Sun Columnist Ron Smith: ". . . many Republicans, being members of the Stupid Party . . ."

Ron Smith, A Baltimore Sun columnist, has written (April 30 2010) that the new Arizona immigration law is "rational." But Ron neglected to mention that the Republican State Senator who introduced the bill, complained in an e-mail to his supporters about "a world in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races."

GOP Senator Russell Pearce went on to assert that the Holocaust never happened ("the Jewish 'Holocaust' tale") and decried "non-White aliens" entering the US.

(For the Pearce e-mail, see www.RealityChex.com and also the Rachel Maddow Show transcript, posted at:http://www.blogforarizona.com/blog/2010/04/racist-roots-of-russell-pearces-regressive-antiimmigrant-laws.html)

Is the Arizona law rational? or racist? GOP Senator Pearce, who introduced it, has given us his answer.


NOTE: According to Wikipedia's Russell Pierce page, the e-mail in question was an item he forwarded to a lsit of his supporters, before he had read it completely, and that he promptly apologized for it, saying: "Ugly the words contained in it really are. They are not mine and I disavow them completely. Worse still, the website links to a group whose politics are the ugliest imaginable." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Pearce


NOTE 2: Sen. Pierce has introduced legislation in the AZ Senate which is aimed at disbanded Mexican American and Black student groups, on the theory that university students should be prohibited by law from creating or joining groups that are based wholly or in part on the race of their membership, such as the Black Business Students Assoc or the Mexican American study program.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Pearce

Peter Schmuck: Davey Johnson "resigned because of a personality conflict with owner Peter Angelos."

By way of explaining why the Baltimore Orioles currently are 2-15, sports columnist Peter Schmuck considers "the curse" of Davey Johnson. Schmck's full quote is: "The Orioles haven't had a winning season since Johnson's 1997 team went wire -to-wire to win the American League East and he was named AL manager of the year on the same day he resigned because of a personality conflict with owner Peter Angelos." ("Have O's Gone from Bad to Cursed?" Baltimore Sun, April 21, 2010, Sports, page 2.) 


A personality conflict? Whaa? Did Bernie Madoff have a "personality conflict" with his investors?   


In 1997, Davey Johnson wanted out of Baltimore, a small-market town. Johnson wanted to void his contract with the Orioles. The Johnson answer was to create a serious issue of trust with owner Peter Angelos. 


So, Johnson manufactured a problem with Angelos, the man who had hired him and who was putting up multiple millions to field a team of superior ball players for Johnson to manage. 


To get out of Baltimore, Davey Johnson began to solicit contributions to his wife's foundation from the players Johnson managed. When Orioles management objected, Johnson denounced Angelos and got himself fired. 


This manager-driven crisis created a quandary for Peter Angelos. Johnson's talent as a manager gave him leverage in the baseball business. How, then, can a business owner avoid putting multiple millions in the hands of a talented but egotistical jerk?   


Angelos fixed this problem by recognizing he could control the talent question if not the ego question. Realizing this, Angelos made a decision that has saved him probably half a billion dollars and which ought to be studied in business schools: if your revenue is the same, hire people with little talent. That way, even if they are jerks, they gotta behave.


Since 1997, the Orioles have hired only marginal managers and mostly marginal players. These managers are so grateful for a job they would never dare to buck Angelos. They know no other team wanted their services. As for the Orioles players hired since 1997, most of them are so ordinary they would be cutting short their own miraculous careers, if they ever complained that Orioles management had no intention of fielding a quality product.  


Why put up millions upon millions to field a talented team when some jerk can mess it up in a weekend? The answer: save the multiple millions. Put up enough to field an average or even a below-average team and pocket the $50 million a year or so that otherwise is at jerk-risk. That is a good business decision, since the media revenues are the same whether the team wins or not.


Pete Schmuck, got it partly right. The current below average team  goes back to Davey Johnson. But there is no "curse." There is simply the owner of a business, having made a mistake once, by entrusting a fortune to a venture that is subject to jerk-risk.


Mr. Schmuck, you probably would have done the same thing Angelos did. Me too. The team has sucked for more than a decade but the owner is half a billion richer.   









    

Former President Bill Clinton:"sometimes people with a lot of money make stupid decisions,"

Former President Bill Clinton, in an April 18 2010 ABC TV interview said: "sometimes people with a lot of money make stupid decisions." This, by way of explaining - 10 years too late - why he wishes he had tried harder to regulate derivatives - such as credit default swaps (near worthless mortgages backed up by nothing).


Bill, sometimes folks with money, such as bankers, who handle our money, too, need to be watched. It's called oversight.


In 1933, FDR and the Congress created the Glass-Steagall Act, which distinguished commercial banks (which loan $$ to you and me) and investment banks (Wall Street), which engage in speculative trading. Glass-Steagall mandated greater oversight of the investment houses.


In 1999, Republican Senator Phil Gramm and his two GOP buds, Rep Jim Leach and Rep. Tom Bliley attached their 262 page Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act to a year-end omnibus appropriations bill. Their bill made possible the 2008 financial meltdown, because investment banks, after 1999, were able to merge with commercial banks and all were deregulated when buying-selling-investing in derivatives. First came the bank mega-mergers, then came the credit default swaps -- all on the watch of our sleep-walking unelected GOP Pres. George Bush.  


Everyone now says there was simply no way, back in 1999, for Senator Gramm's colleagues to read the 262-page add-on bill in time to do anything about it. Just too much ink, I suppose. Too many pages.


Well here's an internet answer. Post every bill that's introduced and attach change-detection software. Then, amendments can be flagged and we won't have to worry quite so much about venal or sleepy Senators, or Presidents who would like to think that rich people are smarter and more ethical than the rest of us.  
    

"After consulting the pope, I wrote a letter to the bishop, congratulating him as a model of a father who does not turn in his children."

So said Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos (Colombia), 

explaining why he had sent a 2001 letter to French Bishop 
Pierre Pican of Bayeux-Lisieux. Bishop Pican had just 
received a suspended prison sentence for his failure to 
report to French authorities the criminal conduct of a priest, 
otherwise discovered, who had been tried and condemned 
as a pedophile. (The priest, Rene Bissey, was sentenced 
to 18 years in jail in 2000  for sexually abusing 11 boys.) 

In his letter, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, then head of the 
Vatican office charged with worldwide supervision of priests,
wrote to Bishop Pican, "I congratulate you for not 
denouncing a priest to the civil administration." You 
have acted well and I am pleased to have a colleague
in the episcopate who, in the eyes of history and of 
all other bishops in the world, preferred prison to 
denouncing his son and priest."

Now that the Cardinal's letter has received publicity, 
the 81 year old prelate has said that the Bishop could 
not have reported the priest, as the sexual activity 
with young boys had come to light in the Confessional. 
But then, why emphasize in a letter publicized by the 
Vatican itself on the internet, that the Bishop that 
correctly protected, not a penitent in the confessional 
but rather "his son and priest." 

Vatican officialdumb wishes to tell us how to think 
but is scandalously unable to think through to a 
correct conclusion, how to protect children from 
those entrusted with their care, but who are known 
by their clerical supervisors to become sexually 
aroused by adolescent kids.

(Quotations taken from "Cardinal Justifies Praise 
for French Bishop's Silence Over Abuses Priest." 
AFP, April 18 2010) 

"I'm not necessarily buying into the predicate that it has to be paid for." Robert Ehrlich

"I'm not necessarily buying into the predicate that it has to be paid for," Ehrlich said. "I don't buy into the idea that when you tax a good or service at a higher level you're going to get more dollars because typically you're going to get less dollars."  -- Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. , responding to a reporter's question about how Ehrlich intended to cover revenues lost by his announced plan to reduce Maryland's sales tax. - Reported April 16 2010, by First Click - Maryland Politics (Washington Post) 


Candidate Ehrlich wants to tout a tax cut without having to explain where he would come up with the reduced income - or even if there would be a reduction - or even if there had ever been an increse in revenue since the sales tax was increased. Hmmm. 


Maybe he expects to garner votes in his third run for Governor of Maryland, simply for using "predicate" in a sentence . . .