Their hanging the repeal over baseball's head like a Sword of Damocles just so every piddling congressman can play Commissioner for a Day is revolting.

But it isn't just about the anti-trust exemption.  The District of Columbia is Congress's little plaything.  See K B Hutchinson's current attempt to repeal D.C.'s strict gun laws so she can keep a handgun in her Capitol Hill rowhouse (S. 1082) if you want to see revolting.

Posted at June 30, 2005 4:25 PM in response to Tom Davis Doesn't Heart George Soros

This is one major reason the current "no-brainer" Social Security system is so popular among young people.

Sorry.  I realize this is going to be both a purely anecdotal comment and an unpopular one to make here, but I've yet to meet a single peer of mine (late 20s) who honestly believes Social Security is going to be around when we retire.  And, no, I'm not trolling.  From the Deaniest of Deaniacs to former College Republicans with the nicely coiffed hair, from East- to West- to No-Coasters, I've yet to actually meet someone in the flesh who honestly believes they'll get anything substantial from Social Security when they retire in 40 years.

Don't reply with facts and figures to say I'm wrong; don't tell me if the Bush tax cuts were repealed all would be safe.  That's not the point.  Government has a serious image problem among twenty-somethings, and a big part of it is the honest belief that Uncle Sam will take a chunk of our paychecks for the next 40 years and all we'll get in the end is enough to buy a cup of coffee.  If you don't believe me, ask a twenty-something who's currently investing in some private retirement plan (not all of us are), e.g. a 401(k), what percentage of their retirement income they expect to get from Social Security.

The three big issues I see that are of most interest to twenty-somethings, because they directly affect our day-to-day lives, are:

1) the perception that we're paying into a retirement system we'll never get anything out of,

2) the rising cost of higher education and Congress's seeming lack of interest in the topic (see: Higher Education Act reauthorization monkey business), and

3) predatory lending, particularly relating to credit cards.

The theme here is money: young people don't have any, and we're worried that we're going to have less of it as time goes on.  No money to pay for school.  No money to buy a house.  Did Citibank just call again?  If I were to add another concern, it would be re: health insurance or the lack thereof, but that, too, is about money.   So what does one do?  As the saying goes, I'd write my Congressman, but I forgot my checkbook.

Today's young people want information.  They don't want government to say "trust us; we know the best way".  They don't want election challengers to say "no, trust _me_; I know a _better_ way".  Give us the unfiltered information so we can make our own educated decisions.  Want young people to pay attention?  Tell them not only do you care about education, but here are the numbers that show what X approach will do and why it's better than Y.  Etc.

Again, these are purely anecdotal comments.  But topical nonetheless.

Posted at June 30, 2005 4:07 PM in response to Progressives and Twenty-Somethings

So, when writing about politics here, I try to keep my language clean. For example, I don't write "dick" but "d*ck." This way, the following is perfectly acceptable even on this highly respected site:  F*CK  D*CK CHENEY !!

I've never understood this.  There can be no doubt in anyone's mind that when you wrote "f*ck" in the above exclamation, you've used it in place of "fuck".  But what's the point?  How is using "f*ck" in place of "fuck" more "clean", when you've conveyed precisely the same meaning?

I'd be curious to hear if anyone is aware of this phenomenon (changing the visual representation of vulgar words without changing the meaning) occuring outside of American English.

Posted at June 19, 2005 5:18 PM in response to Bad words and poetry

Prices may go down (they certainly have before) but that does not mean people are going to run out and list their homes for sale.

Many won't have a choice.  48% of home purchases in CA last year, for example, were interest-only loans (vs. less than 2% in 2001).  Many of these people can barely make the payments because of skyrocketing home prices.  So a family scrapes together and buys their $250,000 house on a three-year, interest-only loan, fully expecting that they can just refinance at the end of the term.  But the super-heated housing market slows down, there's a correction in over-inflated home prices, and three years from now their house is only worth $210,000.  Oops.  No refi for you.  And if you can sell your house before the bank forecloses, you still owe them an extra $40,000.

Nationally, 1/3 of mortgages in 2004 were interest-only.  That's not good. 

Posted at June 4, 2005 7:39 PM in response to Home Economics

There is no housing bubble in Kansas. Or Minneapolis. Or Dallas or San Antonio, Phoenix, Orlando....

 Median single-family home price, over the past five years, is up 63.2% in Minneapolis, 23.1% in Dallas, 24.8% in San Antonio, 53.1% in Phoenix, and 60.6% in Orlando.  That middle- and lower-middle-income families are overextending themselves on adjustable rate and interest-only mortgages is not an issue of "whether investment bankers in Manhattan and lobbyists in Georgetown might take a paper loss."

Posted at June 4, 2005 7:28 AM in response to Home Economics