The latest from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com
- Geri Spieler: The Prisoner and the Art: Will the Real Owner Please Come Forward?
- Michael Russnow: Airline Service is a Sham: Memo to Doug Parker of US Airways, Your Company Tops the List
- Presented By: February is Pet Dental Health Month
- Art Levine: Will Geithner's Bungled Bank Plan Fuel Populist Revolt Against Dems?
| Geri Spieler: The Prisoner and the Art: Will the Real Owner Please Come Forward? | Top |
| At the risk of using a worn-out cliché', I am the poster child for, "No good deed goes unpunished." I have been paying to store Sara Jane Moore's art collection for almost 30 years. Sara Jane was the middle-aged doctor's wife and mother who fired at the head of Pres. Gerald Ford, missing his head by six inches. She was released from prison December 31, 2007 and it was not until January, 2009 that I received any communication regarding her art. Instead of arranging to take it back, she is accusing me of stealing it. This crazy tale began in 1975. I was a part time reporter for the now defunct Los Angeles News Journal, a small LA newspaper. She wrote to me from her cell at the federal prison near San Pedro, CA. asking to meet me. I visited her early in 1976. After several years, letters and conversations, she asked me to rescue her art collection from what she described as a thief trying to steal the only possession she has left. She said the art was all she had left to leave her son, Frederic. On a snowy spring day in March 1982 I drove my Dodge Ramcharger from the Sierra's in from Pollock Pines, CA to the Mission District in San Francisco. My truck looked very out of place with it's mud and snow tires and a winch fastened on the front. . Dunning told me he could not afford to store the art any longer and he suggested in a letter to Sara Jane that he sell it and giving the money to her son. Sara Jane was against the plan and claimed Dunning was trying to steal her art. She found a lawyer to represent her. However, if she could find someone else to store it for her, all would be well. This is where I came in. It turned out though, that instead of the few pieces Sara Jane claimed Dunning was keeping, the collection included 36 various oils, water colors, silk screen's and photographs, some more than 40" square. A promise is a promise. I have kept her art collection safe in the storage facility. I never anticipated I would have it this long. The plan was to turn it over to Frederic when he turned 21 in 1987. Frederic never called or came to collect it. I was hoping some of Sara Jane's friends would come to pick out what they wanted, but again, no one called or showed up. "You don't call, you don't write." I waited and waited. Finally some indirect communications came from people I didn't know claiming they represented Sara Jane Moore and asked to make arrangements to pick up her art. Finally I received an E-mail from a lawyer claiming to represent Sara Jane Moore, the owner of the art. I'm cautious. I know her. I needed documented proof that he really does represent THE Sara Jane Moore. I did not need the aggravation of turning over her art to a scam artist. I know my former pen pal well. Her lawyer refused to give me a notarized power of attorney. If I insisted, he said, he was authorized to sue me for refusing to relinquish his client's property. Well, this is the last time I ever do a favor for a prisoner with a large art collection! Geri Spieler is the author of, "Taking Aim At The President: The Remarkable Story of the Woman who Shot at Gerald Ford." Palgrave Macmillan | |
| Michael Russnow: Airline Service is a Sham: Memo to Doug Parker of US Airways, Your Company Tops the List | Top |
| P.R. brouhahas regarding our airlines are now legend. First, most of them instituted a fee on domestic flights if we checked more than one bag and then, having gotten away with that, doubled the ante in only a few months by charging for the first bag as well. Soon after, US Airways made us cough up two dollars for soft drinks (that's without alcohol, folks), although most of the airlines didn't have the guts to go along. But it didn't stop there. US Airways and others started charging for blankets and pillows. Movies, which had become free if you owned a headset, now cost several dollars when the airline offers a selection instead of the standard fare. I was told "This is what the passengers prefer" by one flight attendant, though she didn't elaborate if the preference for a greater selection would have prevailed if the passengers were forewarned there would be a cost. And that isn't the end. Free flights based on mileage which are so hard to get unless booked many, many months in advance, now cost twenty per cent more on Delta if you travel to Europe. Until last fall, it was 50,000 miles for such a trip and it now requires 60,000. United, too, has bumped up the mileage from 50,000 to 55,000. Plus, one of the added benefits of an award trip -- flexibility in changing your flight dates without charge if you don't modify your itinerary -- has disappeared and it now costs $75 to $100 to do so on some airlines if you notify them within twenty days of travel. Delta charges $100 even if you give them six months notice. American Airlines doesn't charge such a fee and I hope this piece doesn't give them any ideas. The main benefit remaining in award issued international trips is that you are still entitled to a free stopover, meaning you can fly to London and stop in New York on the way over or on the way back for the same mileage cost. And for the moment all international travel (paid or award) still includes a free meal and two pieces of luggage up to fifty pounds apiece. However, many of you may recall that not too long ago there were no luggage weight requirements traveling within or to and from the United States. The air carriers have attributed these changes to dwindling profits, in particular due to the spiraling costs of fuel. To be fair, when free domestic baggage ended last spring gas was well over three dollars a gallon and by mid-summer it was close to five dollars. But guess what? Something happened and the price of gas started to plummet. In my case, the high of $4.59 per gallon last July fell to $1.79 on January 1. But did the airlines reciprocate? No, they started charging special rates for certain parts of their coach cabin. Some are talking about higher costs for aisle or window seats, presumably leaving the most economical rate for the poor sucker stuck in the middle. Pity the tall or portly guy or woman, who will either suffer or pay through the nose. Not to mention the guy or woman who paid more to sit on the aisle when they're pushed way into the aisle by very large bargain seeking passengers fighting for room on the armrest. Why haven't these horrendous so-called cost conscious changes been rescinded as the gas prices have come down? Or better yet, as I suggested in a column last year just charge a few dollars more to return service to what it was before and no one would really notice the boost. Most people know fares go up and down like the stock market, and the person sitting next to you rarely pays the same fare. The increase in revenue would pay for the meals we've been denied for years on long domestic flights -- except for Continental, which for some strange reason still serves them. It would also cause US Airways to stop the ridiculous charge for soft drinks. Oh, wait, on Tuesday I overheard a flight attendant telling a passenger on one of my flights back from Florida that the soft drink policy was ending in a few days, but they were still ordered to collect the charge until then. Memo to US Airways CEO Doug Parker: Have you cut back on P.R. as well as pillows, luggage, meals and drinks? If you're going to suspend a much-hated policy, one that the flight attendants themselves condemn even as they are forced to put forth the evil plan, why not get rid of it when you announced it? Yes, you might wring a few more dollars by waiting the four days, but at what eventual cost when such an expedient decision reveals the level of idiocy and greed of your executive team? Flying used to be classy. Remember the scene in Catch Me if You Can when Leo DiCaprio had all those glamorous stewardesses on his arms? Look around you the next time you fly, and with the dearth of service you'll see it's more like riding a Greyhound bus. And it's not the flight attendants' fault. Plus, the pilots are mostly great, witness US Airways' own Captain Sully. But Doug Parker can't take credit for the heroic US Airways crew, who all did their jobs incredibly as the jet miraculously landed safely in the Hudson. No, for Parker and the other overpaid airline corporate geniuses it would be more correct to impute the increased denigration of air travel in our nation. Michael Russnow's website is http://www.ramproductionsinternational.com | |
| Presented By: February is Pet Dental Health Month | Top |
| PSI encourages all pet owners to take a look inside their pet's mouth. (PRWeb Feb 25, 2009) Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/02/prweb2186224.htm >> Read more Ads by Pheedo | |
| Art Levine: Will Geithner's Bungled Bank Plan Fuel Populist Revolt Against Dems? | Top |
| Many leading economists are increasingly sounding like David Sirota and other leftists: It's time to nationalize the banks , at least temporarily, or we won't have a chance at economic recovery. But the Obama Administration, the GOP, influential CNBC anchors and Wall Street leaders are resisting temporary nationalization -- actually it's more like a receivership -- because it smacks to them of government bureaucrats or wooly-headed liberals running the banks, while giving the government too much power over the financial institutions these bankers, CEOs and brokers in fact wrecked. You can see some of the country's smartest economists, including Nouriel Roubini, Moody's Mark Zandi and Columbia University's Fred Mishkin discuss matter-of- factly what's needed to make Obama's economic recovery and banking bailout plans work on a recent Charlie Rose show here . They essentially all endorse far bolder steps than Obama and Geithner have proposed so far to jump-start the financial system that's slowing down the economy because of so much frozen lending. Progressive journalists also join this critique. As summarized by the Media Consortium: Robert Kuttner offers a strong analysis of Geithner's strategy to salvage the banking industry in The American Prospect, noting that Geithner is explicitly avoiding the simplest and cheapest solution in favor of propping up the current Wall Street regime. The current plan is designed to support a financial architecture that has proven completely ineffective in maintaining the nation's basic economic functions. Geithner has thus far refused to nationalize the big, insolvent U.S. banks and give taxpayers ownership authority in exchange for their financial assistance. Instead, the new Treasury Secretary's proposal devotes $1 trillion to writing insurance policies on bad mortgage assets to encourage private companies to buy those assets from troubled financial firms. This complicated strategy is designed to reduce the amount of money the government will have to pay to save the financial sector by bringing private enterprise into the bailout. However, the sheer convolutedness of the plan makes it much less efficient than temporary nationalization would be. Paul Krugman reports how this too little, too late approach could help turn our banking system into the zombie banks that stalled Japan's economy: Ben Bernanke's testimony over the past two days gives us our best clue yet about where the administration and the Fed are going with bank rescue. And the answer seems to be ... nowhere. Simon Johnson and James Kwak read it the same way I do: This is another sign of the serious brainpower that has been expended on finding ways to avoid or minimise government ownership of banks, and to avoid the slightest possibility of offending shareholders - shareholders whose shares have positive value primarily because of the expectation of a further government bail-out. And The Economist's Free Exchange puts it bluntly: At this stage, I joked, I'd be just as happy with them just saying, "We have a strategy, we will continue to inject capital to prop up zombie banks indefinitely. That's pretty much the whole plan and we're counting on it bringing the financial sector back to life someday, somehow". Is it just me or is that pretty much what Ben Bernanke said yesterday? No, it's not just you. I'd add a political-economy point. Here's Noam Scheiber, in the new TNR economics blog: Yesterday afternoon I spoke to a senior Democratic aide in the Senate who repeatedly emphasized that, the way things stand now, it would be almost impossible to get another cent for the banks. Congress has "bailout fatigue," the aide said. Brad DeLong , Nouriel Roubini and other economists explain that the temporary receivership approach isn't a Soviet-style bureaucracy, but uses government oversight to ensure that banks are strengthened or those that are insolvent have their assets sold off, as Sweden did. As Roubini and Matthew Richardson outlined the basic approach in a seminal Washington Post article, "Nationalize the Banks! We're All Swedes Now": First -- and this is by far the toughest step -- determine which banks are insolvent. Geithner's stress test would be helpful here. The government should start with the big banks that have outside debt, and it should determine which are solvent and which aren't in one fell swoop, to avoid panic. Otherwise, bringing down one big bank will start an immediate run on the equity and long-term debt of the others. It will be a rough ride, but the regulators must stay strong. Second, immediately nationalize insolvent institutions. The equity holders will be wiped out, and long-term debt holders will have claims only after the depositors and other short-term creditors are paid off. Third, once an institution is taken over, separate its assets into good ones and bad ones. The bad assets would be valued at current (albeit depressed) values. Again, as in Geithner's plan, private capital could purchase a fraction of those bad assets. As for the good assets, they would go private again, either through an IPO or a sale to a strategic buyer. The proceeds from both these bad and good assets would first go to depositors and then to debt-holders, with some possible sharing with the government to cover administrative costs. If the depositors are paid off in full, then the government actually breaks even. Fourth, merge all the remaining bad assets into one enterprise. The assets could be held to maturity or eventually sold off with the gains and risks accruing to the taxpayers. The eventual outcome would be a healthy financial system with many new banks capitalized by good assets. Insolvent, too-big-to-fail banks would be broken up into smaller pieces less likely to threaten the whole financial system. Regulatory reforms would also be instituted to reduce the chances of costly future crises. Nationalizing banks is not without precedent. In 1992, the Swedish government took over its insolvent banks, cleaned them up and reprivatized them. Obviously, the Swedish system was much smaller than the U.S. system. Moreover, some of the current U.S. financial institutions are significantly larger and more complex, making analysis difficult. And today's global capital markets make gaming the system easier than in 1992. But we believe that, if applied correctly, the Swedish solution will work here. Of course, "nationalizing" banks is a dirty word in the American political context, and progressives seeking that goal would be well advised to offer different phrases and messaging to be able to sell it to the public, the reluctant Obama administration and Congress. The Nation magazine rightly concludes , "Temporary nationalization of banks is, indeed, the best way for the United States to avoid ending up with a 'lost decade' like Japan in the 1990s. It gets the toxic waste out of the system, and not by robbing the public, making possible the resumption of economic growth. But without stringent safeguards on assets sales and vigorous anti-trust regulations, new rounds of financial pathology will become inevitable." True enough, but how will this bolder approach become reality? Last week, on the Web radio show I co-host, Bernie Horn, a senior fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and Brad DeLong, the noted Berkeley economist (who called in about 50 minutes into the show), explained how progressives can organize to build support for the best parts of Obama's economic plans and make them more effective -- and DeLong carefully explained how banking nationalization can work in America. If mainstream economists and progressives can't help push the Obama administration into taking firmer action to salvage our banking system, Democrats could reap a whirlwind of populist revolt fueled by GOP know-nothingism and genuine grievances. Michael Lind in The Daily Beast wrote a thoughtful, if scary, article pointing out, "If the Obama administration doesn't start to deal with the populist wave headed for Washington, Republicans will tap a reservoir of resentment that could destroy his presidency." Written before Obama's soaring and populist-oriented speech Tuesday night, it's still worth considering because the actions of his economic team so far don't match the rhetoric Obama has used to reflect the anger Americans feel towards the rip-off artists, greedheads and con-men on Wall Street. Lind observed: First they came for the bankers. Then they came for the CEOs. Then they came for the liberals. That might be the epitaph of the Democratic Party, if Democrats cannot learn to surf the tsunami of populism created by the economic earthquake... As more Americans lose their jobs and their homes, as more businesses crater and banks topple, popular anger is rising like a wall of water over a suddenly quiet beachfront resort. You'd think that the Democrats in Washington would be aware of the danger. After all, the massive expansion of Great Society spending in the 1960s, followed by the stagflation of the 1970s, allowed the marginal conservative movement to tap populist anger and dominate American politics for a generation. Substitute stimulus for Great Society and years of possible "stag-deflation" for stagflation, and you have a scenario in which the Obama's overwhelming majority could collapse as quickly as LBJ's. To date, however, the Obama administration has seemed more concerned with reassuring Wall Street that it will be protected against Main Street hotheads than in disciplining Wall Street on behalf of Main Street Americans who have lost jobs, homes, and savings. First Obama appointed an economic team dominated by Robert Rubin proteges, like Timothy Geithner, who were considered safe by the Street. Then Geithner put forth a plan which many economists warn might force the public to pay too much for toxic assets held by the banks... Above all, Obama and the Democratic Congress must refute the idea being spread by Republicans that the trillions of dollars that the federal government will spend are really disguised subsidies for particular Democratic constituencies, from environmentalists to minorities. By stigmatizing Great Society programs as special-interest giveaways, the Republicans built an alliance of conservatives and populists that marginalized liberalism and governed America for a generation. Don't think that they can't do it again. Obama's speech offered hope about the economy, but in the real world of economics and politics, unless the administration can actually get our financial system working with more than gauzy talk about "public-private partnerships" our chances for recovery look grim. We didn't listen to Dr. Doom, Nouriel Roubini, the first time around when he accurately predicted the collapse of the housing bubble and a global recession, so maybe we should pay attention now: Dr. Doom: Nationalizing Banks is 'Market Friendly' Nationalizing insolvent US banks is the best solution to avoid a Japan-like scenario in which 'zombie' financial institutions would eat up public resources while the US economy would teeter on the brink of depression, Nouriel Roubini, economics professor NYU and chairman at RGE Monitor told CNBC Tuesday. Bank shares have fallen on news of abysmal losses and on fears that governments across the world would step in and wipe shareholders out, dragging global stock markets down, but temporary takeover by the state of the sick institutions will insure the survival of the system, Roubini said. "The market friendly solution is temporary nationalization," Roubini told "Worldwide Exchange". "Doing something surgical and radical actually may improve the market sentiment," he said. "If we don't do it, we risk ending up like Japan, that had zombie banks for a decade," he added. Furious banking consolidation that took place in the years preceding the crisis has made matters worse, as it had created banks that were too big to fail but also too big to save, according to Roubini.... "If you don't nationalize them on a temporary basis the fiscal commitments will be bigger," Roubini said. "The alternative is actually a dangerous debt spiral. We risk ending up in a near depression for the US and the global economy if we don't take this radical action as necessary." Is the Obama administration listening to such sensible voices? Let's hope so -- or it could spell trouble for the economy and, hard as it is to believe now, for Democrats as well. | |
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