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What you may not know about the Midtown deal

Most everyone seems ecstatic about the idea of Midtown Mall coming down to make room for the world headquarters of Paetec Communications. That happiness may be well placed, but some aspects of the project bother me.

First of all, the city isn't going to the owners of the property and negotiating a purchase. Instead, they're condemning the buildings and offering fair-market value. I don't like this approach; I don't see it as the government's role to snatch a property and decide what to do with it. If Paetec wants to build their headquarters downtown, why don't they go to the owners of the property and make an offer? The answer to that brings me to my next point.

This project is being completed on your dime. At least $50 million in state money will be spent tearing it down, and an untold sum will be paid by the city to purchase the 9-acre site. This will also certainly be in the tens of millions of taxpayer dollars. So, Paetec will get a nice shovel-ready site at your expense.

My final problem with this whole thing kind of summarizes the first two. I don't like the government taking the lead in these economic development initiatives. It seems to rarely end well, and it's almost always a band aid for a host of other bad government policies, namely high taxes. We don't need to have long memories to recall such initiatives in Rochester. The millions that Bill Johnson's administration poured with blind faith into High Falls and the Fast Ferry became his sad legacy.

For all of these reasons, I think Duffy is taking a pretty big chance here. Don't get me wrong; I really hope it pays off. But even if the ends do justify the means after the final hammer swings on this thing, I'll still be just a bit squeamish about the means.

Clinton throws more crap against the wall to see if it will stick

Hillary Clinton seems determined to throw out as many ideas for new entitlements as she can in very rapid succession. Now that people have generally rejected her ridiculous idea to give every baby born in the US a bond for $5,000, Hillary has abandoned that in favor of a $1,000 matching tax credit for lower income families who contribute to a 401(k) retirement account. She would fund this latest entitlement (estimated at $25 billion per year) by taxing estates worth $7 million or more.
This is, of course, just more socialist entitlement crap. I guess she'll wait to see whether this one sticks to the wall (i.e., what the pollsters tell her in a few days). A John Edwards mouthpiece actually had a good quote, saying that "apparently, new polling data seems to have pressured the Clinton campaign to throw out the baby bond with the bathwater."
One of the most interesting aspects of this to me is that Clinton is still dead set against the idea of any privatization of Social Security. She's busy assuring people now that this new tax credit will not replace Social Security, but rather supplement it. Apparently it's OK to give people money for them to "gamble" on their retirement as long as they do it with shiny new entitlement money.
Stay tuned for more ideas from Hillary on how to give away more and more of your money. Hey, some of it's bound to stick, right?

Stossel brings some common sense to the healthcare debate

John Stossel's 20/20 special "Whose Body is it Anyway?: Sick in America" is a fantastic piece of television journalism in what I see as a pretty sad age for that profession. I've always liked Stossel, not because his views often align with my conservative sensibilities, but because he just makes sense. I think that's why liberals hate him so much.

There's a veritable mountain of good stuff in this piece, but his overriding point is that the individual should be in control of his or her health care, not the insurance companies and certainly not the government. Amen and amen! One great idea to make this happen is a combination of high-deductible insurance programs and employer-funded health savings accounts. Stossel also sits down with Michael Moore and picks apart the myths about Canada's supposed panacea of "free" health care. This is really good television, and it's a must for anyone interested in the health care debate.

It's broken out into 6 parts on Google Video. Watch them all here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Hillary continues "health"y dose of socialism

Hillary Clinton has been busy rolling out HillaryCare 2.0 on the stump lately. Details abound, but one of the most interesting is that she envisions a day when citizens will have to prove health insurance coverage to get a job.

I won't go into all of the reasons why Hillary's plan is a bad idea now, just like it was in 1993. The real issue here is that her campaign message continues to push a brand of softly-packaged socialism, tying into her idea of an "all in it together society."

I can't wait for the real debates to begin so these sharp ideological lines can be drawn. Hillary obviously believes that the climate is right for a more socialistic approach to government. Perhaps she's been watching too many Michael Moore movies. If she were as smart as everyone seems to think, she would know that the American public is not going to swallow this brand of socialism, no matter how she packages it.

A deficit of deficit reporting...

The United States Budget deficit currently sits at $205 billion. That's less than half of what it was three years ago, when all the major news outlets were reporting that the deficit would continue to soar, spiraling our economy into a disastrous state. However, despite this turn of events, the mainstream media wants you to know that this is not really good news. Here's CBS:

After years of unrelenting deficits, Washington may be experiencing a break in its fiscal weather. Strong tax revenues mean that the 2007 shortfall between U.S. income and spending will be the smallest it has been since 2002, according to new White House estimates.
But these rays of progress may be fleeting, say some experts. Revenue growth is already slowing, and defense spending and huge entitlement programs such as Medicare continue to expand at a rapid clip.

Did I just hear CBS complaining about entitlements? But I digress. Here's the AP:

The nation's budget deficit will drop to $205 billion in the fiscal year that ends in September, even as a worsening deficit picture for future years makes it more difficult for President Bush to meet his pledge of a surplus by 2012.
The deficits figures released Wednesday by the White House show red ink less than half of what it was at its peak in 2004. It's also a gain over the $244 billion that Bush predicted in February, but not as great an improvement as anticipated by other forecasters.
Nonetheless, the deficit picture remains worse than it was when Bush took office six years ago. Then, both White House and congressional forecasters projected cumulative surpluses of $5.6 trillion over the subsequent decade.
And the new figures Wednesday show that, instead of continuing to fall, the deficit next year will be on the rise again, to $258 billion.

No news will be good news while Bush is occupying la Casa Blanca, especially on the economic front. Has anyone else noticed the deafening silence as the Dow creeps up toward 14,000? Where is the unbridled economic cheer leading of the late '90s?

Some common sense on race from...the D&C?

I feel like the prospector who just found an actual gold nugget in a two-ton pile of fool's gold. The D&C's editorial page today has an editorial on race, sparked by the Supreme Court's recent ruling that Seattle schools can't divide up their schools using a tidy little race-recipe.

However, the editorial doesn't spend much time on that issue. Instead, it focuses on the importance of personal responsibility and how that issue is playing out in the Democratic presidential primary. Here's a quote I never expected to attribute to the D&C editorial page:

"Personal responsibility is key to the improvement of any group, and it's a concept that many politicians and black leaders avoid."

This editorial even points out that Hillary Clinton is parroting the Democratic lines of the past: racism still exists and is responsible for the social ills of the black community. There's no surprise there. As the rich, white candidate, she can't afford to challenge the leaders of black America. Barack Obama, on the other hand, seems to be ready to start weaving in a pinch of the Bill Cosby treatment. Here's the Obama quote from the debate:

"It is absolutely critical for us to recognize that there are going to be responsibilities on the part of African Americans and other groups to take personal responsibility to rise up out of the problems that we face."

Notice, of course, Obama's luxury in using the words "us" and "we." Will Obama really have the courage to attempt to inspire the black community rather than using the time-tested tactic of infuriating them about the persistence of racism in America? Moreover, could that actually work for a candidate? It could make for a primary with some actual substantive debate.

I must be daydreaming...