Great Depression; Community Reinvestment Act

The Nightly Build...

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Do Republicans Want Another Depression?

Judging by reader comments on The Dallas Morning News blogs, conservatives who blocked the federal bailout (or rescue, if you prefer) of the financial industry are sharpening their talking points.

The libertarians among them say government intervention is bad. Let the banks on Wall Street fail. Let the businesses on Main Street topple after them. Let the workers who depended on their company pension plans and 401Ks go down, too. Free markets are risky and failures are how markets cleanse themselves of mistakes. We are now just shy of 80 years distant from the stock market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. People who have personal memory of the bank panics, the home foreclosures, the Hoovervilles and soup kitchens, are fast disappearing into history. A new crop of libertarians is ripe, ready to risk another Great Depression in the name of free markets.

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Scapegoating the Financial Crisis

Other conservatives who aren't above using government to benefit their own interests are using the current crisis as an opening to attack an old bogeyman -- the poor. These people are pointing to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) as a root cause. According to this storyline, liberals in government wrote laws that forced lenders to make bad loans to people unlikely to be able to pay the money back. Jim Mitchell, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, explains.

"Don't forget the reason CRA exists. It was a reaction to banks redlining minority and low-income neighborhoods. The law forced banks to show regulators that they attempted to provide loans and make other investment in low- and moderate-income communities."

CRA forced banks, not to make bad loans, not to make risky loans, but not to discriminate based solely on the neighborhood one lives in. Banks didn't need anyone to force them to make predatory loans. There was plenty of greed in the mortgage banking industry to do that all by itself. Government's failing is not in passing CRA. Government's failing is in not preventing predatory lending practices. Too many people were getting rich. Too many other people are now left holding the bag.

Candidate forums; Campaign lessons

The Nightly Build...

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Tony Goolsby Ducks Candidate Forum

Tony Goolsby, Republican incumbent in Texas House District 102, took time out of his busy schedule to write a letter to the editor of The Dallas Morning News bad-mouthing candidate forums sponsored by the League of Women Voters. It's too bad he won't take the time to actually participate in a forum. Goolsby says, "The LWV wanted to hold their candidate forums on dates when I had scheduling conflicts." That contradicts what the League president had to say in her own letter to the editor published on September 21: "Mr. Goolsby has declined to participate, despite the league's attempts to find a mutually agreeable date." There were six or more weeks to the election. All Goolsby had to do was pick a date, any date. I'm sure the League of Women Voters would have accomodated him. So, not only did Tony Goolsby not want to answer voters' questions, he isn't straight with the voters about why.

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Selective Finger-Pointing

Mark Davis, in an op-ed column in The Dallas Morning News, draws three lessons from the Presidential campaign so far.

First, Davis has learned that attempts to change the nature of campaigning are futile. He's probably right about that one. Voters had high hopes that this year might be different. John McCain and Barack Obama promised to run honorable and issues-oriented campaigns. Then, silly season arrived early. McCain compared Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Absurdly, McCain twisted Obama's support for a bill that would have included age-appropriate instruction for children on how to resist sexual advances into a charge that Obama wants to teach comprehensive sex education to kindergarteners. Worst of all, McCain accused Obama wanting to lose a war rather than lose an election. Obama, inevitably, responded with attack ads of his own, some clearly stretching the truth, but none as outright false as McCain's. Maybe some day we'll have two candidates who can both stick to the high road. But, I'm not holding my breath.

Second, Davis has learned that liberal bias grew to its shameful worst. That's a good one, seeing how The Dallas Morning News has given Mark Davis, a conservative wingnut who is congenitally incapable of objective analysis, a regular spot on its very valuable op-ed page real estate. Fox News, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly still rule the cable television airwaves. And Rush Limbaugh still rules talk radio. Mark Davis and new columnist Trey Garrison have no regular balance on The Dallas Morning News op-ed pages. There's certainly a lot of shameful bias in election coverage, but more than their fair share of it comes from the right.

Third, Davis has learned that, due to this campaign, gender and race will be less of a barrier in future elections. I agree with Mark Davis on this one. Sadly, neither prejudice is gone yet and may still be a factor in the outcome of this election. But we're guaranteed that either an African-American or a woman will be elected President or Vice President this cycle. That, in and of itself, is a milestone on our nation's long journey towards a more perfect union.

Fannie Mae

The Nightly Build...

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Selective Finger-Pointing

Republicans have pushed deregulation on industry and the financial markets for thirty years. They have extolled the benefits of free markets. Now, as the American economy stands on the brink of a collapse unlike any since before the great regulatory reforms of FDR's New Deal, John McCain and Republicans are desperately trying to evade being pinned as the party responsible. Trey Garrison reaches back to a 1999 Wall Street Journal story for exculpatory evidence.

"Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits."

The emphasis in the WSJ story is Garrison's. He latches on to the finger pointed at the Clinton administration, daringly concluding, "The problem is not too little, but too much, government regulation. As usual."

Garrison blindly ignores the second source of pressure. "[Fannie Mae] felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits." Garrison hides the fact that, since 1968, Fannie Mae has been a stockholder-owned private corporation. Fannie Mae was under pressure from multiple directions. From the government, eager to increase homeownership among working-class families. But also from the stockholders, greedy for dividends and capital gains. There's enough blame to go around in this disaster. There were bad bets by the government, by Fannie Mae, by Wall Street banks that bought up this junk paper, and by every individual investor who put any of his or her investments into anything associated with the risky mortgage-backed securities. Pretty much everyone shares the blame here. The saddest outcome of this disaster is if we don't learn from it. And Trey Garrison is proving to be one particularly slow learner.

McCain on the bailout

The Nightly Build...

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How Is McCain Playing the Bailout?

The blogosphere is rife with speculation on the strategy behind John McCain "suspending" his campaign and going to Washington to work out the details on the proposed $700 billion bailout of financial institutions. The theories span the spectrum, from the honorable (he's putting country first to help the country find a way out of this crisis) to the politically scheming (he wants to postpone his debate with Obama until next week, bumping Sarah Palin's debate with Joe Biden into the indefinite future).

Paul Burka offers his own unique theory which is a hybrid of principle and cunning. Burka predicts that McCain, in the end, is going to vote against the deal worked out by President George Bush, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid and supported by Barack Obama. Burka thinks McCain will pitch his opposition in a way to energize his base (government should let free markets work themselves out) and peel away working class Democrats (government shouldn't bail out the fat cats after letting working stiffs lose their houses). In Burka's script, McCain plays the maverick again, standing up for free markets and workers, while Bush and Obama, arms locked, stand with the billionaire bankers on Wall Street.

I credit Paul Burka with original thinking, but I see two big problems with his theory. First, why would McCain make a big deal of going back to Washington to solve this problem if he planned all along to oppose the solution? He'll end up looking like he failed. A principled failure is still a failure.

Second, Harry Reid has already announced that there'll be no deal unless John McCain and a majority of Republicans sign on. Reid saw from the start the danger of being maneuvered into a dilemma by President Bush, where Democrats either let the country's economy collapse or provide the votes that commit $700 billion of taxpayer money to bail out Wall Street CEOs. Republicans, in the minority in Congress and not responsible for getting a bill passed, would have the luxury of standing on the sideline throwing rocks at whatever solution is hammered out between the White House and the Democrats. Reid has said he won't let that happen. Surely, Barack Obama is astute enough to avoid the trap as well.

Fact checking; Preston Hollow mountains

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As If Politics As Usual Wasn't Bad Enough

The Dallas Morning News Trailblazers blog has been posting stories on campaign fact-checking done by independent sites such as FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, and news media like CNN. I've noticed that, more often lately, Barack Obama is being called out for stretching the truth. John McCain continues to be a serial offender, but the Obama campaign is now joining him more and more. I've also noticed that readers tend to dismiss campaign lies as just politics as usual, excusable because everybody does it.

It's true that all candidates are selective in their choice of and presentation of the facts. But there's something new this campaign. In the past, when the press catches a candidate stretching the truth, the candidate quits telling the lie or at least shifts the wording so it's technically true again. For example, last spring, Obama said McCain didn't care if the war in Iraq went on for a hundred years. The press pointed out that what McCain actually said was that he didn't care if a peaceful American presence in Iraq lasted a hundred years. Obama changed his stump speech.

That's not happening in the McCain campaign. Sarah Palin, for example, in her first speech after McCain announced her as his running mate, bragged about having said no thanks to the bridge to nowhere. In fact, Palin was a big supporter of the bridge and even after publicity doomed the project, still kept the money. When the press pointed that out, did Palin quit telling the lie? No. She repeated it word for word, incessantly, including in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. It's almost as if McCain and Palin don't care if they are caught telling bald-faced lies. That, in fact, may be exactly the case.

Jonathan Chait of The New Republic says that McCain spokesman Brian Rogers described media fact-checking this way: "We're running a campaign to win. And we're not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it." Chait says Republican strategist John Feehery was even more blunt: "The more The New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there's a bigger truth out there, and the bigger truths are: She's new, she's popular in Alaska, and she is an insurgent. [...] As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter."

Facts don't matter. Perversely, McCain considers it a plus for him to lie, if it's the so-called liberal elite media doing the fact-checking. It's a deliberate strategy to tell lies that the Times will report as lies, setting up an "us versus the elites" story line. That's what different this time around. Politicians may have always lied, but rarely did they do so openly, baiting the press to call them liars. This is the campaign being run by John McCain, the man who promised us an honorable campaign. That may have been the first, and biggest, lie of all.

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The Joke's On Us

By now, every blogger in Dallas has had his fun ridiculing the New York Post and its columnist Cindy Adams for her story on George W Bush's house hunting in Dallas. According to Adams, he supposedly has settled on "a town outside Dallas called Preston Hollow, one of the wealthiest areas in the oil-rich state of Texas. Houses come with horse stables, lake views, mountain views, golf club views."

Everyone seems to be having a good laugh on those ignorant New Yorkers, without anyone recognizing that lack of familiarity with Dallas says more about Dallas than it does about New York. Dallasites may like to imagine that they live in a big, important, worldly city, but, in fact, to people who actually live in big, important, worldly cities, Dallas is nothing more than a stereotype. Laugh at the New York Post if you must, Dallas, but know that the joke's on us.

Bank bailout

The Nightly Build...

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Disaster Capitalism

Jim Mitchell, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, says it's irrelevant whether Barack Obama or John McCain warned against the recent financial meltdown on Wall Street or even whether either has a plan to fix the mess. Mitchell says the crisis is upon us, events are moving too fast, and political talking points are mere distractions to the decisions that have to be made now.

The urgency Mitchell feels is exactly how the Bush administration wants Americans to feel about the crisis. The Bush administration, through the Treasury Department and its Secretary Henry Paulson, is rushing through a $700 billion bailout plan, pressuring Congress to act swiftly, without due consideration, without input. Taxpayers ought to be very suspicious of the Bush administration's haste. Check out this sentence buried in the administration's plan:

"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

If that doesn't scare the daylights out of you, I've got a bridge to nowhere in Alaska to sell you. Taxpayers would do well to read The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, a 2007 book by Naomi Klein. Klein details how practitioners of Milton Freidman's free market economics have exploited (and in some cases, even created) disasters and upheavals in order to impose their radical policies on shocked societies. Chile, Russia, Iraq, even New Orleans after Katrina, all have seen wholesale imposition of economic shock therapy. The beneficiaries of this are a narrow group of the economic elite who control the companies adept at profiting from disasters (think Halliburton and Blackwater). The losers are the devastated communities left picking up the pieces of a destroyed economy and infrastructure. That section of the bailout plan quoted above is the kind of license the free marketers give themselves in order to take advantage of the chaos in a market collapse.

Congress would do well to resist being stampeded into hasty action by an administration whose primary interest may be in applying another dose of economic shock therapy, this time on the American economy itself. They were responsible for the disaster. Now they are exploiting it. It's how disaster capitalism works. Read the book.

Fear-mongering; Third party

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Fear Mongering, Bad. Green Weenies, Good

Trey Garrison, in a Points essay in The Dallas Morning News, references some fear-mongering by politicians -- Sen. John Carona's (R-Dallas) bid to outlaw pre-paid cell phones to combat drug dealers; Dallas City Council member Dwaine Caraway's bid to limit how much of a store's window space can be taken up with ads, supposedly to maximize visibility into the store from the street; and Dallas city staffers' bid to sidestep the Landmark Commission in their bid to tear down crack houses.

So far, so good. It's been said that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels. If so, the second last is law-and-order.

Trey Garrison, in his own blog, points readers to a second Points essay by Stanley Fish, a kind of paean to pollution. Garrison says:

"Also, be sure to check out this column from Stanley Fish about how we need to get real about our attitude toward pollution. It’s not a moral sin. It’s a fact of life. It’s the cost of people making things. And the materialist, capitalist system so many green weenies decry is what provides better efficiencies in industry and the technologies to clean up the messes we made."

Personally, I say three cheers for the "green weenies" who lobbied and pressured business and government to hold the polluters to account, to make the people making things responsible for the "cost of people making things" instead of spreading the cost to the rest of us, the people who have to breathe the air and drink the water polluted by those people. It's funny, but when the costs can't be passed off to others, the people making things get pretty innovative and find ways to reduce those costs. So, here's to the green weenies, may they ever be vigilant.

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A Third Party in 2012

Scott Burns, who criticizes financial advisors who recommend complicated investments that benefit them more than their customers, really lays into Wall Street this week. Burns declares "'Wall Street wisdom' is a new oxymoron, right up there with 'riskless investment.'"

Burns makes a few predictions. We're near a bottom. The recession won't be deep. And, most surprising, there'll be a rise of a third political party before the 2012 presidential election. Even though both major party candidates are running as the candidate of change, Burns says neither the Democrats nor the Republicans "get it." He condemns both parties for bankrupting our future. Burns is probably wrong about a third party. The future doesn't vote.

Tony Goolsby, dirty tricks

The Nightly Build...

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Feigned Outrage over Fake Push-Polling

Tim Rogers, in Frontburner, alleges dirty tricks in the race for Texas House District 102, currently held by Tony Goolsby. He doesn't come right out and say it, but he implies that it's Goolsby's opponent, Carol Kent, who is running phony push-polling phone calls against Goolsby.

Personally, I find it more likely that someone in the Goolsby campaign itself, or perhaps sufficiently detached from it for plausible deniability, has been making the offensive phone calls to justify accusing Goolsby's opponent of dirty tricks. Check the reader comments to the Frontburner blog item. For example, this comment by one "Kent Can't":

"I also received a call from the company Carol Kent hired to conduct this dirty scam. I got the telemarketer to admit he was in a call center in Delhi, India. Then he told me he had no idea who Carol Kent was, but she apparently paid his company money. At least that’s what I thought he said...could hardly understand the fellow."

Does this pass the smell test? Have you ever gotten a call from a Indian telemarketer, or any telemarketer for that matter, who is willing to answer questions about his job and about who in America is paying his company for his time? The comment reads to me like someone is making up stuff to smear Carol Kent, perhaps as part of a concerted dirty tricks campaign.

Here's how it would work. First, make some offensive calls to staunch Goolsby supporters. Wait for them to tell someone in the press about it. When an obliging writer like Tim Rogers of Frontburner complies, then pile on the reader comments convicting Carol Kent of something the Goolsby campaign itself manufactured. Finally, start running your own ads criticizing Carol Kent for running a dirty tricks campaign. There. A perfect dirty trick where the victim herself gets blamed for the dirty trick you engineered. Right from the playbook perfected by Karl Rove himself, who, perhaps not coincidentally, was in Dallas August 13 to raise money for, wait for it...Tony Goolsby.

Do I have any proof of this? No. You are right to be skeptical of any such accusation against Tony Goolsby. Just as you should be skeptical of the unfounded accusations now being leveled against Carol Kent. But if you do want to start your own investigation, start by asking yourself this question. Who stands to gain from running a blatantly offensive push-polling scheme against Tony Goolsby that's bound to come to light and get all sorts of negative publicity? The supposed target, Goolsby himself, right? Certainly not Carol Kent. Follow the self-interest.

By the way, if you think Goolsby hasn't been accused before of playing dirty, check out the libel lawsuit filed against him by his opponent in the 2006 race. According to Lone Star Project:

"A 2006 cynical smear campaign and voter suppression scheme orchestrated by Republican State House Representative Tony Goolsby (HD102, Dallas), along with Dallas County Republican Party Chair Kenn George and a Dallas GOP consultant, may have backfired. Monday [Oct 15, 2007], former challenger Harriet Miller, with support from Lone Star Project, filed a lawsuit in the 192nd State District Court showing that their attack 'constitutes slander' and was committed with 'actual malice.' "

Someone has some explaining to do, to the judge at least and maybe to the voters. And it's not Carol Kent.

Wick Allison endorsement

The Nightly Build...

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A Conservative for Obama

This ground-breaking election continues to surprise. Wick Allison, former publish of William F. Buckley's deeply conservative National Review and current editor-in-chief of D Magazine, just published an opinion piece titled "A Conservative for Obama." In it, he first repeats the familiar criticisms of George W. Bush's tenure as President: the deficit spending, the support for tax cuts even after the outbreak of war, the growth of government, the bellicosity abroad, the messianic mission of spreading democracy.

"This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse."

So far, so familiar. Many conservatives have made the argument that George W Bush's failures are not failures of conservatism, but failures of a man, a man who failed to live up to conservative ideals.

Here's where Allison's argument gets interesting. He doesn't say that what's needed is a leader who will somehow just execute the same old conservative game plan better so things magically turn out different next time. No, he argues that what's needed is someone who is "skeptical of abstract theories" including, presumably, the traditional conservative game plan itself. He argues that's what needed is "a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man," a "realist," someone who is "ready to test any political program against actual results." For Allison, these are the traits of a conservative. And who does Wick Allison see filling that role? None other than Barack Obama.

"Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. [...] As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama."

Of all the millions of words written during this Presidential campaign, Wick Allison's analysis is the single most surprising essay I've read. It rings of honesty. It recognizes the need for real change. From a conservative. Simply amazing.

Bad news keeps coming

The Nightly Build...

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May I Have a Word? Compassion

Michael Landauer, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, notes the recent string of bad news and posits a hypothetical worst-case scenario:

"Mom works (for now) for AIG. Dad works (for now) for EDS. Balloon payments are coming due on their leased vehicles, and their adjustable-rate mortgage just reset to a higher rate. And Junior's favorite teacher just got called to the principal's office to talk about the cutbacks at his DISD school."

Landauer asks, "What could be worse?" To which Trey Garrison quickly responds, "Bailing mom and dad out." When accused of lacking compassion, Garrison replies, "What's compassionate about treating adults like children who have to be protected from their own decisions?"

I'm a native speaker of English. For me, compassion is not an emotion that needs to be earned. It's not something to be withheld from people who fail to see misfortune coming. Compassion is a word descriptive of the person with compassion, not the person for whom compassion is felt. From American Heritage Dictionary:

"compassion - n. Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it."

Garrison's brand of libertarianism preaches that if tragedy befalls you, it's your own fault. For living in the path of a hurricane, or for working for a company that goes bankrupt, or for sending your kids to failing schools, or for not making enough money to be able to move to west Plano. Garrison's attitude is that everyone is on his own. Aid and comfort just begets more need for aid and comfort. That cold-hearted philosophy might or might not be good public policy (I think not), but for sure it's not compassion. Trey Garrison may or may not know the meaning of compassion, but for sure he doesn't show any.

Death penalty case reviews

The Nightly Build...

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Dallas, the Death Penalty, and Justice

Rod Dreher, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, throws his support behind Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins' plan to re-examine the cases of 40 death-row inmates, in reaction to DNA evidence having previously exonerated 19 Dallas County death-row inmates. Toby Shook, a former Dallas County prosecutor, objects to the review as a hardship on the victims' families. Dreher finds that attitude "shocking and dismaying" and considers it to be an indifference to justice.

I'm solidly behind Dreher in this matter, all except for the part where Dreher is shocked at an indifference to justice. From Richard Nixon to George W Bush, conservative law-and-order politicians have cared more about putting away the bad guys than in protecting the civil liberties of the innocent. From wiretapping innocent Americans to imprisoning whoever at Guantanamo without habeus corpus rights to sending men to death row in Dallas on questionable evidence, civil liberties have been sacrificed for presumed public safety.

In the comments section, Mike Hashimoto, another editorial writer for The Dallas Morning News, sides with Toby Shook. His reason seems to be that Craig Watkins is a publicity hound. So? The argument is a non sequitur. Hashimoto is "willing to bet" that the vast majority of death cases were decided correctly. That's just crass. If Hashimoto is wrong, he can settle up by digging out some spare change. Innocents on death row pay with their lives. Hashimoto saves his silliest argument for last. He concludes, "Congratulations. We live in California now." For Hashimoto, looking like Californians is more to be feared than putting innocent men and women to death.

What does Hashimoto want to see D.A. Watkins do instead? Review the death penalty cases in private, not going to the courts unless and until new, exonerating evidence is uncovered. Until then, let the executions continue. If someone is executed before the D.A. can review his case, so be it. After all, Hashimoto is "willing to bet" he was guilty anyway.

DISD budget shortfall; McCain's dishonesty

The Nightly Build...

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May I Have a Word? Scandal

The Dallas Independent School District revealed a $64 million budget shortfall. An editorial in The Dallas Morning News called it "embarrassing," "unacceptable," a "scandal." Wick Allison, on Frontburner, put things in perspective. The DISD shortfall was 5% of the district's budget. In comparison, The Dallas Morning News "itself was experiencing a financial shortfall of about 14%." Given that the DISD is "getting the best results in 40 years," and The Dallas Morning News is losing readership, is scandal the right word in the DISD's case?

Mike Hashimoto, editorial writer for The Dallas Morning News, is quick to rise to the defense of the paper. His argument is somehow related to the fact that the DISD is funded by taxes and Belo (owner of the News) is not. His argument also implies that the DISD shortfall is due to either negligence or malfeasance whereas Belo's financial difficulties are...not?

What Hashimoto's argument is not based on is any assessment of the nature of the budget shortfall, where the money is being spent, and whether the DISD is making progress in the quality of education it provides. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but in Mike Hashimoto's world, education doesn't merit a mention.

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McCain Gets Called Out on Lies

Barack Obama unveiled a new television ad this week decrying the lies and smears the John McCain campaign has been spreading. The Obama ad features media fact-finding reports on McCain's claims, such as Time's description of one McCain ad as "one of the sleaziest ads...ever seen."

How does Dallas Blog report this? Does it link to the ad and analyze its claims? Does it fact-check the claims McCain has been making about Obama? No. Dallas Blog runs a story by Tom McGregor headlined, "Obama's 'Change' Campaign Turns Nasty." It's Obama who gets criticized for promising a change from McCain's old-style politics of personal destruction. It's Obama who is being "nasty" for pointing out the lies being told by McCain.

Dallas Blog doesn't even link to Obama's ad, keeping readers from judging for themselves, but it does quote from and links to Fox News. Dallas Blog - Where Even Pretending to be Fair and Balanced is Too Much.

Hurricane Ike

The Nightly Build...

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May I Have a Word? Certain Death

The National Weather Services warned residents of smaller structures on Galveston Island that they "face certain death" from Hurricane Ike if they refused to evacuate the island. That warning got the professional writers at The Dallas Morning News wondering about the appropriateness of the word choice. Death is not "certain" even for those in the path of a hurricane. Exaggeration erodes public trust. Public safety officials need to present the risks in an honest and straightforward manner.

James Ragland comes down on the side of public safety, arguing that whatever it takes to shake people from complacency and get them to evacuate to save their own lives is justified. With only a twinge of regret, I agree. The risk to life is real. The possibility of some deaths from this storm is significant. If you're living in a single-family house near the water, well, "certain death" is only a little exaggerated. And a little hyperbole to drive home the point shouldn't be held against the National Weather Service. After all, they are paid to be experts on the weather, not language.

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Is Rush Limbaugh Profiting From Ike?

Michael Landauer, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, passes on a reader's notice that the hurricane evacuation route signs on I-45 out of Houston direct drivers to tune to 820 AM for traffic info. Drivers doing so today are treated to regular programming, in this case Rush Limbaugh. It kind of makes you wonder why the signs are needed at all, if not even Hurricane Ike bearing down on Houston is enough to interrupt regular programming. And if the signs are just for everyday traffic info, there are plenty of radio stations that provide that. I hope the highway department is at least getting paid something by 820 AM or Rush Limbaugh for the highway advertising signs. If not, they ought to find another radio station.

P.S. It's impossible to resist the urge to write something that includes the words hurricane, Rush and blowhard in the same sentence.

9/11

In Memory

Not just on this day, but on all days, let us all be Americans.

Dallas street names; Trinity Project model

The Nightly Build...

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To Understand Brouhaha, Follow the Money

Jacquielynn Floyd and Ed Housewright, on The Dallas Morning News Metro blog, both lament "the foolishness over street names in Dallas." Housewright says:

" 'Community leaders' (of any race) start yammering about changing a street name to honor an important dead person. How about spending your energy on an issue that will actually help people."

That's a valid criticism as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. This "brouhaha" over renaming Dallas's Ross Avenue didn't spring from the ground up. It wasn't manufactured by "community leaders." Remember, this all began when the Dallas City Council held an online poll to pick a name for Industrial Boulevard along the redeveloped Trinity River. And remember, that happened at the same time the City Council was hatching a plan to commit the city to build, own, and manage a convention center hotel, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. The brouhaha over street naming effectively distracted Dallasites' attention while the hotel was being slipped quietly under the voters' noses.

Community leaders can be blamed for falling for the political tricks played by the city power brokers, but the root cause of not working on matters that will actually help people can be traced back to the Dallas City Council itself and their desire for a $500 million dollar taxpayer-financed hotel.

P.S. Do the quotes Housewright uses around "community leaders" indicate that Housewright buys into the McCain/Palin disparagement of "community organizers?"

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Who Would Drop $500,000 on LEGO?

If you guessed "only an idiot," read on. Tim Rogers, in Frontburner, takes aim at Jim Schutze. Schutze has championed the public interest in the fight against the Trinity Project, a developers' dream of building "a high-speed, multi-lane, limited-access throughway between the flood-control levees, right along the river." Schutze predicts the "stupidly dangerous idea" will never be built, because it's "sort of like building an orphanage on top of a dam." Oh, and because the cost overruns are going to be astronomical.

So, what does Rogers dispute about Schutze's column? It's Schutze's logical conclusion that the continued pursuit of this folly must mean that we have "idiots" steering the ship. Rogers doesn't rebut any of Schutze's premises, nor his reasoning, but is offended at the logical conclusion that the people behind this bad idea might just be idiots.

Jim Schutze isn't the only Trinity Project critic that Tim Rogers takes aim at. Rogers also attacks The Observer's Rob Wilonsky for criticizing this week's grand unveiling of a new model for the Trinity Project. Rogers extols the detail of the model, with a six-inch Renaissance Tower containing 600 feet of fiber optics, and 40,000 model homes, each "an exact replica of the real thing." Rogers gushes that the unfinished model cost $500,000 to build so far and is a "phenomenal work of art," while leaving open the possibility that it still might not accurately depict "what we'll wind up seeing in earth and water and trees and roads." That Rogers thinks a half-million dollar, unfinished, possibly inaccurate, phenomenal work of art is somehow evidence that idiots are not in charge might be a sign that Jim Schutze's search for idiots needs to cast a wider net.

Newspaper endorsements; Trey Garrison

The Nightly Build...

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Does it Matter Who The News Recommends?

Mike Hashimoto, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, expresses frustration that the candidate endorsements of the News have so little impact on how people vote. He asks whether the paper should expend the time and energy to recommend in races big and small?

Voters don't need newspaper recommendations. What they need is information. The news media could provide a service to voters if they would publish three paragraphs for each electoral race. First, the Republican view of the pros of the Republican candidate and the cons of the Democratic candidate. Second, the Democratic side of the debate. Third, the newspaper's own fact-checking of the claims in the first two paragraphs.

P.S. Mike Hashimoto himself could always write the first paragraph. Which is why the second and third paragraphs are so desperately needed.

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Like the World Doesn't Have Enough Blogs

Just in case you thought The Dallas Morning News itself isn't running enough blogs, their own bloggers are now passing on word of a free-lance blog written by one of their own free-lance writers, Trey Garrison. Garrison has bounced around, from the embarrassing Dallas Blog to the intentionally sophomoric and snarky Frontburner, to the occasional guest column in The Dallas Morning News.

Trey Garrison is a libertarian, which in many cases just means a conservative Republican who is too embarrassed by the excesses of his party to publicly wear the label. That lets libertarians like Garrison throw rocks at liberals while simultaneously denying any affiliation with the small government advocates from Reagan to Bush who actually achieve power and expand government spending and control and curtailment of civil liberties. Garrison plays well the role of Republican propagandist with plausible deniability.

Sampling the early servings on Trey Garrison's blog finds a mockery of Cesar Chavez's labor movement and Russ Feingold's campaign finance reform; criticism of suggestions that Sarah Palin ought to moderate her right wing views; praise for ExxonMobil's windfall profits and Plano's ability to keep out the riff-raff; and Garrison's own evolving position on immigration (he was against it until he decided that opposition was futile, so you "may as well enjoy getting your house built, lawn cut, and fruit picked at a discount"). When you tire of reading standard Republican talking points, I recommend you try reading Trey Garrison's less predictable, if just as arrogant, right wing commentary. I find him oddly entertaining, in small doses.

GOP convention wrapup

The Nightly Build...

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Theater of the Absurd

The GOP convention was four days of theater of the absurd. The party that's controlled the White House for 8 years, Congress for 12 of the last 14, and appointed 7 of 9 Supreme Court justices, was dressing up in the costume of change. Watching these guys make their case to the voters was like watching the irresponsible son ask his dad to give him the car keys, promising he won't wreck the car again.

It was sad watching the convention emasculate John McCain. McCain is arguably the Republican who most bucked Republican orthodoxy the last 10 years, but the convention refused to let him talk about his signature issues -- campaign finance reform, immigration reform, compromise on federal judges. Instead, they forced him to pick for Vice President the candidate least likely to carry on any of these in case McCain dies in office.

McCain was the nominal standard bearer, but you could tell the delegates greatest pleasure was in knowing that they forced McCain to pick Sarah Palin for vice president. It was like watching a gathering of family elders celebrating that the family estate has been safely put in the hands of someone from the next generation who won't change any of the family furniture. As the balloons and confetti dropped and delegates waved signs calling for "Change", the elders smugly drank champaign, knowing that change is the least likely thing to come out of the Republican ticket for yet another election cycle.

Palin's speech; McCain's good points

The Nightly Build...

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GOP Lies, Hypocrisy, Shrill Attacks

Rod Dreher, the erratic prig on The Dallas Morning News editoral staff, has found a new love, Sarah Palin. A week ago, he decried Barack Obama for having a reputation for giving good speeches but little more. And he himself wasn't even going to credit Obama with good speech-making. He belittled Obama's convention speech as "really underwhelming," "mostly warmed-over Democratic boilerplate." He even mocked the Denver stage, calling the use of columns an attempt to look "like an ancient Greek temple." (Did anyone notice that when Palin herself mocked this, the GOP convention was displaying behind Palin a three-story majestic photograph of...Mount Rushmore? Can you say irony, hypocrisy, arrogance?)

This week, as one after another Republican traipses to the podium to attack Obama's character and background and twist and smear his record and platform, Dreher is suddenly energized, by...mostly warmed-over Republican boilerplate. Dreher calls Fred Thompson's and Joe Lieberman's speeches "boffo." He calls Palin's speech "outstanding," and "astonishing." "She knocked everybody flat." "American history was made tonight." "The Republicans have found their Obama! This woman is going to electrify the GOP. Game on." I guess Republicans are now OK with being able to give good speeches. Dreher's hypocrisy and puppy-like crush on the "pit bull with lipstick" would be embarrassing to a professional journalist, but Dreher is immune to objective self-awareness. So much for the swooning by the Dallas press.

Republicans are running on change? Anyone who listened to the snide, sarcastic, shrill attack by Sarah Palin recognizes the same-old Washington politics as usual. So much for McCain's promise to run an honorable campaign.

How does the Palin speech stand up to factual analysis? Not so well on that score, either.

Palin lied that she fought earmarks. She lied when she said she turned down money for the atrocious "Bridge to Nowhere." In fact, she championed the bridge. When Congress told her the money allocated couldn't be spent on the bridge, she didn't send the money back to taxpayers. She spent the pork money elsewhere in Alaska. As mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin hired Washington lobbyists to bring home more pork. She finagled millions of dollars for tiny Wasilla out of Alaska's Ted Stevens, now facing trial for corruption.

Palin lied that Obama hasn't passed any legislation. In the US Senate, he sponsored legislation to intercept WMD and destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. In the Illinois Senate, he sponsored ethics reform. I admit that McCain has bigger bills to brag about, but to say Obama has not achievements is simply a lie. Ironically, no one no one at the GOP convention seemed to want to talk about McCain's accomplishments, such as McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform.

Palin lied when she said Obama plans to raise your taxes. McCain's tax cuts are skewed to the very rich. Obama's are aimed at the middle class. Independent analyses show that Obama's plan cuts middle class taxes more than McCain's does.

John McCain lied when he said Palin, as governor of Alaska, was responsible for Alaska's oil. Her primary power over oil on federal lands is to tax it, which she and the Alaska legislature did, allowing her to brag about balancing the Alaska budget, on the backs of American oil consumers everywhere else.

Mike Huckabee lied when he said Palin got more votes as mayor of Wasilla that Joe Biden got running for President. Palin got less than a thousand votes in each of her elections. Biden got 76,000. The GOP's grasp of math might explain the economy.

And on and on. Palin's lie after lie spoiled whatever compelling story she might have and might have told. Let's hope that Rod Dreher snaps out of his crush on Sarah before this shrill practitioner of the Rove playbook drags America into four more years of Bush/Cheney old-style, divisive politics.

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Making a Case for the Other Guy

William McKenzie, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, posts a challenge that I would have thought every professional journalist would be able to ace as a matter of course. McKenzie asks you to make the case for the other guy, the guy you don't support in this election. If you can't do that, you're pretty much just a partisan hack, not an objective analyst. So, I'll take the challenge. I don't support John McCain, but here's how he might be good for the country, if elected.

He says he's for energy independence, including development of alternative sources of energy.
He says he's for a cap-and-trade system to control greenhouse gas emissions.
He says he's for a balanced budget.
He actually has personally shunned the pork-laden earmark system.
He says he won't seek amendments to the Constitution to discriminate against gays or deny women the right to choose or outlaw the Spanish language.
He supports free trade.
He supports tax credits to defray the cost of health insurance premiums.
He used to support campaign finance reform, immigration reform, and a ban on torture; maybe if he's elected, he'll feel free of right wing pressure and return to these sensible positions.

Up until a month or two ago, I might have added as a good point for John McCain that he promised to run an honorable campaign and change the tone in Washington. After listening to Palin's shrill, partisan attack on Barack Obama, that's out the window now. That one speech outweights all the good points that I just laid out for John McCain.

GOP convention spin

The Nightly Build...

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Draining the Swamp

Rod Dreher, the erratic editorial page writer for The Dallas Morning News, thinks that Fred Thompson gave an "boffo" opening speech at the GOP convention. Shorter Rod Dreher: I agree with Thompson's politics.

Personally, I was struck by Thompson's line about John McCain going to Washington to drain the swamp of alligators. No mention that the Republican alligators have controlled the White House the last eight years, the Congress for twelve of the last fourteen years, and alligator John McCain himself has prowled the halls of Congress for the last twenty six years. Will voters buy the GOP outsider line one more time or will they recognize that McCain doesn't represent change, he's the status quo?

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Executive Experience and Legislative Votes

When I haven't read him in a while, I find myself thinking I respect Trey Garrison's analysis. Then he spoils it by speaking up. Garrison has bounced around Dallas, working his way up from the shabby Dallas Blog to an occasional column in the mainstream Dallas Morning News. Lately, he's been hanging out in the Opinion blog forums, making some pretty embarrassing partisan political points, embarrassing even if he weren't a supposedly professional journalist.

Trey Garrison: "[Sarah Palin] has more than executive experience than Obama. And Biden. And McCain. Put together."

When your candidate lacks experience, redefine the term to fit the candidate. Republicans have suddenly decided that "executive" experience is what's important for the Vice Presidency. Their standards for the Presidency itself are apparently different, having chosen John McCain, with no "executive" experience, for that position. Republicans have also decided that being mayor of a town of 9,000 and first-term governor of the 47th most populous state is the kind of "executive" experience that trumps legislative experience in the US Senate -- three and half years in the case of Barack Obama or decades in the cases of Joe Biden and John McCain. Isn't Trey Garrison embarrassed parroting the Republicans' "executive" experience argument?

Trey Garrison: "We certainly already know more about [Palin] than we have learned in Barack's two-plus years on the campaign trail."

Check out ontheissues.org. The track record on Obama is much, much longer than the track record on Palin. Again, an embarrassing claim.

Trey Garrison: "Obama voted 'present' more times than he voted yea or nay in his short term in the Illinois senate."

My research indicates that Obama voted present 130 times out of over 4,000 recorded votes. When challenged with the facts, Garrison replied, "I was speaking of substantive bills." In other words, Garrison will do the counting in whatever way is needed to support his falsehood. Embarrassing.

When Obama did vote 'present', he did this to signal the opposition that he was willing to compromise (a good thing, no?). In other cases he did this to signal his belief that an otherwise well-intentioned bill might in fact be unconstitutional (also good judgment). In still other cases, he did it to signal that he agreed with some provisions of a bill and opposed others, enough that he could not support the bill as a whole (again communicating more than a simple "no" vote would have).

A vote of 'present' has the same effect as a 'no' vote, so a legislator can't dodge taking a stand with a vote of 'present.' What a vote of 'present' does is communicate *why* a legislator opposes a bill. It's a good system, except for the opportunity it gives unscrupulous political opponents to mischaracterize one's voting record. Which is exactly what Trey Garrison has sunk to in this comments thread.

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A Wounded Duck, Not A Soaring Eagle

Mark Davis, with a byline that says St. Paul but with content that says Planet Zork, says Sarah Palin is holding up well. Despite questions about her own baby, her unwed daughter's baby, her alleged abuse of power in punishing her brother-in-law in his divorce proceedings with her sister, her championing earmarks for Wasilla and for Alaska, her support for the bridge-to-nowhere before she was against it, her acceptance of campaign contributions from the same network that has Senator Ted Stevens facing bribery charges, ..., despite all this, Mark Davis says, implausibly, "Nothing has winged her yet."

Is he kidding? She's wounded and fighting for her political life. Mark Davis, loyal partisan that he is, is fighting for her by spouting nonsense like, "Nothing has winged her yet." And The Dallas Morning News publishes it.

Dreher, Garrison, and Davis are professional journalists. I expect objectivity and factual basis for their opinions. Maybe that's where I went wrong, but I can wish, can't I?

All Sarah Palin

The Nightly Build...

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Is Sarah Palin Really a Maverick Choice

Nicole Stockdale, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, asks a very telling question. The key point in answering is the rumor that McCain really wanted to name Joe Lieberman or maybe Tom Ridge. The rumors of late and insufficient vetting of Sarah Palin reinforce the belief that McCain had someone else in mind.

Last week, there were reports that Karl Rove himself called Lieberman to ask him to take his name out of the running. Lieberman declined. The impression is that McCain came under enormous pressure from the right wing, even threats of a floor fight against Lieberman or Ridge or any other vice presidential pick who wasn't deemed conservative enough.

If even half of the numerous reports are even halfway accurate, the conclusion is inescapable. McCain caved to rightwing pressure at the last minute to name hardcore conservative and hastily named Palin, who is popular with this crowd.

So, to answer Stockdale's question, no, Sarah Palin was not a maverick choice by John McCain. It was a surrender to the conservatives who have had Republican Party politics under their control for a generation. McCain, who once rightfully deserved the description of maverick, is now tamed and bridled and working as a pack horse for the far right.

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Palin Family Matters

The news that Sarah Palin's unmarried seventeen year old daughter is pregnant has been heating up the blogosphere since it became known just a day ago. There are too many blog items to count just on The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog. Reaction seems to be of three kinds...

First, that the pregnancy somehow shows that the Sarah Palin herself is an unfit mother or lacks family values. Or that the child's decision not to abort the baby somehow shows just how strong the Palin family values are.

Second, that the pregnancy should be a private, family matter, but Sarah Palin crossed that line by revealing other private, family matters in a bid to gain political advantage. Her son Track isn't mentioned without adding that he joined the military and is due to deployed to Iraq. Her son Trig can't be mentioned without bragging how he's a Down-syndrome baby that mother Sarah didn't abort him. Critics complain that Sarah Palin ought to stick to the facts and not try to spin them to her advantage. By spinning, she can't really complain when her opponents spin the same facts to her disadvantage.

But there's a third reaction. It's the reaction of Barack Obama, who says all this talk of the Palin family should be off limits. He doesn't criticize Palin, either for what's happened in her family, or how she has tried to spin it to the press. Instead, he says the whole subject is off limits. Instead, he wants to talk about the economy, health care, energy, the war, etc. He may not be able to control what his supporters on all the blogs say about Palin, but he does control what he and his campaign staff say. Classy guy, that Obama.

Sarah Palin's religion

The Nightly Build...

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Evangelical, Pentacostal, Lutheran, Mormon?

Jeffrey Weiss, on The Dallas Morning News Religion blog, has been trying to track down Sarah Palin's religion. There has been a lot of speculation that she was evangelical, pentacostal, even Lutheran. The latest thinking is that she really doesn't have a denominational affiliation.

Palin's religion and denominational choice, or lack of one, should be a non-issue, provided she firmly believes in the separation of church and state. Is there any documented evidence of her position on that?

Palin is going to have to take a stand on a lot of things that she didn't have to think about as mayor of Wasilla. And she won't have much time to do it.