Thursday, January 2, 2003

The Stella Awards: Bringing the gold to lawyers who haven't yet dug their paws into the Sarbanes-Oxley cash cow.

It's time once again to consider the candidates for the annual Stella Awards. The Stella's are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonalds. That case inspired the Stella awards for the most frivolous successful lawsuits in the United States. This year's candidates include:

1. Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $780,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson's son.
2. A 19-year-old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000 and medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hub caps.
3. Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania, was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since the automatic door opener was malfunctioning. He couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation, and Mr.Dickson found himself locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found, and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the homeowner's insurance claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of $500,000.
4. Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbor's beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have been just a little provoked at the time by Mr. Williams who was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.
5. A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, $113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and broke her coccyx (tailbone). The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.
6. Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, successfully sued the owner of a night club in a neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. This occurred while Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the window in the ladies room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000 and dental expenses.
7. This year's favorite could easily be Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mr.Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip home, having driven onto the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, the R.V. left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the owner's manual that he couldn't actually do this. The jury awarded him $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. The company actually changed their manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons buying their recreation vehicles.

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Romanian trains nominated for a Darwin award.

In July 2002, paving the sweet path to Prague, the Romanian government recieved a nomination for a Darwin Award. Actually, the nomination went to Romanian trains (which are still motsly government-owned) for their notorious scheduling discrepancies. Forget posted train schedules! Like an American Indian listening for horses in an old Western, a Romanian man placed his ear against the tracks to listen for the arrival of a train scheduled to stop at his station. Instead, the 46-year-old man was hit by an express train, and died instantly from head trauma.

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Their Behavior by Dennis Brutus

Their guilt
is not so very different from ours:
— who has not joyed in the arbitrary exercise of
power
or grasped for himself what might have been
another’s
and who has not used superior force in the
moment when he could,
(and who of us has not been tempted to these
things?) —
so, in their guilt,
the bare ferocity of teeth,
chest-thumping challenge and defiance,
the deafening clamor of their prayers
to a deity made in the image of their prejudice
which drowns the voice of conscience,
is mirrored our predicament
but on a social, massive, organized scale
which magnifies enormously
as the private dehabille of love
becomes obscene in orgies.

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Why Lewis Lapham is one of my favorite public intellectuals.

Reviewing Lapham's new book, Theater of War, Tod Dills puts his finger on what makes Lapham so wonderful:

Lapham might be considered one of the more purely conservative thinkers out there, as he relies on the old values, those of the constitution, pointing out that Mr. Jefferson didn't quite have in mind a republic that refused to "leave some of [its] wishes at the bottom of the well." Watching "the Clintons feed" is, as Lapham admits, a thing of profound ugliness, but the failure by Americans everywhere to acknowledge their duty to the real values of their nation as they are (or should be) is even more ugly. Then, of course, usher in the new administration-John Ashcroft's proselytizing, Rumsfeld's Cold-War hawk's mind, etc.--and what you have is business as usual, essentially. Because, as Lapham points out, "The nineteenth century moral prescriptions presumed the existence of a citizenry willing to take the medicine, but in the year 2001, where does President Bush find a constituency loyal to a civic order grounded on a premise that doesn't translate into the question 'What's in it for me?'"

We live in a nation of our own making, essentially--a notion quite easy to forget in the face of military tribunals and nut-jobs with bombs at the back door--in a system of government that lays in the hands of its backers, the populace, the ability to change it or give it up. We have the choice, Lapham tells us, but first we must do something else: we must become ourselves. "The more people who become fully human in the world, the fewer the hostages to fortune, and the less seductive the voices prophesying war."

Rejecting the temptations of partisanship for the often-harsh realm of political analysis, Lapham follows in the tradition of such greats as Hannah Arendt, Murray Rothbard, and Friedrich Hayek. I am duly humbled.

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Fighting our wars on screen.

In his snarling review of Ronnie Lipschutz's Cold War Fantasies , Clay Risen sheds light on early-20th century propaganda ploys linking the Pentagon to Hollywood. Risen writes:

It was the Pentagon that had the foresight in the early days of World War II to contract guys like Ronald Reagan and Frank Capra to make pro-military films and documentaries. The collaboration continued through the 1950s and 1960s, aided in part by the HUAC purges of the film industry in the 1950s. Not surprisingly, outside of Dr. Strangelove, the era between the end of World War II and the height of Vietnam was dominated by such pro-military epics as The Longest Day and anti-Communist potboilers like My Son John and Pickup on South Street.

What the world needs now is a modernized, war-on-terrorism-ready House Un-American Activities Committee. Like I need a thumbscrew.

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Romanian relations with Pakistan and Afghanistan in the post-September 11th world.

A friend directed my attention to a recent interview with Emil Ghitulescu, the Romanian ambassador to Afghanistan. Ghitulescu notes the high volume of trade between Romania and Pakistan in the last decade:

A Romanian economic mission comprising 11 prominent Romanian businessmen visited Pakistan in 2001. On this occasion ‘Business opportunities between Romania and Pakistan’ was organised in Karachi. The President of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania, Mircea Dan Geoana, and the Pakistani Minister of Finance Mr Shaukat Aziz sent special messages to this Forum. As a consequence of the joint efforts to develop and diversify our bilateral economic relations, including the active and imaginative participation of the Embassy of Romania in Pakistan, the volume of the commercial exchanges increased by 100 per cent in the first 8 months of 2001, comparative with the same period of the last year.

Ghitulescu mentioned that his studies reveal a common intellectual heritage between Romania and Pakistan, as many of their famed national artists and writers studied in Germany.

launhced my book ‘Dialoogue between civilizations: Mihai Eminescu and Allam Iqbal’. It is a comparative study between these two great poets? Eminescu and Iqbal. They never met each other but they have surprising similarities. They studied in Germany and have shown appreciation for several renowned Western thinkers and writers, such as Immanuel Kant, Johann Wofgang, Goethe, Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and have admitted being influenced by some of them. The second edition of the book highlighted the ideas of liberty, justice and progress. The second edition is in English, Urdu and French. I have also a project to name after Allama Iqbal and Mihai Eminescu two important streets from Bucharest and respectively Islamabad.

What really stood out in this interview, however, was Ghitulescu's remark on the new strategic importance Romanian diplomacy accords to Romania's geographic location-- a fact which I believe cemented their invitation to join NATO at the Prague Summitt last year.

The strategic location of Romania as a bridge between Western European and the Asian economic space is a strong incentive to further developing and deepening its close relationship with all the countries of this region, particularly with South Asia and East Asia.

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Supporting indigenous movements in the Middle East.

The pro-democracy movement in Iran has been touted as one of the few truly indigenous democratic political movements in the Middle East. The fact that university students have added their weight to this movement is significant, as it suggests a counterpoint to the conception that educated Iranians tend towards Islamism. The Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran, a group worthy of support, has scheduled demonstrations and protests against the government's consistent disregard for human rights. Exercise caution if you decide to provide the SMCCDI with a donation-- who knows if the Republicrats or Demicans in power will decide that you "funded terrorists"?

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Leaving well enough alone.

Radley brings it back to earth with a terrifying prospect. Personally, I would much prefer the kind of Bush statue that Ashcroft would feel personally compelled to cover up. Alas, where's the charm in saying so?

Thursday, January 2, 2003

The ring of immortality.

From the center today, life after death gets reincarnated as a ring. Can you use ashes in a tattoo? Or perhaps a hairpiece? Where do the good times end?

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Free to fly in Iran.

Hengameh Golestan's photographs of female paragliders in Iran reveal the stubborn side of soul.

Imamzadeh Hashem, in the Alborz mountains two hours' drive from Tehran, is where a group of women paragliders - modern women living in an Islamic state - gather. Even though they are far from Tehran's morality squad vigilantes and the main road, they stick to strict dress codes (chador, maghnae'h and manto) in case of intruders and, to be doubly sure, prop their image of the Ayatollah against the van and unfurl their flag. Fatemeh Asgharpoor, a mother of three, told me: "In addition to all that has already been said about women's lives in Tehran, add the summer heat. The hejab gets really annoying - Tehran is hot and polluted, and we feel boxed in. Any spare time I find, I come to the mountain and I feel free, away from the ordinary weight of being a woman in Iranian society. Flying through the air reduces my frustrations."

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Rosapeppered comments.

Former American ambassador to Romania, Jim Rosapepe, has many fans (including your truly) among the emigre community. So when a friend sent a piece by Rosapepe for the Washington Times to me, I could not have been happier. Rosapepe reminds American investors that some parts of the world (hint hint) have witnessed an increase in economic growth as the US economy slaps the pavement like the fish in the Faith No More video.

As a group, their official GDPs have recovered from deep recessions after 1989. Poland's economy is more than 50 percent larger than it was in 1989. Slovenia has a higher standard of living than Portugal. Last year, the Balkans had the fastest growth rate in Europe. Overall, in the 1990s, Central Europe grew faster than Western Europe. One of the big reasons is that, while poor by our standards, these countries are rich in human resources — universal literacy, skilled work forces, and world-class scientific and engineering capabilities. They are already quite integrated with Western Europe and more competitive than is often assumed.

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Will tax cuts translate into increased savings?

Bush's Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (EGTRRA) has been touted as a means to stimulate the economy by putting more money in the hands of consumers. The EGTRRA, due to sunset in 2010, reduces ordinary income tax burdens, but leaves more taxpayers exposed to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

Originally conceived as a means of preventing those with very high incomes from using special tax benefits or loopholes to avoid income tax payment, the AMT is an extra tax that some must pay in addition to regular income tax. Unfortunately, the extremely complex AMT has been increasingly applied to people that fit neither of these categories over the past decade. So tax relief becomes tax burden.

The AMT works by providing an alternate set of rules for the calculation of income tax, which, in theory, is supposed to determine the minimum amount of tax paid by people in certain income brackets. If your income tax payments don't add up to the AMT-projected amount, then you make up the difference. The fact that the Bush tax cut has placed middle-class Americans under the AMT should come as a boon to tax accountants and a bust to the average Joe. This is bound to pose more serious problems in the next few years.

For long-term economic growth, the recieved economic wisdom cites a need for increased savings on the part of consumers. Will the Bush tax cut stimluate spending at the expense of saving? Certainly, stimulus programs should not be concieved as zero-sum pies, where an increase in spending neccessarily correlates with a decrease in saving. However, to admit this is not to answer the larger question of how effective this particular tax cut might be in encouraging savings. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released an analysis, authored by Peter Orszag, in 2001 which examined the long-term effects of the Bush tax cut. Not only did Orszag dispute the benefits of this tax cut, he also attacked the belief that tax cuts are correlated with economic growth.

The historical evidence is not consistent with the belief that taxes have a large effect on economic growth. For example, in 1993, the top marginal tax rate increased from 31 percent to 39.6 percent. When these marginal tax rate increases were passed as part of the 1993 budget agreement, many prominent conservatives predicted an economic disaster would result. Instead, the economy experienced its longest economic expansion in history during the 1990s. Real GDP grew by an average of 4 percent per year from 1993 through 2000, almost 50 percent faster than the average from 1973 to 1993. Furthermore, income gains were significantly larger in the 1990s among the top five percent of tax filers — the only group affected by the increase in marginal tax rates in the early 1990s — than among the rest of the population. As the Congressional Budget Office recently noted, "the income of households facing the higher rates [from the 1990 and 1993 increases] rose much more rapidly over the decade than did overall income."

The least polemical analysis of this subject so far is a NBER Working Paper called "The Bush Tax Cut and National Saving", authored by Alan Auerbach. This paper finds that the reduction in marginal tax rates implied by the 2002 tax legislation may not decrease revenues as much as the "static" methods used by government agencies to estimate revenue losses suggest.

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Speak of the devil.

Yugoslavian by birth, Natasha Radojcic-Kane has harnessed fiction to the service of war storytelling, which she views as cathartic. While she lived in the US during most of the 1990's, Radojcic-Kane's younger brother "swallowed the bait of the Underground". What can we expect from a homecoming nowadays?

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