Gaithersburg, MD -- Dakota Dreamin'
While waiting in the lobby of 2020 K Street today, I was chatting with the doorman and he said, "The Mayor (Anthony Williams) is next door at the Prime Rib eating a $75 lunch!" While I don't begrudge politicians their luxuries (too often), it was pretty ironic that that was the case on the day where DC newspaper headlines read that
25 percent of children in DC are living below the poverty level.
While DC walkers read this on every street corner
DC Mayor Anthony Williams dined hereSo, I figured that this could be a good photo op, and went to the front of the building as I schemed about how I'd get into the restaurant. Well, as I stared pensively out the window, who did I see coming out of the same restaurant and climbing into a car? Former Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle. What's he doing in DC? Probably just consulting, but it's fun to think that he might be mulling a presidential run (he's not, really). Dude was entirely ineffectual as party leader.
Who might in fact be considering a run? When asked in this NPR story about why he had originally said that we should bring more troops to Iraq and now, Congressman John Murtha (D-PA)
made an admission we don't hear often from our politicians:"I've changed my mind!" Pretty refreshing.
Speaking of Presidents, it's always fun to scrape the bottom of the partisan barrel (thanks to Terk):
Heh heh... President "Bush"
Gaithersburg, MD -- Final Fantasy X-2 Ending
I think Ari's managed to out-post me for the last few days. Why has that been the case? First off, long work days. So much to do the last week or two.
More importantly, I've been trying to finish up Final Fantasy X-2, which turned out to be a pretty good game. Even the songs/music videos were awesome!
As for the ending, well, in order to get the best ending, you have to beat 100% of this massive game to get it, and I'm just a little too lazy for that. But thanks to the power of the internet, you can see
some of the possible FFX2 endings here.
Screenshot from Final Fantasy X-2 EndingThe other night, I picked up Dragon Quest VIII. While I haven't played it yet, I did get the chance to watch the included trailer of the upcoming Final Fantasy XII. Friggin' incredible graphics... that should be a can't-miss hit.
Time to start the PSX adaptation of Chrono Trigger... I've beaten it so many times on SNES, but this one's got extra scenes, so it's worth my 25 hours, right?
Binghamton, NY -- Another Economic Lesson
Everyone seems to have a different opinion on oil. Should we drill for it on our own soil? Should we keep buying it from the Arabs? Should we come up with alternatives to oil?
Quite frankly it's imperative that we come up with feasible alternatives ASAP. Drilling for oil on US soil is not worth it financially. Our oil is further under the surface than Arab oil and is thus much more expensive to get out of the ground. Furthermore, the majority of oil that we use in the US is sweet crude. Unfortunately, the oil that we get out of Alaska is heavy crude, which is oil used in manufacturing -- something we don't really have a use for any more.
And that brings me to my point: we need to get off Arab oil. This has nothing to do with the whole "funding terrorists and drug dealers" argument that some people try to push. This has to do with the fact that wealthy oil sheikhs don't spend any money. According to
The Economist, the savings rates for oil producers are the highest in the world. That means that when we send a dollar over to the Saudis it just gets stuck there. When we send money to Canada for lumber, it eventually makes it back to us when they, in turn, buy imports from us. Dollars sent to the Arabs just sit there. And as they run up insane current account surpluses, our current account deficit continues to grow.
The current account measures the
"the combined balances on trade in goods and services, income, and net unilateral current transfers." So it's a more accurate measure of our deficit than the trade imbalance alone. In the second quarter of this year, our current account deficit on goods and services hit a record $173.3 billion (breaking the previous record from the first quarter of $173.1 billion). Some economists are estimating that our current account deficit this year will break $750 billion once all revisions are made. The problem with running up such enormous deficits is that they add up very fast. Other nations buy up our debt by purchasing US Treasury bonds. Those bonds earn interest. And someone is going to have to pay that interest off at some point. That someone is inevitably going to be us, the US tax payers. So all these wonderful tax cuts we're getting now are going to quickly turn into tax hikes that bring us up to higher tax levels than we had under Clinton. Mortgaging the future is never a good way to go.
Gaithersburg, MD -- Week 13 NFL Picks
Bills (+4) at DolphinsJB: Fins
K-Hole: Bills
Bucs (-4) at SaintsJB: TB
K-Hole: TB
Cowboys (+3) at GiantsJB: Giants
K-Hole: Giants
Bengals (+4) at SteelersJB: Steelers
K-Hole: Cincy
Falcons (+3) at PanthersJB: Falcons
K-Hole: Falcons
Texans (+8) at BaltimoreJB: Texans
K-Hole: Texans
Packers (+7) at BearsJB: Packers
K-Hole: Bears
Jaguars (-3) at BrownsJB: Jags
K-Hole: Browns
Vikings (-3) at LionsJB: Vikings
K-Hole: Vikings
Titans (+16) at ColtsJB: Indy
K-Hole: Indy
Redskins (-3) at RamsJB: Rams
K-Hole: Skins
Cardinals (-3) at NinersJB: Cards
K-Hole: Cards
Jets (+10) at PatriotsJB: Jets
K-Hole: Jets
Broncos (-1) at ChiefsJB: Denver
K-Hole: Denver
Raiders (+10) at ChargersJB: Chargers
K-Hole: Raiders
Seahawks (-4) at EaglesJB: Seahawks
K-Hole: Seahawks
Last week:
JB: 8-7-1
K-Hole: 9-6-1
Binghamton, NY -- Do higher wages help or hinder economic growth?
The answer is, it depends on who gets the higher wages.
More money in Sam Walton's kids pockets isn't going to help us out, but higher wages for the poor, i.e. minimum wages, will lead to increased consumer expenditure. Just think, if you have a family of four and are making $6 an hour, it would take you about three hours of work just to be able to have the wonderful luxury of being able to order pizza to feed your family. Is pizza really a luxury? Ask Jason, and he'll tell you it's a staple. Now suppose that minimum wage was raised to $9.68 an hour. Now if you work three hours, you'll be able to order pizza AND get 3 gallons of gas on your way home.
The average fulltime worker works 40 hours per week for about 50 net weeks in a year, or 2000 total hours. 2000 hours at $6 an hour means a minimum wage earner is getting $12,000 gross per year. According to the
government, in 2002, the official poverty line for a family of 4 is $19,350. That's the bare minimum that a family can get by with in the lower 48 states. At that level people aren't even dreaming about saving any money. So that means that anything they earn will go directly back into the economy. Spending $18 on pizza means the pizza place gets $18 of added revenue which they can then use to pay their workers. Then those workers might take that money and go spend that on a good of their choice and so on. Every time that money gets spent it gets added to our GDP.
So if $19,350 is the bare minimum amount of money people need just to live, we can use that figure to calculate something called a "living wage." Divide the $19,350 by 2000 and you end up with the $9.68 minimum wage that I used in the example above. And with 32 million people living below the poverty line (about 6 million families), just think about what would happen if six million people got an extra $6350 a year to spend. If that money gets spent and respent five times, then you're talking about increasing total wages by $38.1 billion to add $190.5 billion to the economy. Not a bad deal, now is it?
Binghamton, NY -- The Missing Map
Palestinians to this day claim that Israel never offered a continuous piece of land for the Palestinian homeland. In 2004, Dennis Ross drew up the actual maps that were offered to the Palestinians in Camp David II and Taba back in 2000-2001. Those maps were printed in "The Missing Peace," Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2004.
MideastWeb reports that:
In an interview, Ross noted: In the Clinton ideas, which are also presented in the book, the Palestinians were offered the following: 100 percent of Gaza, roughly 97 percent of the West Bank. The principles that guided the way the borders should be drawn and determined by the two sides, based on the percentages were: Contiguity of territory for the Palestinians, non-absorption of Palestinians into Israel.The final culmination of the talks in early 2001 in Taba resulted in Barak offering
this map to Arafat. Arafat still wouldn't agree to it though and Barak gave up on him. Two years (and 3000 combined deaths) later he said that if Israel put that map back on the table, he'd take the offer.
Gaithersburg, MD -- Traffic Explosion!
I checked my website statistics this AM, thanks to all of you (and with a little help from blog syndication), my site's traffic has gone through the roof this month! jasonbrzoska.com had nearly 3,000 visits from nearly 1,500 unique visitors this month!
I also have to thank Rabbi David Kaye -- apparently almost a third of my traffic this month was to see
this post with a picture of Rabbi Kaye in a seductive position. You're all perverts!
Gaithersburg, MD -- Low Wage Work in America
I was driving back to my hotel this evening after my first (delicious) trip to Blimpie, when I heard an NPR program I hadn't heard before. It's called A World of Possibilities, and it appears to be a rather progressive and insightful show. Tonight's show was an expose on low-wage work in America. It's an issue everybody should be aware of -- it changes your outlook on life when you realize most of the people providing you with everyday services can't even afford a visit to the doctor or proper care for their kids. I only heard half of the show, but I'm going to have to catch the rest online later, because it really was excellent.
Click here to listen.
By the way, I'm sitting at the hotel bar with Freddie Prinze's new show,
Freddie. Not surprisingly, it's miserable!
Binghamton, NY -- This just in...
Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs's newsletter has just reported that Peres has agreed to join Kadima and domestically will be in charge of development of the Negev and the Galilee regions. This is yet another sign that Kadima is going to be a center-left party. Peres had been trying to work on the development of Israeli Arab villages in the Galilee up until the point when Labor withdrew from the government coalition. Now without the hardliners from Likud who kept slashing social programs (yeah just like the Republicans back home), development in the north should actually make it on the national budget.
Poor Hanan Ashrawi's not going to be able to call Sharon a racist war criminal any more. Over the last year, he's been the best thing to happen to Arabs in Israel since Salah-a-din chased out the Crusaders nearly 1000 years ago.
Binghamton, NY -- The Political Merry-Go-Round in Israel (from 3000 miles away)
Too lazy to start my own blog and too disinterested to post on anything unrelated to Economics (particularly how bad we're messing things up these days) or Israel, here I am as Jason's Israeli/Economic blog consultant.
The latest from Israel,
according to Yediot Aharonot, is more of the same, or is it? Every single day, additional Labor members and Likud members, and even the occaissional small-party member, are jumping ship to join the new centrist breakaway party, Kadima, led by Ariel Sharon.
But tomorrow night, most analysts are expecting something bigger. Shimon Peres is expected to add his name to Kadima's Knesset (Parliament) list for the upcoming elections. Sharon has promised Peres a permanent position as a special international envoy. That essentially makes him the key player in any peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as with any other Arab state. But possibly even more important to that, it also means Peres gets to be Israel's voice in dealing with the EU in regards to the "circle of friends" trade network (the economist in me needed to get out).
So what does this mean for Israel and Kadima? Personally, I still think that Kadima is going to be a short-lived party because they don't really have a clear-cut domestic agenda. And unlike the US system where a party can survive without a real social program, it just won't work in Israel. Parliamentary governments require coalitions, so if you want to have power, you need to give into the small parties and meet their domestic demands. Sharon's Kadima party is running a single campaign slogan --
2 people, 2 states -- which in itself will win him reelection and give his party a good portion of the Knesset, but it won't be enough for long term success. What happens after we have 2 states? What happens when Sharon retires?
Over the next 24 hours, those questions will be answered. As Sharon continues to add leaders from the Labor party (now he has three big names: Peres, Dalia Itzik, and Haim Ramon) his party will begin to take on more of a domestic policy. People talk about the big split in Likud, but there is also a split going on in Labor. Peretz's takeover means more of a socialist domestic policy for Labor. And with that, the old policies of Labor are now going to become the domestic policies of Kadima. So essentially the Centrist party in Israel is going to look a lot like the Democratic Party of the US (center-left). That means it might actually last in the post-Sharon period. The key that is yet to be seen is whether Sharon can attract more local-level politicians into his party. The mayor of Ashdod has agreed to join already. If he can get a dozen or so mayors under his banner, that would be big for Kadima's social agenda.
Gaithersburg, MD -- "One Week" Later in Canada
Despite Canada's thriving economy, its
current Parliament has been toppled.
Said
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, "Through sheer grit and determination, Jason Brzoska held Parliament together, but once he departed our frigid land, it all came unglued."
Gaithersburg, MD -- Week 12 NFL Results
It was a heartwrenching week in the NFL, and thanks to
Ron Dayne and/or
Ryan Fitzpatrick, K-Hole beat me by one game. The record:
JB: 8-7-1
K-Hole: 9-6-1
Not bad for our first shot at it.
Here's DJ Gallo's
take on the whole wild week.
A couple of choice snippets:
Quotes I Might Have Overheard Had I Actually Attended Any Games Like A Real Journalist
"After a terrible game like that, I always find it helpful to just try to forget about football for a bit. And the best way I know how to relax is to dress up like a sailor and hug a goat."
-- Tom Brady, after his four-interception performance in a 26-16 loss at Kansas City...
Many football fans have a favorite broadcaster. But I've never had one. Until yesterday, that is. I was flipping through the channels during the early games and came across the Bengals-Ravens game on CBS. After a promo for "Survivor," the camera cut to a shot of Ray Lewis standing on the sidelines and, without hesitation, play-by-play man Gus Johnson said: "There's a guy that you wouldn't want to be on an island with if you had to survive." And with that I immediately began preparing my "Gus Johnson for the Broadcasting Hall of Fame" campaign buttons.
...
Here's how Jacksonville's quarterback situation inevitably will play out, though. David Garrard will replace Leftwich for the rest of the year and, thanks to their easy remaining schedule, the Jaguars will slip into the playoffs. Meanwhile, Buffalo will be completely awestruck by Garrard's play over the final five weeks -- even though it will be rather pedestrian and against poor competition -- and will trade for Garrard in the offseason and sign him to a huge, long-term contract. Then, three or four years later, the Bills will release Garrard after discovering he's not very good. Garrard then will move into Rob Johnson's mansion, where the pair will laugh and laugh together about the Bills' stupidity -- in between taking swims in their giant pool full of money -- until their dying days.
Gaithersburg, MD -- New Orleans Goes Wireless
In an effort to kickstart the New Orleans economy, Mayor Ray Nagin has announced that the city
will launch a free 512 kb/s universal wireless network:
"My number-one job is to restimulate the economy," said Greg Meffert, a deputy mayor, the city's chief technology officer and a former tech company entrepreneur. The system, he said, "is going to be the backbone of a brand new, never fully tried set of technology visions" to help distinguish New Orleans from other large cities.It's a step... I look forward to seeing what else the city has up its battered sleeve.
Gaithersburg, MD -- Let Your Dog Bite
So, I'm in the DC area for over a week, as that's where my company's headquarters is located.
I'm pretty tired, as I didn't get here until about 2 AM last night. Why did I take so long? Largely because I couldn't get away from the TV. I was watching the second season DVD of perhaps the best Nickelodeon show of all time,
The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
This unusually cerebral Nick show featured two brothers with the same name who lived in a peaceful but odd Midwestern town named Wellsville. Along with characters like Artie, THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE UNIVERSE, and the adorable Ellen Hickle (played by Allison Fanelli -- what's she up to now?), Pete & Pete tackle the important issues of life, like Halloween bullies and daylight savings time. If you didn't catch this one as a kid, let me tell you, it's even better as a "grownup" (as part of the International Adult Conspiracy).
I watched the first two seasons this week, seeing cameos by several interesting celebs, including Janeane Garofalo, Michael Stipe, Iggy Pop, Steve Buschemi, and LL Cool J. The show's soundtrack is a neat one, largely composed by early '90s obscure alt-rock group Polaris, whose theme song, "Hey Sandy," is worthy of listening to over and over again as you progress through episode after episode.
Rockville, MD -- The Future of Iraq
The always-informed Seymour Hersh
gives us the scoop on the next few months in Iraq (Thanks to Ted):
The fear is that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal would inevitably trigger a Sunni-Shiite civil war. In many areas, that war has, in a sense, already begun, and the United States military is being drawn into the sectarian violence. An American Army officer who took part in the assault on Tal Afar, in the north of Iraq, earlier this fall, said that an American infantry brigade was placed in the position of providing a cordon of security around the besieged city for Iraqi forces, most of them Shiites, who were “rounding up any Sunnis on the basis of whatever a Shiite said to them.” The officer went on, “They were killing Sunnis on behalf of the Shiites,” with the active participation of a militia unit led by a retired American Special Forces soldier. “People like me have gotten so downhearted,” the officer added.Shades of Cambodia...
Meanwhile, as the debate over troop reductions continues, the covert war in Iraq has expanded in recent months to Syria. A composite American Special Forces team, known as an S.M.U., for “special-mission unit,” has been ordered, under stringent cover, to target suspected supporters of the Iraqi insurgency across the border. (The Pentagon had no comment.) “It’s a powder keg,” the Pentagon consultant said of the tactic. “But, if we hit an insurgent network in Iraq without hitting the guys in Syria who are part of it, the guys in Syria would get away. When you’re fighting an insurgency, you have to strike everywhere—and at once.”
Rockville, MD -- Duke Goes Down
In another story of Republican corruption, Californiacongressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham
admitted he's taken $2.4 million in bribes.
Well, there's another seat that'll probably go blue in '06!
My man Terk has begun referring to the GOP as the "Gone Off to Prison" party. Pretty apt these days.
Albany, NY -- Cindy's Back in Crawford!
Cindy Sheehan has returned to be a thorn in the side of the President outside his Texas ranch:
''I feel happy to be back here with all my friends . . . but I'm heartbroken that we have to be here again," said Sheehan. ''We will keep pressing and we won't give up until our troops are brought home."The anti-war drums continue to beat louder and louder...
