what if?

The Man That Got Away

Great song, great actress, great film.

Enjoy!

One Day at a Time

One of the most depressing, pessimistic, negative and plain old unappealing books I have ever read is Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed.  Ms. Ehrenreich goes "undercover" as an entry level worker, and reports how incredibly difficult it is for people at the lower rungs to get by.

While I would never argue that people who earn hourly wages at Wal-Mart, fill orders at Wendy's or clean rooms at Hampton Inn don't have serious struggles, Ms. Ehrenreich's book was a joke.  Part of her undercover stint took place in my hometown, Minneapolis.  Thus, it was easy to see that the author didn't really want to be successful.  She never tried to improve her positions, get superior housing, bargain for better anything at all.  She was surly and rude to most with whom she met - be it co-workers, superiors or clerks where she was trying to find decent but inexpensive housing.  Worst of all - she didn't like pet birds!  Can you imagine...

In any case, today I read the flip side of this embodiment of suffering: Homeless in South Carolina.  Here, a young man tries an experiment of starting out with virtually nothing; $25 and the clothes on his body.  Yet, despite having almost nothing whatsoever, this young man tells a story of hard work and hope, resulting in vindication, success and savings.

During his first 70 days in Charleston, Shepard lived in a shelter and received food stamps. He also made new friends, finding work as a day laborer, which led to a steady job with a moving company.

Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved close to $5,000.

The effort, he says, was inspired after reading "Nickel and Dimed," in which author Barbara Ehrenreich takes on a series of low-paying jobs. Unlike Ms. Ehrenreich, who chronicled the difficulty of advancing beyond the ranks of the working poor, Shepard found he was able to successfully climb out of his self-imposed poverty.

He tells his story in "Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream." The book, he says, is a testament to what ordinary Americans can achieve.

People who get "Nickel and Dimed" should burn it as being dangerous.  Instead, they should read these words:

Would your project have changed if you'd had child-care payments or been required to report to a probation officer? Wouldn't that have made it much harder?

The question isn't whether I would have been able to succeed. I think it's the attitude that I take in: "I've got child care. I've got a probation officer. I've got all these bills. Now what am I going to do? Am I going to continue to go out to eat and put rims on my Cadillac? Or am I going to make some things happen in my life...?" One guy, who arrived [at the shelter] on a Tuesday had been hit by a car on [the previous] Friday by a drunk driver. He was in a wheelchair. He was totally out of it. He was at the shelter. And I said, "Dude, your life is completely changed." And he said, "Yeah, you're right, but I'm getting the heck out of here." Then there was this other guy who could walk and everything was good in his life, but he was just kind of bumming around, begging on the street corner. To see the attitudes along the way, that is what my story is about.

You made it out of the shelter, got a job, and opened a bank account. Did you meet other people who had similar experiences?

Oh, absolutely. We don't need "Scratch Beginnings" to know that millions of Americans are creating a life for themselves from nothing.... Just as millions of Americans are not getting by. There are both ends of the spectrum.

To meet that guy [in the wheelchair] at the shelter, [makes you wonder] 'Can he get out and go to college and become a doctor?' Maybe, maybe not. I think he can set goals..... You can use your talents. That's why, from the beginning, I set very realistic goals: $2,500, a job, car. This isn't a "rags-to-riches million-dollar" story. This is very realistic. I truly believe, based on what I saw at the shelter ...that anyone can do that.

Success is achieved by doing what you need to do to be successful - and by believing that you can achieve and do better.  It is achieved by doing as well as you can, one day at a time.

Speaking of Cash

In my most recent post, I referred to the cool cash that at least one of the Democrat candidates is spreading around her community.

Cash abounds in the Democratic world!  My liberal friends squeal about the money that they believe transfers from Republicans to big biz.  It's true - and that is part of why many of us who want small government desire such.  If the money doesn't come in, it can't go anywhere.

If you think that Republicans are the only ones who like to throw money around, however - please quickly be disabused of this notion.

Many of the superdelegates who could well decide the Democratic presidential nominee have already been plied with campaign contributions by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, a new study shows.

"While it would be unseemly for the candidates to hand out thousands of dollars to primary voters, or to the delegates pledged to represent the will of those voters, elected officials serving as superdelegates have received about $890,000 from Obama and Clinton in the form of campaign contributions over the last three years," the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics reported today.

About half the 800 superdelegates -- elected officials, party leaders, and others -- have committed to either Clinton or Obama, though they can change their minds until the convention.

Obama's political action committee has doled out more than $694,000 to superdelegates since 2005, the study found, and of the 81 who had announced their support for Obama, 34 had received donations totaling $228,000.

Clinton's political action committee has distributed about $195,000 to superdelegates, and only 13 of the 109 who had announced for her have received money, totaling about $95,000.

My thanks to Duane at Black Informant for the link.

McCain Abstained

Are you one of those who says there's not a dime's worth of difference between the Republican and Democrat candidates?

If so - well, viva la difference.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure more than $340 million worth of home-state projects in last year's spending bills, placing her among the top 10 Senate recipients of what are commonly known as earmarks, according to a new study by a nonpartisan budget watchdog group.

Working with her New York colleagues in nearly every case, Clinton supported almost four times as much spending on earmarked projects as her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), whose $91 million total placed him in the bottom quarter of senators who seek earmarks, the study showed.

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the likely GOP presidential nominee, was one of five senators to reject earmarks entirely, part of his long-standing view that such measures prompt needless spending.

Minneapolis Enters the 21st Century

Backwards.  Behind the times.  Ah - the shame of it all, living up here in the prehistoric northwoods.

Finally, however, civilization comes to the Twin Cities!

Naked sushi is hitting the Twin Cities. Nyotaimori / Nantaimori - eating sushi off a naked (or nearly) naked woman or man started in Japan and made its way to Berlin, London, Paris, New York, Chicago and L.A. - a fad that was even highlighted in an episode of "CSI: New York."

Now Tom Pham has scheduled a naked sushi night at his downtown Minneapolis restaurant, Temple, on March 8 from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m.

"We have everything in Minneapolis except one thing and that's naked sushi," says Phan, who booked eight models - six women and two men - for the event. These models have everything to do with whether naked sushi (aka body sushi) is viewed as sexy, tacky or just plain gross. "They have to be flawless and absolutely hairless," says Phan. "That's why we need to book more than we'll need - just in case one of them gets a pimple."

Lying on a table with only a few flowers and banana leaves in strategic places while diners pluck tuna and salmon nigiri sushi from your body also requires skill. "They're in training right now," says Pham. "They have to learn to lie still and breathe in a different way."

Seeking Justice

Attempting to achieve absolute equity and fairness in our justice system is impossible.  I could list a dozens reasons why this is so - and I doubt that many would seriously argue with me that it is so.

Still, that we can never achieve perfection is not a reason not to reach for that goal.  When we see clear injustices and flaws in our system, we should do whatever we can to correct them.

For many years, I have believed that our drug laws are unfair in many ways, and ultimately cause far more pain and problems in our society than they correct.  Today, former Republican congressmen J.C. Watts and Asa Hutchinson make a powerful plea to institute these changes.

Congress created a federal criminal penalty structure for the possession and distribution of crack cocaine that is 100 times more severe than the penalty structure relating to powder cocaine. African Americans comprise more than 80 percent of federal crack cocaine offenders. That statistic does not make sense given that two-thirds of all users of crack are white or Hispanic. The disparity in the arrest, prosecution and treatment has led to inordinately harsh sentences disproportionately meted out to African American defendants that are far more severe than sentences for comparable offenses by white defendants. Indeed, the U.S. Sentencing Commission reported that revising this one sentencing rule would do more to reduce the sentencing gap between blacks and whites "than any other single policy change."

The truth is that for years our legal system has enforced an unfair approach to sentencing of federal crack cocaine offenders. The attorney general's approach will perpetuate this unfairness. As Judge Reggie Walton, who represents the Federal Judicial Conference, said, "I just don't see how it's fair that someone sentenced on October 30th gets a certain sentence when someone sentenced on November 1 gets another."

And it makes no sense that somebody arrested for a crack cocaine offense should receive a substantially longer prison term than somebody who is convicted of a powder cocaine offense. When disparities like this exist it offends the high principles of equal treatment under the law and fundamental fairness. The disparate racial impact of the sentencing rules undermines our nation's larger goal of instilling respect for the criminal justice system.

These changes will not secure judicial nirvana.  They will, however, move us a little closer.

Free Will

As a philosophy student, issues of free will were some of the most complex and intriguing that I studied.  Is free will real or a chimera?  If real, is it always applicable?  How do we judge such questions?

At one of my favorite blogs, The Volokh Conspiracy, guest blogger Adam Kolber addresses these topics with a fascinating example.

Consider the subject of this medical case study, who had no prior history of unusual sexual behavior. At around age 40, he began to demonstrate pedophilic behaviors (e.g., he made sexual advances toward his prepubescent stepdaughter). The man was found guilty of child molestation and given the opportunity to successfully complete a sexual addiction treatment program in lieu of going to jail. Unfortunately, he made sexual advances toward others in the treatment program and was forced to leave the program. Prior to being sent to jail, he complained of severe headaches and was taken to the hospital. Doctors soon discovered that he had a brain tumor in his orbitofrontal cortex. After the tumor was surgically removed, his sexual behavior returned to normal. You have to read the full case study for all the details. The bottom line, though, is that the study authors think it quite likely that the tumor played a causal role in the subject’s inappropriate behavior.

Many of my students have the intuition that the man should not be deemed criminally responsible for his sexual activities while he had the tumor. He is certainly not responsible for having the tumor, and it seems like the crime would not have happened but for the tumor. In most jurisdictions, however, I think the subject would be unlikely to mount a successful insanity defense.

It has been argued for ages that if one is incapable of exercising rational free will, but has made choices to lose the ability to exercise rational free will, that one is still responsible for bad outcomes that may occur in such situations.  Should someone whose brain is malfunctioning, however, be considered someone who had a choice in resulting bad behavior?

Do check out the the blog and Kolber's more recent posts. 

"If We Had Some Global Warming"

Please, if you have any humanity in you - do your part to add just a bit to global warming today.

It's important.

Voting With Your Feet

One of my liberal friends routinely rails at me for being such a selfish, uncaring conservative.   When I remind him, though, that he is the one who moved from Minnesota to Florida because he "could not afford the taxes" in his former home state, and I am the one who remains here - I hear mumbling about temperatures and golf.  (With temps seemingly stuck in the "your-nose-will-freeze-and-fall-off-your-face-if-you-go-out-for-more-than-three-minutes" range, I'll give him the temperature argument.)

People do move for weather and sports, for culture and family.  Nevertheless, if you look at the data, clearly some percentage of people move because they judge it costs them just too damn much to live in their high tax state.

We invite readers to visit the U-Haul Moving Company Web site (www.uhaul.com), where you can type in a pair of U.S. cities to learn what it costs to move from point A to B. If you want to move, say, from Austin, Texas to Southern California, the moving van will cost you $407 to rent. But if you want to move out of California to Austin, the same van costs $1,831. A move from Dallas to Philadelphia costs $663, versus $2,433 to swap homes in the other direction. The biggest discrepancy we could find was $557 from Nashville, Tennessee to Los Angeles, but the trip costs nearly eight times more, or $4,285, to move to Nashville from L.A.

I'm someone who believes in fiscal responsibilty.  You need reasonable services to have a pleasant and safe community, and you need some taxation to pay for those services and safety.  Politicians should remember these words of wisdom, however:

Our friends on the left say Americans are willing to pay more taxes to get better government services, but their migration patterns reveal the opposite. Governors would be wise to heed these interstate migration trends as they try to cope with what may be one of the worst years in recent memory for state finances. The people who tend to be the most mobile in American society are the educated and motivated -- in other words, the taxpaying class. Tax them too much, and you'll soon find they aren't there to tax at all.

Applause!

One of my dearest friends has been a reporter most of her adult life.  When she worked at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, she covered features, fashion and food.  (The latter added untold pounds to my frame, though all heartily enjoyed, I assure you.  Nothing like being "my companion had .....") 

Too long ago, she moved to Chicago and joined the Chicago Tribune, where she reported on a wide variety of news, but truly shown at human interest stories.

Author of several books, contributor to many magazines, my friend Bonnie Miller Rubin is a talented writer, fine reporter, warm and witty - and a truly special friend.  Congrats on your award, Bonnie!  Here are the opening remarks prior to your acceptance!

This writer brings the stuff of everyday lives to the pages of the Tribune.

She described how a parent goes about taking a favorite toy away from a child when it's tained with lead.

She took us on a heart-warming tour through a 50-year-old bundle of long-lost letters from a soldier in Korea to the sweetheart he left at home on the Southwest Side.

She introduced us to a Hinsdale woman who celebrated her first Mother's Day after four years of infertility treatments.

In something  as routine as the government's annual list of the 1,000 top baby names, she explained why Betty is out and Ava is in, and why Vivian is on the fast track.

For all the heart and life she brings to the Chicago Tribune, the award goes to Bonnie Miller Rubin.

Sex Change Operation, Anyone?

After reading this, boy; do I want to disown being a woman or what?  (Warning; do have an air sickness bag nearby prior to clicking on the link!)

Looking at the choices, we began, by rote, to reach up toward the candidate we liked the most, or respected most deeply, or felt was the most competent, or had settled on as the lesser of two evils.

And then, our hands stretched out, we froze. We realized, in a moment of quiet joy – we could vote for a woman.

Someone like us. A woman as equally derided as loved, yes. A woman full of flaws and virtues, yes. A woman who, like so many of her generation, seems to have worked harder than any man to arrive where she is.

A woman who, as we would see in the news later, made a questionable wardrobe choice that day. A woman who probably longed to talk to her husband and daughter as she spent the day with strangers.

A woman who seems to believe that we can do better, for ourselves and for each other. An imperfect woman, just like us. A woman.

And so, we wept – one tear wiped briskly away, or floods shed, not so dissimilar to how she had cried herself, just a few weeks ago. And we had the thought, so rare in America these long, difficult days, of patriotism, thinking: Look how far we’ve come.

Incentives

The behavior of humans can be altered with incentives.  What motivates us, though, is not identical for all.  Find the right incentive, and you can encourage someone to change their behavior.  Conversely, different incentives can promote an unwillingness to change.

In general, most of us believe that earning a higher income is beneficial for workers.  But, what are we do make of this?

The poverty trap is still very much a reality in the U.S. A woman called me out of the blue last week and told me her self-sufficiency counselor had suggested she get in touch with me. She had moved from a $25,000 a year job to a $35,000 a year job, and suddenly she couldn’t make ends meet any more. I told her I didn’t know what I could do for her, but agreed to meet with her. She showed me all her pay stubs etc. She really did come out behind by several hundred dollars a month. She lost free health insurance and instead had to pay $230 a month for her employer-provided health insurance. Her rent associated with her section 8 voucher went up by 30% of the income gain (which is the rule). She lost the ($280 a month) subsidized child care voucher she had for after-school care for her child. She lost around $1600 a year of the EITC. She paid payroll tax on the additional income. Finally, the new job was in Boston, and she lived in a suburb. So now she has $300 a month of additional gas and parking charges. She asked me if she should go back to earning $25,000.

Do you see easy solutions?  I do not.  Aiding those who are earning at the lower rungs so that they continue to work rather than receive pure welfare benefits seems sensible.  What do we say to a woman like this, however, who perversely, was clearly doing better when her income was more than 25% less than what she earned from a large raise? 

Of course, we cannot have large subsidies ad infinitum.  What, then, are the answers?

The Best Result Possible

Do you want the best possible result?  Sure; don't we all? 

When I play bridge, we frequently say:  "I didn't get the best possible result.  But - I got the best result possible."  Sometimes, the best possible result is impossible to get.  And - you don't always get what you want.

These very important lessons are highlighted in this spot-on essay from the Weekly Standard:  The Inconvenient Truths of 2008.

Each party's base has two inconvenient truths it doesn't want to hear. For Republicans, those truths concern immigration and the culture war. Most of today's illegal immigrant population is here to stay (along with their descendants) and will pay no significant price for getting here outside the legal channels. No presidential candidate can change those facts. On the issue that matters most to conservative Christians--abortion--the political phase of the culture war is over. The right lost --a pro-life initiative failed in South Dakota in 2006: If it can't win there, it can't win anywhere. Well, maybe Utah.

For Democrats, the relevant subjects are Iraq and federal spending. Discussions of the Iraq war in Democratic primaries have a bizarre quality: Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama speak as though the war is a lost cause. It isn't--unless one of them wins the election and pulls the plug, a scenario that Iran's proxies no doubt await eagerly. As for spending, the federal budget (and federal tax revenues) will leave no room for large, expensive, New Deal-style health and education programs. For the foreseeable future, domestic policymaking will have more to do with arranging incentives than with dispensing largesse: Think welfare reform, not Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

If Republicans fail to understand their unpleasant truths, they will lose in November, and lose badly. Democrats might win even if their heads remain in the sand: It's a Democratic year, as a comparison between the two parties' fundraising, turnout, and vote totals in the primaries to date suggests. But they will lose the chance to have the kind of public debate that shapes government policy--meaning, the kind that is based on truth, convenient and otherwise.

Will we elect a leader who tells us the truth - even if those truths are not what we want, and not what we want to hear?

Sad to say, the candidate who most often tells unhappy truths may not turn out to be the candidate who wins the most votes. Elections are not always won by truth-tellers; deception sometimes carries the day. John F. Kennedy, whose presidency is often invoked these days, won a close national election by describing an imaginary gap between the Soviet Union's arsenal of missiles and our own. If something similar happens this year, if the next president wins by promising limitless spending with limited taxes or a costless retreat in Iraq, voters should not blame the winning candidate. In politics as in markets, customers rule; we usually get the leaders we want. The trick is to want the right leaders. We might start by asking who tells us the truth--even, or especially, when it hurts.

You get what you pay for.  What will we be purchasing come November?

First They Came for My French Fries

Then my rare cheeseburgers.  My eggs Benedict, and my bagels.

Now they want my Diet Dr. Pepper, too.

I Approve This Message

From the moment I purchased "Managing Your Money" software many years ago, I realized that Andrew Tobias is a very smart and very amusing fellow.  Later, I discovered that Andy is also warm, friendly and has a huge heart.  Despite being a huge business and DNC celebrity (he's the DNC's treasurer), he frequently takes times to email-correspond with lil' ol' me.

Often, Andy and I disagree on a multitude of policy issues.  Nevertheless, on at least one issue, we are quite in agreement:  gay folks deserve the same rights and responsibilities as the rest of us.

While Andy happens to be gay, I am not.  Neither is Jon Kislak, a Floridian active in Republican politics.  Mr. Kislak, Andy, I and many others appreciate that your sexual orientation should not be an obstacle to enjoying the same civil rights that heterosexuals have.  While I seem unable to put in an excerpt at what if?, please do go to Andy's site to see what Mr. Kislak has to say.  (Just a little warning; you'll have to scroll down a lot of pro-DNC stuff before you get to it.  Forewarned is forearmed! :))

Jimmy Carter is Right

Rare is the day that I agree with Jimmy Carter on a topic. 

This, however, is that day.

Carter and James Baker III have written an op/ed about voter I.D.  This kinda says it all:

In the meantime, the Supreme Court can lead the way on the voter ID issue. It has the opportunity to inspire the states, our national leaders and the entire country to bridge the partisan divide on a matter that is important to our democracy. It can support voter ID laws that make it easy to vote but tough to cheat.

If we need ID to cash a check, get a cell phone, board a plane, etc., etc., surely one of our most precious rights should require identification, too.  But let us not make the requirements too difficult that people are disenfranchised for unfair reasons. 

A Chicken in Every Pot

Have you ever met a politician who didn't make promises that could not be delivered?  I haven't, either.

Of course, there are promises... and then there are promises.

If you are someone with an adjustable rate mortgage who has run aground, then you might like Hillary Clinton's promise to freeze interest rates for five years.  If you're all the rest of us, however....

The Clinton proposal is a blunt tool applied too broadly to problems that are, in principle, contained and specific. Only 3.1 percent of prime (good credit) ARM loans are seriously (90 days or more) delinquent. The disconcerting delinquency rate of 16 percent is for the subprime sector--which is alarming, to be sure, but 84 percent are not seriously delinquent. Over the last three years there was an unusually large volume of aggressive lending activity with flaws at several levels. Some borrowers were led into loans they did not understand. These people deserve some concern. Other loans were made to speculators who do not live in the homes and were betting that house prices would continue to go up. The inhabitants of these homes deserve our concern, but the investors do not. It is now clear that there were too few checks and controls to assure reasonable loan underwriting practices (for example, no escrow accounts for taxes and insurance) or even good recordkeeping.

An accurate assessment of the current mortgage problem would probably reveal no more than 700,000 loans with distressed borrowers. Why, then, would the U.S. government rewrite eleven million loans, or even all 3.4 million subprime mortgages? Any intervention should be targeted at the borrowers who are truly in trouble, especially those who were likely duped by unscrupulous mortgage lenders. The numbers suggest these victims are disproportionately poor, young, and African American. Looking forward, the government needs to take steps to make this market more transparent and make it easier for borrowers to make good choices. But it would be irresponsible to do this by ruling millions of legal contracts null and void.

Senator Clinton's policy amounts to a command-and-control approach to economic policy in which the government announces prices and tells suppliers what to produce. Undertaking such an intervention can only raise interest rates on mortgages (and maybe other interest rates as well) as markets attempt to incorporate risk premiums to cope with possible future interventions. Promising the American people that you can fix things by just lowering their interest rates is dishonest, a fairy tale that won't come true.

I'm all for examining various remedies to modify the pain from the current mortgage and housing difficulties.  Yet, the notion that we should undertake to destroy contracts and the relationships between investors and lenders is a bit frightening.

Of course, I find a lot about Senator Clinton to be on the frightening side....

Vote for Hillary

It's important!  Please... pretty please.  Republicans for Hillary!  I am one of 'em.

Hillary entered the race saddled with inherent weaknesses. She has the kind of negative ratings candidates usually have only after the battering of a general-election campaign, not before. Her political persona ranges from grim to charmless. She may relentlessly call herself an "agent of change," but she's emblematic of an entire era of search-and-destroy partisan politics.

She is the Tony Robbins of negative Republican motivation. At a town-hall meeting in Derry, N.H., back in January, Mitt Romney tried to stir the crowd in the immediate wake of Barack Obama's victory in Iowa: "We cannot afford Barack Obama as the next president." About two people applauded. The next day he mentioned Obama again, but added, "I can't wait to meet Hillary Clinton face to face." Sustained applause.

"She has tremendous baggage, high negatives, and she can't be the candidate of change," says a top Republican strategist who pines for her to be the nominee.

Obama may give inspiring speeches at campaign events thronged by thousands, but for Republicans, there's only one candidate of hope: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Who's Your Candidate?

My sister sent me this short quiz today.  Sometimes they seem a waste of time - but - this one did appear to fairly accurately represent my views.

	John McCain Score: 44	Agree Iraq Immigration Taxes Stem-Cell Research Health Care Social Security Line-Item Veto Energy Marriage Environment	Disagree Abortion Death Penalty Gun Control Education
	Ron Paul Score: 28	Agree Taxes Stem-Cell Research Health Care Energy Marriage Death Penalty Environment Education	Disagree Iraq Immigration Abortion Social Security Line-Item Veto Gun Control
	Mitt Romney Score: 22	Agree Iraq Taxes Health Care Line-Item Veto Gun Control Environment	Disagree Immigration Stem-Cell Research Abortion Social Security Energy Marriage Death Penalty Education
	Mike Gravel Score: 20	Agree Immigration Abortion Marriage Death Penalty	Disagree Iraq Taxes Stem-Cell Research Health Care Social Security Line-Item Veto Energy Gun Control Environment Education
	Barack Obama Score: 19	Agree Immigration Abortion Marriage	Disagree Iraq Taxes Stem-Cell Research Health Care Social Security Line-Item Veto Energy Death Penalty Gun Control Environment Education
	Hillary Clinton Score: 19	Agree Immigration Abortion Marriage	Disagree Iraq Taxes Stem-Cell Research Health Care Social Security Line-Item Veto Energy Death Penalty Gun Control Environment Education
	Mike Huckabee Score: 16	Agree Stem-Cell Research Health Care Social Security Line-Item Veto	Disagree Iraq Immigration Taxes Abortion Energy Marriage Death Penalty Gun Control Environment Education

Enjoy!

Extra Baggage

  United has announced that it will charge some flyers if they wish to check a second bag.  $25 is the expected tab if you don't travel light.

I wonder; what will the charge be for Hillary's extra baggage?

Questions about Hillary's role in the Clinton administration, and about Bill's business and philanthropic ventures since he left office, are not just fair but necessary.

Why won't the Clintons speed up the release of White House papers that would let us see what kind of authority Hillary Clinton enjoyed? Who donated how much to the Clinton presidential library, and might those donors expect anything from a Hillary Clinton administration? What business tycoons have snuggled up to the former president, and what -- other than the chance to bask in the radiance of his wit -- did they hope to get out of the exercise?

Would Bill return to his foundation and its high-profile international projects? If so, would that work be coordinated with Hillary's foreign policy? Could donors be sure that the foundation's priorities were still being set independently, in accord with what they were told when they wrote the check?

It's natural to ask whether Bill Clinton is grasping at the chance for an Act II of his presidency to redeem the Clinton name from the impeachment scandal. It's also natural to ask whether he's capable of playing second fiddle to anyone, even his wife.

Hillary Clinton had to know she was bringing this baggage along when she boarded the train. She'll be stuck with it the rest of the way.