Political Interest

Giuliani Cashes In, Again

Rudy is cashing in again.  According to the NY Times, America's supposed mayor is further aggrandizing his wallet.  This time it's by joining a "politically connected" Texas law firm, who, of course, represented Enron and Boston Big Dig darling's Bechtel.

The firm will take Giuliani's name in hyphenated form, so I expect the billable rate for the junior associates fresh out of law school doing most of the work to rise by at least twenty percent.

Giuliani was Rumsfeldian as to whether this will affect his political future:

Asked if opening a law firm in 2005 would rule out a run for governor of New York in 2006, about which there has been some speculation, Mr. Giuliani said, "If it does, it does, and if it doesn't, it doesn't."

Hard to argue with that.

Neither of the Conservative Intellectuals Can Agree on Social Security Plan

Bush's Social Security privatization scheme is in the midst of loosing yet another group, according to the WashPost; conservative intellectuals. 

Now that's just sad, really.

Bush Plays Hamlet

We all know that Bush prides himself on his decisiveness and steadfast resolve.  He based a large part of his 2004 campaign on his vaunted ability to 'stay the course.'  So much so that far less emphasis was placed on his ability to actually select the correct course.  But, doggone it, he'll stay on that wrong course.

Unless, of course, he backs the wrong political horse.  Kevin Drum has the scoop on the latest leaks coming out of the White House distancing the President from his midnight Federal intervention into the Schiavo case.

Seeking Asian Women

In a gift to bloggers and arm chair speculators everywhere, the census bureau released data giving the average annual income of US demographic groups by race, sex and education with no explanation on why the differences are there.  According to the MSNBC site and most of the coverage I've seen, the headline from this study is how relatively poorly white college educated women did compared to both black and Asian women, earning slightly less than both groups.

Here's my theory based on a minute and a half of thought, offered to maintain compliance with blogging license,  the lack of earning by white women may be related to the sub-headline finding that white men still make more than anybody else.  Since white men and women still tend to predominately marry each other, white women with higher earning husbands may feel freer to take jobs with lower pay but that have other non-monetary benefits, such as jobs with a social mission or more family friendly policies. 

It would be interesting to cross tabulate the individual data with household data and marital status, neither of which seem to be touched in this study.

Tough Sell

Recruiting new soldiers for the Army with Iraq War is, not surprisingly, getting to be a tougher and tougher.  According a story in the NY Times, the pressure to make that sale is being passed right down the line to the 7,500 Army recruiters, 70% of whom were plucked involuntarily out of their regular duties.

The Army's recruiters are being challenged with one of the hardest selling jobs the military has asked of them in American history, and many say the demands are taking a toll.

A recruiter in New York said pressure from the Army to meet his recruiting goals during a time of war has given him stomach problems and searing back pain. Suffering from bouts of depression, he said he has considered suicide. Another, in Texas, said he had volunteered many times to go to Iraq rather than face ridicule, rejection and the Army's wrath.

An Army chaplain said he had counseled nearly a dozen recruiters in the past 18 months to help them cope with marital troubles and job-related stress.

The army general responsible for recruitment interviewed in the article claims the punishments and reprimands shouldn't fall on the individual recruitment soldiers, but that's just what seems to be happening.

Recruiters said falling short often generates a barrage of angry correspondence, formal reprimands, threats or even demotion.

"The recruiter is stuck in the situation where you're not going to make mission, it just won't happen," the New York recruiter said. "And you're getting chewed out every day for it. It's horrible." He said the assignment was more strenuous than the time he was shot at while deployed in Africa.

That same general, though, refuses to acknowledge the toll the on-going conflict has on their recruiting mission, so the top brass is shifting  blame onto unit commanders, who by and large seem to dealing with it by haranguing the recruiters.  That alone is a pretty poor advertisement for signing up with the organization.

The Globe phones it in

It's hard to fill a paper seven days a week, and there just so many Terri Shiavo editorials a paper can write.  So the Boston Globe gives us this Andy Rooney-esque space filler on the difficulty of remembering names.

That's why people sometimes mumble when introducing the mystery person to someone they know -- or they'll ask, ''Have you met my husband?" hoping that Smith/Jones will take up the conversational slack and introduce himself. A feigned coughing fit can also get results, particularly when it is accompanied by introduction motions as the person at a loss for the name grabs a glass of water.

People have been known to duck behind plants when seeing a name disaster approaching -- or they'll quiz other people in the room, who may be just as clueless as they try to remember if the prompt is ''Mr. Sears has big ears," or ''Mr. Wynn has no chin."

I have to assume the Globe editorial board is lightly staffed this holiday weekend, or perhaps they are saving their real editorials for much more highly read Sunday edition.

Dot Real Estate Bubble

I started this blog, at least, in part, to document my political predictions, such as my prediction that Mitt Romney wouldn't seek reelection in Massachusetts.  Or my July 2000 prediction that Joe Lieberman would be picked as the VP nominee, a prediction you'll just have to trust me on.

Now, the NY Times seems to be stealing my line on the real estate craze.  In an article today the Old Grey Lady echos my theme connecting the run up in home prices to the run up in stock prices five years ago:

Real estate-crazed Americans have started behaving in ways that eerily recall the stock market obsession of the late 1990's.

In Naples, Fla., some houses have been bought twice in a single day, an early-21st-century version of day trading. Buying stocks on margin has morphed into buying homes with no money down. The over-the-top parties of Internet start-ups have been replaced by flashy gatherings where developers pitch condos to eager buyers.

It looks like the Harvard MBA's are buying into it, too, oh-so-self confidently buying into the greater fool theory.

Even at Harvard Business School, where students have traditionally gravitated to careers in investment banking and corporate marketing, real estate is suddenly hot. About 25 graduates have taken real estate jobs in each of the last two years, up from only six in 2001.

It is not quite the gold rush of 2000, when about 200 Harvard M.B.A. graduates flocked to technology companies. But even if they are not working in real estate, some of those graduates are now investing in it.

Andrew Farquharson, a member of the class of 1999, said he recently teamed up with a high school friend to buy a home in the Central Valley of California "out of pure speculation." He knows of other classmates who have made similar investments.

Then again I and the Times could be wrong, but that's what the delete key is for.

(Article updated 4/9/05).

OYE OTB

Odd years are tough on political junkies.  We have to get our election fixes through watching races like the NY and LA mayor or the Virginia and New Jersey Governors races from across the country.   The political nerd equivalent of down-on-their-luck old men peering at the jumpy screen in an Off Track Betting lounge that's dark inside even at 3 in the afternoon.  It's sad really.

That said, the DC Political Report, has the links:

• LA, where the Dem establishment has split with the Mayor
• VA where the GOP Governor candidate may have split his party over taxes
• And NJ Governor's race where the GOP candidates have come together over their mutual hatred for each other

Splits in the Ranks

Apparently the inherent contradictions to everything the GOP thought it stood for in Shiavo bill passed last weekend are too much for a few Republicans, according to the NY Times.

Stephen Moore, a conservative advocate who is president of the Free Enterprise Fund, said: "I don't normally like to see the federal government intervening in a situation like this, which I think should be resolved ultimately by the family: I think states' rights should take precedence over federal intervention. A lot of conservatives are really struggling with this case."

Some more moderate Republicans are also uneasy. Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the sole Republican to oppose the Schiavo bill in a voice vote in the Senate, said: "This senator has learned from many years you've got to separate your own emotions from the duty to support the Constitution of this country. These are fundamental principles of federalism."

We can look forward to more of these splits as Bush era mercifully begins to draw to a close.

Hunter Green

In part because I just can't resist up a good headline. And because I think it's an interesting story, I thought I'd pass along this story from the Rocky Mountain News on Democratic efforts to woo sportsmen.

In Colorado and elsewhere, Democrats are talking about rural development, casting environmental protection in small-town terms, and making a case that they, too, care about preserving traditional ways of life.

That's where hunters come in.

As Democratic consultant David Sirota puts it, the party is trying to "turn hunters green" on land and water protection while also standing up for hunting and fishing rights.

"Hunters and fishermen are starting to realize that their interests are not just guns," Sirota said. "Guns are important, but it's broader than that. It's also public lands. It's also fishing access. It's also clean water."

One effort in Congress is being led by U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, an Eldorado Springs Democrat. Working with Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, he has introduced a bill that could have major ramifications for hunters.

The bill would preserve a state's right to give preference to in-state hunters when deciding how the limited number of hunting licenses are allocated.

As the article notes, this kind of effort was successful in Montana last year.