Life in Slumburbia — Musings of a Middle-class Holdout

The Slumburban Asphalt Jungle

2009-05-07T23:50:00.013-04:00

This Wednesday we were treated to a Washington Post article with a photo featuring a familiar sight from Connecticut Avenue Estates here in west Wheaton: an ugly parking slab that used to be a front yard.

The Post article covers the county’s proposed measure to prohibit people from converting their lawns into paved parking lots. Here’s an excerpt:

“The Montgomery County Council began considering a proposal [on Monday, May 4] by County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) to limit pavement in front yards and restrict who could park there. Violators could be fined as much as $500 a day for each offense, potentially rising to $750 a day for repeat offenders. No matter how small your lot, however, you would always be allowed to have at least 310 square feet of pavement, enough for two short, tightly parked cars.

The proposal also would forbid parked vehicles on grass in the front yard, forcing drivers to either park on pavement, gravel or stone in the yard or park on the street. But it doesn't mention the back yard, which means that still could be paved over in most single-family neighborhoods.”

—“Montgomery Council Considers Limits on Front Yard Pavement,” Washington Post, May 6, 2009

What the article doesn’t mention is that people here often pave over their front lawns so they can cram more renters/boarders in these houses. Residential overcrowding is rampant in Connecticut Avenue Estates.

For example, my next-door neighbor uses her house as a cut-rate motel and dive lounge with cheap beer and cheaper music. Her “patrons” rely on her ample parking lot to store their wheels while they carouse at her tacky slumburban dive. They can fit four vehicles in her lot, but they often manage to accommodate six when they park in front of our lot as well.

A fair number of households have four to six automobiles, a lot of which are large vehicles, such as work vans and trucks. Many of them are commercial/company vehicles, often unmarked.

The county has had so many complaints about oversized vehicles in residential neighborhoods that MCPD will start enforcing a new code prohibiting street parking of oversized vehicles starting on July 1, as mentioned in the article. But before you start plotting to flag your obnoxious neighbor’s pickup or van, you should know that this covers only very large commercial and recreational vehicles, with gross vehicle weight (GVW) of 10,000 lbs. or greater, measuring at least 8 feet high and 21 feet long. (For details on the new law, click here [PDF, 238K].)

As far as the Post article and comments in reaction to the county’s consideration of the measure, I was somewhat surprised at the passionate “don’t-tread-on-me” style mini-diatribes defending the right to pave over one’s patch of suburbia.

All I can say is that neighborhoods like Connecticut Avenue Estates make HOAs look very attractive. I realize how arbitrary and inflexible these groups can be, but it’s a slippery slope to slumburbia, and libertarianism works much better out in the wilderness.

In the article’s comments section, Aspen Hill blogger Thomas Hardman eloquently articulates the position of residents like me:

Thank GOD!

In the recent District 4 Special Election, this was the cry that I delivered for Aspen Hill, the cry against people who cut down all of their trees, pave their yards, and illegally park their work fleets on their paved yard, and give the neighborhood the appearance of an industrial park illegally renting out their shop spaces to families of illegal aliens.

It is an offense to the neighbors, to the neighborhood, to the Chesapeake Bay watersheds, and to the aquifers under Maryland.

It has to stop.

Thank you, Montgomery Council.

If you learn nothing from this Special Election, learn this:

Stop PAVING MONTGOMERY. Stop trying to PAVE the BAY.

I leave you with my own photographic illustration of the phenomenon of paved front lawns. This is a section of Valleywood Drive in Connecticut Avenue Estates. Here we have three different parking lot substrates in front of four different homes. During the height of summer this area is an unwelcome miniature heat island. Valleywood Drive runs right next to a stream that is part of the Rock Creek watershed.

The county council will hold a public hearing on this issue on Tuesday, June 9 at 7:30 p.m. at the Council Office Building (100 Maryland Avenue, Rockville 20850). The measure under consideration is called “ZTA 09-03, Home Occupations and Residential Off-street Parking.” To give testimony, call 240-777-7931.

What the brick--?!?

2009-04-06T02:21:00.025-04:00

In honor of “Script Frenzy,” I have written the following short dialogue, which takes place not far from lower slumburbia (southwest Wheaton, in this instance).

Boilerplate Disclaimer: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and derives from heretofore untapped psychic powers.

INT. CONSTRUCTION SITE TRAILER - EARLY SPRING, DAYTIME

The contractor, JOE, sits on a broken swivel chair, looking over change order forms and other assorted paperwork. ELMER, a construction worker, enters the room and stands there until JOE notices him.

ELMER

Boss? My family is growing very fast and I need more space right now. I want to ask you--

JOE

--what, buddy? You lookin’ for another bonus? Or even more overtime?! You know, work slowed down a bit in the off-season and I think you should really take it easy. (Pauses.) Hold on, didn’t you move out of that roach magnet and into a new house in the suburbs not too long ago? What gives?

ELMER

Yes, but, you see, this house is very small, less than 900 feet. My wife wants all our boys to have their own rooms and she wants a new kitchen and we have a corner lot, so I--

JOE

--well, why didn’t you say so?! You want to take that surplus off my hands? That stuff left over from the jobs last season? Help yourself, buck.

ELMER

Thank you; I owe you big, Mr. Joe.

JOE

Sure. Hey, you want those pallets of cinderblocks for cheap? I really need to free up the space for some new shipments.

ELMER

Yeah, I take those. Also, I see you have very many leftover yellow bricks--

JOE

--go ahead and help yourself to those, too. And you’ll need some mortar mix. Y’know, I’ve even got some manufacturer mortar dye samples you can play with, if you want ’em.

ELMER

Oh, very good! Thank you, man!

JOE

No problem, charlie. Show me some photos once you get things going.

ELMER

I will!

The result:

A Lower Slumburbia DIY McMansion —
Fugly Supersized Rear Addition / Re-McModel Variant

That’s right, folks, it’s just your average slumburban

“Surplus Supply Shotgun Special” :

Now let’s examine this aesthetically-challenged architectural hybrid from hell:

1. On the right we have an original Dutch colonial brick-and-frame duplex with a quirky mansard roof, circa 1950.

2. On the left we have a brick-and-block millenial monstrosity, circa 2000-2003.

Exterior Side Wall (Northeast Exposure):

Let’s call this creative color scheme “Adobe Sunset” (or perhaps “El Dorado ” or “La Casa Puesta del Sol ” if we’re marketing to Spanish-speakers).

This wall features:

• 1/5 pink brick with white mortar

• 2/5 pale yellow brick with pink mortar

• 2/5 pale yellow brick with dun mortar

• flimsy builder-grade windows/doors

The spouse calls this ample annex the “Pink Elephant.” I’ve gotta admit that it does kind of resemble a pink elephant, with its rosy coloration and ear-like frontal overhang. And if I were one of the itinerant neighborhood drunks, it might make me do a double take, too.

Check out the decorative bricklaying 8-9 feet above grade. The manic masons decided to lay down a course of “soldiered” bricks just above the first floor windows and side entry door. The outer ends of the lintel blocks are flush with the corners of the windows, so they provide absolutely no structural advantage over the standard running bond brick pattern, which would have been functionally superior in this case. (These corners should be fine as long as they used steel lintels, but they really squandered an opportunity to combine form and function in the masonry here.)

The railings look like they’re interior-grade, untreated wood that is supposed to be primed and painted, or at least stained and sealed. Using this interior millwork for entryways seems to be very popular here in lower slumburbia. Hence, you tend to see split and rotting wood railings (sometimes with missing balusters) that were installed just within the last 5-10 years.

Exterior Rear Wall (Southeast Exposure):

(If this vivid spectacle is not yet seared into your brain, feel free to scroll back up to reference the top photos again.)

• cinderblock painted a dullish custard yellow

• more cheap builder-grade windows/doors

Other Tidbits:

• assorted junk, typical of casual slumburban living, including the obligatory molded plastic patio chairs

• rebar-embedded cinderblock retaining wall, topped off with a layer of cement (Quikrete or somesuch)

• not pictured: generously proportioned shed/outbuilding, free-roving collie

WASCally Wabbits, Cheap Chickens, and Bad Eggs...

2009-04-04T01:18:00.007-04:00

No, that’s not my version of early Easter tidings.

Maybe this is, though:

(apologies to neb & fury)

WASC == White Anglo-Saxon Capitalists

It’s a trendy slur in our era of global economic meltdown triggered by malfeasances committed in financial megacenters like New York and London. (We won’t bother to get into the other end of the spectrum of deceit and delusion just yet, such as the shady dealings that took place in sketchier corners of American slumburbia.)

If you’ve been checking out news/commentary programming outside of the U.S. mainstream media these days, such as the BBC, you’ll occasionally hear a few veiled and not-so-veiled incriminations against WASCs. Leftist Continental Europeans and others will sometimes carry on about how the delicate machinery of our global economy was tampered with and eventually wrecked by heartless “Anglo-Saxon” capitalists run amok.

A web search turns up a typical screed from a leftist heaping abuse on transatlantic Anglocentric Caucasian capitalists, sampled below:

“Just for the record, the portliness of most Americans is testimony to their malnutrition caused mainly by the ‘GDP-ization’ of every single possible activity including Motherhood by our White Anglo Saxon Capitalists. The end result of malnutrition is generally a degenerative disease –a more or less slow and painful death — of which most all cancers, heart disease, arthritis, Alzheimer’s etc. are examples. (I believe but cannot prove, although the facts tend to support such, that beginning with Henry VIII’s barons takeover of the commons and the putting of their farmers on the road to make way for sheep and wool, leading to the British effort to run a navy on rum and salt pork which was only saved with the discovery of limes and proceeding to America’s unlimited faith in magic pills and medical intervention, that the ruling elite is committed to filling the hoi polloi with non-descript fats, proteins, and carbohydrates, all seasoned with sodium chloride — feaux [sic] food — with magic bullets to be supplied on the fly as they are found.) The only real solution is real, unadulterated food.”

—some liberal named “Lee” on some conservative website

(While I agree with some of this food-fixated fool’s basic sentiments, this “Lee” person’s leaps in logic make you wonder whether he/she maybe needs to start hitting some “non-descript” carbohydrates after all, before his/her blood sugar runs down too low and deprives his/her brain of all coherent cognition. I oughta know, after all.)

I was reminded of the surge in anti-WASCism when I heard a French journalist mention this lament on NPR’s “All Thing’s Considered” on Thursday evening during a segment covering the G20 summit.

And then I noticed Hardman’s post on his campaign blog on Thursday evening, where he mentions the wane of WASPs (among many other things).

For those of you who aren’t avid loco Moco politics hags, Hardman is from Aspen Hill and is running as a Democrat for the District 4 County Council seat. (The seat was left vacant when well-respected civic activist and sitting District 4 Councilman Don Praisner died suddenly in January, following the passing of his predecessor, his own wife Marilyn — another tireless veteran county leader — by less than a year.)

The District 4 special election has turned out to be a pretty lively race with a rather broad array of candidates.

In his recent post, Hardman takes issue with a local politician’s statement endorsing the front-runner in the District 4 Council seat special election.

The sitting councilmember who extended the endorsement, the cherub-faced Mr. George Leventhal, is a Democrat holding an at-large seat on the council. Leventhal resides in Takoma Park, an historic aging streetcar suburb in the far southeastern corner of the county that has a lot of verve and character.

For those of you unfamiliar with the county, Takoma Park is a very liberal enclave that extends into the District (somewhat like Chevy Chase). Some Takoma Parkers even label their city the “Berkeley of the east” because of its liberal atmosphere. (If they can make that ridiculous claim, let’s just call nouveau Silver Spring the “SF of suburban Maryland” and Wheaton can be MoCo’s own “Little Oakland” to round things out.)

Leventhal is endorsing a school board member who has unprecedented resources (seasoned campaign staff and funding) compared to most contenders in the District 4 field. The majority of the county’s solidly left solidarists (who wield the lion’s share of the power in east-county politics) have effectively anointed the school board’s candidate as the new council member.

Leventhal included this appeal in his endorsement:

“We must do more to understand the needs and concerns of working and lower-income families, our younger population, and our Latino and African American population. Although they represent the future of Montgomery County, they are badly underrepresented in our county’s political dialogue.”

To me this sounded like tired old rhetoric pushing the usual bromides of patronizing liberal tokenist tolerance, barely worthy of a yawn or a ho-hum. But it elicited this pointed response by Hardman on Maryland Politics Watch:

“So, according to Mr Leventhal, Ms Navarro's most important qualification is her ethnicity?

Wow.

There's nothing left to say.”

* * *
Now, I grew up nestled pretty comfortably in the lap of luxe-liberalism here in MoCo, so I sometimes still find it difficult to turn a dispassionately critical eye on any local group of sympathetic solidarists.

However, Leventhal’s description is a very clumsy demographic caricature of the “future” of this county, which is genuinely diverse in many different aspects.

If I identified as latino/hispanic or African American, I might actually take offense at being singled out in this way, hastily categorized in the same breath as “working[-class]” and “lower-income” residents ripe for representative political affirmative action.

There are plenty of middle-class and affluent residents of Latin American and African American heritage thriving in this county. They are busy creating prosperity for themselves and their children, with or without special ethnically targeted assistance from county government, business, and non-profit leaders.
(Of course these folks may or may not wince at this Democratic party rhetoric as much as I do. Maybe they really do hunger for these sorts of statements; I’ll have to leave it to them to express their individual reactions to this treatment.)

But there’s also the inevitable exclusion by omission that underlies Leventhal’s appeal. I don’t mean to pick on Leventhal personally; after all, his statement is a very typical expression of current Democratic Party outreach agendas. Hardman points out the inevitable exclusion in this cherry-picking endorsement, demanding:

“If that's the plan, where do the wealthy professionals fit in? How about wealthy Asian-Americans? Wealthy Indian-Americans? What about Arab-Americans of whatever level of education or income? What about the this-or-that-ethnicity? Or, maybe since there aren't all that many of them, they don't need a voice?”

He pretty much nails it here. I would go on to mention Caribbean Americans (whether they identify as hispanic or not), African immigrants (west, central, and east), eastern and central European immigrants, and so on. And of course the middle class, including the rising middle class. But this proliferation of diversity is too bewildering for many liberal Democratic party liners to wrap their heads around; they’d rather focus on the simpler demographic pigeonholing they’re used to.

I think it’s pretty clear that many liberals would prefer to analyze and court a very few massive ethnocentric voting blocs rather than embrace a broader array of diversity. By that I mean an expansionary diversity that would be more international in scope and that also draws from various defining qualities beyond the obvious divisions of race/ethnicity/culture and gender.

These other facets might include, for instance:

• income level, educational background, socioeconomic class and level of mobility, trade/industry/profession

• age group, generational identity

• culture/continent of origin, immigrant generation

• political, philosophical, or spiritual orientation

• lifestyle arrangements (marital/partnership/relationship status/orientation, household size & features)

* * *

“Another ideal for which we fought was ‘equal justice for all.’ Somehow the history books in Country schools will tell you that the majority of the victorious Union army was ‘poor newly arrived immigrants’ but they don't tell you much more. But college-level history texts, especially those written right near the time of the conflict, will tell you that the majority of those ‘immigrants’ were fresh off the boat from the Germanies, and some of those history books will flatly declare that the slaves of the Confederacy were freed by the point of German-American bayonets. And for this, we don't get to be part of the future. Now that's gratitude for ya.

Another ideal for which we fought was the ‘separation of church and state’ and ‘freedom of religion.’ Oh yes, Mr Leventhal. Not just for the Amish and Mennonites and Methodists and Lutherans, but for the Catholics and Jews as well. But, hey, we're dinosaurs, we aren't the future of Montgomery County. And when at last we're gone, who will be left to fight for your religious freedom? Nancy Navarro? Can you even say ‘religious freedom’ in Spanish?”

I don’t know about the Councilman, but I think I know how to say “religious freedom” in Spanish, thanks to the county’s above-average public school system. (That would be libertad religiosa, or something to that effect.)

It’s somewhat ironic that a number of young adults whose parents brought them to the United States illegally end up signing up for military service in order to secure U.S. citizenship, often after many frustrating years of living dual lives.

If we still engaged in wars that impressed the majority of Americans as urgent and imperative, wars that young people didn’t feel so deeply conflicted or apathetic about, then this might not be so tragically absurd.

* * *

And as far as the talk of “dinosaurs” and “extinction” goes, this recalls unsettling dichotomies of “winners”-vs-“losers,” “new”-vs-“old,” “vigorous”-vs-“weak,” “prolific procreators”-vs-“others” and the like.

These dynamics and the reactions they provoke get at the heart of the politics of population growth, rapid demographic change, and mass immigration. All of this is very treacherous territory for Democrats, whether they admit it or not.

With the accelerating liberalization and democratization of public education throughout the United States, many children who attended public schools after the 1970s experienced very different visions of America and the world than the lessons and narratives presented to previous generations.

For instance, in suburban Maryland public schools, I learned a great deal about the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Olmecs, and the Incas.

I hardly learned anything about the Cherokees, the Navajos, the Chippewas, or the Sioux.

Over and over again during human history, those in power have found it expedient to marginalize or even eradicate cultures and subcultures under the mantle of political, economic, or social “progress.”

* * *

It’s also a bit quirky how Leventhal channels his inner Lloyd Bentsen at the beginning of his statement of support of Nancy Navarro:

“Much has been said about how best to carry on Marilyn Praisner’s legacy on the County Council. I served with Marilyn Praisner. I knew Marilyn Praisner. Marilyn Praisner was a friend of mine.”

You half expect him to conclude this little progression with, “Delegate Kramer, you’re no Marilyn Praisner.”

(For those of you who don’t/can’t remember the late-’80s, this is lifted from the 1988 vice presidential debate where Senator Bentsen memorably dissed Dan Quayle for comparing himself (Quayle) to JFK.)

* * *

Alright, enough of all this rehashing of neoliberal identity politicking and precarious exercises in multi-culti tightrope-walking.

I’ll leave the “progressive” pissing contests to the pundits of MPW and MoCo’s coterie of bright-eyed MySpace/Facebook/Twitter Young Democrats.

For now, I’ll just throw my moral support behind the gutsy underdog politicos east of I-270 who still venture to be honest and open about the divisive leftist strategies and policies that contribute to chronic fragmentation and anomie in our suburban ’hoods.

Maybe I should start a new, unofficial pro-diversity PAC called Montgomery County Citizens for Left-handed Radical Centrist Pagan Tree-hugging Scientific Agnostics.

Here’s a stab at a campaign slogan:

“It takes a Hardman to tenderize so many soft-touch Democrats.”

(This goofiness is styled after the ’80s & ’90s ad campaign that featured Maryland’s poultry dynasty, the Perdues.)

Here in lower slumburbia we’ve had quite a few mom-and-pop poultry entrepreneurs who’ve launched their own ambitious chicken husbandry ventures from their humble slices of suburban gothic. It got so crazy around here circa 2005 - 2007, that I really should’ve made a low-budget horror film about this phenomenon, titled something like Enter: The Conquering Chicken*, The Eggs-orcist, or Poultry-geist, of course.

Actually, it appears that some wise guys penned a script for an obscure indie horror film project called Poultrygeist: Attack of the Chicken Zombies as early as 2002, so it looks like that chicken has already flown the coop.

Whoa, Nelly...

Wow.... Longest... and Most Discursive... Post... Ever!

If I were in a foamcore fantasy band...

2009-04-02T13:36:00.012-04:00

I just ran across this local blog, “Foam Core Fantasy.” I discovered it because the author (who goes by Cyndy) sometimes comments on Scenic Wheaton’s blog. (My running joke about the difference between my own Wheaton blog and “Scenic Wheaton” is that mine could easily be titled “Splenic Wheaton.”)

When I first saw the phrase “Foam Core Fantasy,” it struck me as an excellent name for a band. The band’s sound would be something like mildly spacey effects-heavy synth pop backed with hair metal guitar.

Like some unholy fusion of Esqu¡vel, Erasure, Pet Sh0p Boys, Def Leppard, and Poison, maybe.

It turns out that the foam core in question actually describes something along the lines of engineered pre-fab construction panels with extraordinary R-values.

I have no idea where the foam core blogger’s house is located or even whether it’s in Montgomery County, for that matter. A few of the exterior photos suggest some semi-rural suburban gentrification haven like Olney or Burtonsville. The house pictured exudes a sort of 21st-century farmhouse exurban boho chic.

I’ve stumbled across other similar blogs while searching for home improvement keywords and FCF falls under what I might call the “home remodeling fetish” blog genre.

Due to our current circumstances, I personally favor the “Xtreme DIY” blogs that get into the nuts and bolts of home improvement materials and practices. The XDIY blogs are good sources of know-how and inspiration for people who can’t (stand to) pay other people to perform improvement & reconstruction work for them.

Anyways, the FCF blog inspires me to put more home “improvement” stuff up here in this sprawling blogspace, once the spouse and I get back into the low-budget demolition & seat-of-our-pants “design-build” renovation work later this spring.

More pictures + less blogorrhea == less echo-chamber diarist blogging

(I was originally going to embed a video of “If I were a carpenter” in this post. Ultimately, I just couldn’t bring myself to inflict any of the cheesy versions of that song on the few hapless souls who stumble on this junk heap of blogging damage.)

Pokin’ fun at the usurer suspects...

2009-04-01T15:40:00.010-04:00

Happy April Fool’s Day, folks.

I hate practical jokes because I tend to suspend disbelief with alarming ease, particularly when I’m off my meds.

There are so many fools in this world that we definitely need to claim a day all our own, if not an entire week or fortnight. In that spirit, I present you with this silly post from this weekend that I almost neglected to stick up here.

Following the financial/banking “series” from last week, below are some words to the effect that bankers are wankers. If you are in the banking industry and you are not a wanker, then please forgive me for these cheap shots. They are, of course, aimed at your unsavory colleagues, not you. I’ve thrown in a couple of curiosities and non sequiturs for variety.

And if you are unfamiliar with colorful cockney vernacular (e.g. wanker), maybe try renting a few choice episodes of “Only Fools and Horses” or something.

These nugatory nuggets are presented in vainglorious Comic Sans MS (where installed) for your general irritation and vexation.

“A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.”

—Anonymous

(often attributed to Mark Twain, probably erroneously)

“Banks have a new image. Now you have ‘a friend,’ your friendly banker. If the banks are so friendly, how come they chain down the pens?”

—Alan King (1927 – 2004),

American comedian

“Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made.”

—John Berryman (1914 – 1972),

American poet

“bank’s closed”: Slang from the 1920s that meant no kissing or making out was allowed.

great halls of power

just as the most important people in the city
are complete and utter bankers
the most important people in the army
are the absolute highest rankers

—Michael E. (b. 1967),

British wag

(This guy is likely riffing on British rhyming slang vis-à-vis wankers.)

Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer

This is a song to celebrate banks,

Because they are full of money and you go into them and all you hear is clinks and clanks,

Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills,

Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills¹.

Most bankers dwell in marble halls,

Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits and discourage withdrawals,

And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it,

Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don’t need it.

I know you, you cautious conservative banks!

If people are worried about their rent it is your duty to deny them the loan of one nickel, yes, even one copper engraving of the martyred son of the late Nancy Hanks²;

Yes, if they request fifty dollars to pay for a baby you must look at them like Tarzan looking at an uppity ape in the jungle,

And tell them what do they think a bank is, anyhow, they had better go get the money from their wife’s aunt or ungle.

But suppose people come in and they have a million and they want another million to pile on top of it,

Why, you brim with the milk of human kindness and you urge them to accept every drop of it,

And you lend them the million so then they have two million and this gives them the idea that they would be better off with four,

So they already have two million as security so you have no hesitation in lending them two more,

And all the vice-presidents nod their heads in rhythm,

And the only question asked is do the borrowers want the money sent or do they want to take it withm.

But don’t think I’m against banks,

Because I think they deserve our appreciation and thanks

for eliminating the jackasses who go around saying that health and happiness are everything and money isn’t essential,

Because as soon as they have to borrow some unimportant money to maintain their health and happiness they starve to death so they can’t go around any more sneering at good old money, which is nothing short of providential.

—Ogden Nash (1902 – 1971),

American wag

1. While this line sounds outlandish to us today, thousand dollar bills (with Grover Cleveland’s likeness) were around when Nash penned this poem. The U.S. Mint ceased issuing larger denominations after World War II and they were retired from circulation entirely in 1969 to help thwart organized crime rackets.

2. Nancy Hanks was Lincoln’s mother, so “one copper engraving of the martyred son of the late Nancy Hanks” would refer to a penny, naturally. This might have been more obvious had you grown up way back during the early 20th century like I did. Truly I am an “old soul.” Okay, now you know I’m yanking your chain.

* * *

Below you’ll find my stab at an Ogdenashy ode. Only I take aim at a very 21st Century set of targets. This is clearly more jeer than jeremiad, inveighing against influential and irresponsible media figures with churlish cheekiness. However, the underlying target is really their employers, the mainstream media outlets that featured personalities who indulged in chatty cheerleading during the bubble and splenic spluttering during the bust.

Business media personalities are just like anybody else, except they have unusually exorbitant hair & makeup allowances

This is a verse to celebrate every silly talking head,

Who lulls with such fatuous chatter the most easily led.

Most fashion-plate correspondents sit in Herman Miller Aeron chairs

And affect light conversation and smiles that draw willing viewers’ stares,

And particularly because they all observe one rule, and their fans do a great deal to support it,

Which is you must never deliver news or analysis unless it is dumbed down and distorted.

Fiend, you forsook to foresee the financial fiasco, forsooth!

Objectivity: FAIL, you fraudulent Wall Street mouthpiece herald!

If we worry about our savings is it your duty to deny us the reverse of the coin of truth,

Even if it costs us some more numismatic portraits of the martyred son of the late Rose Fitzgerald?!

While your ink-stained betters lose their shirts despite all their toil,

You still prosper while peddling your infotainment snake oil.

But don’t think I’m against air-brushed personalities,

With their packaged presentations and banalities,

Because I think they deserve our full gratitude

for helping to cultivate our dull attitude

Besides which, we'd be hung higher and drier

And find ourselves even more out-of-lucker,

If our culture failed to be a supplier

Of the latest, greatest model of sucker

—Publius Ignominius Stuporis Slumburbius

(two-bit American wag)

Joey ♥ Maria

* * *

Gabba gabba hey... To make up for that kind of lame Ram0nes song, I feel compelled to include a classic from 1977’s R0cket to Russia LP. “Teenage Lobo†omy” keeps up the brain damage theme (albeit sans zombies), complete with Lego stop-motion action. Hey, these little dudes play air guitar better than I do, and I have the luxury of articulated elbow and wrist joints.

Foreclosure Fallout in the Mid-County

2009-04-01T11:28:00.070-04:00

A foreclosed home on the corner of Turkey Branch Pkwy & Independence St in lower Aspen Hill.
This neighborhood is not included in the county’s new focused revitalization program.
(Saturday, March 28.)

The Montgomery County Department of Housing and Community Affairs (DHCA) held a community “charrette” for its new Focused Neighborhood Assistance (FNA) program last night at Wheaton High School. This was basically a public feedback and discussion session. Evidently the term “charrette” comes from urban planning circles; it was originally applied mainly to creative sessions run by planners, policy-makers, designers, architects, and other experts.

In the March 31st meeting, any experts in attendance mostly acted as facilitators and observers, except during the introductory and wrap-up speeches, where county leaders treated us with enthusiastic exhortations such as “Be a squeaky wheel!” and “Be an informed wheel!” (I grew up in this county and I have to say that the shrillest “squeaky wheel” residents can be exhausting and occasionally mildy terrifying to put up with. Maybe having a comfortable salary and an advanced degree in some optimistic field like urban planning makes dealing with the restless rabble more tolerable. The planning/housing eggheads at the meeting certainly seemed to be perky, perpetually positive-thinking types.)

For information on the FNA initiative, visit the county housing authority’s informational webpage:
“Foreclosure Prevention”

Most of the maps listed on the DHCA webpage link to large, rasterization-intensive PDFs (>1.5MB each). These graphics were generated in February based on information released by real estate data clearinghouse RealtyTrac. If you open up the countywide map (~2.85 MB), you’ll see that the greatest concentration of foreclosures occurs along a southeast-to-northwest axis. This pattern closely aligns with many declining neighborhoods that tend to attract lower-income residents, as well as those blocks hit particularly hard by recent population destabilization and densification.

If you’re interested in the incidence of foreclosures throughout the entire state, check out Maryland’s Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) website for its Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), which features a map color-coded by foreclosure impact level. A sum of $26.7 million has been allocated for this program; it’s unclear how much of that will find its way to Montgomery County.

The statewide residential stabilization program falls under Maryland’s Neighborhood Conservation Initiative (NCI), first rolled out in tandem with former governor Glendening’s statewide “Smart Growth” program. Ultimately, Maryland’s push for “Smart Growth” fell far short of living up to its name, as Environment Maryland outlines in their sobering report, “Not So Smart: Land Consumption in Maryland after a Decade of Smart Growth.”

And yet even today, pro-growth advocates still caricature the opposition as “slow growth” obstructionists who stand in the way of economic “progress” and social “progressivism.” This smear is pretty astounding, given the overwhelming evidence that the pro-development crowd that has dominated government and local politics over the last two decades has rammed through policies that have degraded quality of life measures throughout the county. This trends have hit densely populated regions like swaths of the mid-county, as well as rapidly developing exurban regions that used to be more rural and rustic in character. When pressed, a lot of long-term residents agree that this county has become a considerably less appealing place to live for much of the rising middle class.

And yet when you look at the District 4 Special Election, the few candidates in favor of more active measures to achieve residential population stabilization and safeguard the local environment are constantly sidelined and marginalized by the most well-funded Democratic campaigns, as well as local politics beat journalists. It appears that the aggressive staffers and volunteers enlisted in these slicker campaigns have transferred much of the rhetoric, tactics, and funding streams used in the national political theater to a humble local council race. They are counting on members of the usual lock-step, pamphlet-ready Democratic voting blocs to usher in their anointed candidates and shut out all of the other worthy contenders, many of whom are long-term residents and civic activists who have a much more direct ground-level appreciation of the history of this area and the steady decline many of these neighborhoods have experienced for decades.

“Growth is good” is about as sound a statement as “Money quells all ills” or “Poverty is ennobling.”

“Smart” growth in Montgomery County quickly devolved into shortcut growth-at-all-costs expansion and an explosion in construction/renovation projects driven by developers who seduced politicians and residents with their visions of economic invigoration and a transformed metropolitan landscape. A lot of residents, particularly in the west county, have profited handsomely from these policies.

The decline in rising middle-class neighborhoods like mine has been swift and dramatic during the 2000s. Top-down policies and planning measures that catalyzed fast growth starting in the late 1990s rapidly created thousands of low-end jobs with depressed/stagnant wages. Loosening credit standards, misleading leftist political rhetoric, and an ever-expanding stock of cramped and crowded slumburban rental units and sub-units helped paved the way for this steady race to the bottom.

And unlike in places like northern Virginia, broad economic development and job growth hasn’t kept pace with the residential overpopulation and densification bubble in Maryland. Now that county employees are increasingly missing out on perks like cost-of-living adjustments, they may finally develop a deeper appreciation of what so many other residents are struggling with right now.

And yes, “densification” appears to be a legitimate word. Using it here only invites obvious slurs about the stupefication of local leaders and residents during the Dumb Money decade. (Hey, I sipped half-heartedly at the Kool-Aid, too, until about 2004 or so.)

Well, well. Google tells me that British tunesmith Graham Parker once wrote a song titled “Stupefication.” This minor associative tidbit gives me the perfect pretext for including my gratuitous music vid embed of the day, an early new wave gem from three decades back:

This song — from Parker’s 1979 acclaimed LP Squeezing Out Sparks — arguably has a quasi-suburban feel to it, especially since the accompanying vid features plenty of goofy girl-next-door Londonettes along with the come-hither caddishness of Mr. Parker.

Ahem, now let me return to the weighty subject of mid-county suburban decay.

* * *

The county’s revitalization program targets a few key areas hit hard by foreclosures, including one upcounty region (Germantown). Their mid-county target area is Glenmont.

I wish I could say that this is merely a pilot program, but it looks like county officials are being very cautious about the initiative because of their depleted budget and re-shuffled policy priorities. Ms. Cantor of the Mid-County Regional Services Center used the word “scant” at least twice while describing the level of funding available for the effort. Speaking for County Exec Leggett, one official emphasized that local priorities are currently ordered as follows: “public safety, education, and safety net services.”

It looks like Montgomery County has been monitoring preliminary and active residential foreclosure trends for several years, along with the socioeconomic and other demographic data they normally compile and analyze for policy guidance.

I excerpt one of these maps below; again, the data was current as of February.

This is a snapshot approximating foreclosure activity in west Wheaton and Glenmont during the 4th quarter of FY 2008.

FNA = Focused Neighborhood Assistance
CAE = Connecticut Avenue Estates

For the original maps this graphic is extracted from, again, see the DHCA’s foreclosure resource webpage.

The area surrounded in blue is the mid-county zone being targeted by this program. The vast majority of people within this area identify as Glenmont residents. (Glenmont and Wheaton share the same census-designated place, or CDP.)

My household falls within the triangular area outlined in red, which roughly comprises much of the the “Connecticut Avenue Estates” (CAE) legal subdivision. (Portions of “Connecticut Avenue Park” and “Montgomery Highland Estates” are cordoned within this red boundary as well, albeit unintentionally.) There are at least a thousand households with the CAE subdivision designation; at least a couple of hundred of them are located in the southern region of the county’s targeted area, north of Randolph Road. CAE is an aging high-density subdivision that the county has targeted before in combatting mid-county suburban blight.

Too Little, Too Late?

We’ve got a mid-county landscape studded with foreclosures and overshadowed with many other manifestations of creeping suburban blight. These trends have been worsening for the past fifteen years or so, accelerating during the last 5 - 7 years.

While we are grateful that the county is finally addressing these long-developing patterns after all these years of decay and neglect, it’s frustrating that officials can only muster up the resources to focus on this very circumscribed area for this latest round of revitalization efforts. Even with these well-defined constraints, DHCA officials made sure to repeatedly temper residents’ expectations about the project at Tuesday night’s meeting, which is certainly a good idea during this lean fiscal era.

If anybody has any other ideas about how or why county leaders arrived at this particular targeting decision, I’d really like to hear it. I think they may have been chosen in part because of an emerging groundswell of civic involvement within that neighborhood. Congratulations to the men and women behind the new Greater Glenmont Civic Association (GGCA). The county is obviously looking to capitalize on the energy and “human resources” within these neighborhoods in its FNA initiative. Incidentally, GGCA seems to tilt toward the southeastern portion of the region highlighted in the map above, which is centered on the subdivision known as “Glenmont Village” near the Glenmont Metro station. The western regions of the neighborhood seemed somewhat isolated from this civic movement (e.g. portions of “Glenmont Hills,” “Connecticut Avenue Park,” and “Stoneybrook Estates”).

Those of us in neighboring communities (e.g. west Wheaton, Aspen Hill & north Kensington) really ought to redouble our own efforts to resurrect and support our own flagging and oft-neglected neighborhood groups.

Not so far from the madding crowd...

2009-03-30T01:11:00.030-04:00

“Never follow the crowd.”

—Bernard Baruch (1870 – 1965)

American financier, speculator, & public figure

¢ $ ¢ $ ¢

Gratuitous embedded music video of the day:

“Who wants honey, as long as there’s some money?”

B¡lly C0rgan of the Smash¡ng Pumpk¡ns,
“¢herub R0ck,” S¡amese Dream (1993)

¢ $ ¢ $ ¢

Here are two token positive quotes about market investment and speculation.

“A speculator is a man who observes the future, and acts before it occurs.”

—Bernard Baruch

“If there were no bad speculations there could be no good investments; if there were no wild ventures there would be no brilliantly successful enterprises.”

—Francis W. Hirst (1873 – 1953)

British economic journalist

¢ $ ¢ $ ¢

In keeping with the times, the rest of the observations I include are inevitably more circumspect, cautionary, or outright negative.

“The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible.”

—Bernard Baruch

“There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it, and when he can.”

—Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

iconic American writer

“Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honoured by the name of ‘speculation’; but which ought to be called Gambling.”

—William Cobbett (1762 – 1835)

British journalist & reformist thinker

“[T]he stock market has not come down to historical levels: the price-earnings ratio as I define it in this book is still, at this writing [2005], in the mid-20s, far higher than the historical average. … People still place too much confidence in the markets and have too strong a belief that paying attention to the gyrations in their investments will someday make them rich, and so they do not make conservative preparations for possible bad outcomes.”

—Robert Shiller (b. 1946)

prominent American economist,
Irrational Exuberance, 2nd ed. (February 2005)

This graph shows the recent housing hypervaluation
that helped to dramatically inflate 2000s securities values,
as derived from data included in Shiller’s 2005 book.
(The graphic was skillfully assembled by Wikipedian “Frothy.”)

“October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.”

—Mark Twain

The hunt for dread October...

I cannot find the original context for Twain’s quip. Of course, he never lived to see the most spectacular stock market crash of the twentieth century, spanning October 24 – 29, 1929, (or the “roar” that preceded it, which he likely would have laid waste to with his wit).

However, the 1907 stock market panic, which traced many of its roots to the previous year, unfolded dramatically in an October. It also overlapped with a sudden monetary contraction and a widespread banking panic.

If you mention the “Panic of ’73” today, some baby boomers may think of the supply shock crisis that began in mid-October of 1973 when OPEC began waging a campaign of punitive crude oil pricing against the U.S. From its period peak in January 1973 to its relative nadir in early December 1974, the DJIA lost almost half of its value.
[ (577.60_12/6/74 – 1047.59_1/5/73) / 1047.59 = –44.86% ]

The “Black Monday” nose dive of October 19, 1987 was the largest single-day percentage market loss. (Oddly, the related recession didn’t set in until a few years later. Even now, the reasons for the speculative volatility of the latter ’80s and subsequent late-onset stall in the economy remain opaque, especially compared to other recent recessions.)

“Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.”

—Henry Ford (1863 – 1947)

American industrialist

“The speculation economy is one in which business management focused on production is replaced with business management focused on stock price.”

—Lawrence E. Mitchell

business/corporate law expert,
The Speculation Economy: How Finance Triumphed Over Industry (2007)

“The short-termism of the late 1990s and early twenty-first century simply is an exaggeration of a quality that was embedded in the American economy a hundred years ago. The typical public corporation we know today, what I will call the giant modern corporation, was created during the merger wave of 1897 to 1903. It gave birth to the modern stock market. As it did, it transformed speculation from a disruptive game, played by a few professionals and thrill-seeking amateurs that from time to time erupted into a major frenzy, into the very genetic material of the American stock market, American business and American capitalism.”

—Lawrence E. Mitchell

The Speculation Economy ... (2007)

“Now, speculation — in which the focus is not on what an asset will produce but rather on what the next fellow will pay for it — is neither illegal, immoral nor un-American. But it is not a game in which [the vice chairman] and I wish to play. We bring nothing to the party, so why should we expect to take anything home?

The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs.
Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities — that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There’s a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.”

—Warren Buffett (b. 1930)

American executive, investor & philanthropist,
FY2000 Chairman’s letter to Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.

“In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”

—Charles Mackay (1814 – 1889)

Scottish journalist & writer,
“National Delusions,” Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841)

“Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper.”

—Charles Mackay

“National Delusions,”
Extraordinary Popular Delusions ...

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one!”

—Charles Mackay

“National Delusions,”
Extraordinary Popular Delusions ...

“Some in clandestine companies combine;
Erect new stocks to trade beyond the line;
With air and empty names beguile the town,
And raise new credits first, then cry ’em down;
Divide the empty nothing into shares,
And set the crowd together by the ears.”

—Daniel Defoe (ca. 1660 – 1731)

English writer,
orig. publ. context unknown
(quoted by Mackay)

“If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.”

—Henry David Thoreau
(1817 – 1862)

American naturalist &
Renaissance man, Life Without Principle (1854/62)

Absorbing more economic punches...

2009-03-26T23:47:00.009-04:00

Econocratic brains everywhere recoil in fear as the zombie smorgasbord continues in Washington. The administration persists in deflecting and downplaying criticism that it is coddling the investment banking industry and rewarding its reckless practices. Instead, the president and his advisers seek to focus media attention on upcoming regulatory reforms.

But many of us still feel that the White House is essentially saying to Wall Street: Don’t worry, we’ll cover your assets. In unsettling ways, the federal government is taking over where AIG left off, assuming much of the risk burden produced by pooled toxic assets, while inviting sanguine investors to play the game with too little to lose.

What should we nickname this pool of little orphaned assets now being pushed by the U.S. Treasury? The Federal Fools’ Fund (FFF)? Shall we call these new arrangments Debt Unlimited Miscellaneous Public-Private Partnerships (DUMPPPs)?

Meanwhile, the U.S. GDP contracted by 6.3% in the 4th quarter of 2008, while the national unemployment rate will likely hit ~8.3% by the end of the current quarter.

* * *

Here’s a flashback from last fall, when the economy seemed a lot more intact, even if the credit system was on the rocks:

“Credit markets do not function. Why not? Because the word ‘credit comes from ‘credibility.’

The left side of the balance sheet has nothing right and the right side of the balance sheet has nothing left. But they are equal to each other. So accounting-wise we are fine.

Transparency is ‘what you see is what you get.’ And what you don’t see gets you.”

Now who was the witty wiseacre behind this wry wordplay? Why that would be the AIG vice chairman entertaining his financier friends at a luncheon on October 11, 2008.

The hoi polloi have mostly stopped calling for the heads of these AIG goons. For now, their righteous rage is subsiding as popular sentiment retreats to more familiar territory — seething impotent outrage, frustrated disgust, and reluctant resignation.

But quiet terror simmers, particularly among those who distrust the exuberant overtures of obscurantist optimists.

By the way, if you still want your zombie fix, check out cartoonist Mark Fiore’s “Zombie Bank” animation.

* * *

De bankier en zijn vrouw (The Banker and His Wife) [cropped]
(after Quentin Matsys)
oil on wood, date unknown
Marinus Claesz van Reymerswaele, ca. 1490 – 1567
Netherlands
collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes, France

Instead of continuing the zombie theme, I’ve included an early Northern Renaissance painting. Bankers, money-changers, and other monetary specialists were often regarded with suspicion and wariness back then, too.

* * *

Today I recommend a very thorough and eloquent piece written by a thoughtful liberal-leaning progressive:

“This Crisis Is Way Bigger Than Dead Banks and Wall Street Bailouts”
(AlterNet.org / Washington Monthly, 3/23/2009)

James K. Galbraith :

Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin

senior scholar, Levy Economics Institute

author, The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too (Free Press, 2008)

For focus on the banking industry debacle, skip down to the 11th paragraph in the article and/or search for the lead sentence:

The chance of a return to normal depends, in turn, on the banking strategy.

Here Galbraith joins the chorus of people who insist that the current financial crisis resembles the banking system failures of the 1930s more closely than the credit stumbles of the previous three decades.

He reminds us of the current plight of middle class Americans who have to rely on our government entitlements safety net now more than ever.

Galbraith also adds to the colorful metaphors enlivening the debate by characterizing the recent wanton behavior of Wall Street speculators as a “poisonous game of abusive mortgage originations followed by rounds of pass-the-bad-penny-to-the-greater-fool.”

He points out that the FDIC could justifiably take over distressed Wall Street institutions by placing them in full receivership.

He also implies that a “state of denial” that began in the waning days of the Bush administration persists within the current Treasury leadership.

Galbraith also reminds us of why former SecTreas Henry Paulson eventually began to back off the throw-the-money-in-the-hole approach. First there was the sheer scale of the potential losses involved (as suggested by the ravenous appetites of certain cash-flow-starved financial institutions feeding at the TARP trough). In addition, the task of discovering the true value of these mysterious assets was highly arbitrary and rife with risk and wishful thinking.

He is blunt about so-called “troubled assets”:

“The reasonable inference would be that many more of the loans will default. Geithner’s plan to guarantee these so-called assets, therefore, is almost sure to overstate their value; it is only a way of delaying the ultimate public recognition of loss, while keeping the perpetrators afloat.”

He also implies that delaying the inevitable may lead us into further financial and economic hazards while sidelining “normal prudent banking.”

For example, instead of soundly restructuring, reforming and restoring our lending systems to health, delay and enabling may provoke investors to wreak havoc in other risky markets or indulge in additional rounds of klepto-capitalism.

Galbraith also cautions us that the shortsightedness of the plan signals that the White House’s economic brain trust fails to recognize that we are faced with “a true crisis -- an integrated, long-term economic threat.”

(Many of us felt similarly when we heard Fed chairman Ben Bernanke utter the following prediction/prescription on CBS’s “60 Minutes” ten days ago: “We’ll see the recession coming to an end, probably this year. We’ll see recovery beginning next year.”)

As a liberal, demand-side economic thinker, Galbraith challenges the primacy of what I’d call “mechanical” or “system flow” economics. He stresses the importance of “creditworthiness” anchored in consumer economic fundamentals such as asset prices. He also states that Americans who find themselves suddenly asset- and cash-poor don’t tend to rush headlong into more credit, even if the lending spigot is set at full blast again. He argues that this reluctance to spend and borrow will dampen any multiplier effects triggered by cash and credit injections into consumer markets.

And then Galbraith ventures into that misunderstood decade of our economic history, the 1930s.

He quotes a December 2008 paper (“Time for a New ‘New Deal’” [PDF, 59k]) by economist Marshall Auerback. (Interestingly, Mr. Auerback appears to be a global portfolio manager fluent in areas like equities trading.)

Again, I encourage you to read Galbraith’s piece. He argues for public investment and relief initiatives that borrow the most productive and redemptive aspects of FDR’s New Deal. However, like many others, he credits the war mobilization, not the New Deal, for helping to stoke enough consumption, investment, and trade to propel the United States out of the rut of the Depression.

The current thinking among many social liberals is that a millenial “Newer Deal” could revive our economy.

However, many of us believe that this assumption is fatally flawed. We fear that such an audacious undertaking could yield few immediate results, while plunging our country further into debt.

Such programs should be supported as standalone public relief and investment measures, without being hitched to false hope and inflated promises.

* * *
To be continued ...

Zombie Bankers Feast on Brains of White House Economic Brain Trust

2009-03-24T22:49:00.024-04:00

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Bankers at major living-dead Wall Street investment firms have continued to graze on the gray matter of prominent members of the new administration’s economic crisis team.

Among the reported victims are:

• Timothy Geithner, SecTreas

• Larry Summers, NEC Director

• Neel Kashkari, Interim Asst SecTreas for Financial Stability

Financial jocks jumped on news of Geithner’s proposed “public-private partnership.” Investors delighted, noting that the plan preserved the sanctity of business-as-usual investment market culture without any threat of significant “change.” High fives were heard everywhere throughout global trading floors and boiler rooms. Whether they were genuinely grateful for the plan, or just looking to make a few gratifying long sales before Friday, Wall Street profiteers rallied and the Dow climbed 500 points on Monday.

Mainstream media talking heads rejoiced, then promptly phoned their brokers for updates at the bottom of the hour.

* * *

In other news, marginalized economists and scholars successfully thwarted the zombies by donning lampshades and sitting in the corner while the weekday party took off. However, a few of them snuck out earlier this week and reported their close call with the financial undead on various op-ed pages, blogs, and public broadcasts.

* * *

Okay, kidding aside, here’s a sampling of various experts’ reactions to these recent developments:

First we have Paul Krugman’s early rejection of the plan as details were leaked over the past few days: “Despair over financial policy” (The Conscience of a Liberal [NYT blog], 3/21/2009).

He declares, “The zombie ideas have won” and repeats the refrain that the Treasury Department is tempting fate by preserving a systemic moral hazard.

Then we also have other reactions of disappointment and disbelief, like those aired Monday morning on NPR’s Boston-based current affairs program, On Point. I excerpt some of the discussion below, representing typical objections to the plan from both the left and the right:

“[Geithner, Summers, et al] have decided that the way to get private money, to rescue these toxic assets, is to double down on the same kind of strategy that Hank Paulson unveiled back in October that didn’t work, which was to have the government put up guarantees — in this case [the] government’s providing as much as 94% of the capital. I think there’s an echo chamber effect going on where Larry Summers and Tim Geithner are talking to each other, and they’re talking to the likes of Goldman [Sachs] and Citigroup. They’re talking to the very same people who created the mess, and they’re not talking to the critics of this approach. My sources say they’re not even talking to Paul Volcker — who nominally heads a task force appointed by the president, that has never met — who’s a critic of this. They’re certainly not talking to Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize laureate at Columbia [University], Nouriel Roubini at NYU, Paul Krugman — well-informed people who think this whole approach of having government put up a lot of the capital, guarantee almost all of the loss in the hopes of bringing hedge funds and private equity — the least transparent part of the system, the most underregulated and prone-to-abuse part of the system — back to the party, to do the same kind of convoluted deals that helped cause this mess. And it’s incredibly risky, it’s incredibly expensive, it may well not work, and there’s also the risk of political backlash.”

“Let me just say: If this were to work and a lot of rich guys got even richer, I would hold my nose and say, ‘If that’s the price that it takes to get the banking system running again, I can live with it.’ My concern is more that it’s not going to work and furthermore that it’s rife with potential for abuse. Let me give one little example and I hope this is not too technical: So, a hedge fund — or private equity company — comes in and says, ‘We will buy this toxic asset at fifty cents on the dollar.’ It’s a pool of loans. Then [the company] buys a credit default swap. So, it’s ‘heads I win, tails you lose.’ If the value of the asset goes up, [the] hedge fund makes out. If the value of the asset goes down, the government eats the loss, and the hedge fund collects on the credit default swap. There is all kinds of potential for these gains. And make no mistake about it, this was not designed [in] the best interest of the U.S. taxpayer. This was designed on Wall Street, by Wall Street, for Wall Street. .... If you look at the transition from Paulson to Geithner, it’s the same team.”

“This [current approach] is the worst of both worlds. The Treasury, which does not have the resources to do this properly, is intervening in an episodic and ad hoc way. If you're going to have this degree of government involvement, it’s better to do it with your eyes open, with some transparency there.”

“[Hedge funds and private equity firms] exist to do deals — complicated, highly leveraged deals. This [plan] gives them a chance, gives them a new lease on life. Better yet, it’s guaranteed by the government. Hedge funds — people are deserting hedge funds in droves — this gives them a new lease on life. And I think the administration is underestimating the populist backlash against using taxpayer money and taxpayer guarantees, so that a whole new round of rich guys — in some cases the same old rich guys — can get even richer, at taxpayer expense. I also think that the government is going to need more money one way or the other and, if you do it via an RFC, where you don’t enrich private speculators but you help ordinary people and you do it directly, there’s going to be much more popular consent for spending taxpayer money and putting taxpayer loan guarantees at risk, if you don’t do it by enriching a lot of middlemen, but you do it more straightforwardly. And, you know, Citi, what Citigroup worries about — since they are, I mean, if anybody’s insolvent, Citi’s insolvent, right? The government has put about 65 billion dollars into Citi. You can buy the thing by buying up all of its shares for 17 billion right now. If that’s not insolvent, I don’t know what’s insolvent, because if it weren’t for all this government money, they’d be out of business. So we’re really not talking about 12,000 banks. We’re talking about a handful of large banks — Citi, maybe Bank of America, possibly Wells Fargo — that would have to go through some kind of receivership project and come out the other side. [It’s] much better to do this straightforwardly.”

—Robert Kuttner

co-founder & co-editor, The American Prospect

distinguished senior fellow, Dēmos public policy research and advocacy organization

columnist, The Boston Globe

“Any time we subsidize the banks, like this plan does, we are giving some money to those long-term debt holders and to the equity investors in the banks. If you forced the long-term debt holders to convert into equity — which is sort of a receivership, sort of a Chapter 11, but could be done somewhat differently so that the government wasn’t necessarily running things — you get a private sector solution and the banks become potentially quite solvent, ’cause there’s a lot of long-term debt out there and it doesn’t cost the government anything.”

“I have to agree with Bob [Kuttner] — which I don’t often do — on most of what he said. This is not a good solution, there are better solutions out there, and the plan is flawed. ... I think that the thing to understand is [that] there are two possible scenarios: The scenario number one, which the administration is banking on, is that the toxic assets — and they are ‘toxic’ assets, not ‘legacy’ — are undervalued, and that the banks are fundamentally solvent. That was the assumption in the original Paulson plan; that is the assumption here. The other scenario is that the toxic assets are correctly valued and the banks are not solvent. This is where Paul Krugman is [coming] from, this is Nouriel Roubini, on the right you got Luigi Zingales, one of my colleagues, Ken Rogoff — former chief economist of the IMF — and in my view that’s probably the more likely scenario. So now let’s look at what happens in this plan under those two scenarios. If the scenario is that the toxic assets are correctly valued, and the banks are not solvent — meaning they don’t have enough equity to support their business — this plan is not going to help. ’Cause the banks won’t sell, ’cause if they’ve got these things marked at a particular point, if the value that the hedge funds pay is not above those marks, this doesn’t help because it doesn’t give them more equity.”

“The whole idea here is to get the banks solvent, to get them more equity. .... that I think is the most likely scenario, ’cause remember [that] the economy has deteriorated substantially since the first Paulson plan, and, you know, we were in trouble at that time [too]. Well, ... they take that gamble [under the current plan] and now you’ve created a situation where it’s heads, the hedge funds win, and tails, the government loses. And this becomes a very, very expensive program. And that’s also the case, by the way if we’re in the situation where it is a liquidity problem, not a solvency problem. The hedge funds will either make a lot of money, which will create outrage at the other end, or the government will end up losing a lot of money, neither of which is great, and there are better solutions. The government really doesn’t get anything here.”

—Steven Kaplan

Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

To be continued...

Wedding Crashers Don’t Have to #%$@ing RSVP

2009-03-21T14:23:00.047-04:00

Check out this D.C. Craigslist RNR flamebait:

washington, DC craigslist > northern virginia > rants & raves

Couple in need
----------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to: [please-dont-flame-the-happy-hubby-2-b]@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-03-21, 8:08AM EDT

This is a long shot, but here goes. I am 38 year old dealing with overwhelming task of getting married for the first time. My future wife and I are both employed, hard working tax paying citizens. She owns a condo in Las Vegas which unfortunatley has be to be short sold to get out from under that burden. At our age we basically are paying for our wedding by ourselves, which is putting further and further in debt. I can easily say it is the best investment we both have ever made! Unfortunatley we are still in need of help. With only 1 month till the big date. That is why I am posting this. If find you can donate, even a little bit I could not thank you enough.

God Bless
Jason
----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Couple in “need” (the courthouse steps)

“Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.”
—Ambrose Bierce

Regarding this beggar bridegroom and his “long shot” at satisfying his nuptial “need”:

Maybe “Jason” still believes in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, too.

Otherwise, why is he begging a bunch of strangers on Craigslist to help pay for his catering bills? Is he even trying to hit up his parents or his fiancée’s parents? Is he shaking down his buddies and his girlfriend’s girlfriends? After all, at least those folks can look forward to attending this blessed celebration that he’s not even inviting us to crash in his charmless appeal.

When “Jason” and his lovely bride-to-be made these wedding arrangements many months ago, there were obvious signs that we were already heading into a recession, if we weren’t there already.

Besides that, if he’s 38, that means he was in his early twenties when the last recession hit. Of course, it could very well be that it didn’t hit him too hard back then, either.

Perhaps like a lot of D.C.-area workaholics, he is already married—to his career—and doesn’t have a concrete idea of how dire things are out here for many people.

Maybe he somehow thinks that asking anonymous strangers to help finance a wedding is not an asinine thing to do in an economy where anonymous strangers are losing their jobs, having to drop out of school to pay their bills, postponing retirement because their life savings are depleted, witnessing their businesses fold, and sacrificing their health while trying to stay afloat.

He may believe that asking for donations to carry on a lavish rite-of-passage party is not a tacky thing to do at a time when people are getting kicked out of their housing, watching their marriages & relationships fail, trying to explain unsettling new realities to their kids without upsetting them, having their “friends” turn their backs on them, losing their minds and their identities, becoming victims of crime as those with less scruples grow even more selfish and desperate, and more.

To be fair to “Jason,” so many people in our generation get suckered in by our parents, our friends, our sad-sack middle-class assumptions about the “American Dream,” and the extortionists of the wedding & hospitality industries who prey upon the princess-for-a-day fantasies of brides-to-be.

I’ve been to a few weddings in the last ten years where the families blew tens of thousands of dollars on a weekend—only to find out that the blessed couple filed for divorced within 3-5 years anyways... Many of these were extravagant affairs that were almost embarrassing to participate in because of all of the tasteless excess. Half the time we didn’t even know why these conspicuous consumers and careless carousers invited us to these over-the-top shindigs, as we barely knew the couple or the family.

“In economics, a study (done by Pew Charitable Trusts, the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Urban Institute) challenged the notion that each generation will be better off than the one that preceded it.[16] The study, 'Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well?' focuses on the income of males 30-39 in 2004 (those born April, 1964 – March, 1974) and is based on Census/BLS CPS March supplement data.[17]

The study, released May 25, 2007, emphasized that in real dollars, this generation made less (by 12%) than had their fathers at the same age in 1974, thus reversing a historical trend. The study also suggests that per year increases in the portion of father/son family household income generated by fathers/sons have slowed (from an average of 0.9% to 0.3%), barely keeping pace with inflation, though increases in overall father/son family household income are progressively higher each year because more women are entering the workplace, contributing to family household income.[18]”
—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X

I don’t know what the facts on Gen Y are but they can’t be very good either.

Our baby boomer parents have done a lot of us a huge disservice. Their rules no longer apply to many of us but they still keep at it, urging us to follow in their footsteps and hit all the adult milestones in the correct order, at the right time, just like they did.

I just want all you older (boomer and Gen Jones) folks to know that we are not all as blissfully oblivious and shameless as “Jason” appears to be.

“State unemployment at a glance” (3/11/09)

2009-03-20T19:55:00.013-04:00

The Associated Press released this historical unemployment data a week and a half ago. For some reason they didn’t bother to format it in a table; it just looks like their journalist smart alecks exported the data from a spreadsheet or something.

Maybe this is what happens when the newspaper industry fires too many of its key IT people.

Here I’ve performed a humble public service by putting this information in a table for your edification and analysis. Enjoy, fellow armchair labor economists.

(DC-metro states are shown in medium blue; regional neighbors in pale blue.)

A: “rank of each state based on the January 2009 unemployment rate, with a lower number indicating a lower rate”

B: “state's unemployment rate for January 2009”

C: “[unemployment] rate for December 2008”

D: “[unemployment] rate for January 2008”

E: “the month and year unemployment peaked [from January 1976 onwards]”

F: “peak unemployment rate since January 1976”

State	A	B	C	D	E	F
Alabama	31	7.8	6.5	3.9	Dec. 1982	14.4
Alaska	34	7.9	6.8	6.4	July 1986	11.5
Arizona	24	7	6.6	4.4	Feb. 1983	11.5
Arkansas	17	6.4	5.7	4.8	Mar. 1983	10.2
California	48	10.1	8.7	6.1	Feb. 1983	11
Colorado	19	6.6	5.8	4.3	Nov. 1982	9.1
Connecticut	27	7.3	6.6	5	Jan. 1976	10
Delaware	21	6.7	5.7	3.9	Jan. 1977	8.2
District of Columbia	44	9.3	8.2	5.9	Mar. 1983	11.4
Florida	37	8.6	7.6	5	Mar. 1976	9.7
Georgia	37	8.6	7.5	5.2	Jan. 2009	8.6
Hawaii	15	6.1	5.1	3	Mar. 1976	10.2
Idaho	19	6.6	6.1	3.7	Feb. 1983	9.4
Illinois	34	7.9	7.2	5.8	Feb. 1983	12.9
Indiana	43	9.2	7.8	4.8	Nov. 1982	12.8
Iowa	6	4.8	4.4	3.9	May 1983	8.5
Kansas	13	5.8	5	3.9	Sept. 1982	7.4
Kentucky	40	8.7	7.6	5.5	Dec. 1982	12.1
Louisiana	8	5.1	5.5	3.8	Sept. 1986	12.9
Maine	31	7.8	6.5	4.8	Mar. 1977	9
Maryland	16	6.2	5.4	3.6	Aug. 1982	8.3
Massachusetts	29	7.4	6.4	4.6	Jan. 1976	10.9
Michigan	51	11.6	10.2	7.3	Nov. 1982	16.9
Minnesota	30	7.6	6.6	4.8	Nov. 1982	9
Mississippi	40	8.7	7.8	6	May 1983	13.7
Missouri	36	8	7.1	5.5	Apr. 1983	10.5
Montana	12	5.6	5	3.9	May 1983	8.7
Nebraska	3	4.3	3.9	3	Feb. 1983	6.8
Nevada	45	9.4	8.4	5.3	Dec. 1982	10.7
New Hampshire	8	5.1	4.3	3.5	June 1992	7.7
New Jersey	27	7.3	6.8	4.6	Feb. 1977	10.6
New Mexico	8	5.1	4.7	3.7	Apr. 1983	9.9
New York	24	7	6.6	4.7	July 1976	10.5
North Carolina	46	9.7	8.1	5	Feb. 1983	10.2
North Dakota	2	4.2	3.3	3	Mar. 1983	6.9
Ohio	42	8.8	7.4	5.7	Jan. 1983	13.8
Oklahoma	7	5	4.6	3.3	Aug. 1986	9.4
Oregon	47	9.9	8.3	5.3	Nov. 1982	12.1
Pennsylvania	24	7	6.4	4.6	Mar. 1983	12.9
Rhode Island	49	10.3	9.4	6.3	Jan. 2009	10.3
South Carolina	50	10.4	8.8	5.7	Jan. 1983	11.4
South Dakota	4	4.4	3.7	2.7	Oct. 1982	5.9
Tennessee	37	8.6	7.6	5.3	Dec. 1982	12.4
Texas	17	6.4	5.6	4.4	Oct. 1986	9.3
Utah	5	4.6	4.1	3.2	Mar. 1983	9.7
Vermont	22	6.8	5.9	4.3	June 1976	9
Virginia	14	6	5	3.4	Jan. 1983	7.8
Washington	31	7.8	6.5	4.6	Nov. 1982	12.2
West Virginia	11	5.3	4.5	4.1	Mar. 1983	18.2
Wisconsin	23	6.9	5.9	4.4	Jan. 1983	11.8
Wyoming	1	3.7	3.2	2.7	May 1983	10.1

More “Me decade” Redux and Madness

2009-03-13T19:15:00.011-04:00

Happy Friday the 13th for the second month in a row.

“I’m as mad as a hatter and I’m not going to take you any more...”

You may or may not recognize that as a corruption of the famous line screamed by apoplectic news anchor Howard Beale in Network (1976):

“I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more...”

He builds up to this crescendo after saying other things that eerily resonate with our current climate of anxiety:
“I don’t have to tell you things are bad.
Everybody knows things are bad.
It’s a depression.
Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job.
....
Banks are going bust.
Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter.
Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere that seems to know what to do and there’s no end to it.
....
We know things are bad, worse than bad, they’re crazy.
It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy so we don’t go out anymore.
We sit in the house and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller and all we say is,
‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms ... just leave us alone.’”

When the madman utters the climactic line, he is exhorting the Everyman, the Silent Majority impassively assembled in the anemic blue glow of their living room television sets, to literally get up out of their seats and go scream their outrage out their windows.

Paddy Chayefsky, the creator of this timeless American character, explained his attitude about Network like this:

“People say to me: ‘Jesus, you moved into some pretty surreal satire.’ I say: ‘No, I still write realistic stuff. It’s the world that’s gone nuts, not me. It’s the world that's turned into a satire." We never lied. Everything in the movie is true—with some extensions. It's very hard to describe simply and realistically what is going on without being grotesque. I think the movie is right now. .... I think the American people deserve some truth—at least as much truth as we can give them—instead of pure entertainment or pure addiction.”—“Chayefsky: ‘Network Is True’,” Time, 12/13/1976

I was reminded of the Network rant scene for the umpteenth time recently while checking out “Silver Spring, Singular,” a downcounty blog that attracts a lot of attention because of its whip-smart & candid writing, topical currency, and its connectedness to the goings-on of greater Silver Spring. Plus, it’s got plenty of photos and graphics and the blogger keeps comments open to Anonymice, which makes things livelier and more engaging.

SSS introduces a recent post with the following:

“I don’t know about on yours, but the locals on my neighborhood message board are mad as hell about the ‘melee’ in [downtown Silver Spring] this past Saturday and they aren't going to take it anymore!”
[Acronym expansion, formatting, & linking all added.]

SSS accompanies the post with a movie still from the Angry Man classic Falling Down (1993), which left me scratching my head over the madman movie mixed metaphors.

SSS: “... the regularly expressed opinion that ‘it's just like that in Bethesda’ is total bulls***. Anyone who says this has clearly never been to Bethesda.”

Springular sure got that right. Downtown Bethesda invests a lot of money in attracting the right crowd of self-actualizing professionals and big spenders. BUP and friends do a bang-up job of keeping baggy-pants, saggy-seat crews out of their scrubbed urban districts.

The most aggressive people you’ll encounter in Bethesda generally include the Type-A jerks that jockey for the plummest parking spots in the downtown garages, the aging frat boy drunks that frequent “Caddies” on Cordell Avenue, and the Valet Parking Mafia that extort fat tips out of west-county and NWDC gentry flush with an embarrassment of disposable income. While some of these potential rowdies may threaten bodily harm if you make the mistake of wasting their time or delaying their gratification, none of them is very likely to break out in fisticuffs with you.

123cartoon on WashingtonPost.com quips:
“The ‘Stop the Violence’ concert is over. You may now return to your previous violent nature. Thank you for coming.”

»»»

Sublime Magic theatre.
Entrance not for everyone.
For madmen only.

«««

Here’s an English etymological enigma. “Mad” variously means angry, crazy, and a combination thereof. Why and how did this come about? Is there psychological research that bears out the observation that raging makes can make you raving?

SSS: “Also, while people certainly have every right to be upset, some use this as an excuse to prop up their bogus theories about how these miscreants will invade Silver Spring throughout the week once the Fillmore is open. Yes, because those Seal (actual Fillmore performer) crowds can get completely out of hand.”

Hey now, once Seal starts singing some of his more provocative lyrics, what if the crowd starts to take it a tad too literally:

“But we’re never gonna survi-i-i-i-ve unless, we get a little crazy...”

Now back to more madcap madness:

Thayer Avenue said [on SSS’s blog]:
How did you gain such a penchant for drawing in the crazy people to the comment board? I never cease to be amazed.

And “Thayer Avenue” said this before I added my damage to the mix.

I splenically snorted in return:
“‘Thayer Avenue’? Perhaps this proud member of the Nouveau Silver Spring gentry should try on the address and blogger moniker ‘Woodmont Avenue.’ It appears that Thayer doesn’t much care for the untidy opinings of us ‘crazy’ east-county riff-raff.

Springular, how did you gain such a penchant for drawing in the downcounty gentry to act as such wet blankets on the comment board? I never cease to be crazed, er, amazed.”
[more crazy stuff followed this jabbering....]

Thayer Avenue said:
“Wow, Sleepless. I make an off-handed, generalized comment and you end up attacking me, The X-Files, *and* linking to classic Bernstein all in one fell swoop? Very impressive.

I think my work here is done!”

Indeed!

Springvale Roader informs us:
“Well folks, this is timely. This coming Sunday and Monday, AFI will be screening the documentary, ‘Crips and Bloods: Made in America.’ http://www.afi.com/silver/new/nowplaying/events.aspx#crips

I plan on wearing my red bandanna...or should I go with blue?”

Thomas Hardman weighs in:
“I was more hoping for a screening of ‘Lord of the Flies’.”

Well, here in the south-central loco-en-MoCo ’hood of west Wheaton, I guess we would have to sport blue bandannas to this cultural event, as MS-13 claims to be the dominant “click” in these here parts.

Yeah, so I’ve heard that the AFI Silver is trying to make it in this recession just like a lot of others arts-and-culture institutions. May I suggest the following quadruple feature, curated by myself:

“The All-American Angry Man Film Marathon”
…featuring conniptive classics from the 1970s through the 2000s…
Network — 1970s
Ruthless People — 1980s
Falling Down — 1990s
Gran Torino — 2000s
Why, this could even be the basis for yet another AFI superlative list...

...“100 Years, 100 Rages” !

Reaction to Hardman’s latest Dist. 4 race post

2009-03-12T18:18:00.063-04:00

County Council District 4 candidate Thomas Hardman just posted his responses to the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce’s special election candidate questionnaire this morning.

Below are some initial thoughts on the issues raised here. I live just outside the Dist. 4 boundary but I find this race very interesting and pertinent nonetheless.

Here is a link to my “cribsheet” listing some basic information about each candidate, linked to each person’s campaign website, if available.

And click here for Maryland Politic Watch’s coverage of the race.

As far as Chamber’s “oversight” in not giving you a questionnaire, Hardman, perhaps that cadre of glad-handers is leary of your independent streak and your reluctance to put on a tacky pinstripe uniform.

* * *

Hardman states, “Montgomery is already a leader in biotechnology and medical research and this will continue into the future. We are part of a region that is a major driver of the global Information Technology industry.”

Now that the federal government is lifting restrictions on the use of stem-cell lines in federally-funded cellular microbiology research and hopefully investing greater money and resources in biotech, Maryland will hopefully be more competitive in the regional economy. Virginia profited disproportionately from the Doom Boom of the ’00s, maybe Maryland can finally catch up a bit here.

As far as IT in Maryland, the pols seem intent on dampening the digital economy in Maryland. This is why D.C., Virginia, and other localities will continue to beat out the Old Line State in terms of cultivating and nurturing computer/tech industry firms.

At least Maryland had the sense to cancel the computer services tax.

Here is an article from November 2007 that covered the original bill:
“Maryland To Tax Computer Support Services—
The computer industry is fighting the state's decision to add computer, data center, and disaster recovery support services to the state's new 6% tax rate.”
InformationWeek, 11/19/2007

One person wrote this comment in response to that article:

“I'm leading a small software company currently based in Silicon Valley. We've recently been looking to open an office in the Mid-Atlantic area to be closer to our East Coast customers. We'd been considering the Baltimore area, but with this development I can tell you we'll cross Maryland off the list. Why would we voluntarily choose to take an additional 6% off our service revenues when we could just as easily locate to another state?”

I guess Maryland pols also wanted “Geeks on Call” to get off their high horses and pick up their hefty share of the Maryland tax burden or something. Yeah, all the tech “geeks” I know of are disproportionately heavy users of state/local services, not.

They better not pull this stunt in 2010 when this issue comes back to the General Assembly.

* * *

Hardman says, “We have so much business in Montgomery County that nearly half of the workforce has to reside outside of our jurisdiction and we thus have the country's second-worse commute. Until and unless this is resolved satisfactorily, we have no business offering incentives to attract companies to relocate here to add to our current woes.”

I would have to respectfully disagree a bit here. Sure we have many businesses in Maryland, but the lousy climate for business (that Hardman alludes to under question #3) makes this area more suitable for plentiful “workforce housing” residential developments, including lots of sprawl, as well as tons of non-profits, as opposed to small or even medium-sized businesses.

And we certainly have a shortage of entry-level / cottage-industry innovation around here.

The questionnaire asks, “DO YOU BELIEVE THAT PROVIDING INCENTIVES FOR COMPANIES TO LOCATE IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY?”

Hell, yes! Why don’t we also help entrepreneurial Marylanders get their businesses off the ground without so much red tape and so many strings attached?

* * *

Hardman says, “... we shall have to harness the unparalleled intellectual resources and educational achievement of our community.”

Many entrepreneurial technologically oriented people who grow up in Maryland leave the state for California, Virginia, Texas, etc. This brain/talent drain is a big waste of our state’s educational investments; we are not reaping enough of the rewards of our purportedly excellent high-ranking “challenge index” public schools.

I personally think we should split the University of Maryland flagship campus at College Park into two schools.

The bottom 60-70 percentile of the student body should attend “Maryland State.” This would retain the Smith School of Business, the sports franchises, Greek life, etc. The top 30-40 percentile of students should attend an institution that retains the University of Maryland brand name, the honors program, and other top-notch academic/research initiatives, and this version of the school should be invested in as a highly competitive “state ivy” institution to rival the Universities of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, California, etc.

As for the “Maryland State University” idea proposed here:
Note that many élite public universities have at least one state counterpart that doesn’t practice as much admissions “gatekeeping” — VCU, Penn State, Mich. State, Cal State, etc.

This would go a long way toward the recruitment and retention of élite public school students in Maryland in college, grad school, and beyond. Many people end up living where they go to college / grad school during their early adulthood.

* * *

Hardman says, “Given the current economic conditions and the near total collapse of the housing market, any discussion at all of ‘economic development’ is premature at best.”

As long as Maryland pols feed hungrily at the trough of federal payroll, contract, and grant money, many MoCo public and private sector leaders will continue to be obsessed with simplistic, short-sighted visions of “growth” and “development” that neglect or even stymie a lot of innovation. We’ll also have more overcrowding, sprawl, and traffic nightmares.

Hardman adds: “... if we're going to be building or developing anything, we must build and develop affordable housing much closer in towards the business campuses and research/industrial cores.”

Before we start a fresh round of ingratiating handshaking and ribbon-cutting ceremonies with residential developers, how about “thinking outside the box” a little more?

I wonder what people would say if somebody proposed subdividing some of those large mid-county condo units into affordable/“MPDU” housing for all of the poor families that Maryland is becoming so well known for.

“How nifty, Barbie®’s fifty”

2009-03-11T11:07:00.017-04:00

(WARNING: Skip this digressive post if you hate bubblegum pink and/or prefer to steer clear of the general morass of American popular culture.)

I watch the news semi-regularly and I’ll bet that more than a few Americans have noticed that the network news anchors have started softening their evening broadcasts with lots of uplifting, aw-shucks human-interest stories.

These segments are obviously meant to serve as antidotes to the steady stream of bad news bearishness bombarding us from the global marketplace.

Perhaps these salt-of-the-earth profiles of courage and altruism are there to inspire and shame the hoi polloi into staying put in their overstuffed couches instead of taking to the streets armed with steak knives and handguns. (They could be right; many people seem to be pushing aside their woes and seeking comfort in entertainment and social connections right now.)

A few days back the well-coiffed talking head personality anchors were paying homage to that paragon of perfect, injection-molded plastic womanhood, Barbie^®, who débuted early in 1959.

Amidst the retrospective coverage of this pop culture milestone, I heard about a bizarre Mattel^® product launch from 1975, “Growing Up Skipper^®.” This junior cousin of Barbie^® was an “action” figurine; if you cranked her arm, her torso elongated and her bust “grew.”

Actual marketing copy printed on the box:

“She’s 2 dolls in 1 for twice as much fun!”
“Make her grow from a young girl to a teenager in seconds!”
“Cute little girl! ... Tall, curvy teenager!”

This “toy” should have been packaged with a miniature paperback book:
Are You There God? It’s Me, Body-Dysmorphic Skipper^®

For those of you who think that toys and play time don’t have a lasting impact on children, check out this caustically funny commentary [warning: language]. It’s a blistering account of mid-seventies childhood drama between the author and her cousin, allegedly the Growing Up Skipper^® doll’s “most fevered and devoted disciple.”

Incidentally, 1975 is the same year The Stepford Wives hit U.S. theaters, presenting Americans with an assault on the ideal of suburban domestic perfection by swapping pretty, docile, affluent suburban housewives with near-identical animatronic body doubles.

* * *
The media blitz on the Barbie^® merchandising empire & its cultural aftershocks led me to dig up an arty artifact from the eighties.
This unnamed cult film has a running time of about three-quarters of an hour and looks like it was partly shot on Super 8. Official prints were yanked and destroyed in the wake of a copyright suit won about two decades ago. Bootleg copies still circulate; I don’t name the filmmaker, title, or subject here because I don’t want the files to get pulled. But if you have any familiarity with American popular music of the 1970s, then you can probably follow along here.

The film imaginatively dramatizes the real-life story of a woman was who the vocalist/drummer of a ubiquitous brother-and-sister pop powerhouse with lots of lush orchestral chart-topping hits throughout the early-to-mid-’70s. (Can you guess which one?)

It’s a lovingly enacted 1:9-scale tragedy of female suffering, complete with painstakingly crafted miniature props and sophisticated mise-en-scène featuring Barbie^® line dolls outfitted in dead-ringer ’70s and early ’80s fashions.

Without further ado, click here (Youtube) if you’re still curious. (Right after the page loads, try pausing the player in order to give the stream a chance to buffer footage a few minutes ahead.)

* * *

“The early seventies had felt like the last moment of pure, popular culture fantasy and fakeness that I shared with my parents, when we were still united in this image of happy American familyhood. And The C________s’ music seemed especially emblematic of that time.”

—the auteur who directed and co-wrote the film linked above

What’s a little startling to me is this: as a child growing up in the Washington area in the late ’70s through mid-’80s, in many ways I lived in a late ’60s through mid-’70s time warp. This is because my decidedly Establishment parents listened to a lot of WGAY* and their LP collection consisted of selections like the orchestral folk-pop stylings of The Sandpipers and the soundtrack to Ryan’s Daughter.

While my spouse’s boomer parents were more plugged into the “counterculture” and familiar with the mid-to-late Beatles catalogue and even ventured into the post-punk and new wave territory of bands like Talking Heads and the Clash, as a tyke I remember being enthralled by cheesy Las-Vegas-revue-like pop arrangements such as Steve Lawrence’s rendition of “Go Away Little Girl”.

This decade-lagging anachrony from early childhood may explain some of the chronic cultural disorientation and confusion that afflicts me to this day.

* * *
And finally we have Sonic Youth’s cover of a song that was a signature Top Ten hit by that same ’70s pop group. (The Sonic Youth interpretation was originally released as part of a 1994 tribute album.)

The vid features Thurston Moore as Tragic Troubadour Ken™ and Kim Gordon as Rocker Chick Couture Barbie™.

* * *
So here’s wishing a belated happy birthday to that indestructible American icon, Barbie^®, and that princess of 1970s pop perfection, Karen C________ (March 2, 1950 – February 4, 1983).

* For those of you who didn’t live in the D.C. area before 1990 or so, WGAY was an adult contemporary easy-listening radio station. (Its transmitter was located on Kemp Mill Road in Wheaton before it moved to the World Building in downtown Silver Spring.)

(More trivia: According to this source, oddly enough, the “GAY” in WGAY originally stood for “Government And You” way back in the forties.)

Banking on a song and a prayer...

2009-03-09T17:43:00.073-04:00

This past Sunday, CBS’s “60 Minutes” ran a segment about FDIC / Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) bank takeovers. I think I heard or read somewhere that they’re calling in retired bank takeover specialists who are veterans of the S&L collapses of the ’80s.

Not surprisingly, the “60 Minutes” correspondent emphasized the overall stability of the retail banking sector, the continuity of customer service and asset guarantees once distressed banks are taken over by the feds, and the security of deposit accounts, now insured up to $250k as of 2006.

The piece didn’t really focus on which banks are vulnerable and why they have become insolvent. However, Maryland was mentioned as the site of a recent bank failure, which prompted me to look up the story of Crofton-based Suburban Federal Savings Bank, whose employees now pledge fealty to a bank based in Virginia’s Tidewater region.

A revealing follow-up story on the bank that ran in the Baltimore Sun shows us how this formerly modest and conservatively operated “community” bank mutated into a mortgage wholesaling monstrosity.

We learn about Maryland minister Samuel Burrow, Jr., who claimed in his loan documentation that he made something like $350k in annual earnings when he actually brought in an amount below the state median income of ~$65k. Nevertheless, this self-styled man of the cloth goes on to sue the bank for seducing and trapping him in a loan he couldn’t afford. Perhaps the good reverend was a proponent of prosperity gospel; he certainly ordered up a very worldly custom mega-McMansion. Unless this man was speaking in tongues or drooling on the loan documents in the Title office, his lawsuit looks pretty baseless.

However, this “community” bank was wildly irresponsible as well. After 2004, Suburban Federal grew very profligate very quickly while it aggressively fought for a piece of the action during the mid-decade asset commodification frenzy. Perhaps the old hands from the elder generation of this family of bankers should not have handed the reins over to junior so eagerly.

“Court papers say that in April 2005, Burrow was constructing ‘a palatial, seven bedroom residential home on over five acres of property with amenities including a movie theater, recording studio, gym, and media room.’ Suburban agreed to refinance his existing $872,000 mortgage and give him $389,000 more to finish building. Two months later, Burrow settled a loan for $1.3 million, bringing in $41,000 in points and fees to the bank and the mortgage broker.

[....]

“What burned Suburban more than anything - not just on that deal, but on scores of loans - was that the value of houses and construction projects dropped when the real estate market cooled, often to less than the amount of the loan, [Baltimore-based loan broker Sidney P.] Levin said. Burrow's house was once appraised for $3 million.

“‘As long the value is going up, it doesn't matter,’ Levin said.

“Indeed, [deputy director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Thrift Supervision Timothy T.] Ward and other regulators say Suburban might have endured its foray into no-documentation lending if the real estate market hadn't crashed. But as values dropped, the amount of bad debt on Suburban's books soared. With capital of around $30 million, Suburban could not afford to have many large loans go into default.”

—“Suburban Federal’s short, sharp fall,” Baltimore Sun, February 22, 2009

The bank “might have endured if the real estate market hadn’t crashed”: Wow, this statement makes me wonder how many people are still laboring under the delusion that this comprehensive “market correction” wasn’t inevitable, given the massive quantity of counterfeit wealth that was manufactured at so many levels of the American economy before the financial market collapse of ’08/’09.

Caught DUI/DWI? Don’t be caught DOA.

2009-03-07T02:08:00.008-05:00

And we’re talking about political demise here as well.

* * *
This week many of us have done our level best to ignore how the Dow/S&P, the Nikkei, the Hang Seng, the DAX, the London Exchange, etc. are all plunging and anemically regaining value in paroxysms of wild panic. Meanwhile the news on job losses and industry contractions is making many people seek oblivion in whatever form they can come by it, whether that’s a liquid, a capsule, a pulsating LCD display, or whatever.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been something of a train wreck these last few weeks.

So I fear that I have to resort to mordant humor and patent absurdity that may get me in trouble. Please forgive this lunacy.

* * *
I tend to take drunk driving and alcohol abuse pretty seriously. This position made me very popular among the carousers in my cohort of collegiate alcoholic conformists. Well, if you grow up around a bunch of annoying gin-and-tonic-addled adults, the sXe lifestyle starts to look a tad appealing. One only tends to get drunk to emulate Mom and Dad if one doesn’t hate their pickled guts too much.

You know, it’s a little like non-smokers who grow up associating foul ashtray smells with the rank stench of Mommy’s sweater or Daddy’s sportcoat.

* * *
Proud Papa-to-be Pagnucco over at MPW generously provides the text of Ike Leggett’s letter in support of stricter DUI/DWI enforcement measures using a clever ignition interlock device that only activates if the operator exhales a “clean” enough breath.

Are such devices hard to foil? Can you get a (presumably sober) child to exhale into the thing, for instance? Yes, it’s true, drunks will attempt stunts like this. Let’s just hope they don’t try it in the Old Wine(-o) State.

* * *
We just have to make sure that these gadgets are simple enough that tipsy Maryland politicians like state Dels. Barve and Taylor can use them effectively.

Hmm, I think I feel a tickle of farce coming on.

Let’s start with the “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” premise but replace the Jersey bit with some Old Line State flavor.

“Herman & Kumar Go to the House of Crabs” is more like it, the House of Crabs in question being the stale echo chamber occupied by Maryland Delegates.

Or what about the sequel: “Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay”? Man, that’s so ’07/’08. The Gitmo goons are closing up shop and Barve and Taylor probably won’t get profiled as enemy combatants unless (a) they go on a drunk driving spree in Carroll County and/or (b) Bobby “Persecution Complex” Ehrlich gets voted back into the Governor’s Mansion and jumpstarts another spying & profiling program directed at his mortal enemies.

Nope, we need to adjust the tone for a new era of dope, er, hope.

“Herman & Kumar Escape from Annapolis Soirée.” Yep, that’s much better, plus it sort of rhymes with “Bay.” “Chesapeake Bay” would be another obvious possibility, although then we have to explain how these two pols ended up in that pfiesteria-infested pond to begin with. Crumbling infrastructure anyone? A few certifiably shoddy bridges would be like money in the bank for Maryland Democrats. We’re talking Federal Stimulus paydirt here, kids. But that’s a topic for another long-winded post.

But, ahem. Back to our DUI duo.

We’ve got the promise of a narrative here. Picture this for starters:

Herman & Kumar stagger out of a stultifyingly boring engagement full of hobnobbing Maryland muckety-mucks. The open-bar drinks and phony praises are pouring forth freely. Then they stumble into the leather-upholstered bucket seats of their respective luxury vehicles, now outfitted with this clever breathalyzer “interlock” ignition device.

After spending too many hours in the dense, soporific fog of Maryland Democratic politics, Herman & Kumar breathe hearty sighs of relief into their ignition interlock mouthpieces. The dense vapors of their winey breaths immediately trigger the fuel cell contacts to close; their keys fail to budge. After screaming invective at their vehicles that would make Mike Subin blush, they each whip out their BlackBerrys and implore their long-suffering wives to come pick them up.

Hey, this could be the setup for a brilliantly staged candid-camera press conference on the new device.

If such a press conference were to occur, we’d hope that Herman & Kumar wouldn’t louse things up by doing something embarrassing like inserting their car keys in the wrong car holes or something.

Paging Parris “thwarted-by-the-child-proof-safety-lock” Glendening, anyone?

Because confessions shouldn't just be for Catholics...

2009-03-06T23:11:00.004-05:00

“Yours is the only version of my desertion
that I could ever subscribe to,
That is all that I can do.
. . .
You’re so cute when you're frustrated, dear
Yeah, you’re so cute when you're sedated, dear
Oh yes dear...
.
.
.
You are a past sinner, the last winner, and
everything we’ve come to,
(it) makes you you, you...”

Was Paul Banks taking the piss out of our cohort here? He sounds like he was in thrall of a damaging friendship or affair here.

What if you screamed “INSOLVENCY!” at the top of your lungs in a crowded, chaotic “marketplace of ideas” in the middle of a global economic implosion?

Would some Globalist Stasi arrest you for your damaged tin-foil hat fomenting?

I felt a burning compulsion to unleash this conniption recently:

re: Is this for real? (FDIC) (Solvency.........for now.......)

“And you will not reach me I am resenting a
position that’s past resentment and now
I can’t consider, and now there is this distance, so...

Sleep tight, grim rite,
we have two-hundred couches where you can
sleep tight, grim rite,
we have two-hundred couches where you can
sleep tight, grim rite,
we have two-hundred couches where you can
sleep tonight
    …You’re a simpleton…
sleep tonight
    …(You’re) a simpleton…
sleep tonight
    …Can I follow?…
sleep tonight
...”
[4] Turn on the Bright Lights, 2002

A very few people hear “dream right” instead of “grim rite,” which makes some contextual sense, but I just can’t hear it.

(Yes, I realize that this indie rock dirge is ~7 years old but I need to hear something other than the throbbing sobbing bass-line subwoofing coming from the neighbor’s unit.)

Bobos in Paradise?

2009-03-06T17:41:00.061-05:00

Well, they may not be bobos but they’ve been influenced by the culture since college, at least.

Hey, check out what I found in my email inbox this afternoon.

First, by way of explanation, I have two younger siblings:
Xxxxxxxxx Xxxx <xxxxxxxxx_xxxx@xxxxx.com> is about half a decade younger than me.

Xxxx Xxxx <xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxx.com> is only one year younger than me.

I don’t know how they’ll take what I wrote to them (see top level of email below). Alienation among adult siblings is more common than one might think, though.

I never was a castaway living with the other middle-class revelers on Bobo Island and I don’t think I’d even vacation there at this point. (Something tells me I won’t be getting too many invitations either.)

Re: [xxxxx] Fwd: Exchange
Inquiry from #••••• (CANNES, France)to #•••••
Friday, March 6, 2009 5:13 PM
From: "X. X. Xxxx" <xxxxxxxx@xxxxx.com>
To: xxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.com

UNSUBSCRIBE

Please remove me from your bobo mailing list.

--- On Fri, 3/6/09, Xxxxxxxxx Xxxx <xxxxxxxxx_xxxx@xxxxx.com> wrote:

From: Xxxxxxxxx Xxxx <xxxxxxxxx_xxxx@xxxxx.com>
Subject: Re: [xxxxx] Fwd: Exchange Inquiry from #••••• (CANNES, France)to #•••••
To: "xxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.com" <xxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.com>
Date: Friday, March 6, 2009, 3:26 PM

Their place on the French Riviera looks sweet! Could I crash with you guys a few nights if you go there??

:-D

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 6, 2009, at 12:39 PM, Xxxx Xxxx <xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxx.com> wrote:

Here's the crazy home exchange I was talking about!
-xxxx

Begin forwarded message:

From: Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxx <xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxx.com>
Date: March 4, 2009 9:18:02 AM PST
To: Xxxx Xxxx <xxx@xxxxxx.xxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Exchange Inquiry from #••••• (CANNES, France)to #•••••
Reply-To: Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxx <xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxx.com>

Dear Xxxx Xxxx,

Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxx (xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxx.com) has written regarding your home exchange offer.

SENDER'S MESSAGE:

Hello,
Would you be interested in exchanging homes with us?
We can offer our house in Cannes, France (Réf •••••) and/or our 1600 sqf 2 bedrooms appartment in Murano Grande, South Beach, Miami, FL.(we can send photos if you want)
We would like to visit San Francisco in august this year (for around 10days). It will be the two of us, both non-smokers.
Exchange can be non-simultaneous.
Please tell me if you are interested?
Warm regards,
Xxxxxxx

LISTING PROPOSED FOR EXCHANGE:

Spectacular French Riviera manor above Cannes bay. Stunning panoramic views! 2 swimming-pools.

Fabulous activities year round within minutes. http://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com/xxxx.xxx?xx=•••••

WHAT DO I DO NOW?

* As a courtesy, please reply to all inquiries (even to politely decline)
* To answer Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxx personally, just reply directly to this message.
* To plan your trip, visit our Resources page at http://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com/xxxxxxxxx.xxx

Please contact us if we can be of further service.

Bon Voyage,

The Staff of xxxxxxxxxxxx.com
Xx, Xxxxxx, Xxxx and Xxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxx.com

•••.•••.•••• Toll Free
•••.•••.•••• International

Time to wake up to the realities of our era...

2009-03-06T04:24:00.037-05:00

“The collapse of globalization . . . is absolutely possible. It happened in the 20th century in the wake of World War I and the Great Depression, and could happen again. Nationalism is rising and our political systems are inward looking, the more so in times of crisis.”

—Jeffrey Sachs, American economist
(as quoted in Wednesday’s Washington Post)

“The United States has higher fertility rates among teenage girls compared with other developed countries of the world. For example, girls ages 15 to 19 have fertility rates more than five times higher than their counterparts in developed countries such as France, Italy, Japan, Slovenia, and Switzerland.

Nonetheless, the fertility rate of girls ages 15 to 19 declined consecutively over the period from 1991 to 2005. During this time, the fertility rate of the age group dropped by one-third, from 61.8 births per 1,000 girls ages 15 to 19 in 1991 to 40.5 in 2005. However, the latest data for 2006 may point to a reversal of this trend, with the fertility rate inching upward to 41.9.

This trend is of great concern because adolescent pregnancy has been associated with unemployment, poverty, repeated pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, infant mortality, high risk pregnancy, and lower educational achievement. Furthermore, teenage pregnancy is a primary indicator of adult poverty among women.”

—“Rising U.S. Teen Fertility,” Rogelio Saenz & Eugenia Conde, Population Reference Bureau, February 2009

My fellow armchair-economics survivalists:

It’s time to revive old, long-neglected campaigns for things like curbed (e.g. replacement-level) fertility and stable, sustainable population growth.

Otherwise Malthus’ ghost will be visiting us many times in this millenium.

A global glut of cheap labor, cheap goods and services, and cheap credit helped precipitate this collapse. We have devalued work and life by indulging in cultural and political movements that push rapid population growth and depressed wages and now we sit here amidst the ruins generated by those destructive lies and distortions.

Our economic systems are relatively efficient as far as productivity goes; technology, division of labor, economies of scale, and other factors have devalued low-skill/no-skill labor and helped to create a swollen global underclass.

It’s time to challenge the powerful institutions and assumptions that shoved us into this hole.

The pro-fertility camp is going to bring further ruin and suffering upon everybody if they are allowed to continue to irresponsibly advocate for unchecked exponential population growth that ultimately cheapens life.

We have witnessed Peak Oil. Shall we now usher in a new era of Peak Population and Population Stabilization? It is time that we refuse to be silenced on these issues.

“Save Wheaton Library,” say locals.

2009-03-04T16:17:00.033-05:00

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But if the county’s broke, we may be fixin’ for a fight.

By “fight” I mean a good old-fashioned fracas about funding priorities. Silver Spring got a sexy makeover, but it looks like homely stepsister Wheaton is going to have to settle for some delayed gratification now that times are lean around here.

Hats off to county residents who have stayed on top of the Wheaton library relocation proposal. Local activist and social media strategist Noah Wolfe has started up a Facebook group in support of keeping Wheaton Library at its current location at the corner of Georgia and Arcola Avenues. He makes a lot of sound, sensible arguments laying out why the library should stay where it is.

Also be sure to check out the related Save Wheaton Library website. This site provides some background on how Wheaton redevelopment planning has been conducted.

Even though some of us missed the official public comment cutoff date, we can still make our voices heard about this.

I plan to learn more about Wheaton redevelopment. Hey now, we can’t always trust politicians, pointy-headed urban planners, and other self-appointed know-it-alls to work everything out in our collective best interest, can we?

(My sister is actually an urban planning geek; let’s hope she doesn’t take offense at this. Many urban planning/renewal thinkers are very bright and motivated about their work but I fear that they don’t always have entirely realistic views about urban/suburban blight and decay. It’s probably one of the occupational hazards of being a visionary.)

Wheaton Redevelopment: Security First

2009-03-04T00:23:00.025-05:00

(DRAFT)

In a recent post, Aspen Hill blogger and Council District 4 candidate Thomas Hardman has gotten me thinking about Wheaton Library and urban redevelopment in downtown Wheaton.

The county has been soliciting public opinion on whether to relocate the Wheaton library to the Central Business District (CBD).

Here’s my take on this. Overall, it’s pretty simple:

Keep the library in its current location in east-central Wheaton. This area straddles suburban and urban segments of Wheaton very nicely. Instead of relocating the library as part of a costly and protracted construction project, give it a major overhaul and increase its accessibility to west-side and downtown Wheaton residents. This latter goal could be met by broadening sidewalks/walkways and adjacent public spaces and by creating more pedestrian-friendly crosswalks and traffic patterns in the immediate vicinity, for instance.

As for the Wheaton library itself, give it a well-designed renovation with vigilant project cost oversight. If the existing building is structurally sound enough, it can easily withstand a major renovation. The county only needs to recruit architects and structural engineers creative and responsible enough to rise to the challenge of such a renewal project.

Wheaton does not need a cool, glittering edifice to rival the regional libraries of places like Rockville and Bethesda; we only need a comfortable, serviceable community library with enough upgrades to meet our population growth.

The county can use the funds saved to help relocate the “Wheaton” Police Station to Wheaton proper.

As it stands, the District 4 station is located in Glenmont, probably more for historical than logistical reasons.

The station would better serve county citizens if it were moved to downtown Wheaton.

1. Wheaton has become an unfortunate magnet for crime and other social ills in the county, being located along the southeast-to-northwest crime corridor.

Some Glenmont and Aspen Hill residents will object to moving the District 4 station south along Georgia Avenue. If you are such a resident, keep in mind that criminals based in Wheaton and other points south/southeast often prey on your communities. In addition, remember that well sited and coordinated community substations can very effectively meet local community policing needs and can also tailor their operations to your particular area.

Also note that many other urban MCPD stations are either located in or adjacent to downtown areas; Bethesda, Rockville, and Silver Spring are good examples.

2. MPD personnel based in Wheaton would be at the nexus of several major regional arteries:

MD-193 / University Blvd (W/E)
MD-97 / Georgia Ave (N/S)
MD-586 / Veirs Mill Rd (NW/SE)

A site like Wheaton Triangle might be a good option for a new police station.

A location along a key downtown street such as Grandview Avenue (N/S), Amherst Avenue (N/S), Reedie Drive (W/E), or Blueridge Avenue (W/E) would also provide good secondary routes for 4th district police.

3. Law and order are potentially good for business.

Image-conscious business interests helped eject the police substation out of Wheaton Mall several years back.

Some of us are old enough to remember when “Wheaton Plaza” was a place where more suburban county residents felt relatively safe (and you could enjoy free Fourth of July fireworks with family and friends, for that matter).

Mismanagement by offshore landlords (Westfield Group) allied with powerful county business/developer interests have helped turn this so-called “Shoppingtown” into a local crime haven. Residents from all over the region routinely pan Wheaton Mall as a hangout for thugs, juvenile delinquents, and their groupies. On top of the constant reports of shoplifting/thefts and other crimes that happen around the mall regularly, we have high-profile shootings, stabbings and gang displays at the mall that bring notoriety to the area and ward off many customers with higher disposable incomes.

Moving the police station to downtown Wheaton could help lower crime and disorder in the business district overall. Ultimately, open-minded residents from surrounding areas would find Wheaton more welcoming for running errands, shopping, and dining. This would potentially counter the creeping retail blight that has been afflicting Wheaton in recent years.

Many south-central county residents seem frustrated with the course of Wheaton “redevelopment.” Does anybody have an inside line as far as what the Wheaton Kensington Chamber of Commerce, the Wheaton Redevelopment Advisory Committee (WRAC), and other controlling business/development interests are really up to? Much of the information out there seems to be mostly slick packaging and promises.

District 4 Special Elections — A Cribsheet

2009-03-03T10:24:00.184-05:00

(DRAFT)

Special Election Timeline from Board of Elections

Council District Map linked to interactive PDF maps for each district.

Party	Candidate	Community or Neighborhood	Organizational Affiliations
Democratic	Thomas J. Hardman	Aspen Hill	• TJH Internet SP, owner-operated IT firm
	Ben F. Kramer	Derwood	• Maryland Delegate, Dist. 19 • Montg. Co. Liquor Control Task Force • Wheaton Redevelopment Steering Committee, Transportation and Public Safety Subcommittee Co-chair, ~2000 – 2001 • Kramer Enterprises, commercial real estate concern; (est. by father, Sid Kramer, County Executive, 1986 – 1990)
	Cary A. Lamari	Aspen Hill / Norbeck	• Montg. Co. Civic Federation, President 2002 – 2004 • Cary Electric Co., owner-operated electrical contracting firm
	Nancy Navarro	Colesville	• Montg. Co. Board of Ed., President 2006 – 2008; appointed 2004 – 2006, elected 2006 – present • Centro Familia, bilingual latino child-care non-profit, co-founder, 1998; co-director 1998 – 2004
	Chris Paladino	Layhill	• WITHDREW FROM RACE 3/2/2009; PERSONAL/FAMILY REASONS CITED • American Red Cross of the Nat’l Capital Area, Montg. Co., Exec. Dir. 2002 – 2005
Green	George Gluck	Norbeck	(unknown)
Republican	Lou August	Colesville	• Save the Children, Director of Tech. Development & Partnerships • Wilderness Technology Alliance, non-profit taking on the digital divide; founder
Republican	Robin K. A. Ficker	Fairland*	• Robin Ficker Realty

* Ficker declared Fairland his place of residence in Feb. 2009; otherwise he makes his home in Boyds, Potomac, and apparently wherever else there is a hefty tax burden to crusade against.

Wheaton DUI driver: “I strike Ike.”*

2009-03-02T19:31:00.023-05:00

* Okay, if you don’t get the cheesy pun here, try revisiting mid-20th century American political history.

A citizen who variously calls west Wheaton & West Virginia home has brought our downtrodden unincorporated area more unwanted distinction and notoriety.

Yes, Mr. Kendall S. Smith was apparently celebrating the end of the shortest month of the year with a few too many brewskis yesterday. He plowed his pickup into the SUV carrying County Executive Ike Leggett and MoCo “First Lady” Catherine Leggett.

Here’s the story as reported in the Post and Gazette.

State court records indicate that Smith has racked up quite a few DUI/DWI and moving violations, like too many local drivers.

We hope that Mr. & Mrs. Leggett recover quickly and that they consider a push to tighten up state drunk-driving penalties and heighten enforcement measures.

Housing False Starts

2009-03-02T15:01:00.042-05:00

Below is a digitally vandalized version of a Flash ad I saw yesterday on a major DC metro website.

This was a rather large skyscraper-format ad run by a company that has consistently ranked among the top ten large-volume homebuilders during the crest of the 2000s U.S. housing bubble.

For some reason the ad has huge expanses of white space, some of which I filled with my own vulgar “copy.”

I omitted the bottom section, which looks almost blank. If you mouseover this area on the real ad, you will see links to “quick move-in homes” in:

“Suburban Maryland ~ From the $500s”
“Baltimore Metro ~ From the $300s”
“Eastern Shore ~ From the mid $200s”

(These items may be geographically filtered based on my user profile, which indicates that I am a Maryland resident.)

If you click on any of these, you will be taken to the builder’s website featuring listings of luxurious exurban McMansions.

Perhaps the builder is counting on the fact that oil prices have partially collapsed due to the global economic contraction, so high-consumption-oriented prospective homebuyers are more likely to tolerate long commutes to job centers like D.C. and Baltimore.

In any case, the original unvandalized ad struck me as perverse and even anachronistic in March 2009.

Remembering Our Claw Buddy

2009-02-13T13:03:00.100-05:00

Clarence Julius C. Z. (“Claw”)
October 14, 1996 – February 11, 2008

We are missing our former canine buddy, “Claw,” who went over the proverbial “Rainbow Bridge” about a year ago. He came to us from Basset Rescue of Old Dominion, back in 2002. BROOD and rescue groups like it are a wonderful way to find an older dog with charm and character.

He was a goofy, nutty guy who craved attention and he could be very needy and whiny. He had lived a rough life and he always thought he was going to be abandoned because he lived in too many homes.

Clarence always got a lot of attention because of his constant squeaky, wheezy whining and pathetic baby-like expression.

I remember vividly when there was a thunderstorm and I was lying across the sofa. He climbed on top of my chest and perched there for at least ten minutes, whining and panting anxiously and drooling foam all over my shirt. I think I related to Claw well because I recognized him as a fellow tortured soul.

Clarence was a loyal guy. If he knew you were hurt or in pain, he would often come over to you and whine in sympathy. He did this especially if he sensed you were the victim of some terrible wrong.

Claw lived with us in slumburbia for about three years where he served as a faithful watchdog and friend. This was back when we still felt fairly positive about our neighborhood and our house still felt like a home to us. The photograph shows Clarence in late autumn of 2003, soon after he turned seven. He loved walking with us in our neighborhood along with his basset brother. We were happier and more comfortable walking around the neighborhood; more of the older and longer-term residents were around to say “hi” to and it was a more stable and less stressful place.

Then my folks fell hopelessly in love with him so I let them wrench him away from us. (He was getting a little too hostile toward our other basset hound, who happens to be blind.) Claw moved into suburban Affluenzaville down in the southern part of the county. There he was spoiled shamelessly and lavished with love and as many canine accessories as any other empty-nester lapdog of luxury.

Losing him was very hard on us. However, I feel incredibly fortunate because:

I was visiting my folks the night his emergency started.
I recognized that he was experiencing bloat and we were able to rush him to the nearest 24-hour emergency vet, Friendship Hospital for Animals.
(That place is like the Sibley Hospital for the Washington canine jet set, by the way. They offer gold-plated veterinary service with very capable and dedicated staff.)
We got to say good-bye to the guy and he left us gently, painlessly, and peacefully.

A Word of Caution:
If you live with a large dog, beware of bloat / gastric torsion. This is a dangerous and often deadly condition where your dog’s GI tract twists or otherwise becomes obstructed while the stomach rapidly fills with gas. Basset hounds and certain other breeds are more susceptible to bloat than many other dogs. He was also in declining health and my folks had to spoon feed him all of his favorite foods (especially burgers), but he was still too weak and underweight.

Long live our Claw.

We know he is frolicking in some vast, green elysian dog park somewhere.

Ben and Babs, please listen to us...

2009-02-06T11:20:00.033-05:00

I sent versions of this to Maryland Senators Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin.

Re Stimulus Bill [orig. sent to NPR’s Diane Rehm Show]

The panic being shown by [legislative] Democrats … is hurting their cause. They are forcing this behemoth through and shutting down too much debate in the center.

The level of hostility and arrogance shown by leftist Dems is undermining support for the bill by the hour.

Many centrists want this bill broken up into at least two parts: relief (transfer payments) and reinvestment (infrastructure and other targeted spending). These areas should be hammered out separately.

Giving this unprecendented [scale of] power and money to technocrats coupled with such little accountability and reform is a potential disaster in the making.

Thank you,

--[Name Withheld] in Silver Spring [Wheaton], Maryland

[Senator Mikulski et al., I have been a loyal Democrat all my life; I switched to unaffiliated / independent this January because I fear that “hope” and “change” [are] not translating into dialogue and reform under the current incarnation of the Democratic Party. Please do not ignore your progressive centrist constituents. There are more of us out there than you may think.]

Octogenarian on Octuplets Controversy: It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.

2009-02-04T12:10:00.000-05:00

Quote: “With our economy the way it is, with California going to hell in a basket, I should be excited?! Doesn’t make sense to me.”

Me neither, lady.

Fact: This Whittier woman, the 87-year-old next door neighbor of the “miracle” octuplets mother would have been about eight years old when the Great Depression hit about eight decades ago. Many of us remember being eight years old fairly vividly. I sure do.

See the short segment on the BBC World News YouTube channel (duration = 1:58) for an example of how this story is being covered abroad.

Yes, this controversy has been festering for a while now, but this lady’s reaction is my favorite aspect of the story so far; she’s such a breath of fresh California air compared to, say, all the back-peddling fertility specialist experts.

Here is some not-so-fresh air. The image at right depicts carbon monoxide (not CO₂) emissions over South America in September 2004 as recorded from NASA’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Terra Satellite. See NASA’s excellent Visible Earth portal for more stunning images.

A question: Do crisis refugees have higher fertility rates, on average? Consider the case of the Indian Ocean rim baby boom/boomlet soon after the December 2004 earthquake/tsunami.

This paper might offer some insights: “Mortality and Fertility Interactions” [PDF]. This was published by the Population Research Center, National Opinion Research Center (NORC), & The University of Chicago around 2003.

Now, as far as the octuplets lifestyle saga goes, I wonder if the bread-winning Iraqi grandfather who brags about his wealth plans to support his family with U.S. contract money for Iraq, courtesy of Bush and his neocon crony club of amateur nation builders. (Sorry for that dig, Dubya apologist holdouts. We know your disgraced figurehead has left for the warm climes of Crawford, but his legacy is to be found everywhere nowadays in These United States.)

Tip of the Day

2009-02-03T16:52:00.000-05:00

Monorchid
“Oral Fixations Anonymous”
Let Them Eat… [LP]
Simple Machines/Dischord
1997

Help out the economy and your local aging punks and buy it locally.

Here’s a tip for when your neighbor on the other side of the party wall is playing the same s--tty music over and over and over. Especially when this music seems to consist of exactly two major chords and maybe an accordion. Or it sounds like thug music that would be the perfect accompaniment to a gang initiation rite.

Play this song/album. Another favorite of mine on the album is “Dead Signal.”

This track is great to play very loud, almost to the threshold of pain. It has this off-kilter, giddy, see-sawing guitar throughout.

It is awkward to do karaoke to unless you like doing sing-along primal scream therapy.

I sometimes sing the “i.l.l.…l.” chorus as well as the “i was a kid once” part. The middle part has intriguing lyrics but it’s hard to keep up with the rhythm. If you sang along to it at a show back in the nineties, I wonder if Chris Thomson would have cored you with a broken-off bottle neck. (After all, it’s all about some a--h--- who took his innocence.) Okay, so here are the lyrics; just a warning, they’re a little f---ed up.

“anorexic vampires i hear that fashion has failed you
so you smoke cigarettes and drink stale black coffee
oh it’s getting awful lonely for those anorexic vampires
so they f--- their little children ’cause there’s no one left

how could someone smile and look so i.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.?

well i saw your young frankenstein ms. anorexic vampire
he was getting the heel fixed on his motorcycle boot
do you hear someone knocking oh ms. anorexic vampire
it’s your little children are coming and they’re
going to stab you in the chest

how could someone smile and look so i.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.?

i was a kid once. i had my dreams and schemes.
someone asked me once. i’m going to touch you but you can not tell a soul.”

Now, where did I misplace those controversial trousers?

The New Mandate: “Thou shalt OBEY”?

2009-02-03T09:56:00.000-05:00

I was a dutiful registered Maryland Democrat until January. I still support many Democrats, particularly the ones that think for themselves and stand up to their own party machinery at the risk of being politically/socially exiled by their fellow party members.

As for the hypocrites and sell-outs, that’s another thing entirely. Right now I can only conclude that most leading Democratic incumbents are either drunk on their own power, in an all-out panic about the global economy, or both. The almost trillion-dollar “stimulus” package (full title: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) is bewildering and massive, and the Dem leadership machinery seems insistent on ramming it through both chambers with a minimum of debate or compromise.

The full text is here on the HR website. Personally, if I want to read 647 pages of inscrutable text, give me Faulkner or Joyce instead. I think I need to look to independent academic / think tank types for insightful interpretation of this behemoth and its potential consequences.

How funny is it that Pelosi is co-sponsoring this bill with a Rep. “Obey” (D-Wisc.)?!

DC RnR section on Craigslist: The DC metro's favorite cyberslum...

2009-01-24T14:51:00.000-05:00

So I had a funny exchange with this person (a woman possibly) on DC Craigslist's RnR section:

I am the McFly persona.

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/mld/rnr/1006010409.html

McFly here... (...zipping up my McFly.)
Reply to: [...] Date: 2009-01-24, 2:36PM EST

Prove it, buddy.

Have you ever been to a huge soulless state university with an active “Greek Life” culture? Or a bum-scratch isolated liberal arts school with lots of people with nothing to do but drink, partner-swap[,] and explore funky sexual fetishes?

I have. I took a state scholarship slot that an Ivy League-bound kid opted out of. And let me tell you, it wasn't pretty. But then even the Ivy Leaguers have their "F--- Trucks" and whatnot.

The numbers might be exaggerated but orgies can and do happen.

The rest of American life is resembling the crumbling Roman Empire but there aren't ORGIES? Where's your sense of history?

--Marty McFly

OP said, rolling eyes sarcastically:
Uh, Hello! McFly!! The 24 y.o. sex survey poster is a dude! (MD)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to: [...]
Date: 2009-01-24, 2:01PM EST

Wakey-wake time! It's just some dude having fun. Not really sure why that's fun for him but rest assured, it is NOT a 24year old woman giving an accurate accounting of her experiences. Sheesh!

Welcome to Slumburbia. Now get lost.

2009-01-22T12:45:00.001-05:00

I live in slumburbia.

I started using this term about 4-5 years ago, right around the crescendo of the housing bubble. At the time, the term didn't have much currency. Mainly the only other person using it on the web was some visual artist from Canada.

If you're in your 20s or 30s and grew up liberal and neurotic; the suburbs are a Tragically Unhip* place to live. The suburbs are considered a destination for losers and clueless middle Americans. I know this because I used to be one of those self-hating liberals. Now I'm an independent and over 30 so I don't have so much patience for this culture anymore.

*another Canadian allusion there

California Über Alles:

Early last spring, San Francisco real estate journalist Carol Lloyd used the term to apply to some rather spacious tract house communities around the Bay area. To be quite honest, far-leftist anti-sprawl activists would like nothing more than to see suburbia rot. It's powerful symbolism, like vandalizing Eisenhower’s tomb or something.

But I have to say that this is such an absurd application of the term slumburbia. Anybody applying this neologism to millenial large-lot McMansion boom developments in central Cali has never experienced authentic American slumburban living in a fifties-era small-lot roach magnet. And even I know that the corner of slumburbia I live in has nothing on the strains of slumburbia found in L.A. County.

Luckily, around the same time as the San Francisco Chronicle / SFGate article, The Atlantic published a more well-researched piece that extended the term beyond outer-ring exurbs.

Here is an excerpt:
“On the other hand, many inner suburbs that are on the wrong side of town, and poorly served by public transport, are already suffering what looks like inexorable decline. Low-income people, displaced from gentrifying inner cities, have moved in, and longtime residents, seeking more space and nicer neighborhoods, have moved out.”
“The Next Slum?,” The Atlantic, March 2008

Now, that’s the slumburbia I’m talking about. The old housing stock slumburbia. The middle-class flight slumburbia. The slumlord rental units slumburbia. The lawn-paved-over-into-a-mini-parking-lot slumburbia.

Now that's my corner of America.

Welcome to slumburbia, friends. You must be lost.

So here's a tip: Lock your car doors, do a U-turn in the clogged cul-de-sac up there, and keep driving until you get to the mall.