Monthly Archives: March 2004

Energy price rise not having usual effect on national economy

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The price of West Texas crude oil has climbed $10 in the last six months to its current level of $36.28, its highest level since the eve of the Iraq war. Meanwhile, the economy is expanding at a 4.1 percent annual rate, weathering the rise in oil and gas costs without the inflation and economic stagnation that occurred in much of the national economy after energy price spikes in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. This NY Times article addresses the reasons for this reversal in the normal countercyclical effect that high energy prices have on the rest of the national economy, and the point at which even higher energy prices would likely slow the economy’s expansion.

NY Times on Lakewood Church – Compaq Center deal

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This NY Times article describes Lakewood Church‘s long term lease on the City of Houston’s Compaq Center, formerly the home of the NBA Houston Rockets, who have now moved to a new downtown arena, the Toyota Center.
Lakewood’s acquisition of the lease on Compaq Center was not easy. Immediately after the deal was announced, Fort Worth-based Crescent Real Estate Equities Company, the owner of Greenway Plaza, the five-million-square-foot high-end office complex that surrounds the arena, threw ecclesiastic concerns aside and sued Lakewood, contending that its proposed lease on the Compaq Center would violate deed restrictions on the arena. Of course, the new office building that Crescent wanted to build on the Compaq Center site did not violate those same deed restrictions. At any rate, the suit was settled last year, after the city agreed to overpay and buy 5.5 acres of land from Crescent in front of the City’s George R. Brown Convention Center for $33 million.

Dick Cheney, Comedian

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The Daily Standard has the highlights of Vice President Dick Cheney‘s remarks at Saturday night’s annual Gridiron dinner in Washington. The ending of Vice-President Cheney’s remarks are absolutely appropriate and his other comments are clever, such as this one:
“Lots of familiar faces here tonight. I always feel a genuine bond whenever I see Senator Clinton. She’s the only person who’s the center of more conspiracy theories than I am.”

But we have nice weather and good golf courses

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Texas cities’ Chambers of Commerce are not wild about this report.

Obesity becoming major public health issue

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This Rand Corporation study concludes that many of the improvements in health that medical advances have bestowed upon middle-aged and older Americans will likely be effectively erased over the next 20 years if Americans’ weight continues to increase.
The proportion of health care expenditures associated with treating the consequences of obesity would increase from 14 percent in 2000 to 21 percent in 2020 for 50-69 year-old men, and from 13 percent to 20 percent for women in the same age group, according to the study to be published in the March/April edition of Health Affairs ($).
Absent changes in health behavior or medical technology and assuming obesity trends continue through 2020, the study predicts that the proportion of people 50-69 with disabilities (those who are limited in their ability to care for themselves or perform other routine tasks) will increase by 18 percent for men and by 22 percent for women between 2000 and 2020.
These statistics — coupled with America’s broken health care finance system and accelerating Medicare costs — indicate that health care in America is headed for a day of reckoning soon. In my view, one of the Bush Administration’s biggest political problems in the upcoming election is the perception of many Americans that the administration ignores major domestic issues such as these.

VDH’s finally has a website

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As readers of this blog know, Victor Davis Hanson is one of my favorite commentators on America’s position in the world and its war against Islamic fascists. Dr. Hanson finally has his own website. I suspect that this site will go on more than a few favorite lists over the several days.

Arnie, about that embedded ball 46 years ago . . .

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Former Tour player and longtime CBS golf color commentator Ken Venturi has written a book — “Getting Up and Down: My 60 Years in Golf” (Triumph Books, April 2004) about his life in professional golf. Golf Magazine recently ran an excerpt from the book in which Venturi recalled how Arnold Palmer broke a rule on the historic 12th hole of Augusta National on his way to beating Venturi to win his first Masters Golf Tournament in 1958. Not surprisingly, that was interpreted by some in the golf community as Venturi saying that Palmer had cheated on his way to winning the Masters.
This NY Times article today has Venturi falling over himself publicly apologizing for what he termed a “misunderstanding” over his observation regarding Arnie’s rule-bending. “Arnold played a second ball incorrectly,” Venturi said in the statement. “This was due in part to Arnold not understanding the rule, which stipulates a player must declare playing a second ball prior to the playing of the original ball. This does not make Arnold Palmer a cheat.”
With his second ball, Palmer saved a par-3 that the Masters rules committee upheld on appeal, in contrast to the double-bogey five that he would have had with his embedded ball. Those two strokes turned out to be the difference in Palmer’s winning his first of seven major titles (and first of four Masters).
Note to Venturi — Don’t bash the King.

This is definitely not a Rose Garden

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Following this earlier post on the bankruptcy of the entity that owns the Rose Garden, Portland, Oregon’s NBA basketball arena, this Oregonian article provides further background on the financial difficulties of the arena. Interestingly, a substantial drop off in attendance to Portland Trailblazer games is cited as the primary cause of the arena’s financial problems.

Bush v. Nixon pre-election spending

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Daniel Drezner points us to a clever Foreign Policy article by Kenneth Rogoff, former IMF chief economist and professor of economics and Thomas D. Cabot professor of public policy at Harvard University in which Professor Rogoff compares the pre-election macroeconomic policies of President Bush against those of former President Richard Nixon and other world leaders. The entire article is a must read, but here is an excerpt to give you a flavor of the article:

Does all this election-year economic engineering pay? In the short run, yes, because voters sure like a booming economy and a free-spending government at election time. They don?t seem to question why anyone should reward a politician for artificially boosting an economy before elections, even if doing so produces serious long-term problems. Perhaps, like moviegoers who expect to be emotionally manipulated, voters just enjoy an election-year high.
Of course, U.S. presidents are hardly the only or the best practitioners of electoral economics. Mexico, for example, boasts a history of political business cycles that make the United States look fiscally Puritan. Mexican Presidents JosÈ LÛpez Portillo in 1982 and Carlos Salinas de Gortari in 1994 set benchmarks that few have surpassed. Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin gave away the country?s natural resource base (under the guise of ?privatization?) to ensure his reelection in 1996, a problem the country is still painfully sorting through today. In Italy, every prime minister seems to produce a fiscal splurge come election time?and Italy has a lot of elections. But then, a country does not achieve one of the world?s highest debt-to-GDP ratios (more than 100 percent) without effort.