Merry Christmas!

Changiness, Rick Warren edition

Why is Rick Warren being invited to give the invocation at the inauguaration with this kind of track record:

When it came time for questions, a woman stood up, proclaimed her Judaism, and asked Warren if she was going to burn in hell. He paused before responding--and then answered her question the only way it could be answered. Yes, he said to audible gasps.

I'm sorry, but this isn't someone you want around your grandkids, getting all drunk on Christmas railing against the "Jewish banking conspiracy", let alone a presidential inauguration. 

Obama may claim that we can respectfully disagree on issues, but anti-Semitism is where the lines get drawn. If Obama is trying for some kind of political "Kumbaya" here, Warren isn't the guy to deliver it.

Clark County #2 in Real Estate Foreclosures

Barry Ritholtz points to a 28% rise nationally in real estate foreclosures, with the western United States being particulary hard hit.  Nevada comes out as #1 in the nation, with 1 out of 78 properties in foreclosure.  That's unreal.

Closer to home, Clark County has a rate of 1 out of 427 homes in foreclosure, only exceeded in Washington State by Pierce County's rate of 1 out of 327.  That's combined with a 37.3% decline in home sales year over year for November.  In other words, there's a whole lot of inventory out there with nowhere to go.  That's curious that both Clark and Pierce are "commuter town" locales by any definition.

I'm sure Tom Mielke's "ideas" of turning on the pro-growth spigot will save the day here.  

Frickin' laser beams

Obama's choice for Secretary of Energy is positively exciting news:

Obama will also nominate Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as his energy secretary, a Democratic Party official said.

Who's Steven Chu? He deals with frickin' laser beams:

Chu’s own research has resulted in numerous awards, including the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips, for developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.

Any guy who works with laser beams in a meaningful way is instantly cool. Further, he's formed a public/private group working on solutions to global climate change:

Chu is currently pushing his scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and industry to develop technologies to reverse climate change. Chief in Chu's campaign is an unprecedented research pact reached between UC Berkeley, oil industry giant BP, the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the University of Illinois.

I understand absolutely nothing about the work of Steven Chu, but if we're going to have a new Manhattan Project to develop alternative energy, this sounds like the guy to pull it off.

We're always told that technology can solve the issues of alternative energy and global climate change, and then everyone proceeds to do nothing about it. My sense is that with a real scientist at the helm of DOE, we'll begin to actually develop some real solutions other than the industry sham of "clean coal".

Chicago, Chicago that toddling town

From workers taking over factories, to President-Elects doing their transition thing, to newspapers declaring bankruptcy, to a governor getting arrested for trying to sell a US Senate seat, America turns its eyes to you, Chicago.

Blagojevich is so corrupt he probably would have hit up contributors for that US Senate seat only to eventually appoint himself. 

Updated Deep Thought: Many are comparing the level of corruption in Illinois with Alaska and Louisiana, and there's quite a bit of truth to that. But I'd make the argument that Illinois is no more corrupt than other parts of the country, it's just that they have an aggressive United States Attorney who is truly "untouchable" and doggedly trying to clean the place up.  

It's too bad that so many other US Attorney's were summarily removed from office by Rove and Gonzalez as we've truly exceeded Gilded Age corruption amongst the political establishment in this country.

Raftery goes for the Pulitzer

Isolde Raftery's series on under-age prostitution is just about the best reportage The Columbian has ever done.  Seriously, it's a must read:

Young workers in the oldest profession

Clark County sex trade operates mostly online

Young girls forced to learn and obey brutal rules of the street

The accompanying video on the last piece is pretty harrowing stuff.  While politicians jawbone on budget cuts for education, social services, and law enforcement, there's some very real consequences on the end of that wire.  

Pridemore booted off of Ways & Means

Newspapers around the state are reporting on the purge of Sen. Craig Pridemore from Senate Ways & Means:

Another interesting change is that Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver, is no longer the number 2 Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee. Sen. Rodney Tom, D-Medina, is the new vice-chairman. This is likely a response to Pridemore's ill-fated phone calls in search of potential support to replace Sen. Margarita Prentice as chairwoman.

For whatever reason, this isn't important enough to hit the pages of The Columbian. This is a pretty big hit to Southwest Washington, especially in light of huge upcoming budget cuts. So if Clark College or WSU Vancouver is found to be taking inordinate budget hits, you'll know why.

Factory takeover time, banks next

This is what happens when the bank recipients of Treasury bailout largesse withhold credit:

Workers who got three days' notice that their factory was shutting its doors have occupied the building and say they won't go home without assurances they'll get severance and vacation pay.

About 250 union workers occupied the Republic Windows and Doors plant in shifts Saturday while union leaders outside criticized a Wall Street bailout they say is leaving laborers behind.

Leah Fried, an organizer with the United Electrical Workers, said the Chicago-based vinyl window manufacturer failed to give 60 days' notice required by law before shutting down.

[...]

Fried said the company can't pay its 300 employees because its creditor, Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, won't let them.

Bank of America received $25 billion from the government's financial bailout package. The company said in a statement Saturday that it isn't responsible for Republic's financial obligations to its employees.

Good on the employees for making the brave choice of simply taking over the factory, a pattern of resistance most recently seen earlier in the decade during Argentina's financial crisis:

When the economy collapsed here 18 months ago, the situation was so bad that the owners of many factories simply shut their doors and walked away, in most cases owing their employees months and months of back pay. Rather than accept that situation, workers -- backed by neighborhood associations and left-wing groups enamored with the idea of ''people's capitalism'' -- have sometimes been able to persuade bankruptcy courts to let them take over the company's assets.

Simply shuttering the factory doors is not allowing for a more orderly transition for these employees to seek other employment. It will be interesting to see if U.S. Bankruptcy judges follow the Argentine example here, since our Latin American brethren have far more experience with economic "shock doctrine" than we do.

Bank of America is making a strong case for being taken over by Federal banking regulators. You cannot just squander $25 billion in taxpayer proceeds by keeping your powder dry, which is exactly what BofA is doing here. A bank's job is to lend money, when it ceases to do that, it ceases to do business.

If Bank of America can make the bold statement that it's not responsible for financial obligations to a creditor's employees, than why are taxpayers responsible for BofA's financial obligations?

Update: Lest this post simply be interpreted as "class warfare" pitting employers against workers, that's not the case, as even Chicago-area manufacturers are no fans of the banks:

The crisis at Republic may soon spread to other Chicago manufacturers. Meinster says Republic is a cornerstone among Goose Island businesses, and is not alone in having financial problems.

“That could be 50,000 jobs here in the city if the banks allow these manufacturers to go down,” Meinster says.

Glenn Johnson, a member of the board of directors of of the Illinois Manufacturers Association, agrees.

"I'm hearing horror stories about banks coming in and saying, 'It's been a great relationship and we'll miss you, but we just don't like your numbers, and we're just not going to renew your line of credit,"' says Johnson, who also served as chairman of the organization.

One wonders, are Portland metro area manufacturers in any better shape? How about that window manufacturer down the road?

How does it feel?

So the Republicans are clearly itching for a fight over the Big 3 automaker bailout, with Senator Richard Shelby (D-Alabama) shoveling dirt on GM's grave:

Mr. Shelby in his opening remarks said: “I intend to oppose bailing out the Big Three auto manufacturers.” And he sharply criticized the companies for failing to succeed against their foreign-based competitors.

What's fascinating about all of this is the Republican sponsorship for decades of suburban sprawl, climate change denial, and fixation on cheap Middle East oil, as documented in Kevin Phillips' American Theocracy. In Clark County, nothing has been more culturally indicative of Republican sympathies then an SUV with a Bush/Cheney 2004 sticker.

Shelby is all about selling out unionized workers and American companies, whether it be in the auto industry or his pet project, the Airbus tanker.

What's heavily ironic here as well is the pattern of GM CEO Rick Wagoner's political contributions:

George W Bush (R)
President
BUSH-CHENEY '04 (PRIMARY) INC, $2,000, 7/22/03

ASHCROFT, JOHN D (R)
Senate - MO
ASHCROFT 2000, $500, 6/2/00

George W Bush (R)
President
BUSH FOR PRESIDENT INC., $1,000, 11/30/99

Sure, there's the contributions to the champion of lower mileage standards John Dingell (D-Big 3) as well, but Wagoner backs Republicans on the presidential level. That investment is not working on so well.

We may have entered an era where Toyota Prius drivers sport "Palin 2012!" stickers.

Pridemore in trouble?

Joe Turner up at TNT's Political Buzz passes along an interesting rumor:

The Senate Democrats' Committee on Committees, the folks who decide who will be chairmen and chairwomen and other such stuff, is meeting today to do what it does.

On the informal agenda is what to do with Sen. Craig Pridemore. Rumor is, the Vancouver Democrat wanted to be promoted from vice chairman of Senate Ways and Means Committee to chairman, and started making a few calls to that end.

Problem was, Sen. Margarita Prentice of Renton already has that job.

Pridemore failed. Now what?

Long time readers will know of my absolute disdain for Margarita "Cash Advance" Prentice (D-MoneyTree). She's part of an old guard that is way out of touch with the concerns of regular folk. Now that state rep Bill Fromhold has retired, it is essential to have Southwest Washington representation on the state budget with someone who actually has experience as a budget analyst. With a projected $5 billion budget shortfall, who is better qualified here?

There's also the issue of Prentice's compromising Native American gaming interest ties. I'm all for tribal gaming, but there's a balance to be maintained between the rights of local communities and the sovereign rights of tribes. Prentice, who also sits on the state's gaming commission board, appears to be more concerned with tribal gaming contributions to her re-election fund than actual regulation. With all of her time committments to tribal gaming matters, Prentice has little left over to make the hard choices that need to be made on the state budget.

So if the forces who support Prentice want to kneecap Pridemore, let's do it up. It's a debate worth having. Kicking a rising star in the teeth for having a bit of ambition is no way to run a caucus.

Let's just hope this is all much ado over nothing.

Recession finally hits!

Captain Obvious makes it official:

But the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research, charged with making the call for the history books, waited until now to weigh in.

In a statement released Monday, the members of the group’s Business Cycle Dating Committee — made up of seven prominent economists, most from the academic sector — said that the economy entered a recession in December 2007.

What a fantastic idea to wait until after the election to make the call.

With sound economic profunditry as this, you'd think we were still communicating in the Age of Sail when news took months to travel around the world.