richardhowe.com

NYTimes columnist David Brooks tries to set the record straight on what President Obama is doing and why he is doing it. I’m not in Brooks’ camp on most issues, but on the President he is usually a fair and reasonable commentator. I appreciate his thoughtful tone as he writes about complex political and social issues. He doesn’t go nuclear and accuse Democrats, progressives, liberals, or others of being unpatriotic, bad Americans if they hold a view different than his. Read his column here and consider subscribing to the NYT if you appreciate it.

Brooks’ colleague the economist Paul Krugman today walks us through the realities of the health care reform bill in its current version. Where have the voices of the people who really need this bill been for the past year? My sense is that most if not all of the opposition has come from people who are fighting it while on the “health-care plan clock,” so to speak… they’re covered. Read Krugman’s column here.

No Comments »

The Washington Post is reporting that the wife and daughter of Senate Majority leader Harry Reid were seriously hurt in an automobile accident. The vehicle they were riding in was rear-ended. They were taken to an Washington D.C. area hospital for treatment. Reports unclear on extent of their injuries.

Breaking news here: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/03/reids-wife-and-daughter-sent-t.html?wpisrc=nl_polalert

1 Comment »

Yesterday’s mail brought a short note from the U.S. Census Bureau informing me - or RESIDENT AT my address - that I will receive the 2010 Census form by mail in about a week and asking me to promptly fill it out and mail it back. It goes on to say

Your response is important. Results from the 2010 Census will be used to help each community get its fair share of government funds for highways, schools, health facilities, and many other programs you and your neighbors need. Without a complete, accurate census, your community may not receive its fair share.

And as someone who has used past census records for historical research, I would add that we have an obligation to future generations to ensure that life in America in 2010 is fully and accurately documented through the census, a practice that dates back to the founding of our country.

5 Comments »

President Obama and company need to move the question on the health care reform bill so they can focus more energy on the joblessness and job insecurity that are gnawing at the nation’s collective confidence. Bob Herbert of the NYTimes has his “jobs” drum out again today, and he’s pounding it in hope that the Democrats in Washington will hear the message. Read his column here, and subscribe to the NYT if you appreciate it.

5 Comments »

Boston College Gasson Tower

 

 

The Boston College Magazine - 2010 Winter edition - has an interesting array of articles. The Northern Ireland “Homefire” images of photographer Bobby Hanvey are stark reminders of  life and culture through the eye of the camers. The tale of author Chuck Hogan ‘89 - The Craftsman - profiles a hard-working, extremely successful novelist who has mastered all elements and layers of Massachusetts as a setting for his mysteries. His 2004 “thriller” Prince of Thieves has been made into a movie “The Town” by Ben Affleck.

Perhaps the highlight piece in this edition is an essay by Erik C. Owens - Bad Bets - which begins “America is a land of lotteries.” Owens - the associate director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American and Public Life at Boston College - gives an interesting history of lotteries in America from their early days back in the colonies as a way to raise funds for the common good to their re-emergence in the 1970’s. He also presents statistics on who plays the current lotteries; who benefits; who loses; who accepts the concept and who regards it as sinful. It’s a “must read” as legislators and policymakers are on the verge of expanding gambling in the Commonwealth.

Read ”Bad Bets” in the Boston College magazine at: http://bcm.bc.edu/issues/winter_2010/features/bad-bets.html  Check out the other articles I mentioned as well as those on BC Nursing students, the Supreme Court and more.

No Comments »

Because of the precipitous decline in home prices from their peak in 2005 until today, countless Americans owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth, otherwise known as “being underwater.” When a homeowner in this predicament loses a job or suffers some similar setback that disrupts income and the ability to continue paying the mortgage, the homeowner is trapped. Since no one will pay more than fair market value, he will not receive enough money from the sale to pay off his outstanding mortgage because he owes more than the home is worth and no one will buy the home for any price unless the current lender will release its lien.

Back when most home mortgages were held by local banks who had their corporate fingers on the pulse of the community, the lender often agreed to a “short sale” under these circumstances. In a short sale, the lender agrees to release its lien (i.e., the mortgage) for less than is owed. This allows the sale to go through, a new owner to acquire the house and the current owner/borrower to get out from under and unsustainable loan. True, the bank suffers a loss, but it would suffer an even greater loss if it had to go through the inevitable foreclosure process.

In the current crisis, short sales are rare for a number of reasons. National banks don’t know the communities or their borrowers, so they operate under a blanket assumption that everyone can really pay the mortgage if they try hard enough. So the same bankers who didn’t hesitate to take billions of dollars of taxpayer funds to bail themselves out, won’t cut underwater homeowners any slack. This means no short sales and more foreclosures and all the community pathologies they bring.

A new proposal by the Obama administration detailed in today’s NYT might make it easier to have short sales. Under this new federal program, a lender will use independent appraisers to determine the current fair market value of the property. If the homeowner (who is not told that figure) brings the lender an offer from a potential purchaser that is equal to or greater than the fair market value, then the lender must agree to the offer. There are modest federal payments that will go to lenders in this situation and to the homeowners as well as a “relocation assistance fee.”

One of the major drags on the economy right now is the enormous number of people who are trapped in their homes by big mortgages. Until that logjam is cleared out, there will be no recovery of real estate. We can allow this to play out over the next half-dozen years and prolong the recession, or we can take strong action, clean up the problems quickly, and re-ignite the housing market. This program has a chance to do just that

No Comments »

Tsongas supporters at campaign kick-off

Niki Tsongas at campaign kick-off

This afternoon I joined more than 150 others at the Niki Tsongas Re-election Headquarters at 17 Kirk Street in Lowell. With five Republicans and two unenrolled candidates already having taken out papers, Tsongas is sure to face multiple challengers this fall. Far from shying away from this fight, she seems highly energized by it, saying that she is looking forward to making her case to the voters over the coming months and that the Democratic case in general “is a case that needs to be made.”

Tsongas spoke quite a bit about health care reform, saying that the cost of doing nothing is unacceptable because the current system of health care is simply unsustainable. She said that Washington was caught completely off guard by the Scott Brown victory in January and the immediate reaction by many was to pull back and to break up health care into a series of smaller bills. (Tsongas herself believes that the Brown victory was not a referendum on health care reform, but the result of a “perfect storm” of political circumstances).

With the passage of just a few weeks, however, many have returned to the position that health reform must happen now. With both the House and the Senate having already passed health care bills, she predicted that a bill will soon be on the President’s desk for his signature and that the differences between the House and the Senate bill will then be worked out through the reconciliation process.

Once the President signs a health reform bill, Tsongas believes it will be as if a great weight has been lifted off of the country and we will then be able to move onto other critically important issues such as creating new jobs for regions such as the Merrimack Valley that have been especially hard hit by the recession.

But Tsongas is not naïve about what lies ahead. She said that politics in Massachusetts right now is very unsettled and that she and her supporters have to work hard for every vote. As if on cue, a group of union workers from Dorchester who were angry about not having gotten a job on a Tsongas-assisted project in Billerica (that did utilize 80% union labor), materialized on the sidewalk across Kirk Street from the headquarters, loudly expressing their displeasure. Their chants were unintelligible inside the headquarters, but they served to raise the political-adrenalin of the Tsongas supporters inside. In that way, the union protesters were helpful stand-ins for the Tea Party activists who will inevitably pop-up on the campaign trail in the coming months.

My sense is that Tsongas’s supporters are fully engaged and ready for a fight. Beginning with the Town Hall-Tea Party fiascos of last summer and continuing through to the Brown election, Democrats have been on the defensive for far too long. There’s now an eagerness to aggressively rebut the lies and misstatements from the other side that have gone unchallenged for far too long and to take the case for health care reform, banking reform, credit card reform, mortgage reform and job creation directly to the people.

It’s certainly going to be an interesting summer.

10 Comments »

Poet and writer Brian Turner writes about the “hurt locker” in everyone who gets damaged by war. He wrote this essay for the NYTimes after attending a showing of the film “The Hurt Locker” in Hanoi, Vietnam. Read the essay here and subscribe to the NYT if you appreciate it.

No Comments »

I just finished watching Food, Inc., the 2009 documentary on the American agriculture system that is one of this year’s nominees for the Academy Award for documentaries. The film is thought provoking and well worth watching while mostly avoiding sensationalism (although I’ll probably have a few peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before I see my next hamburger).

In some ways, American agriculture parallels the American banking system: a few major corporations use their political clout to gain a competitive advantage over their smaller, less powerful competitors which are put out of business or acquired by the bigger companies. Just as the US government has socialized the losses of our biggest banks (i.e., we, the taxpayers, have to make good the loss), so does the US government use farm policy and our tax dollars to subsidize agribusiness, artificially driving down the price of their food-like products. In your local grocery store, a bag of corn chips is much cheaper than a bag of carrots.

But to me, the most interesting parts of the film featured Gary Hirshberg, the president and CEO of New Hampshire-based Stonyfield Farm yogurt maker which is one of the stars of the organic, environmentally friendly, healthy food movement (and which has been owned, since 2001, by Groupe Danone of France). Hirshberg is shown bringing some buyers from Walmart to meet some of the organic dairy farmers who provide Stonyfield with its milk (and who proudly proclaim to the Walmart guys that they’ve been boycotting the megastore for years). The corporate buyers explain that Walmart is going big into organic food because that’s what the customers want (and not necessarily because it’s the right or moral thing to do). As Hirshberg from Stonyfield Farm points out, since an order from Walmart is measured in tons, not ounces, dealing with Walmart is the surest way to effectuate change.

Near the end of the film, Hirshberg asks rhetorically how can we change the system. He answers that each time we push a product across the grocery store scanner, we cast a vote. If our grocery carts continue to be packed with cheap, good tasting, highly processed food that is of marginal nutritional value and quite possibly unhealthy, then that’s what we will continue to get and that’s what our elected representatives will continue to subsidize with our tax dollars. But if we choose differently and buy more foods that are closer to their natural state, that are grown organically, that are produced locally, then Food, Inc. will take note.

2 Comments »

Cherry Blossoms

Spring must be coming! The National Park Service has gone out on a limb and predicted the time-frame for the 98th annual blossoming of the nearly 3,750 cherry trees around the Tidal Basin in Washington DC. The iconic blossoming marks the advent of Spring and the burgeoning numbers of tourists in  D.C. - especially those groups of school kids on their class trips and school vacation week family outings. Planning to catch the  Cherry Blossom Festival?  Call your Congressman/person to get tickets for tours of the Capitol, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the National Portrait Gallery while you are there. It’s probably too late to get tickets to the White House for March or April as those are scarce and need a few months notice! 

From the AP story:

The National Park Service is hinting at when spring will arrive in Washington.

National Park Service Chief Horticulturalist Rob DeFeo announced Thursday that the cherry blossoms will be in bloom from March 31 through April 11. He is predicting the peak bloom period will be April 3 through 8.

The 2010 festival is scheduled to run from March 27 to April 11.

This year marks the 98th anniversary of Japan’s gift of the cherry blossom trees to the nation’s capital.

DeFeo says minor damage from the heavy snow last month won’t affect the trees. He says a few branches broke off, but it was nothing major. He says arborists have been mitigating damage from storms and visitors for years.

No Comments »