Splat! Bailout Fails, and So Do Stocks

In the end, it wasn't just House Republicans who had a problem with the Bush crafted $700 billion dollar bailout of US financial markets. 95, count 'em, 95 Democrats also failed to get on the bus, sending the bill to a crashing defeat. So confident were most people the bill would pass that John McCain was bragging about his role beforehand on the campaign trail. But then, he also placed an ad saying he won Friday's debate before it happened.

The financial mess is now rippling across the globe. The inability of banks to raise capital has hit European and Asian markets, causing both to skid as credit dries up. What's worse, politicians here are waking up to the very real question, "Now what"? There seem to be no easy answers. Some, like Ohio's Dennis Kucinich, think there ought to be more hearings on crafting a better bill. Some social Darwinists among the House Republican block say simply that the markets need to correct themselves.

Others, in particular those who crafted the bill that went down, want to go back to the drawing board quickly and come up with another measure to vote on this week. One thing is for sure. Too many more days like yesterday and the New York Stock Exchange will need a full time staff of grief counselors.

How about doing something that directly benefits the American people? My good friend John Nichols at The Nation says split the bailout 50-50. Give half to the bankers and let them generate the rest through smart investing that's not exploitative. Use the rest to help homeowners, fund job training and creation, improve health care, the environment, education, you know, the things ordinary Americans are having to pay more for every day. Part of the reason why this bill failed is because the average person saw nothing in it for them.


Why not invest in Americans for a change?

Deal on Bailout? Yeah, Sort Of

So they worked all weekend, those cabinet and congress people struggling to craft a bill to bail out the US economy. In the end, they gave Bush something to say at 7:35AM Eastern, when he addressed the nation on the need to get the bill through the House and Senate. It took him all of four minutes. Meanwhile, world markets don't seem impressed. Most are down, and a couple more banks have been nationalized.

The US bailout has been made to sound like the risk to taxpayers is minimal. It doles out up to $700 billion dollars in stages, $250 billion here, $100 billion there, the rest later. There is some help for homeowners facing foreclosure, but not too much (that would be socialism)! And all this, as best I can tell, to get banks to trust each other enough to lend each other money. Maybe it's a lot more complicated than that, but who knows?

Speaking of which, who knows if it will actually work? The House is expected to vote later today, but who knows whether the Republican block, which last I checked is a minority, will go along? Most of the fighting here has been GOP against GOP. That battle is almost as interesting as Obama vs. McCain.

Around the world, some nations are putting out harsh critiques of this peculiarly American financial mess. China has called for a new world economic order, one that's less dependent on the US. Their central bank ordered a halt to business with their US counterparts last week. Brazil's president says the bailout is for the rich, not the poor. Iran's Ahmadinejad, never one to miss an opportunity, slammed this country from the podium at the UN.

These are the real wages of greed. Those that got the country into this mess don't really care. Their salaries may be limited if the bill passes, but it won't make them miss a tee time at the country club. Real and imagined Masters of the Universe don't go out that easily.

Why? They've got us!

Standoff Continues as Chaos Reigns

America awakes Friday with no more hope that a bailout deal can get done than there was three days ago. Any way you look at it, we've got John McCain and a small group of House Republicans to thank for this mess. Just as it looked like a deal was done early Thursday afternoon, here come House GOP lawmakers, essentially declaring war on a president from their own party. Even worse, John McCain, who dramatically suspended his campaign to come to Washington like a knight in shining armor, sat at a White House meeting he called for and said nothing for most of it.

So just what's going on here? A skeptic who follows politics might argue as follows. McCain and House Republicans saw a mutually beneficial opportunity to inject themselves in the bailout process. McCain, for whatever reasons, didn't want to participate in tonight's scheduled debate with Barack Obama. His friends in the House would seemingly rather watch the nation slide into depression rather than intervene in the "free market".

So they collaborate. They decide they don't like the bailout, then scramble to come up with an alternate plan that involves insuring bad debt rather than buying it outright. They even accused Treasury Secretary Paulson (what, another Republican?) of not giving them the information needed to draft their plan.

McCain seemed to glom onto this insurance approach. He certainly played his hand close to the vest for the better part of Thursday. The White House meeting reportedly descended into shouts and recriminations. McCain sat largely silent. Why? He needs the constituents conservative House Republicans represent. However, as happens sometimes, another event intervenes, one that could change the stakes.

Washington Mutual got itself seized by the FDIC Thursday night. WAMU isn't a small player. It's the largest savings and loan in America. Virtually all its assets were sold to JP Morgan Chase. Will this put pressure on Washington politicians to get off their ideologies and get something done?

You tell me.

McCain's Gambit Leads to Standoff

So here's John McCain, down in the latest polls, desperately trying to look like a leader. What does he do? He dramatically suspends his campaign, and says he wants to postpone Friday's debate. I'm sure his boys Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt told him the move would back Barack Obama into a corner. Go along, and McCain looks presidential, a man putting the nation's fiscal woes above his own personal gain. Refuse, and Obama looks like just another selfish, self absorbed politician.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out quite the way they diagrammed it on paper. Obama responded by saying, in essence, that anyone wanting to be president should be able to chew gum and walk at the same time. His people then released a timeline to yesterday's events that showed it was Obama who contacted McCain first, not about pushing the debate back, but about a bi-partisan show of unity in addressing the serious financial mess the country faces. Just after the two of them spoke yesterday afternoon, McCain went on television with his ploy.

Now, it looks like there's a standoff. McCain backed away just a bit, saying he'd debate if the bailout package was passed by Friday night. Yet for John McCain to act as though his presence is somehow crucial to getting a bailout through the Senate is beyond arrogance. As his colleague Sen. Bernie Sanders told me last night, John McCain hasn't been around all that much of late.

Barack Obama is right. Now is the time for the candidates to debate the economy. All that had to happen was a change in the theme. Foreign policy, the original focus of tomorrow's debate, can wait. John McCain knows this. Could there be another reason why he's holding out for postponement?

Could it be he's just not ready?

Can One Man Stabilize Markets?

Tuesday wasn't a great day for last week's financial heroes Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke. They were grilled all day by skeptical members of Congress about their $700 billion dollar bailout of the financial markets. It seems their stubborn desire to get a bill passed free of conditions like caps on CEO salaries, congressional oversight, and such hit a wall. Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd concluded, ominously, that major changes to the plan must be implemented to get it moved.

Paulson and Bernanke should have seen this coming. Their miscalculation was believing the average American saw some benefit to helping people who are perceived as conductors on the express train to American financial ruin. They can tell Congress it's all about the taxpayer, but taxpayers themselves aren't feeling it. Things are so bad Bush himself is thinking about giving a speech to the nation prior to floor debate in the House. Like the plan itself, there's no guarantee a few words from the Decider-in Chief will make things any clearer.

American taxpayers want sensible answers to basic questions. Why shouldn't the salaries of CEOs whose companies are being bailed out be limited? How much help will there be for distressed homeowners facing foreclosure? Where exactly is this $700 billion dollars going to come from? And, most importantly, what happens if the bailout doesn't work? Right now even the most savvy economists don't see a Plan B.

The stock market is apparently buoyed early Wednesday by the news that billionaire investor Warren Buffet will put $5 billion dollars into Goldman Sachs. This is supposed to renew investor confidence that the independent investment bank model still has a chance. Maybe, in the short term, it will. However, a knight in shining armor may not be enough to solve this thing in the long term. The Treasury Secretary and Fed Chair wanted what they call a quick and clean bailout bill passed this week.

Maybe not.

Is the Surge really Working?

John McCain has made a big deal out of the notion that he supported the troop surge in Iraq, and that the surge has led to a drop in violence there. He's right about the first part, but is he right about the second? For sure the US troops are doing a fine job there, but there's another factor driving the drop in violence McCain won't talk about. It's the emergence of the Awakening Councils, citizen patrols paid by the US to fight the insurgency.

Talk to Iraqis on the ground, as some American reporters have, and they'll tell you it's the Awakening Councils that have played a key role in lowering violence. The US military says the same thing. There were those who, a the beginning of the relationship between the Councils and the US, had problems with the fact that some Council members were former insurgents. In other words, people who were shooting at Americans were now being paid by Americans. Still, the Councils are 99,000 strong. That's many more than the surge, giving at least some credence to the notion they should receive some credit for the reduction in violence.

However, there are some clouds on the horizon. There have been recent incidents that indicate the Councils are starting to become a problem. There are turf battles, allegations of intimidation, and sometimes, violence. On top of that, a transition is coming. Starting October 1st, 54,000 Awakening members in and around Baghdad will join the payroll of the Shiite led government of Iraq. The patrols are predominately Sunnis. How this transition is made will speak volumes about whether the violence in the country remains low.

The US military is trying to help mediate the transition, but it's a tricky process. There are issues of pay, authority, and lack of trust between Sunnis and Shiites that goes back generations. All this goes on while John McCain keeps trying to hammer Barack Obama about opposition to a surge that itself isn't responsible for the reduction in violence. And even with the violence down, almost no one is reporting that the Iraqi death toll since the start of the war now tops 1 million.

And all the while John McCain refuses to tell America what victory in Iraq means. What does it mean to you?

Will Race Cost Obama?

So now we have a poll that has put a number on racism in this presidential campaign. According to an AP-Yahoo News poll, that number is 6%. In other words, Barack Obama's support would be as much as 6% higher if he wasn't black. The operative question, then, is whether that 6% is enough to cost him the election. Recent polls, even as they swung back his way, would tend to say yes. However, look inside the numbers contained in this poll and there should be little to surprise.

The poll set out to determine why the presidential race is so close between Obama and john McCain. It concluded that Obama's problems aren't just with white Republicans or independents. White Democrats support their nominee at a 70% rate. For John McCain, the corresponding number is 85% of his own party. You've also probably seen the poll numbers that say one third of all Democrats and independents hold at least one negative view of blacks. That group is less likely to vote for Obama than those who don't. Yet among that same group, 58% said they planned to vote for Obama.

The poll suggests there is still a deep vein of racial hostility in America, and that political affiliation does little to mitigate it. However, the poll was taken before last week's economic chaos, so there's no telling how that might affect not racial attitudes, but how people will vote. That a segment of white America might let race get in the way of their own economic interest is old news. The question is, how big is the segment?

There are people inside the Obama campaign who understand the implications of this poll. That's why his supporters have been receiving a great deal of e-mail of late. The appeals are for money at times, but they also ask people to talk about the campaign among family, friends, and co-workers. Because after all, 6% is a small number. One third of white Democrats holding a negative view of blacks means two thirds do not.

Some say these poll numbers could doom the Obama quest for the presidency. I say otherwise. What do you say?

Palin Tears a Page From Bush's Playbook

While it may be true that the McCain-Palin ticket wants no part of our current president on the stump, they certainly know how to follow his example. The campaign has been quietly trying to quash the Troopergate probe in Palin's home state of Alaska, and the tactics they're using are startlingly similar to those used by the Decider-in-Chief when certain congressional committees wanted to look into allegations of wrongdoing.

Palin, who initially supported the bipartisan probe into whether she fired the state's public safety chief because he wouldn't fire her ex-brother in law. Now that McCain has named her as his running mate, not so much. In fact, she's let the McCain people be the ones doing the talking about why, for example, her own husband has refused to testify in the investigation. Sound familiar? It should. Bush told Congress more than once that everyone from Karl Rove to Harriet Miers to Josh Bolten were off limits.

And what exactly does Sarah Palin have to hide? And who allowed her, or McCain for that matter, to determine when an investigation is legitimate and when it's not? Most laughable among the reasons Todd Palin's attorney gave for refusing to testify is that the subpoena is "burdensome", since First Dude is planning to be out of state. And here's the interesting part. The Alaska State Legislature has no power to compel any witness to testify prior to November 4th.

Ah, so that's the important part. Keep this thing on ice until after the election. Now this isn't to say that this sort of thing isn't done in other jurisdictions, and sometimes even by Democrats. Yet in this case the motive is so transparent it's insulting.

By the way, Palin is co-operating with a separate probe into Troopergate. That one she began after she was tabbed by McCain. That probe is being done by Palin appointees.

Bailout Blues

This early in the day, nobody knows whether the nation's financial markets will rebound from the week's earlier losses. One thing is for sure. Fingers will continue to be pointed and blame assessed. Coming as it has in the middle of a presidential race, both candidates will burn the midnight oil trying to convince the public they have the answer. So why does it feel like most of what people are talking about is so short term?

The most dangerous thing that could result from the current crisis is a quick fix solution. Get it off the front page, and all those involved know it recedes from the public consciousness. One person in the eye of the storm is Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank. He's center stage in all this as chair of the House Financial Services Committee. He's blunt and to the point when he says the nation can't afford to use the Fed to bail out large struggling institutions forever.

And make no mistake, the titans of high finance aren't the only ones looking to Uncle Sam for help. The auto industry is seeking $25 billion dollars in either loans or loan guarantees. With Michigan a battleground state in the upcoming election, how the government answers will have wide implications. Will other troubled suitors, many of whom detest regulation, have to come to that great regulator, the federal government?

Barney Frank's approach is to deal with the problem on several fronts. He told Politico.com the government should pressure financial institutions to ease up on foreclosures. He also said central bankers in allied nations ought to be doing more as well. His committee will be holding a hearing on the mess next Wednesday. No matter what happens in the markets between now and then, that hearing is important if not crucial to the future of the country.

Barney Frank seems to know the right questions, even if he doesn't have all the answers. But does anyone?

Can You Afford McCain's Health Care Plan?

With the nation's attention focused on the economy (the feds bailed out AIG), it's interesting to note a column by Bob Herbert of the New York Times. He talks about the McCain-Palin agenda for health care, specifically health insurance. To say the plan is an eye opener is an understatement. Herbert says, correctly, that with the focus on lipstick and who invented the BlackBerry, The Republican candidates' proposals haven't gotten much attention. Hopefully, that may change.

What jumps out about the McCain-Palin plan is the fact it would treat employer-paid health benefits as income. That means workers would have to pay taxes on it. That of course means your employer will have to withhold a bit more from your paycheck to cover the estimated tax. Now for McCain, who paints himself as a tax cutter, to propose taxing healthcare is radical by itself. McCain proposes to make up part of the tax by offering all taxpayers a refundable tax credit of between $2500 and $5000.

The question then becomes this. If you're going to offer a credit, why tax the benefits as income in the first place? Oh yeah, the agenda, which is to eventually relieve employers of the pesky responsibility of helping to pay for workers' healthcare. It would put more and more Americans in the private health insurance marketplace. That means, left to their own devices, workers will opt for the cheapest possible plan, or opt out of the health care system entirely.

A new study of the McCain plan projects that 20 million Americans will lose employer based health insurance if McCain and Palin get their way. In other words, this is the very kind of deregulation that has helped cause the current mess in the financial markets. Do you want that kind of chaos facing you if you or a member of your family gets sick?

John McCain and Sarah Palin think government regulation is part of what's wrong with America. They may try to dress it up a bit due to present circumstances on Wall St., but as they mouth their platitudes, ask yourself this.

Can you afford the McCain-Palin health care plan?

Masters No More

If you have any doubts that the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the fire sale of Merrill Lynch, and the ongoing woes of AIG don't have global consequences, take a look at the international media. You'll quickly see that financial markets from London to Berlin to Tokyo are shuddering as the Dow lost 504 points yesterday. Most financial experts are saying it will get worse before it gets better.

What's already worse is the paucity of information about how this meltdown will affect the average hard working American. We told you yesterday it's likely thousands will be thrown out of work. Lehman Brothers alone has (or had) 25,000 employees worldwide, about 11,000 of them here in the US. However, a close reading of the foreign press tells you some will make out better than others, just as they have in the past.

The so-called "Masters of the Universe", the highest of the high flyers, never seem to actually get seriously hurt by these economic gyrations. As the newspaper The Scotsman puts it:" Masters of the Universe will never know what it's like to live in a subprime home". Richard Fuld, Lehman's boss of all bosses, certainly took a hit on the plummeting value of his company's stock. After all, he was Lehman's biggest shareholder. Yet he'll still walk away with eight figures.

And so it goes with any number of financial titans who leave as their firms struggle or go under. Those who were compensated largely in stock options saw the value of their paper evaporate, but they still had enough left over to keep both their homes and their memberships in fancy country clubs. And those fat bonuses many high flyers got when the markets seemed on a never ending roll? Nobody thinks about asking for them back.

And so, while millions of Americans worry about their 401Ks, the bigwigs who presided over this meltdown lick their wounds, knowing the little guy will never understand what it's like to be worth over a billion dollars one year, and only $60 million the next. The little guy just wants to know how it happened, and what anyone will do to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Right now, nobody's talking.

Bankers on the Block

The nation awakes Monday morning to the news that one of its most prominent securities firms has filed for bankruptcy. Maybe you've been reading about the troubles Lehman Brothers has been having of late. It came to a head over the weekend, as neither the feds nor a corporate angel was willing to bail the company out. There's more, however. Other prominent firms in the financial sector are also teetering on the brink. Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself to Bank of America yesterday. Insurance giant AIG and savings and loan bigs Washington Mutual also find themselves strapped for cash, and looking for help.

All this comes on the heels of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout, which in turn followed the shotgun wedding of Bear Stearns and JP Morgan Chase. Keeping in mind these aren't mom and pop operations we're talking about, a fair question to ask is, how come? How is that financial names Americans have come to know and trust are falling apart like this? The easy answer may be greed. It seems many of these companies invested heavily in the mortgage market that's now dragging the whole country's economy down.

Beyond that, it would appear a lack of discipline in the financial sector and regulation on the part of government also brought these firms to the brink. It gets like that when everybody at the top is making out like bandits. Six figure bonuses, lavish parties, and a never ending boom market come together to create a sense of entitlement to good times for all on Wall. St. And then it ends.

There's no telling how this market meltdown will affect the average American. There will no doubt be a huge shakeout on Wall St., meaning thousands will be out of work. They will join the hundreds of thousands of everyday folk who struggle to find comparable work. The guess here is most won't feel sorry for the high flyers. There may not even be much pity for shareholders who've seen their money evaporate before their eyes.

Recession? What recession?

Palin, ABC Shoot Blanks

Now we know Sarah Palin is clueless about foreign policy, and even national security. Her answers in the interview with Charlie Gibson on the Bush Doctrine and war with Russia told us that. This is a person who, if elected, would be a heartbeat away from the presidency, and she muddled through an answer about whether the US has the right to send the military into Pakistan without telling them first. All in all, she was in over her head, but that's only part of the story as far as the interview(s) are concerned.

First, ABC ought to be ashamed of itself for the amateurish edits during the segment shown on World News Tonight. It looked choppy, and at one point there was an edit before a sentence was finished. For his part, Charlie Gibson didn't pitch softballs. But who decided to take parts of two different interviews and spread them over four shows on two nights? Sure you want to milk Palin's popularity and the nation's curiosity about her for all it's worth but isn't this overkill?

Yet coming out of this first broadcast test, another question looms. Are those people inclined to view Palin favorably going to be swayed because she doesn't know the Bush Doctrine? The answer may be no. Her Teleprompter answers and clumsy attempts at interview intimacy (how many times did she call Gibson Charlie?) may not matter as much as what she represents to the Religious Right, some women, and, if blogs and comment sections of newspapers are any indication, lustful men.

Those who look at Palin from a political perspective may be licking their chops, waiting for Joe Biden to deliver a series of knockout blows in their one debate. They may be missing something a very wise man once said to me.

"Be in error, but never be in doubt". Can that old adage save Sarah Palin?

Where's the Freedom Tower?

On this, the seventh anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks, it should be noted that it took all of 410 days to build the Empire State Building here in New York City. This is significant because in the 77 odd years since that structure was opened, technology has improved, and workers are at least as capable. So why, seven years after 9-11, do we have no permanent structure built on the footprint of the Twin Towers?

That answer is simple. Political wrangling, changing plans, and a myriad of local, state, and federal agencies with their fingers in the pie have conspired to make a mockery of the one thing the nation seemed determined to do in the wake of the terror attacks. That is, simply, to rebuild. The sordid history of a foundation laid and removed, one plan on paper that was ultimately scrapped, and competing political egos doesn't warrant repeating here. Suffice to say there's plenty of blame to go around.

Now New York's mayor wants the state agency charged with supervising the rebuild at Ground Zero dissolved. He says, rightly, they've botched the job. The proof? Just take the subway to lower Manhattan and look for yourself. However, getting rid of a government agency is easier said than done. At least one powerful politician stands in Mayor Bloomberg's way, and that person has blocked some of the mayor's initiatives in the past.

Now you might say political squabbling is a bit untoward on this, the anniversary of 9-11. You'd be right, but this is New York. Politicians will fight on any day and at any time. While they do, the hole that is Ground Zero sits, waiting for the spirit of unity the city and nation showed on that awful day to reappear.

It could be a long wait.

Tactics Shift in the Hunt for bin Laden

On the eve of the 7th anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks, the US is changing strategy in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. In doing so, they're beginning to acknowledge mistakes that some have been pointing out for a long time now. The question is whether they're making other errors in this tactical shift.

US, Pakistani, and European officials admit they haven't had a solid lead on bin Laden's whereabouts since they came close to nailing him at Tora Bora in December of '01. They also say the war in Iraq has been a major obstacle. That's right, the war Bush said was central in fighting the war on terror has in fact been an impediment in finding the world's most sought after terrorist. So now the question is, how do you change tactics after a fruitless search of seven years?

The answer, at least in this case, is the Predator drone spy plane. Because the Pakistani government has made it difficult for the CIA and Special Forces to operate freely in their territory, the Predator, with its deadly Hellfire missiles, has been seen as a viable alternative. Problem is, in tripling the number of missile attacks along the Afghan-Pakistan border in recent months, the number of civilian casualties has spiraled. This has made enemies of the Pashtun tribes along the border. That in turn makes it more difficult to cultivate the human intelligence needed to figure out where bin Laden is hiding.

It's significant that no one has ratted bin Laden out despite a $25 million dollar reward posted by the US. Perhaps the possible redeployment of US troops from Iraq to Afghanistan may make a difference, if it ever happens. Perhaps the change in leadership in Pakistan can mend frayed US- Pakistan relations. And maybe a new administration in Washington can come up with a new and innovative strategy to capture the man whose very freedom is America's biggest failure.

Or maybe Osama bin Laden will die of old age in the hills of Pakistan. What do you think?

Hillary Won't Pick a Fight

It was her first campaign stump since the Democratic National Convention, where she clearly hit a home run in asking her supporters to back Barack Obama. Senator Hillary Clinton made several stops across central Florida Monday, but if someone expected her to lower the boom on Sarah Palin, they would have been disappointed. Her former communications director Howard Wolfson said she wouldn't get involved in "cat fights" with the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, and yesterday, he was right.

Hillary Clinton may have said "No McCain, no Palin", but that's as far as she would go. When asked specifically about the Alaska governor, she wouldn't take the bait. She's probably smart not to. There's no reason other than the fact both are women to expect Hillary Clinton to go after Palin. Better Joe BIden, who, after all, is running for the same office, to handle the task of stopping the Palin Express.

There are also signs that former President Clinton may soon be adding his heft to the Obama effort. He's due to lunch with Obama in Harlem day after tomorrow, and perhaps stumping for the Illinois senator could be on the agenda. Sure, there was bad blood between the Obama and Clinton campaigns, but that was then. If anyone can present the case for electing Obama with a laser-like focus on the economy, it's Bill Clinton. Recent polling says Obama's margin over McCain on economic issues is slipping. Keep the campaign focused on Bush bungling and McCain's economic ignorance and Obama should win no matter what the polls say a week after Labor Day.

McCain will continue to push the notion that Obama isn't ready to lead, and is somehow so character flawed as not to be trusted. Both the Clintons can swat those arguments aside like Venus Williams at the US Open.

Will they?

Another Term for Bloomberg and Friends?

Yeah, I know the presidential sweepstakes kicks off in earnest today. And yeah, Hillary Clinton will be in Florida on behalf of Barack Obama, and Sarah Palin will go on World News Tonight. Still, today we talk local. There's a move afoot in New York City to overturn the will of the voters. Those who would benefit are playing coy, not wanting to discuss it much, for fear of angering the people who put them in office.

I'm talking about changing term limits for local elected officials. Term limits are currently set at two consecutive terms for all members of the City Council, as well as citywide elected officials, including the mayor. The limits were set by voters in a referendum more than a decade ago, then affirmed in a second round of balloting. It's no secret members of the Council have wanted to get rid of them, but they're pretty sure if it goes to another referendum, they'll lose.

So what to do? How about passing a law that sets term limits at three instead of the current two? That kills two birds with one stone. It bypasses the electorate, and it allows elected officials to run for a third term next year. Another referendum couldn't get on the ballot until next year, too late for the current crop to benefit. And what of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who swore up and down he was done on Dec. 31, 2009?

Not so fast. After saying he wouldn't run again but would consider what kind of term limits law the Council passed, Hizzoner seems to have had a change of heart. Not about the consideration part, but about running again. True, he's a popular guy, but in shifting positions doesn't he run the risk of looking like Rudy Giuliani at the end of 2001? You may remember Rudy thought (and still thinks) he was the city's savior, without whom New York might fall apart. When his bid for a third term fizzled, he wanted to stay an extra 90 days. That didn't work either.

Mike Bloomberg has toyed with the presidency, and there's was talk he might run for governor in 2010. He tamped that down, but few people think if term limits were extended he wouldn't make another run for mayor.

You tell me. Should term limits be extended?

The Poor Know Times are Tough

I didn't watch all of John McCain's speech Thursday night. Greater minds than mine will decide if he convinced the American public that the best people to clean up the mess Republicans have left this country in are....Republicans! In the meantime,, as people slog their way out of St. Paul and prepared for the 60 day fight to come, I've been observing how America's slumping economy is hurting people on the ground. It isn't pretty.

New York City is supposed to be in better shape than the rest of the country as far as economic health goes. The mortgage mess has hurt, but not as badly, and city government prepared for the downturn by trimming its sails a bit. Yet twice during the past month, I've seen evidence with my own eyes that people, just plain folks, are struggling.

I wait for the bus after work on a midtown Manhattan corner. Usually the wait is about ten minutes. Three weeks ago, I saw a couple who looked like typical New Yorkers walk up to a box of fast food chicken left on top of a mound of garbage. I didn't give it a second thought until I saw them empty the box's contents into a bag they were carrying. Now maybe they were collecting scraps for a family pet. I didn't think so at the time, but that's certainly possible. But then they got on the same bus I was riding, and didn't have money for either fare (they ended up riding for free). As they got off the bus in front of a fast food place, they began looking through the mound of garbage bags sitting outside. Keep in mind this couple didn't look like the typical "down and out" New Yorkers. They looked just like you and me.

Then, night before last, I saw an elderly woman at the same bus stop. This lady was dressed well enough to be mistaken for one of those Park Ave. matrons you read about in magazines. She was digging through a plastic bag full of garbage from a nearby restaurant. I realized after a minute she was collecting rolls that had just been discarded. Again, maybe she was going to feed pigeons the following morning. But then, after walking halfway down the block, she returned. She dug into a different garbage bag, and retrieved some other items, which I couldn't see. Then she walked to the corner, and began rummaging through the garbage can there before heading out of my sight.

After witnessing these two incidents, I've concluded there are more people living at the margins in our society than any politician would care to admit. I'm not sure there's any solution to the problem of hunger at a political convention. Speeches and applause don't feed anyone.

I wonder how those people I saw are feeding themselves today?

Was Palin Really That Good?

Sarah Palin had her night in the spotlight at the RNC. Predictably, the last thing I heard before changing the channel was from a cable network commentator gushing, "A star was born tonight"! Oh really? I found Gov. Palin's speech to be nothing less than a passionless, scripted, superficial string of half truths, outright falsehoods, and rehashed attacks on Barack Obama.

She spent nearly the first ten minutes of it introducing her family, which may have been to lower her unfamiliarity quotient. Then then droned on and on, pausing for applause that seemed clearly manufactured. She mentioned foreign countries without once mentioning world leaders. If she spent the previous 48 hours rehearsing a speech she didn't write, it showed.

As for her attacks on Obama, those too rang hollow. She said he wants to expand government, hinted he'd rather be president than achieve "victory" in Iraq (she, like her GOP colleagues, never say what victory is), and attacked his vision as a "cloud of rhetoric". Yeah, but at least there's a reasonable chance he wrote his own speech. She mentioned Al-Qaeda, but never Osama bin Laden, her party's most glaring and continuous failure. And still, through all this, most media acted like she walked on water in St. Paul last night.

That's because many of my colleagues in the press had been rocked back on their heels by McCain campaign attacks. All those pesky questions about vetting, teen pregnancy, earmarks, support for the "bridge to nowhere", all the stuff we liberals in the media ask about to the exclusion of focusing on Sarah Palin's son, who's about to be deployed to Iraq. Or her love of mooseburgers. When the media is attacked, it often backs up and fawns over the attacker. So it was last night, and probably through the news cycle today.

Sarah Palin can't hide forever, though. Soon she'll actually have to talk to the media, even if it is Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. Soon we'll learn if all those lessons about Kim Jong Il and Nicholas Sarkozy and Hugo Chavez actually stuck in her mind.

Is Sarah Palin the real thing? You tell me.

Fact and Opinion, Do You Know the Difference?

I was doing a little channel surfing, and came across a C-Span show where Michel Martin, host of the NPR program "Tell Me More" was talking to a group of young people. She was making a point that more adults ought to pay attention to, something that's been bothering me ever since I saw an ad for Rush Limbaugh which referred to him as America's most trusted anchorman. There is an increasingly blurred line between journalism and punditry. In fact, as Michel Martin told those youngsters, shows like "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" are treated by some as actual news programs.

This of course perplexes the hosts of both these programs, as that was never their intent. They're comedians, not journalists. But where does it end? Some have taken issue with MSNBC's decision to allow Keith Olberman to anchor their coverage of the political conventions. Olberman's regular show is full of opinion, and it's often a joy to watch. But does that make him an anchor? MSNBC isn't the only culprit here. Fox News seems to have deliberately blurred the line between news and opinion, with its newspeople often making no bones about where they stand on certain issues.

Yet what fascinated me about the discussion I saw on C-Span was my own situation. I was trained as a journalist, meaning I was to keep my own opinion out of the stories I covered. Back in the day, our politics could be discerned primarily by the stories we chose to cover, that is, stories the mainstream media ignored. Still, for the past quarter century, I've been paid to express my opinion, to inform, to analyze, and tell people where I stand. In other words, I'm a journalist and commentator. There are times I'm not comfortable with wearing both hats.

However, take a look at CNN's Lou Dobbs (full disclosure- I've been on his show). He began as a business reporter, and has morphed into something very different (and far more lucrative). And one supposes there's nothing wrong with that.

Or is there? Do you know the difference between a journalist and a commentator? Can one person do both?

Bristol Palin's Pregnancy: Off Limits?

The conventional wisdom is nothing is off limits in a political campaign. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin must know this. That's why she and Sen. John McCain will try to ride out the media storm created by the revelation that her 17 year old daughter Bristol is pregnant. Sen. Barack Obama says his campaign won't make an issue of Bristol's situation. He doesn't have to. The media will do it for him. Suffice to say this will be the most closely watched teen pregnancy this side of jamie Lynn Spears. She's going to marry the father, a self described redneck and hockey buff named Levi Johnston.

That's all well and good, but the question the McCain campaign must now answer is whether his choice for vice president was properly vetted beforehand. There are rumors the timeline of his choice and the issue of when he knew about the pregnancy make a thorough vetting unlikely. There's the added question of the probe into Gov. Palin's alleged abuse of authority in hiring a top police official who wouldn't fire her former brother in law. The public is being asked to believe McCain knew about both these things, but decided to go forward anyway.

Back to Bristol Palin. One reason why this story won't go away is her mother's position on birth control (she's against it) abortion (against, even in the case of rape), and sex education in schools (not a big fan). Yes, one can say children should be off limits in a political campaign, but remember Bristol's pregnancy was revealed in part to stop rumors that her recently born brother was actually hers. Maybe the 24 hour cable news operations will actually respect the couple's right to privacy from here on. Maybe the blogosphere has better things to do than follow this thing right through to the election.

Both possible, but unlikely. In a couple of days, Hurricane Gustav will be off the front pages and breaking news blurbs. The Republican National Convention only lasts a few more days. Then the real race for president starts.

Will the media leave Bristol Palin alone? You tell me.