Floods, Bread, and Circuses. The wealthy remodel. The real victims are overlooked.

Anyone who suffers any form of perceived loss, such as what has resulted from the recent floods in Atlanta, deserves compassion. Especially so for those in counties like Douglas and in North Georgia where they were taken by surprise.

What I do not understand is why anyone living along Peachtree Creek or the Chattahoochee River is surprised they have been flooded? This is isn't global warming. This is not new. This is not even a 100 year flood, much less a 20 year flood.

Though reported as the "Worst in Recorded History", the flooding which made all the headlines around Buckhead & Vinings occurs every 6-8 years. The event is appropriately deemed the "worst" owing to the flooding in the outlying counties which was widespread and unanticipated. People actually died in the outlying areas. People in Buckhead got to remodel. 

For ITP ATL, the flooding is a result of inadequate infrastructure to offset for the impermeable ground cover generated by development. Point the fingers at developers and you would be wrong. They build detention ponds according to code. They are shaken down for exorbitant impact fees in City of Atlanta. Those impact fees get funnelled into a general fund. The funds do not usually end up building infrastructure to offset the increased run off. Point the fingers at the municipal authorities. They have the inadequate codes. They misallocated the money. It is their responsibility to manage "proper" growth in their jurisdiction.

As for my fellow ITP residents, they already know the drill. Researching a given property using FEMA's website or interflood.com will demonstrate the frequency and severity of flooding. The FEMA insurance rating should be a BOLD type hint. The main reason ITP houses were on national news is that it makes a much better photo opp to show a 1 million plus home 10 feet deep in chocolate soup. Meanwhile, the areas where people died lies 25 miles to the west of the homes on the news. 

Filming a flooded field where the livestock were swept away does not show well in a film. It is just a flooded field. They could not capture the action of the animals drowning, or the farmers attempting to save them. Showing the tail lights of a car that was swept away does not convey the action. They missed the chance to film the action of a person and their child dying.  What is left? An enormous mansion covered in muck for days. That is action. Someone lost their stuff in the first floor of their McMansion. 

These are the linkely choices news editors made when picking mansions for the news, instead of depicting the tragedy of real loss. That would be too much like work? The public wants action and drama. Given them "Bread and Circuses". "Let them eat cake". 

I have heard it said from joggers at Memorial Park, "People who live here must see it as a way to redecorate their houses at least once over 10 years, at the insurance company's expense." 

The insurance companies & FEMA Flood Insurance enable these people to rebuild, in the very same location, over and over again.

Intown residents chose their own hell. Call the contractor and decorators! Reserve a suite at the Four Seasons! We are remodeling the house with insurance money! Whee! Chaaarge It! 

Our ITP neighbors enjoyed all the headlines. The outlying county residents suffered huge losses, and some lost their lives.  Those are the ones who really are in hell. We don't see pictures of their "Gates of Hell", just the fancy mansions that are well-insured.

From my memory, these are the large recent floods for Buckhead over the last 20 years: 1990, 1994 (opel, 2004 (Ivan?), 2009

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/floodtracking/chattahoochee/pdf/floodtrack_chatt_back.pdf

City of Atlanta Parks and examining the role of Conservancies and City Responsbilities

Piedmont Park conservancy group pays off

While well-written and informative from a historical perspective, this article barely hints at the challenges that smaller conservancy and sports organizations face when dealing with the city itself; scratching the surface on the implications of universal use of the Conservancy model in a given municipal environment.

The model of a non-profit conservancy is ubiquitous. Thereby the model holds a large degree of credibility. Simply because a given model is prevalent, does not necessarily imply that it is without serious drawbacks.

City parks are an amenity to any city. The original management model of public parks was that city tax dollars and staffing support the maintenance, improvement, and operation of the parks within the municipality's domain. However, when budget cut backs are needed, the funding of the parks is usually the first in line to have their budget reduced. Over time, cutbacks degrade parks, thus creating an environment suitable for the creation of Conservancies by grassroots organizing citizens form together to raise funds to repair otherwise untended and deteriorating parks.

The Conservancy model has gained widespread popularity, with even small neighborhood parks taking over the city's management responsibilities. The benefits of the conservancy model are fairly obvious. The leading benefit is that an organization dedicated to the mission of a given park's restoration, expansion, and operation can better pursue execute it's projects since they will have the latitude and focus to direct their budgets with a large degree of autonomy, once a master plan is established.

Within the Conservancy model, there is a spectrum of specificity of the model's application. You have sports teams appropriating fields from a park such as Frankie Allan's baseball (BYO) facility on Pharr Road, improving the fields, and leaving the remainder of the park literally to rack and ruin. You have well run groups, such as Grant Park, that have generated enormous visible improvements to a park, with very little actual money raised to accomplish the goal. You have other groups that leverage revenue generating facilities within a park charging park users for various access and park activities, such as Piedmont Park. What is consistently true among these applications is that Conservancy activities relieve the City of cost and responsibility. The ongoing existential problem is that the City, as the erstwhile trustee of these public assets, generally does a poor job of interacting with 3rd parties who have been delegated the City's own responsibilities.

The parks administration regularly displays sudden changes of mood and attitude when interpreting MOU's with Conservancy's. I have personally witnessed the City's capricious disregard for fairness time and again. There are several examples. Grant Park must rent it's own Pavilions from the City, though they use these properties for a park raise funding event. Bitsy Grant must rent it's own bathrooms for the gala fundraiser, as well as pay the city staff, instead of allowing volunteer docents to staff the event. Bitsy Grant, after investing $2m for new courts which more than exceed the water usage regulation codes, could not use water on the brand new clay courts since they are lumped in with all the other courts that have not been improved. To prevent the $2m investment from literally drying up and blowing away in a dust cloud, Friends of Bitsy had to raise another $25,000 to install well equipment to water the courts, never mind what impacts widespread use of wells in an urban environment may have on ground water. This past January, rugby teams were kicked off fields en masse, while paying tens of thousands of dollars per year in field rentals, being labeled as field destroyers, when unscheduled field users actually destroyed the fields, leaving them as the only ones to be reached when blame must be assigned, since they were the only ones paying rent on the fields. The Parks Department was given ongoing photographic documentation of the usage by the rugby teams, but this information was not taken into account when the four teams were expelled.

Suffice it to say, unless you are the 800lb gorilla, your organization will face inconsistency and adversity in your interactions with the City. I can only conclude that until an organization achieves a financial stature that elicits respectful and consistent treatment, they will continue to have to struggle to assert the tenets of an MOU with the City.

Another important shortcoming implied by the Conservancy model is that the proliferation of the model has produced a negative pressure on the competing conservancies ability to raise funds to the particular detriment of non-tax funded charities.

- The first movers have enjoyed a majority of the capital donations and attract/retain the more qualified staff. For example, Piedmont Park is a first mover. Being well situated and visible to nearby corporate funding sources, they have generated a long standing relationship of trust. This creates a very difficult climate for other conservancy's in which to compete, since the donors are already committed to one park versus another. In the City managed model, all the revenue generated by the park would have benefited other parks within the Parks Dept. Now, this is funnelled only to the park generating the income. Whether this is appropriate or not is a subject to lengthy debate. The essence is that the other parks without similar revenue generating properties, will inevitably be at a disadvantage.

- Once the management and funding of a given park has been delegated to a conservancy, the City can then depend upon the efforts of the Conservancy's for finances instead of lobbying for adequate internal funding from the City's annual budget to perform the activities their department is otherwise charged with. The public, in effect, does not get what it is paying for, and now is called upon to donate even more funds to a Conservancy to enjoy services that should have otherwise been made available by virtue of taxpayer contributions.

- To subsidize parks with charitable funds when tax payers are otherwise supposed to provide those funds negatively impacts other charitable organizations that are not deemed "city services". Parks are "city services" and therefore entitle to share in the proceeds of tax revenue collections.

Therefore, the overall effect is that several conservancy's compete for limited resources, also pulling funding resources from other charitable organizations that may have no means to make claims upon municipal budget resources.

One solution requires reformatting how City Hall and it's Parks Dept serve the public properties for which they entrusted. Any Conservancy's political strategy should call for active lobbying for the prioritization of tax funding for parks. However, the funding will support an Parks organization that has very many operational shortcomings and only have marginal, durable impact. The city itself, as we well know, has very many operational shortcomings. In order for the parks to be effectively managed by the city, it implies that literally all the other broken facets of city operations also need to be repaired.

Therefore, the way forward is to maintain the Conservancy mission as status quo, all the while to present a unified front requiring the reform of city operations, hiring & contracting practices, the balance of power between the mayor and city council, and implementation of formal accounting controls in conjunction with ongoing 3rd party audits for oversight.

The focal point of this political front would logically be Park Pride, since they span the ecosystem of Conservancy's in our region and espouse missions statements in alignment with the conservancies they service.

If we can organize this message to the City under Parkpride's banner, voicing the need for reform of city financial controls, hiring practices, and balancing of power, then one day we may just be able to hand much of this responsibility back to the where it should have been maintained all along. Then, a Conservancy could provide active oversight and input into the future care of a given park, but utilize tax payer funds that have already been raised to achieve the goal, rather than absorbing charitable donations from missions that do not qualify for tax payer funding as a component of a qualified City service.

If these efforts do succeed, the reality is that Conservancy organizations will not likely abdicate their authority to the City, even if it would be more effective for the overarching park conservation mission.

As a rule of thumb, any organization will entrench itself, even to the peril of the mission, since this is the natural response and function of the organizational collective's ego; the identity of the organization will want to survive, no matter the cost.

When the citizens and groups such as conservancies do succeed in reforming City of Atlanta, we will have an interesting, perhaps painful, challenge to reorganize our organizations to ensure the most effective strategy in the new environment.

Therefore, Conservancies are here to stay! ;-)

Atlanta's Casino - Atlanta devolves into Pottersville?

We are one step away from having a casino in the middle of downtown Atlanta.

"The Atlanta City Council and Mayor Shirley Franklin have endorsed the project. The casino development could help to relieve the city of an estimated $56 million balance on roughly $85 million in bonds issued for redevelopment of the site in the 1980s. "
Read the full article here


All of this brings to mind Yeats -

"The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? "-Yeats - The Second Coming

Will we allow Atlanta to devolve into Pottersville ? We should demand a referendum on this issue, and demand it straight away before we lose our ability to participate in the process.

Is this the best idea our city and state's business and political leadership can conceive of for this prime real estate? Real estate situated in the middle of our downtown area, across the street from the Capitol building (full of erstwhile "Conservatives"), and adjacent to the largest University student body (GSU) in the Atlanta metro region.. ALL THEY CAN COME UP WITH IS A CASINO?!

Georgia State University, "Founded in 1913 in Atlanta, Georgia State University is the second-largest and one of four research institutions in the University System of Georgia."

Atlanta is a premier national city! We have a strong business community. We have so many great things about our region and the city itself.

Atlanta is not a resort destination.

Atlanta is by no means a flagging metro area desperately stooping to anything in the name of economic development.

This initiative displays a lack of vision, a lack of transparent representative government processes, and exemplifies the power the "machine" has to override the general disposition of the public.

The casino increase law enforcement costs by the increase in organized crime and vice related activity. We can not afford our current law enforcement budget as it is!

There are demonstrable negative impacts that a casino will bring upon our community. These are well researched and documented. Our tax dollars will have to offset these impacts.

Please download this document from University of Chicago as an example. The University of Chicago is home to economic luminaries such as Milton Friedman. Perhaps they understand how to research economic impacts of a given initiative?

Refi the USA, in lieu of Stimulus

Monday, February 09, 2009
Last updated: Thursday, March 12, 2009

Refi the USA, in lieu of Stimulus

Friends,

Please review the following as an alternative to the Federal Stimulus bill. Please assert your commentary in the comment fields below this proposal.

This document proposes a clear alternative approach to the Stimulus bills.

The tenets of this proposal will quickly deliver the desired effect of market stabilization, restoring confidence in the markets, and thereby enabling access to credit. This proposal will have a swift impact, without the need for ongoing government spending.

The government incentives requiring banks to extend loans to "underqualified" borrowers, as well as the investment banks pushing the limits in vast numbers of loans of what is a reasonable risk, collude to form what amounts to a Ponzi scheme, with the distinction of involving so many various parties in government, mortgage lending, real estate services, and other investment banking, that prosecution in an efficiently and swift time frame is not possible for the near term to create any positive impact upon the confidence levels in the markets.


With relatively minor government expenditure, banks, and local administrative services, a strong and deep keel will set into the deep waters of our economy, stabilizing markets and restoring confidence.

Confidence in values will increase, credit resources will open, the inventory of homes will decrease, demand for new home starts will then increase, and jobs will spawn throughout the entire cycle owing to the 90 days hiatus from payments restoring ability to pay and decrease interest liabilities by individuals and businesses allowing for expansion of business.

Therefore, it is proposed:

Immediately Stabilize the Underlying Asset Values.
For any home sales in the next Two years, the minimum sales price allowable by law shall be determined as the lesser of the last mortgage property appraisal or the last Tax Assessor’s valuation prior to January 1, 2007. Arguably, the last time the market can be said to have been functioning was prior to January 1, 2007.

Since individual States will likely refuse to waive the associated Intangible Taxes for each loan refinance, it could be possible to use Stimulus funds to reimburse States for the associated Taxes.

After Two years expire, the minimum allowable sales price shall decrease by Ten Per Cent per year annually over Five years. After the Seventh year, the open market shall dictate pricing.


Refinance Every Home Loan in the USA.
Once home values are stabilized by law, every homeowner in the USA shall be refinanced to a Thirty year Fixed Conventional Mortgage Loan at the preferred borrower’s market-based interest rate, currently 5.1%. Each homeowner shall enjoy 90 days hiatus from payments.


Restore Consumers Confidence in the ongoing Cost of Credit.
For all inhabitants, including aliens resident legal or otherwise, of the United States holding credit cards and other unsecured consumer related credit card debts, all outstanding balances of credit card debt shall be assigned no more than an 8% interest rate, and debtors shall enjoy 90 days hiatus from payments. For a period of two years from the date of the bills enactment, credit card interest rates shall not exceed 8%.

Restore all Home Equity Lines that the homeowner had prior to January 1, 2007. Affix a maximum interest rate of 3.5%, which shall endure for as long as the current homeowner remains in the property.

Directly Fund Access to Education. For EVERYONE.
All outstanding college loans and any subsequent college loans for the following Five Years shall enjoy a maximum interest rate of 3.5% and no origination fees shall apply.

Students shall not be required to make payments during periods when they are earning less that 50% of the Average Household Income in their Metropolitan Statistical Area or County, which ever is smaller.

Enable Businesses to Invest and Expand.
For all businesses, any outstanding balances of debt shall be reassigned an interest rate not to exceed 8%. Any subsequent borrowings shall be assigned a rate of more than 8% for a period of Two years.

Acknowledge Lending Practices Have Been Basically Unfair, Possibly Illegal.
We must admit meaningfully that a wrong has occurred, and these people damaged deserve meaningful

The members of this category shall enjoy the aforementioned refinancing if they are able to retake their home.

Dispossessed homeowners shall be restored financially to their status before dispossession.

Where the home has already been resold, the disposed homeowner shall be reimbursed the lost equity in the property existing as of January 1, 2007. In either case, all dispossessed homeowners shall be reimbursed for any expenses related to the dispossession such as storage of personal effects, health care, loss of wages, or other provable expenses and damages. and swift redress.

The source of reimbursement funds shall be: TARP funds where the mortgage bank made no attempt to perform a workout with the homeowner OR Stimulus funds where a good faith workout was attempted by the lending bank.

Where the home was purchased by speculatively, by non-property occupying owners, the property shall revert to the original owners. The investors made whole during the transaction. Investors were behaving in a lawful manner, and therefore should not be damaged.

Reform the Banks and the Real Estate Transaction Cycle. (1st draft)
Where possible and provable, criminal proceedings should be brought forth against any parties clearly stepping outside the law at that time.

Penalties for fraud activities such as collusion to perpetrate mortgage fraud shall be increased significantly and shall have federal jurisdiction.

Require Multiple Listing Services to provide Open, Affordable, and Full to the General Public.
This will weed out the dead wood of incompetent agents, and allow real agents to provide better services.

Illegal Immigration, End It. Collect Tax Revenue from the Workers. (1st draft)
Those currently in the United States under illegal circumstances could be paying their full share of Tax Revenues if we simply assign Tax Payer ID Numbers to each migrant worker.

There is no law that necessarily connects Citizenship or immigration status with the ability or responsibility to pay Taxes. Therefore, taxes can be collected from anyone in our nation, if they simply had an Account Number and access to Identification.

Currently Illegal immigrants would be allowed to stay in the USA, provided they begin paying taxes and register themselves. They would not be eligible for Citizenship owing to the illegal nature of their entry to the country.

To reinstate eligibility to apply for citizenship, currently illegal immigrants shall have to perform community service duties of Five to Ten hours a month for a period of Five years.

This would integrate the immigrants into their new communities by given them opportunities for volunteer service, thereby improving the community in which they now live.


Rationale:
Whereas, previous attempts to direct funding to "bail out" the economy have been misused, subverted, or at the very least experienced far less success than what was generally expected.

Whereas, the current stimulus package will likely amount to an ineffectual misdirection of our nations resources. There are no discernible areas in the economy that can be improved by direct inject of capital. Even if there were areas where investment could make a significant impact, the government is not capable to execute the appropriate spending regime, and, furthermore, the long term financial impact upon our economy, could actually send our nation further into economic decline for an even longer period of time.

Whereas, the mortgage servicing industry faces financial penalties for performing loan "work outs" with mortgagee. The loan investor pools build these penalties into the loan servicing engagement contracts. Individuals with the loan investor pools can also sue the Servicing companies for performing "work-outs".

Whereas, if only failing homeowners are given benefits, the ones who are actually paying are in effect penalized for being financially responsible, since there are no provisions being discussed for those who are in good standing.

Whereas, the manner under which lenders have extended loans during the past decade has proven to have contributed significantly towards undermining our nation's, and in turn the world's, economy.

Whereas, these loans extended by the financial industry amounts collectively to an enormous Ponzi scheme, since the extension of loans to underqualified borrowers directly impacts the investment of the owners who were qualified and depends upon ongoing demand of buyers to maintain the valuations underlying the loans.

Whereas, any prosecution of the perpetrators of the Ponzi Scheme is impractible owing to the diminished responsbility of all the parties involved.

Whereas any relief of homeowners still residing their homes would be unfair to those who, owing to timing of the relief, were unable to enjoy any relief since they no longer have their home.



Sincerely,

Bryan “Beau” Grant, BSM, MSMoT
Convivia Group (http://conviviagroup.com)
Commercial Real Estate Brokers
http://www.linkedin.com/in/bryangrant

Grandpa McCarthy had a heartattack last night

Robert C. McCarthy Jr, my grandfather, suffered a heart attack this morning around 8am. He is currently being catheterized.. for what seems like all morning and part of the afternoon. So we don't know the extent or scope of the problem.. Healing a heart attack can always be helped by strong prayer. If anyone deserves a prayer after years of hard work and service, it is this man.

The Lord must have been pushing me to go visit him , since the trip was a last minute "grab-and-go affair", and I coincidentally arrived in Asheville last night to visit the Gran's. Last night, we watched the usual dose of Fox News, loud commercials, political speeches, and local news... and then the usual intrafamily panel analysis and discussion about national politics, complete with printed articles in hand from all parties.. grandma too. Calm thoughtful banter about issues that we can all have direct impact upon. ;-)

[Sample Fun Topics: Obamarama and the Care Bears Vs Blood n Guts McCain and Caribou Barbie. Discuss. Topic: Oil V Renewables, domestic or foreign still destabilizes our country. Foreign for obvious reasons. Domestic since Oil Companies manipulate the political process and easily corrupt our officials and legal systems. Discuss. Topic: Where is Osama and how did he get a dialysis machine into a high altitude cave? etc..]

A great but humble man, Grandpa was a Korean war hero who fought at the Frozen Chosin (2 purple hearts) in Marine Fox Company defending against an advance of 9 Chinese Divisions in the withdrawal from North Korea at the beginning of the war. He has 4 children, 9 Grandchildren, 1 great-grandchild, 2 dogs.. He is a first degree black belt green thumbed gardener. He surfs the Internet at 84 years old, still drives his mini-van with Drill Baby Drill, "W", and Marine Corps stickers on the back, helps promote longevity through holistic remedies. Obviously, he is a staunch Republican, but wondering from time to time about the last 7 years. Still, he keeps his signed photo of W and the 1st lady prominently displayed right next to the signed photo from the Gipper (Reagan for you kids out there). Grandpa is incisive, very intelligent, the best husband any gal could hope for, dog lover, patriot, healer, the best grandparent, and a heck of a Scottish Country dancer.

I guess last night was one "Fox News evening" too many. He went to bed an was awaken by a pain in his shoulder. Grandma quickly deduced this indication as symptomatic of heart attack, and high tailed it to the VA hospital.

Your prayers are welcome and needed. Thanks for your healing thoughts that many of you have already expressed. Y'all are the best!

Tibetan Olympic Team

For many years, I have admired the philosophies taught by Tibetan Bhuddist monks. I have admired the endurance of the refugees, and known for a long while the atrocities they suffered at the hand of the Chinese. They are not the only ones to suffer this ruthless intolerance of cultural and religious diversity, instead forcing cultural unification and homogeniety at the point of a gun.

To mark the games, I have procured a Tibetan Flag, and plan to hang it out in the front of my home during the games, along with an American flag to show my support fo our athletes and my support for all those ground under the boot by China and similar governments.  Those of you who know personally, have seen my Free Tibet sticker on my old car for many years. Yet, it is not as if a sticker really amounts to much more than than visual clutter, unless people ask questions about the sticker.

Also, I wanted to remind folks that we enjoy the presence of a real Tibetan Monastery here in Atlanta, the Drepung-Loseling Institute.  They have established, over the past few years a strong relationship with Emory University. I invite people to visit on Tuesday's for the public teachings, which are discussions of philosophy and relate to human development and "Right Action". You will not bump into radical protesters waving flags and hopping about. If you do want to hang a Tibetan flag, they have some in the book shop. Just remember to take your shoes off when you enter the sanctuary!

It greatly pleases me to see the exposure of their plight to the world. It is my hope that with this exposure, the Chinese government to find better ways to deal with it's citizens and the world at large, ways beyond using brutal force, torture, censorship, and misinformation. (The China-Dalai Lama Dialogue: Prospects for Progress)

It is a hard question, whether to boycott Chinese products, as if that were actually possible since we no longer produce anything for the retail consumer, or whether to pursue the Dalia Lama's approach of Active Engagement, striving to raise awareness within Chinese leadership that they are connected with everyone, and that both our ends and their ends share, and therefore there is no victor, but simply, we all progress and move forward humanity in an enlightened and peaceful manner.

I tend towards the boycott side, but I simply have not found the faith within me to go along with the better approach of Active Engagement. I agree with the idea, but simply must mature enough to support this approach by my own actions.

The US infrastructure is failing. I simply see that every dollar I spend on Chinese goods build their schools, their roads, and their high speed rail.  Our money supports their military and puts their citizens further under the boot of a ravenous central government that Orwell envisioned. Our funds prop up a government that really is one of the most powerful and oppressive the Earth has known since World War II. We are just lucky they halted their militarily aggressive foreign policy with Tibet. Now,China's strategy seems to be, "Rope up the commodities and supply routes, and then command the terms of engagement", as they are now doing.

China is rising to super power and economic status largely thanks to our purchasing habits and failure to enforce productions standards on their producers. Shirking these same  business legal standards would land you in jail here in the United States. Somehow, it is OK for our retailers to source products from a market where human rights, labor laws, the rule of law, environmental standards, and living standards are all ignored, at least as demonstrated by their actions, by the Chinese central government, as well as local and regional officials. You want proof? 320 million Chinese have cancers that are directly attributable to environmental hazards such as cadmium and lead in the water. The entire problem with pet food from last year stemmed from this cause, and killed thousands of pets. (Geopolitics, China, and poisoned pet food)

So raise your awareness towards the idea of the world economic agenda, and therefore geopolitical security (Engaging China: The Political Economy and Geopolitical Approaches of the United States, Japan and the European Union) , being largely influenced, if not dictated, by a China empowered with our own consumptive inability to establish a true free market economic environment here or abroad.

Instead, the world trading community has invited a player to our game of open markets and allowed this player several trump cards the others are not allowed to use. How could China fail to rise to prominence, taking the entire pot of winnings?  The trump cards - human rights, labor laws, the rule of law, environmental standards, living standards, and unilateral pricing of the Yuan - all give any business an strong incentive to ignore moral issues, and source production in China. Since "everyone is doing it", it would be suicide not to follow suit.

Please urge your politicians during this election cycle to take a good hard stand on trade imbalances. We are as a nation, unwittingly or not, supporting a communist regime that fundamentally contradicts our constitution and what America, under the Bill of Rights, is founded upon. Call upon the politicians to wake up to this fact and take significant action.

Thanks for your interest and enjoy supporting your nation's games in the upcoming Olympics!

Warm Regards,

Bryan Grant

State of the homes in Atlanta

Homeowners here are a little nervous about the downward turn. However, Atlanta has been weathering the storm rather well by comparison to the West Coast or Florida, all except for condos. Though well paying jobs do seem to be growing scarce here.

Congress has done little to turn all of this around. The economic stimulus tax rebate checks will translate into us paying that money back in more taxes or inflation. The money is going to come from somewhere. They just get good political mileage out of this gambit.

Meanwhile, the banks are getting away with murder by being able to turn down offers for homes going into foreclosure, then once the house is foreclosed, the bank allows the buyers to bid up the price. The homeowner loses all their equity, the bank gets restored for the loan by the new buyer, and gets a nice tidy profit for their "troubles". Though it is technically illegal for banks to "broker" property, they are effectively doing so by turning down bona fide offers and allowing the value to bid up.

Meanwhile, the lax regulations for lending practices that has led us down this old and familiar road have not been dealt with by anyone. This lax environment allowed banks to dangle tempting fruits to home buyers by allowing most folks to buy more than they probably should have. While closing the deal, the banks, Realtors, and mortgage brokers downplayed the realities of re-financing when things go badly for the homeowners credit. All them, for the short term returns, earn more buy selling a bigger home than not. Once they are paid, there is no further recourse against any of them. Now the banks want us to bail out their loans? Ha. One of the rare good things Bush has done is threaten to veto congress's attempts to bail out the banks.

The banks know which loans are in danger of foreclosure. Unless they want to hold bad debt, those loans should be allowed to refinance to a 30 year fixed at a reasonable rate for a 725 FICO score, as a standard, and then given 2 or 3 months of grace period to re-stabilize the buyer's payment budgets. All of this should be at no expense to the homeowner. The banks set up this mess, they promoted the products, and they allowed marginal loans to be underwritten. They should eat the losses, or work in good faith to transition these loans into more serviceable accounts. And since their actions have led to an artificial run up in values, they have endangered the financial well being of every home owner.

This would go a great distance towards stabilizing the credit markets, both here and abroad.

The alternatives to this course of action are few. If we stay on the road we are now on, in terms of the Fed and Congress's quick fixes, we will drag the markets further down, and delay recovery.

Hmm. Maybe they want this to happen so we will vote in the new Amero to replace the Dollar, and usher in the North American Union to extinguish the flame of liberty knows as the USA.

3 Beagles: Updates

Hey all,

I still have the 3 Beagles referenced in the other email and need to get them placed into "Forever homes". There are some new photos - webalbum.

They are all on Petfinder, which will be the most likely source of a lead, but .. it is always good to work the friends and family social network when placing dogs.

They are now being sponsored with fund from Atlanta Beagle Rescue, but I am fostering for the interim. Bobbie, one of my neighbors, has volunteered to foster Jake, but the other two are here with me.

The female, "Lucy", is pretty much ready to go and is vetted/spayed. The young male, " Bart", is up for neutering next week. The oldest one, "Jake" we are going to do two weeks from now, as he has a cold right now.

Thanks for your support, and definitely keep forwarding the leads to me if you have them.


Beau


PS: If you any of you know anyone in the press or legal professions, please have a look at this case, and lend a hand. Someone brought it to my attention tonight. How the rescuer is being is arrested for saving a dying dog, but the owner is not being arrested for gross negligence and cruelty to animals, I will never know or choose to accept. The incident is up in Pennsylvania, so pass it along to folks up there to help as well.

Tha 

 

 

This is from Bayard Snowden in TN and that is his son on the couch with the dog....

 

    An old tired-looking dog wandered into the yard.  I could tell from his collar and well fed belly that he had a home.  He followed me into the house, into the kitchen, and on a couch.



    An hour later he went to the door, and I let him out.  The next day he was back, resumed his position on the couch, and slept for an hour.  This continued for several weeks.  Curious, I pinned a note to his collar, "Every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap."
    The next day he arrived with a different note pinned to his collar, "He lives in a home with ten children.  He's trying to catch up on his sleep.  Can I come with him tomorrow?"

 

 

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--
Bill Penn
The Letitia House Gazette

--
Bryan "Beau" Grant
Convivia Group
Commercial Real Estate Broker

"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time." -Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Office: US - +1 (404) 351-0905
Office: UK - +44 (20) 8144 7750
Mobile: US +1 (404) 932-6399
Skype: malacandra
SecondLife: Jebediah Raymaker
Google Chat: bgrantenator


The information in this e-mail and any attached documents is strictly confidential and may be legally privileged. Any unauthorized use or disclosure of this communication is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not read, use or disseminate the information.  If you believe that you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete it from your system. Further, this e-mail does not constitute an offer to sell securities or property or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities or property, and may not be used for such purposes.

3 Wise Beagles found on Christmas Eve..

(Please do CROSS POST to your own lists.)

View their photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/bgrantenator/BeaglesXMAS2007

The short story:

On Christmas Eve, I found 3 pure bred Beagles on the side of the road.. 2 male and one female, all unfixed/unspayed. One of the males is quite old, but is gentle and bright. The other two are are 2-6 years old, behave like siblings, and are clever and gentle. The younger male likes to assert himself as the Alpha dog, but he is manageable and can be trained pretty easily with more time.

They curl up together to sleep. The two males sleep on top of one another, despite the apparent rivalry.

They appear to be seasoned hunting dogs, very friendly even affectionate dispositions, and really clever. They also get along with cats. My cat was not put off them, snoozing about a foot away from one of them.

They seem to be housebroken, having only one or two accidents. Given their emotional state, this is pretty normal to have an accident.

Anybody who knows anyone with a penchant or knowledge of Beagles, please call me to get these three into fostering or adoption. -404.932.6399 cell.

Thanks!!

Beau Grant

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress
can be measured by the way its animals are treated"

                                                                              Mahatma Gandhi

PS: If you want to adopt them directly, please fill out on adoption form on the Ga Humane Society website. I will work with them to get them spayed/neutered BEFORE they are adopted, and the adopting family can reimburse for the expenses. Under no circumstances will these be released before being spayed/neutered.. for obvious reasons.


The Long Story - I just returned form visiting my family in Augusta. They live out on the Savannah River just over the border into South Carolina. It is the first nice neighborhood on that route. It appears that shrewd McCormick County, SC  red necks dump their pets on the road into the neighborhood.

This year on Christmas Eve, I drove past 3 beagles who were sniffing around a spot on the road. I passed them on my errands about 3 times. They never left the spot, so I when I was heading back up to Atlanta, and it was getting dark, I decided these must be abandoned. They appeared to be waiting for their owners return. They would inspect each car as it made the turn onto the road, making sure if it was the right one. Sooner or later, someone would carelessly run them over by talking on their cellphone, so there was no choice but to round them up.

I flagged down a car with a couple of guys who helped me put them into my car. The Beagles were very cooperative, the problem was that I already had my three labs in the car.  Popping the rear hatch window, we found that if inserted them backwards, then they would not snarl at each other. I suppose this worked because the new Beagles showed submission to the labs by presenting their backsides first.

Barely making my Christmas eve dinner plans back in Atlanta that evening, I managed to install the Beagles in the sunroom under the Christmas tree, where they drank all the water, ate all the food, and curled up on the dog beds. I decided to forgo the stand up-sit down-kneel Christmas church service routine, opting instead return home after dinner to give  them all a good cleansing, stem to stern. After a thorough scrubbing with gentle topical disinfectants, endless q-tips soiled with ear goo, and organic soaps and conditioners to remove the caked on dirt, sludge, brambles, fleas, and ticks, they emerged clean and vibrant. All the cuts and tears on the ears were dressed, and all in all, they emerged shiny and presentable for Santa Claus.

2007 Holiday year end wrap up!

2007 Bulletin!

Well the Christmas tree is up and looking good. All the ornaments are hanging in there, as the dogs know realize these are not toys for them to play fetch with. Last year, the first several feet of the tree were denuded by Cami pulling off the ornaments and presenting them to me.


As the year wraps up, it is time to look back on all of it. This past year has been packed with all sorts of events and happenings.

Aside from continuing as ever my commercial real estate brokerage business, I have been up to all sorts of other things.

My great aunt, Hattie, has been doing well since she went to the nursing home, Budd Terrace. Emory Healthcare does a great job, and with the added support of 24 hour sitters, we have some peace of mind that she will not have much opportunity to fall for a 5th time. She fell last November in 2006. Piedmont admitted her into the hospital on a fishing trip. She was livid, and so the nurses drugged her without our permission with Haldol. This sent her into a 15 hour seizure where she squeezed the blood out of my hand for hours. The floor had contagion protocol signs on the other doors, so it was not long before she caught eColi, in addition to pneumonia. The Haldol "burnt" her brain up, so she was transferred for special care. So.. after 2 weeks of intensive care at Emory Wesley Woods neuropsyche.. she managed to regain her faculties, as well as fight off the illnesses. Amazing.

She was dropped by her sitters on the floor, so she had to go into the hospital this past summer. Emory did a great job. The ER, the OR, the hospital care, all of it was top notch. She received 3 pins and a plate in her hip, and she is back up and at them these days. I have to say, Emory's service and level of care was superb, and a welcome change from the careless and rude manner of the staff at Piedmont Hospital.

As for day-to-day stuff, I try to stop by to see her every 2-3 days. We are encouraging her to use a Nintendo Wii. The director of nursing agreed that it would be good for her exercise as well as maintaining her mental sharpness. She likes watching us, not actually playing herself, play golf and tennis. She seems to enjoy the Brian Age game. I hope she will get up the pluck to try playing the tennis and bowling.

In any case, between bingo, Turner Classic Movies, smuggled in Chik-Fil-A nuggets, frequent, nearly daily, visits from all of us, including the dogs, daily activities at the home, and the constant presence of sitters and other staff, she has a reasonably busy life. Ironically, she has a busier life now, than before she fell and broke her hip to begin with 2 years ago. Turner Classic Movies has been a huge thing for her, as she is calm and entertained by the old movies they offer for free and without commercials. She really likes the classics with Jimmy Stewart, Claude Rains, Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, etc. She always makes me look up all the details about the movie on the internet to remind her of all the actors names and the other movies they were in.

My brother, Drew, just passed the bar as well as earned his JD degree from Ga State Magna Cum Laude. He threw a big dinner party near Grant Park in Cabbage Town at Jack Sobel's restaurant, Agave. It was a lot of fun. The food and service could not have been better.




About the same time Drew graduated, I finished up a new degree from Georgia Tech, an Executive Masters of Science of Management of Technology, a modern day MBA program involving Venture Capital finance, entrepreneurship, technology change management, globalization trends, marketing, and best practices. I hope to put it to good use by pursuing business plans I have been working on involving Hydrogen fuel energy systems and another that is closer to home in real estate.

A professor from the program encouraged me to pursue a PhD in Economics. I am very interested in Free Market economics, and have several ideas that I have been researching that may offset some of the consequences we are facing with China, outsourcing, and the decimation our country has faced in terms of all of our production going off-shore. We are just now starting to feel these consequences, and I felt it was time to really consider how to go forward. The article is further down in this blog if you want to have a look.

Back in February, I resumed playing rugby with the Atlanta Renegades. I do not know how so many years got away from me, but it will not happen again. It is like having the most favorite thing in your life return and to find it even more fun than the last time around.

This past May, the Old Boys traveled to the Bahamas to play the Freeport Pendragons. In September, we went to Newport, Wales to watch the Rugby World Cup matches in Cardiff. Our team is twinned with the Newport Saracens. Rugby is the Welsh national sport, and World Cup is a very big deal there.



Since the mayor of the city and the chief of the police are both former Saracens.. we had a "fun" time. They threw a huge party at Terra Nova on the wharf in Cardiff. The interior was decked out as a 3 story high frigate ship. To give some idea as to how cool this was, this would be like being hosted at at the nicest and largest place on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras.

While visiting, we also played against Caerleon RFC and Newport Saracens RFC on the Roman drilling fields in Caerleon, King Arthur's true backyard and the original site of Camelot. King Arthur's round table was supposedly across the street from the pitch, in a roman amphitheater.










We also watched the Newport Dragons practice, a professional level team.I became pretty badly injured when I decided to pick up the ball in front of a 300 lb. man, who leveled me. However, the good news is the British National Health System, which is grossly under-rated, did a great job. It is just going to take time to heal.

After the lads returned home, I hired a car and drove up to Thirsk, Yorkshire.










As if I stepped through the looking glass, I literaly stepped into the world of James Herriot, author of All Creatures Great and Small, the basis for the popular TV show on the BBC. The people would not let me buy my own pints, replacing mine so quickly, I was never without a full and fresh pint of Yorkshire Bitters. The landscape is unchanged from the TV series, and I can well imagine little has changed much since the 1930's when the books was set. The characters in the books still live in the area, as do Tristan and Sigfried Farnon's real life counter parts. I was regailed with tales from the books from the children of the characters or the characters themselves. What a trip!

So.. in lieu of being able to actually play.. I underwent training as a Rugby coach, and am now certified by USA Rugby as a coach. I have been helping out at Kennesaw State, Lassiter HS, and Ga Tech.

On other fronts, I rescued about 10 or so dogs by working as a foster with the Georgia Humane Society. I now have 3 dogs, Chip Conner and Cami.. 2 black labs and a half pint version of a Golden Retriever. They are great, get along with each other, and seem to make a great pack.

After banging on it for about 3 years, I was thrilled to receive an approval from the City of Atlanta qualifying our street for speed humps. You imagine that I was thrilled. Now, we have to get 75% of the property owners to sign the petition, and we will have some measure of safety. Personally, I can't stand speed humps, but they are really the only thing to get people to stop doing around 50-mph in front of our houses, especially since all the traffic tries to use our street as a cut thru. To give some idea, 3 of the 10 worst intersections in Atlanta are next to our neighborhood. We have had one house on the 5 o'clock traffic report, as it was hit by a car.

On the topic of cars.. Last month, I bought a new car, trading in the Volvo.. the Volvo has lived at the shop, so this time I went for something foolproof, a Toyota. I wanted the Subaru Outback, but I test drove the FJ Cruiser, which is a totally different sort of car, and did not look back! the dogs love it, and it is a great off-road vehicle. Check out the video on the Toyota homepage where the FJ literally crawls over huge boulders. It is a descendant of the first car to ever summit Mt. Fuji, so appropriately named "FJ", the modern version of the old Land Cruisers. It is a blast to drive. I named it "Yona".. Cherokee for Little Bear.

On other fronts, I have been trying to help at the Bitsy Grant Tennis Center, serving on their board to help raise funds ($2m) for the renovation project. Also, I've been busy serving on the board of directors for the Grant Park Conservancy (donate) with similar goals and where we have secured a Memorandum of Understanding from the City to manage and fulfill the goals of the Master Plan which hopes to restore the park to its original beauty.

Last year, after the Master's program residency in Europe concluded, I went over to London to help my friend with the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (Donate). The happy news, in a truly tale of ruthless extinguishment of the animals in the name of palm oil and biofuels, is that the new TV program, Orangutan Island, has been critically acclaimed and generated loads of awareness here at home in the US. The rest of the world has been hard at owkr helping for a few years now, so we here are behind the curve. The best thing you can do to help is to send them some cash, avoid food products containing Palm Oil (10% of the products on the shelves), write some letters to the Indonesian government if you are really plucky, and not wear Patchouli.. the hippies will love that! (The plant this oil is harvested from is also grown on plantations that cause forest fragmentation.)


I have also cooked up a plan to transform a 14 acre area, otherwise known as the Gulch, into the Atlanta International Sports Gateway. I could use a hand this whale of a project, so let me know if you want to help! The project basically involves the following..

• Professional venues would be inserted
into a parking deck that extends from the current
facility under the surface park at the dome.
• The parking deck would hide beneath a park that would entirely cover the top level of the deck structure, similar to the park between the Dome, Philips Arena, and the Ga World Congress Center.
• Each venue would rise 2-3 stories above the level of the
surface park.
• Tennis for Davis Cup, Track & Field by the AUC,
Football-Soccer-Rugby-Lacrosse multi-use venue- host
to future GSU Football team, Atlanta Silver-backs
Soccer, Georgia’s Div. 1 National rugby teams, and
college lacrosse tournaments.
• The deck would house covered basketball courts, tennis
courts, velodrome, criterium track, and a ground level skate/bmx park.
• Visually, it would blend with Centennial Park as well as
the existing park at the Dome.
• Connect to GSU via underground viaduct following
Wall St. Connect to Centennial by redevelopment
of Spring-Marietta-Techwood garage -
the Gateway to the site. Wide pedestrian footbridges
connect to the AUC.

I was also trying to get a better solution implented for our traffic problems. They have been using, literally, designs from the mid1980's to the early 1990's to alleviate the snarl we exist in. I am pitching a two block "round about" that would completely improve the gridlock in our nieghborhood. Here is a diagram.


Besides that I have been doing CrossFit at my friends new gym, reading some books, and trying to stay on top of my life!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.


All the best..

Beau..

aka.. Samwise “Lizard” Gamghee, el mosquito bandito del pescadors..
Sam really was the only reliable Hobbit.

Cheney in 1994 on Iraq

Cheney clearly stating why the US has no business invading Iraq. Amazing how 10 years can change one's mind.

A proposal to foster free markets and what to do with China.

Folks who know me have been hearing me talking about this for at least three years.. So now, it is finally taking shape.

China dumping their Treasury bond holdings in response to our requests for tariffs.
(http://www.forbes.com/business/2007/08/13/china-us-dollar-markets-currency-cx_jc_0813markets1.html?feed=rss_popstories )

The important thing ignored by this article is that the US Treasury bonds held by China , represent about 1/4 of China's budget surplus. If China dumped a small portion, say one eight of the position, it would send the dollar into the $2-$3 per Euro range, yet this amount is minuscule to China. It would reduce our ability to buy from China, force the vlaue of the Yuan to increase, and reduce the value of China's dollar currency reserves.

While some argue that a $2.50 -$3 Euro is coming in the next 24 months, and if introduced over that period of time, it could be an advantage to level our trade imbalance, people also ignore another factor, what exactly do we export these days besides know-how and services? The old model of devaluing our currency can't be nearly as effective as it once was, when we had the commanding heights of the economy running strongly, when our exported goods and our own commodities were in high demand and were not produced elsewhere; when the world believed that our way was mostly the right way, versus the Soviets. This is NOT the case in today's free markets.

Another factor, the imbalanced labor laws, environmental controls, and democratic processes in China all incentivize our own business leaders to ride this Rickshaw wagon til the wheels fall off. We have had a few US CEO's already indicted for lobbying against labor in reforms in China. China, if they are tired of buying oil, can simply put the entire country onto bicycles in a matter of days, at the point of a gun. They have, if you combine N. Korea, 3.4 million troops, not engaged in an active war, and possess long range nuclear capabilities. China does have its own viable space aeronautics program.

We are no position to dilly dally with tariffs. However, there is another solution.

In the current free trade environment, there are two losers. The less obvious losers are those from developed economies who have the most restrictive laws. The obvious losers are the 3rd world poor who have no access to the free markets. The poor in developing nations have no access to the markets because they have few if any instruments of legal trust such as title rights to property, credit instruments, or savings security. Meanwhile, the 1st world nations must buy from nations like China who undersell our own labor and production lines owing to our highly evolved regulatory laws and the fact that China and countries like them can all but ignore these rules to benefit their bottom line. China can use conscripted slave labor to produce questionable products with methods which foul the planet's ecology, all at a bargain rate so that average consumers can't afford NOT to buy the goods. Sure, they will execute a government official that is so negligent that the entire world complains about the products, but beyond that public outcry, there is little oversight beyond what cash the communist government can rake in off our dependencies.

WHAT IF... we try another approach. It is in the business leaders' and government's best interest to alleviate a growing poor population's pains, and not through the misguided altruism of aid packages, but rather let's allow the "poor" full access to the capital markets for their own betterment. Given them the chance to improve their own status. It is also in our business leaders best interest to maintain a strong working middle class in developed nations.

In order to do we should pursue two courses of action:

In developing nations, we should provide clear means for the establishment of titles to property, credit access, and other basic laws that enable a trust based free market to occur.

In developed nations, instead of using misguided and poorly designed tariffs, we could instead target the companies in those countries. Any company selling into our own markets, for example, would have to demonstrate they make good faith attempts to match our own domestic legal standards. Since they are able to benefit by the lax regulatory environment in the countries in which they operate, and since the governments are unable or unwilling to change legislation so that the laws governing business and production reach a level in parity with developed nations, why not start a program modeled loosely after what Wal-Mart does with it's vendors? Wal-Mart has the power to compel it's vendors to make expensive and radical changes just to sell into the stores.

Is the USA less powerful than Wal-Mart? The US and the EU are the most lucrative consumer markets on the planet. The developed nations are the most lucrative markets for these goods, offering the highest retail prices. Anyone should be so honored as to be able to sell on these shelves. We should no longer maintain laws which allow for our own laws to be circumvented by outsourcing and imports. Our middle class is at risk. Our way of life is dying. Democracy will fade when the markets are not balanced and stable.

In order to be allowed access to these top end markets, a company would have to agree to a pre-determined code of corporate standards whereby they agree to end several practices that allow the disequilibrium to exist. These could range from putting a halt to child labor, installing smokestack scrubbers, or other similar policies that a business in the other country would have had to obey. Market's will correct themselves, either financially, or through wars, famine, and other negative social means.

The goals is to convince these companies to act in parity with the laws of the markets they are selling into. These measures can be introduced over a period of time, say 5 to 7 years. At the end of each year, the company would offer a report on it's website as to the progress achieved to reach these goals. At the end of the transitional period, if the goal is not achieved, then the company can not sell into the market without accomplishing the transition to parity. Given that their own government may at times prevent the company from achieving these goals, there would be the opportunity to appeal for one-two years provided Good Faith efforts are clearly demonstrable. In any event, these efforts would easily discernible by any auditor or investor, much less a regulatory official with a shiny badge.

These two courses of action would have two effects. The poor could participate. They would be enabled to actually sell among themselves and translate that value into the wider markets at their discretion. The countries that undercutting developed nations through what amounts to shirking the law in the other country, these countries would eventually find traction and direction for the legislative process to move towards a parity of basic set of interchangeable laws that the trading community agree must be in place to preserve stability of the trading markets.

In the absence of another economic policy solution, such as Socialism, Capitalism is the only remaining system available to the world. The question is not whether we are going to be capitalists, it is whether or not we want to ignite the remaining 80% of humanity with access to the markets. Be forewarned if we do not, those left out will find myriad ways to ruin the market system such as what we have been seeing these past 15 years. Without stability, the disenfranchised will find a locus of power to leverage to make their point known. When they do, the markets will be at risk.

A great resource I found is "The Commanding Heights- the Fight for the Global Economy", an amazing comprehensive view of the history of modern economics as it has evolved into the current era of free market initiatives. Everyone is in the series. Finance Ministers, Presidents, economists, protest leaders, union leaders, and whoever else has been battling on either side of the efforts. It is a must for anyone living in the global economy, which means all of us.

IHT.com Article: A weak dollar and the Fed

A weak dollar and the Fed
The New York Times
Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Despite the Federal Reserve's latest stay-the-course message, investors are betting on at least one interest-rate cut by January, intended to quell turmoil in the markets and to juice the slow economy. But with the dollar also weak - recently hitting its lowest point in 15 years against an index of other major currencies - the Fed may be reluctant to oblige.


A declining dollar is a source of inflationary pressure because it can boost the cost of imports. So if the Fed tried to rev up the economy with a rate cut at the same time the dollar is falling, it could end up provoking even more inflation. That would be a drag on economic growth rather than a boost. In an extreme case, it could result in a toxic combination of weak growth and high prices that is a central banker's nightmare.


How did the Fed lose room to maneuver? The answer is rooted in the Bush administration's misguided economic policies.


Over the last several years, America's imbalances in trade and other global transactions have worsened dramatically, requiring the United States to borrow billions of dollars a day from abroad just to balance its books.


The only lasting way to fix the imbalances - and reduce that borrowing - is to increase America's savings. But the administration has rejected that responsible approach since it would require rolling back excessive tax cuts and engaging in government-led health care reform - both anathema to President George W. Bush. It would also require revamping the nation's tax incentives so that they create new savings by typical families, instead of new shelters for the existing wealth of affluent families - another nonstarter for this White House.


Stymied by what it won't do, the administration has gone for a quicker fix - letting the dollar slide. A weaker dollar helps to ease the nation's imbalances by making American exports more affordable, thus narrowing the trade deficit.


But to be truly effective, a weaker dollar must be paired with higher domestic savings. Otherwise, the need to borrow from abroad remains large, even as a weakening currency makes dollar-based debt less attractive. That's the trap the United States is slipping into today.


Among other ills, it could lead to a deterioration in American living standards as money flows abroad to pay foreign creditors, leaving less to spend at home on critical needs. Or, it could lead to abrupt spikes in interest rates as American debtors are forced to pay whatever it takes to get the loans they need.


In volatile economic times like now, leadership is crucial - and notably absent with this administration. Officials have made no effort to orchestrate a more coordinated and comprehensive realignment of the world's currencies, in part, it seems, because the administration is unwilling to have America do its part by saving more.


Until the administration - either this one or the next - is willing to acknowledge the source of the economy's imbalances, and starts addressing them seriously, the dollar is likely to remain weak. And the Fed's ability to maneuver will be constrained.



http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/08/opinion/eddollar.php

Pet the dog, eat the cow: Our confused relationship with animals

My brother sent this article from The Philadelphia Inquirer. The article touches upon an interesting idiosyncrasy of humans and the animals we have stewardship over. Personally, I struggled with this issue about 7 years ago. After fouling up my system by following a poorly designed vegan diet, I concluded, for better or worse, that I am beef eater that somehow likes animals as well.

At the time, my uncle hunted. I asked him to teach me to hunt.Since I am to be a carnivore, I should at least appreciate what it takes to personally track, kill, prepare, and then eat the animal. It is an odd way of being able to look in the mirror and say "I now have more integrity because I don't simply consume factory produced flesh from a plastic bag." At least the animal I consumed had the luxury of living free and naturally until it crossed paths with my dinner plans. It should be mentioned that hunting, if performed in accordance with DNR regulations, is NOT shooting ducks in a barrel. It requires tons of time in the off-season tracking and studying the movement of the game you wish to hunt. One does not simply climb a tree one cold morning and expect a herd of deer to come by on schedule 30 minutes later and go home. You can spend days in the woods sitting quietly, having tracked your quarry, and they never emerge. As for poachers, which is basically anything that falls outside of the DNR regulations, there are enormous penalties and sentences. So you anti-hunters, rest assured the DNR is hell on enforcement and people go to jail all the time for violations. The game animals are far batter protected than the animals who provide the meat available in your grocery store. And since our ancestors exterminated all the predators, culling the herds are now our job.

It takes about 5 minutes of googling to find enough reliable information about factory farmed animals to nauseate and revile any normal person.
We have cruel testing practices on dogs happening right here in Atlanta in labs at Georgia Tech. When attempting to make a few changes with their circumstance, not even the local media batted an eye. Still, we bend over backwards to save one dog, while 3-4 million a year are euthanized because someone didn't bother to neuter/spay along the way, or someone was making a living running an awful puppy mill or raising dogs to fight.

Yet, we don't see volunteer groups rescuing a sow who has not touched the ground since being trussed up after having its first litter, being repeatedly re-impregnated and jacked up with every imaginable medication to speed the production cycle and enhance growth of the offspring. We do not see people turning their heads in disgust at the prospect of eating a lamb, which play organized games among themselves. Most people relish veal, the production of which is just a horrific practice. Would you lock your puppy up for 2-3 months in a pen with no light, then slaughter and eat it? No, but is is OK if it is a cow.

Then, one has to consider the inefficiency of the meat production cycle. A majority of effluent sewage contaminants and chemicals in the water supply result from all the run off from the treated fields, and the untreated sewage of the meat industry. The amount of grain required to raise on cow could feed somewhere around ten x the number of people with the grain as opposed to the resulting slaughtered meat.

The reality is these products taste good, fan our egos, and provide needed nutrition. Yet, as responsible people, it is good to consider where all of the bounty comes from, and what it had to endure to provide for our tables. For me, it means simply not overeating when it comes to meat, dairy, poultry, and fish. It means purchasing products from farms that respect the animals and not from corporate producers.

It means remembering to take full appreciation of the sentient entity that gave its life to give me sustenance and culinary enjoyment. It means learning how to prepare food to a higher level. After all if it died, one should make the very best of it possible. It is remembering to pray and thank the animal. Many native Americans do this.

Cherokees, when building a sweat lodge, would cut saplings for the lodge's construction. On the remaining stump, they would place a portion of tobacco, and thank the tree for giving of itself. Imagine a lumber company doing that!

Nonetheless, all living things are imbued with Spirit. When one fails to respect and honor Spirit, that can serve no good purpose.

Here is the article.

Bryan




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Benjamin Lynch <ben.lynch@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 28, 2007 9:33 AM
Subject: Pet the dog, eat the cow: Our confused relationship with animals
To: Bryan Grant <bgrantenator@gmail.com>

Pet the dog, eat the cow: Our confused relationship with animals

By Crispin Sartwell
The Philadelphia Inquirer

Article Last Updated: 07/27/2007 09:11:29 PM MDT

The Michael Vick dogfighting case, and all of the attention on dogfighting and its attendant practices, show one thing very clearly: As a society, we have no idea what we think about animals. We don't know how much we ought to take them into account, morally. We don't even know how to figure it out.
I watched cable news recently, and almost every anchor interviewed an official of the Humane Society, and all expressed horror, especially that Vick's indictment had accused him and his fellow defendants of executing dogs in ways apparently designed to be as cruel as possible: drowning, strangling, electrocution. One official compared the practice to child pornography.
Then I went into town for some lunch, driving past all of the franchises peddling ground cow for human consumption - the same ones you'll find on every American highway exit.
If killing dogs is the equivalent of child pornography, while eating cows is simply a way to put off mowing the lawn, we seem to be conflicted - or reeking with hypocrisy and confusion.
We have a set of intuitions, driven partly by our interactions with pets, that many animals can experience pain in a morally significant way, that they can suffer, or be used and degraded. Perhaps they have somewhat less of a claim on us than human beings do, but they make a claim.
But another set of intuitions is driven by our dietary habits or our experience of thumping squirrels and armadillos on the road: that an animal is little more than an inanimate object, and can be used in whatever way a human being sees fit.
Our moral evaluation of animals seems to vary with their proximity to ourselves - both their everyday interactions with us and their perceived similarity to us - so that by the time you're done attributing love, loyalty and inferential reasoning to your dog, you have recognized her as a de facto human being, a member of the family. It works both ways, and your dog recognizes you as leader of the pack.
Cows have big, sad eyes, but less personality of the sort that arouses our recognition. And these days, unless you're directly involved in the farming and food industry, your interaction with cows is limited to, let's say, the drive-through lane.
In practice, the moral claims of animals vary by species and track our sense of the animal's proximity - cognitive, emotional, physical - to ourselves. We become truly sentimental: We write memoirs with our dogs, talk baby-talk to them, let them lick our faces. But about other species we are as hard-nosed as possible. Essentially, we do whatever we feel like to them whenever we want.
But there is no rational justification for this distinction. Pigs aren't more stupid, or less emotionally complex or less capable of experiencing pain than dogs, but they seem to lack that certain something (well, all except Charlotte's Wilbur).
One might simply rest the problem with dogfighting on its effects on human beings - as in, "Dogfighting is debasing not to the pit bull but to the quarterback who participates."
But if we really believed cruelty to animals debased humans who participate, we'd have to accept that our massive, industrial-scale systems of cruelty to cows deeply debase all humanity.
If there were an argument for dogfighting, I suspect it would go like this: The dog is bred to fight; we admire its violence and participate in it; it is a primal and even noble enactment of our life here on Earth. Perhaps the dog would rather die than lose, like the world's greatest athletes or businessmen.
This resembles the animal-rights argument: It reads a dog's motivations as though they were human. But it has a different sense of what it means to be human.
We need to decide: (a) Do animals count? and (b) How, exactly, not as dwarfish, or four-legged, or stupid people, but as real things whose existence is, though connected to ours, profoundly external and different?
Until we grapple with these questions, our condemnation of Vick and our tender treatment of Beau the miniature dachshund are equally irrational.

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CRISPIN SARTWELL teaches philosophy at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. He wrote this for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Senator Saxby Chambliss: Oil exploration along the Ga Coast

Dear Senator Chamblis,

Thank you for your response to our letters about the exploration and extraction of oil along the Georgia Coast, the Outer Shelf being the chief parcel of my personal concerns.

Unfortunately, your position only focuses on the national energy security strategy as related to Oil and Natural Gas. Furthermore, this particular tactic represents little more than a reactionary short-term stop gap measure, rather than a well conceived plan to stabilize our nation. As I wrote to President Bush seven years ago concerning ANWR, I would have less of a problem with prospecting for oil in these sensitive areas so long as we are putting forth significant efforts to reduce our dependency on non-renewable fuels. Practically nothing has been done towards finding alternative ways to keep our country's energy supplies viable besides actually in creasing our consumption of oil by incentives consumers to purchase gas guzzling vehicles. Once an area like ANWR is exploited, we have to keep looking for our next fix like some mendicant drug addict, yet we have not invested in other means to alleviate our needs. We find ourselves back at square one, over and over again, compelle to make war to secure our economic interests.

As a nation, we have consistently failed to foster these alternative means to power our economy. Electric cars were removed from the roads (EV1), despite high levels of customer satisfaction, good vehicle performance, and very low emmissions from the actual vehicle. Hybrids cost more than regular cars to maintain and purchase, the hybrid credit falling far short of the price differential it was designed to offset. The farm vehicle credit was reduced, but you still get a hefty credit for buying a huge vehicle if you are an LLC. The farm vehicle credit is several time larger than the hybrid credit. The gas guzzler tax was completely repealed in 2005. The failure to regulate building material energy efficiencies and allowing a mushrooming housing market to build cheaply has over burdened our already over taxed utilities wasting our energy both in the time it takes to work long enough to pay the bills and in terms of the overall energy consumption. Our failure to secure global commodities agreements has left the door wide open; allowing China to pin down the resources we need, has placed our entire economic future in peril. This has lead to a $1.36/Euro from a $.83/Euro in 2001. We have all lost in real dollars about 39% of our former purchasing power. ( read why here) Meanwhile, the government has distracted us with an agonizing war that only benefits the companies who have the contracts to rebuild what is destroyed. Meanwhile, oil prices have significantly INCREASED since President Bush from the deck of the carrier declared, "Mission Accomplished". We have not necessarily reduced our exposure to terror. If buying fuel from countries who sponsor terror increases the threat of terror, then we are cutting our nose to spite our face.

Related to this matter, four years ago I wrote and submitted to the Icelandic Parliament a road map to a hydrogen economy based on their access to geothermal resources. They are well along into the actual deployment of this proposal and are reaping the benefits . Currently, I am working with a Utah based company that has already developed fuels systems that supplement fuel with Hydrogen to gain 20-30% mileage performance improvements, quad fuel vehicles (H2, Ethanol, NG, Unleaded), and the founder, Tai Robinson, is the first American to successfully drive round trip on Hydrogen only.This was accomplished nearly 4 years ago. (published Press Releases & Coverage)

The crucial mission for our nation involves energy security and economic sustainability. Your plan would only serve as a knee jerk addictive reaction which only make certain companies that sponsored certain political campaigns a little bit more profitable, yield minuscule amounts of crude to the national supply, and would certainly endanger our state and national treasures for the short term goal of energy exploration.

We have in our state of Georgia one of the leading think tanks for energy security. Mr. John Endicott is the Director for the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy at Georgia Tech's Ivan Allen College. The center hosts a regular series of presentations which are attended by the military as well as private sector individuals. You would find establishing a dialogue with this resource to be formative and provocative.

In closing, your position lacks the foresight necessary to stabilize the energy security of our nation. I call upon you to expand your view of what is possible and the economic growth our state and nation can experience by truly pursuing these alternatives. These alternatives are already proven to be functionally sound. We must, as with most public service related initiatives, legislate the adoption of these technologies on a wide scale so the investors can see fit to patronize this effort.

I invite you to explore these possibilities and deploy the power of your chair as a senator to building a stronger America.

Sincerely,

Bryan "Beau" Grant
Convivia Group
Commercial Real Estate Broker
Skype: malacandra
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Letter from Senator Chambliss:

Dear Mr. Grant :

Thank you for contacting me regarding the Department of Interior's initiative to boost oil and natural gas production on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska . I appreciate hearing from you on this important matter.

High energy costs are hitting Americans in their pocketbooks due to supply problems with oil and natural gas. This plan will begin to alleviate our supply problems and provide us with greater independence from foreign sources of energy by opening up millions of acres for energy exploration.

According to the Department, the program could produce 10 billion barrels of oil and 45 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over 40 years, generating almost $170 billion, in today's dollars, in net benefits for the Nation. The OCS is a vital source of domestic oil and natural gas for America , especially in light of sharply rising energy prices and increasing demand for these resources. This energy production will create jobs, provide greater economic and energy security for America and can be accomplished in a safe and environmentally sound manner.

I will continue to support an energy policy that will make our country less vulnerable to fluctuating gas prices by promoting renewable energy sources, developing alternative sources of energy like hydrogen, encouraging greater use of ethanol and biodiesels, and increasing domestic refinery capacity and domestic sources of fuel.

If you would like to receive timely email alerts regarding the latest congressional actions and my weekly e-newsletter, please sign up via my web site at: www.chambliss.senate.gov . Please let me know whenever I may be of assistance.