Month: March 2010

Keep Your Terrible Presidents off My Money

GE is loving on Ronald Reagan like white on rice.

And I can see it from GE’s perspective – Reagan’s signature accomplishment was spending the USSR into the ground, and it worked, and it helped companies like GE and Bechtel and Boeing along the way. (We’d do well to recall this lesson when setting economic policy, but that’s another story).

The important lesson is that Reagan was, essentially, a terrible president, ignorant and reactionary in the George W. Bush vein. Despite his big smiley friendly veneer, he was a monster. Let us remember his attack on Medicare:

Headlines Mislead, Say Experts

So, the CBO estimate of the health care bill is out, and the headlines are all screaming about it. The AP headline, carried on CNBC and elsewhere, reads “CBO: Health bill would cut $138 billion from deficit in 10 years.”

The Wall Street Journal gives a big shocking number: Health Overhaul to Cost $940 Billion Over Decade. In the online version, that’s the page title, but in the print version, it’s the headline, which is then followed by three paragraphs before the article explains that, despite the big number, it’s actually a savings.

Maybe it’s not just a WSJ thing, but it sure seems like it to me.

Questions that keep coming up

What chain of circumstances lead one to open a joint bank account with a spouse, and then set up direct deposit, and then ask whether it’s possible to hide their paycheck amounts? Isn’t asking that question the equivalent of saying “I’m a terrible person?”

What obligations do we have to art that makes us uncomfortable, or is difficult? Are we morally obligated to seek out, say, headache-inducing exhibitions at the ICA, or watch Oscar-nominated dramas, or listen to music that gets good ratings on Pitchfork? If so, how much? I mean, is there a ratio of serious to unserious entertainment that you have to maintain? Do you have to watch one “Precious” for every “Must Love Dogs?” One blog post about third-world poverty for every ten pictures of kittens? If you fall below that ill-defined ratio of highbrow to everything else, what are the consequences? Do you get exiled from the good dinner parties in Cambridge?

Also, what’s with the sudden proliferation of ballet flats that show women’s toe-cracks? A couple years ago it was about showing the toenails, and now it’s the other end of the toe. Is it the foot-fetish version of low-rise jeans?