are correct: Gay educators want to “promote homosexuality” in American schools. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Police these pills and powders: Congress should give the FDA the power it now lacks to regulate the dietary supplements industry. [Boston Globe]

Don’t count illegal immigrants? That doesn’t add up [LA Times]

‘Public option’ politics: The government-run option is a good compromise, but lawmakers avoided dealing with its true cost. [LA Times]

What’s next for health care: The battle now is not about whether to pass a bill, it’s over how to define the product. [Washington Post]

Adrift in an ocean of complexity: The important work of being informed about public issues has been crowded out of our lives at the very time that big money has found a way to insinuate itself into nearly every cavity of government. [Boston Globe]

Saving the news [Chicago Tribune]

The Court and Your Savings: Congress wisely put limits on the ability of mutual funds to overcharge investors. The Supreme Court needs to give the law the power that Congress intended. [New York Times]

Superpowers with super problems: Most Russians are peculiarly willing to accept their place. This is a horrifying idea to most Americans, who have deeply absorbed our sense of a Jeffersonian democracy. [Boston Globe]

Afghanistan’s drug war: The farmers aren’t the enemy – Opium cultivation and heroin production fuel corruption and aid the Taliban, but targeting the growers isn’t the answer. [LA Times]

Inside Iran’s opposition: Even if its leaders supplant the current regime, the biggest changes might be of style. [Washington Post]

Our sense of troubled normalcy returns: One year after the financial panic was at full bore the US economy is more shackled than ever to a military budget, which is money spent, for all its benefits, on death. [Boston Globe]

We’re killing communication: At 78 years old, I can authoritatively say that ‘talking’ isn’t what it used to be [USA Today]

The Shepard Fairey-AP case: A clearer picture: The dispute over the popular Obama poster gives the courts a chance to better explain what is fair use of creative works. [LA Times]

Cape Wind: The Wampanoag tribes’ attempt to block a clean energy project off the Massachusetts coast should be rejected by the responsible federal and state officials. [New York Times]

Wind power might blow a hole in bird populations: Some species will not nest near the turbines, while eagles, hawks and migratory flocks can be cut down by the spinning blades. [LA Times]

Shale game: A boom in natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania will ease energy demands and boost the state economy. But there’s reason to be concerned that environmental regulators won’t be able to keep up with this new gold rush. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Science, faith used to be allies: Tellingly, President Obama’s pick to head the National Institutes of Health — Francis Collins — touts this symbiotic relationship today. In recent years, some Americans have come to view science and religion as consistent antagonists, butting heads over everything from the origin of the cosmos to when human life begins (abortion) and when it ends (euthanasia). [USA
Today]  

Mr. Karzai Relents: To ensure that the presidential runoff in Afghanistan is fair and credible, it’s going to take a lot more effort and high-level attention. [New York Times] 

Nobody wins in the Afghan runoff election: No matter how the Nov. 7 vote goes down, it likely will impede the goal of creating an effective, independent government in Kabul. [LA Times]  

Don’t quit on Afghan women: Is the world ready to let them be killed and tortured again by a resurgent Taliban? [Philadelphia Inquirer]  

A matter of trust: The insurance industry may find out that there’s something worse than having to compete with a Medicare-style health plan for working-age Americans. How about yanking its long-standing exemption from federal antitrust laws? [Philadelphia Inquirer]  

What the oligarchs fear: In health insurance and on Wall Street, the bogeyman is a free market. [Washington Post]  

Good Sense on Medical Marijuana: Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. was right to call off prosecutions of patients who use marijuana for medical purposes or those who distribute it to them within the law. [New York Times]  

Medical pot’s highs and lows [USA Today]  

Grass roots effort: The long-haired stoner is no longer the face of the pro-pot lobby. [Washington Post]  

A compounding nightmare: By Jamie Lau Low- and middle-income households with credit card debt owe, on average, $9,827 on their cards. If you make the minimum monthly payment – often 2 percent of the balance or $10 – at 10 percent interest, it will take you more than 26 years to pay off the balance, including $6,812 in interest. [Philadelphia Inquirer]  

Halloween: Trick or stereotype: Major retailers stopped selling some costumes that played on stereotypes of illegal immgrants as Mexicans and space aliens. [Boston Globe]  

Obama’s Sudan policy: ‘incentives and pressure’: The U.S. is seeking to engage Khartoum in efforts to bring peace to Darfur and deny terrorists a haven. [LA Times]  

Balloon caper: Race to the bottom [Chicago Tribune]  

Parenting’s soar spot: The Balloon Boy saga offers a good lesson on when to let go. [Washington Post]  

Policing our cyberstreets: Keeping pace with cyber-threats demands that resources be marshaled. [Boston Globe]  

The year the dominoes fell: Twenty years ago this season, Moscow’s  Eastern European satellites threw off their chains. [Boston Globe]  

The clock is ticking: The White House and Congress can still do right by the Uighurs. [Washington Post]  

Coffee with a geriatric grumbler [Chicago Tribune]