Wall Street Holiday?

During the Great Depression Franklin Roosevelt declared "bank holidays"--in effect closing the banks  for a period of four days  to stop the frightened paranoia that was resulting in "runs"on banks. It created a cooling off period during which congress passed the Banking Stabilization Act. Shortly thereafter the FDIC was created and bank customers assets were insured by the government.

In our present financial crisis, once again, fear, paranoia, and misinformation are causing irrational fluctuations on Wall Street The market with no rhyme nor reason fluctuates  like a yo-yo on a string, up and down, reacting irrationally to this or that event, to what this or that so-called expert says. To what avail? Is anything of value being done on Wall Street? Is what happens on Wall Street helping to solve our economic crisis? Is Wall Street, at this point, doing anything for the common good of the country? I think not. The only ones benefitting are the brokers who continue collecting their fees.

My suggestion is that President Obama declare a "Wall Street Holiday"---stop all trading as of 4 PM Friday, March 6, and not resume trading until 9 AM, Monday, March 23. The players, i.e. the buyers and sellers can jockey around for position before March 6,  knowing that nothing is going change until March 23rd. This "holiday" will provide the country with a "cooling-off" period, a period of stability. Prices will be frozen; investors will neither make money nor lose money in that period of time. Brokers should be forced to take a two-week vacation and reacquaint themselves with their families. The public would be spared the fear and paranoia that results from the news media's concern with each and every fluctuation of the market. We would know that, at least for 16 days, our retirement funds are not disappearing into some unknown hole in the ground.

Some, I am sure, would consider such action unthinkable. The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, Bloomberg News etc. would not be happy; but, on the other hand, it would give them a chance to do some serious analysis of our situation and how we got into this mess. Everyone considered it appropriate to close the markets in the fearful days after 9/11, and there were no ill effects. The shut-down in fact had a calming effect. That is what's needed now.

Meanwhile, the Obama Whitehouse could put together a task force of the best and brightest to examine and revamp the SEC from top to bottom--eliminating the possibility of a Bernard Madoff and the other mini-Madoffs.

Govenrors' Postering on Stimulus Package

Give me a break. The Republican governors of Louisiana and South Carolina are suggesting that they will not accept the benefits of the stimulus package for their states because the stimulus package is contrary to their sincere Republican philosophy.

All of which means their name is daily in the news, especially Fox News and conservative talk radio.  But we all know they will eventually accept the benefits of the package,  and two years from now will  claim credit for the beneficial results of the package.

The hypocrisy of these guys is disgusting.

Wishful Thinking, Senator Bunning?

On the day that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg returned to the bench after having undergone surgery for pancreatic cancer, Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky felt compelled to tell us that she will only live for nine more months. Are we to believe Mr. Bunning, who is often confused about many things? He received his medical degree from what university? Or is this just wishful thinking on his part? Anyway, what a nice guy.

US Oil Oligarchs

In one of the country's worst economic crisises, one wonders why the price of gasoline is rising. Since January 1st, the price has increased 22 %. Oh well, we promote capitalism and understand about supply and demand. But wait! In that same period of time the supply of crude increased 16%. Why then is not the cost of gasoline going down?

In the last run-up to $4 a gallon gasoline, the oil executives told us and congress that it was "supply and demand." We soon learned the unrealistic increase was a result of unregulated Wall Street types speculating in the futures market--nothing to do with supply and demand.

Now we are learning that this current 2009 increase, since it is contrary to the laws of supply and demand, is being artificially manipulated by the oil companies who have decreased the output of their refineries in order to drive the price higher.

Now that the Bush-Cheney oil oligarchs have been replaced in government, how long do we have to tolerate the machinations of big oil?

Catholic "Get Out of Jail Free" Card

It has been noted here that Pope Benedict XVI has been making a series of moves to take the Catholic Church back to pre-Vatican II customs and rituals.

The most recent, as reported byThe Cincinnati Enquirer, is the resurrection of  the idea of indulgences in the archdiocese of Cincinnati and other places around the world.  "What are indulgences?" you might ask.  And well  you might;  indulgences were called into question 500 years ago when they were viewed as a way for the wealthy to buy their way into heaven. Today, the Church does not charge a finacial fee for an indulgence, but apparently sees indulgences as a way to take the Church back to the "good old days" before the 2nd Vatican Council.

This is the idea. A Catholic a) goes to confession, b) takes communion, and c) says prescribed prayers and then receives a "plenary indulgence." Confession exonerates the Catholic from "eternal punishment," but something called "temporary punishment" in a state called "Purgatory" still awaits. And that's where indulgences enter; these indulgences wipe away the "temporary punishment" of Purgatory. This indulgence is then a "Get Out of Jail Free" card.

It appears to me that the concept of "purgatory" has been discredited by theologians and scripture scholars who find it has no biblical basis. It is a medieval,  superstitous construct that helped consolidate power in the hands of the clergy. Reviving it suggests the Pope is trying to restore clerical superiority in a time when the laity is seeking a more democratic--indeed a more catholic--church. 

Now the question for Catholics is: what's next? how far backwards is this Pope willing to go? will women be required to cover their heads in church? will the Church bring back communion rails at which communicants must kneel in order to partake? will the Church, in other words, become once again the sole province of men determined to have and exert total power over the thoughts and practices of the laity?

Grisham and Palin

Many of his fans have been waiting for John Grisham to get back to doing what he does best, telling us a a gripping legal story like "ATime to Kill." Hearing that he had done  so with The Appeal, I recently read it and was initially pleased to discover the Grisham of old. It has the Grisham pace and characterization that I had always enjoyed. It has the "good" guys--a small- town ma and pa legal team--taking on the bad guys--a huge chemical company which has polluted the drinking water of a small town in Mississippi, but has protected itself with high-priced New York attorneys.

The interesting part, the part that seems apropo of recent American politics, is a political campaign, secretly financed by the chemical company and overtly by conservative and religious groups,  to place a judge on the Mississippi Supreme Court. The candidate is a small-town attorney who has never tried a criminal case, but is young, handsome, a deacon in his church, a little-league coach, married with two children, opposed to gun control, gay marriage, and, most importantly opposed to large settlements for injured/deceased plaintiffs. The young candidate becomes a pawn of the highly-paid organization that runs his campaign.

Mr. Grisham wrote this before John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, but it smacks of the same cynicism. Ignore the person's experience and qualifications, find an attractive conservative who can be  wowed by star status, private jets, designer clothing, but most importantly,  programmed to tell the faithful what they want to hear.

The story may or may not be satisfying to John Grisham's fans, but subsequent political events proved him prescient.

Historic Photos of Toledo

Photographic images possess the power the tell a complex story quite efficiently. Most of us have an image we associate with particlular events or locations. One such image is the famous National Geographic cover of "The Afghan Girl." Such a beautiful girl, but her eyes reveal an emptiness, a deadness. It becomes a metaphor for Afghanistan itself.

Historical photos, perhaps because they are frequently straight- forward and contain the detail of daily life, have the power to help us sense what it may have been like to be there at that time. Such is the case with many of the photographs in Historic Photos of Toledo (text and captions by Gregory M. Miller, Turner Publishing Company, 2007). In a large coffee-table format on quality paper, the black-and-white photos provide a "street-level" view of Toledo, Ohio, from the 1880's to the 1980's. One of the earliest photos is of the Milburn Wagon Works which in the 1880's was the largest producer of wagons in the world. It concludes in the 1970's and 1980's with the construction of the Fiberglass Tower, the destruction of the Town Hall Burlesque House, and a majestic photo of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

For the Toledo natives, there are nostalgic photos of Tiedtke Brothers Department Store, a 1926 football game at Scott High School, soldiers returning from World War I, the Depression, tree houses at Camp Miakonda, jeeps of all sorts, and the Auto-Lite Strike of 1934. On the other hand, Toledo natives might be aware of significant absences: The University of Toledo, Rosary Cathedral, the village of Ottawa Hills, and the Toledo Museum of Art (only one unremarkable photo of an art class). While there are photos representing the glass industry, based on this book, the reader might never appreciate the importance of glass in the city.

Whatever the gaps, readers who appreciate historic photographs will enjoy Historic Photos of Toledo. It is available at most local book sellers.

You Thought Your IRS Returns Were Secret?

Most of us, over the years, have been reasssured that information provided to the IRS is sacrosanct and cannot be used for purposes other than tax administration.

In Greeley, Colorado, on Oct. 17, Weld County Sheriff, John Cooke, seized thousands of confidential tax returns from Ms. Amalia Cerrillo's Translation and Tax Services office. For years thousands of Hispanics went to Amalia's for assistance in paying their annual income taxes. Although some of these people were in Greeley legally, others were not. The Sheriff and the District Attorney justified the raid on the basis that some of those taxpayers were illegal immigrants using stolen Social Security numbers, thus committing "identity theft." 

Unfortunately, it appears that this "identity theft" operation is a thinly disquised attempt to deport illegal  Hispanics, who according to the IRS "paid almost $50 billion in taxes from 1996 to 2003." (But we daily  hear that illegals do not pay taxes. You're damned if don't, and now damned if you do!)

As serious as the immigration issues and racial overtones are, it is not the primary concern in this case.  As Mark Silverstein, a legal director for the ACLU said: "If the sheriff and D.A. can comb through thousands of records in a tax preparer's office on the theory that some of their clients are doing something wrong, then none of our confidential information is safe."

This, if I may say so and I do, appears to be part of a popular law enforcement trend which sacrifices peoples'  rights for the expediency of criminal investigation. The sheriff and D.A. don't want to do the old-fashioned police work of tracking down the identity-theft felons one at a time, they want to take a short-cut with no regard for the privacy of all the legal taxpayers.

One of the basic promises accompanying the Federal Income Tax  legislation was that the information we citizens provided would never be used for anything other than federal tax administration. Do Sheriff Cooke and District Attorney Buck in Greeley Colorado have the authority to break that trust?

Scary Toledo Police Officer

The Toledo Police Department says that a TPD undercover vice narcotics officer (whose identity was not revealed) accidentally shot herself in the right foot while training at the Scott Park Police facility.

One has to wonder whether a person who accidentally shoots herslf should be roaming around the city with a .40-caliber Sig Sauer semiautomatic and a taser and the authority to use "deadly force."

Must be Smoking "Good" Stuff

Michael Phelps, the hero of the 2008 Olympics, is photograhed smoking marijuana. Okay, not a good image, but Presidents Bush and Clinton did it.  But wait---just a few days later, Mr Phelps congratulates the Arizona Cardinals on their "awesome victory" in the Super Bowl by saying, " The Cardinals really tore it up last night." The problem was that the Pittsburg Steelers won the game. What was Mr. Phelps smoking Sunday night?

Newt Obstructionism

The Republicans in the House were happy President Obama met with them in order craft a bipartisan approach to saving the US economy, happy to have their picture taken with him and happy to seek a personal autograph, but they had no intention working on a bipartisan approach.

These Republican congressmen grew up and were elected to congress in the spirit of Newt Gingrich who introduced the Republicans to an era of angry, nasty  non-cooperation. He declared an end to gentlemanly disagreement. He shut down the government rather than cooperate with the President in an effort to do what was best for the country. With the new gospel according to Newt, it was not what is beneficial for the country or the common good, it is what is good for the Republican Party. It is no surprise, therefore,  that these Newt Republicans are not cooperating with President Obama even though the country sent a message in CAPTAL letters that they wanted a change. The Republicam fear is that,  after eight years of Republican tax breaks for the very rich, deregulation of and the consequent collapse of Wall Street, and the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the new Democratic President  might be actually have a workable plan to turn the country around. God forbid that they cooperate with Democrats for the sake of the future of the country.

Although economists across the spectrum endorse the stimulus package (McClatchy Newspapers,1/27/09), the House Republicans are  choosing to follow the lead of Rush Limbaugh who in reference to President Obama and his stimulus package said, "I hope he fails." And so, Rush and the Republicans would rather see the country fall further into the abyss than work with the new President. If that is not self-serving obstructionism, I don't know what is.

The Pope is at it Again!

The pope, Benedict XVI, has done it again.

Only weeks after removing the excommunications of five right-wing schismatics, one of whom denies the holocaust, he has appointed Father Gerhard Wagner as auxiliary bishop of Linz, Austria. Father Wagner, it turns out, maintains that the death and destruction of Hurricane Katrina were "divine retribution" for New Orleans' acceptance of homosexuals and loose sexual attitudes-- sounding quite similar to remarks by a few American conservative preachers. Apparently, he thinks God sent Katrina as an avenging angel to destroy abortion clinics, brothels, and nightclubs--not mentioning the innocent residents.

Father Wagner calls himself Christian, but his God is a God of the Old Testament, not the Christian New Testament.

Why would a man promulgating such an anti-christian attitude be appointed a bishop of the Catholic Church?

These two recent actions by Benedict the XVI appear to be an effort to restructure the people's Church (remember Vatican II?) into a fundalmentalist bastion of conservative theology.