Are you smarter than a politician?
See if you can’t fix the following sentence:
My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.
See who said it, along with commentary from Dick Cavett, here.
Columns of the Day: Big Changes for the Big 3
For your consideration: three columns about what to do with the Big Three.
Michael Barone sees problems with bailouts and bankruptcy:
And yet the implications of a bailout are frightening. The Detroit Three were unprofitable well before the current financial crisis hit, and GM is reportedly hemorrhaging $1 billion a month. The huge cost of lavish employee and retiree health care benefits, negotiated with the United Auto Workers (UAW), makes it impossible for the companies to sell for a profit anything but the big cars and SUVs that, after gas prices hit $4 a gallon last spring, almost no one wants to buy.
Robert Samuelson argues that a bailout must come with strings attached, including writing down debt, lowering labor costs, and mandated higher gas prices:
To encourage consumers to buy fuel-efficient vehicles, Congress should mandate higher gas prices. Gasoline taxes could be raised gradually (say, a penny a month for four years, possibly offset by other tax cuts).
It’s a sentiment echoed by a pair of contributors to the NY Times, who suggest:
a price floor of $3.50 per gallon on gasoline. If the price drops below that, as it recently has, the federal government would impose a variable tax to bring the price up to $3.50. If the price goes above $3.50, then the tax disappears. The money raised by the variable tax would be used, at least in the short term, to provide loan guarantees to the auto companies. (To ease the burden of higher gasoline prices on low-income taxpayers, some of the revenue would be provided to them as tax credits or vouchers.)
Column of the Day: Charles Blow
If you’re going to learn how to synthesize textual and graphic sources, you need to read Charles Blow’s columns and blog. Last week, he examined how minority groups have voted for Republicans since the Reagan Administration.
Extra Credit Alert!
WANTED: Copies of Wednesday’s Grand Rapids Press (just the first section). Will trade for extra credit. Will also accept first sections of other Wednesday papers. Bring them in Friday if you have them!
How satirists vote
Christopher Buckley explains it all for you in today’s Daily Beast. Here’s a clue:
Satirists can work with earnest, but it’s not a long-hanging fruit by any means. We prefer, well, something broader. A president who can’t speak English, say, or who talks to God and launches cockamamie wars.
Column of the Day
Bob Herbert expresses what many Republicans, including former MI governor William Milliken, have come to realize about the Grand Old Party:
Voting has consequences.
I don’t for a moment think that the Democratic Party has been free of egregious problems. But there are two things I find remarkable about the G.O.P., and especially its more conservative wing, which is now about all there is.
The first is how wrong conservative Republicans have been on so many profoundly important matters for so many years. The second is how the G.O.P. has nevertheless been able to persuade so many voters of modest means that its wrongheaded, favor-the-rich, country-be-damned approach was not only good for working Americans, but was the patriotic way to go.
Column of the Day – Black Friday Edition
It’s the “Moment of Truth” on Wall Street today. Paul Krugman proposes what should have been done, and what needs to be done this weekend:
But on Wednesday the British government, showing the kind of clear thinking that has been all too scarce on this side of the pond, announced a plan to provide banks with £50 billion in new capital — the equivalent, relative to the size of the economy, of a $500 billion program here — together with extensive guarantees for financial transactions between banks. And U.S. Treasury officials now say that they plan to do something similar, using the authority they didn’t want but Congress gave them anyway.
Column of the Day – Roger Cohen
“Never again” is an emotionally charged phrase, and Roger Cohen takes Sarah Palin to task for using it in reference to the mortgage crisis. Well done.
