The Run to the Championship...

The Detroit Pistons started their playoff run tonight with a win over the Bucks.

Chauncey Billups (above) displays his team's seed with his finger and his jersey. The Pistons are trying to prove that, even in the NBA, the team concept is alive and well.

Shooting the Messenger

Apparently, the American public was unhappy with all the news coming from the current Administration, so Bush decided to shoot the messenger.


...or maybe he had Dick Cheney shoot him.

How do you budget for this expense?

Check out this guy's phone bill...

Americans Can't Save?

Today, I heard something remarkable on the radio. It was commentary made by Robert Reich on NPR. He made the claim that the reason Americans don't save money is because they can't save money. He quoted numerous reasons for his claim, including higher costs of living, higher energy costs, global competition causing wages to drop, etc. I'm sure there were many people listening in their cars, cheering him on as they thought of their weekly crunch of trying to pay bills, and never getting any further ahead in life. I could argue against his points, with such facts as the extremely low inflation rate over the last several years. However, by doing so, I would miss the opportunity to point out the false assumption that he used as his starting point: that rising costs and dropping incomes automatically translates to an inability to save money. He may be winning points with his listeners who are struggling to make ends meet, but he's not doing them any favors. He is providing them with excuses, and thereby enabling them to continue down the slippery path they are already well along.

We all know the stories of people who lived through the Great Depression and learned to squirrel money away every chance they got, protecting themselves for any future emergencies. I've heard people jokingly ridicule their grandparents' spending habits, as they show off a shiny new $40,000 car that was just recently bought -- on credit, of course. I'm not trying to imply that no one should enjoy spending money, or that they should deprive themselves of that $40,000 car that they just have to have. I am, however, suggesting that our priorities are backwards. Our grandparents would have made sure they had saved enough money for an emergency prior to buying that fancy car. They would have made sure that they never spent more than they had, and would only buy that fancy car if/when they could afford it. They would have put SAVING first.

I've not yet met anyone who only buys those things necessary for survival. Saving is not about how much you make, or how much the cost of living increases. It's about priorities. It's about spending less than you make, no matter how much or little that is. It often means sacrificing. It means not buying what we really want so we can protect ourselves from an emergency.

Americans don't have an inability to save. They just don't place a high enough priority on it.

Death for Moussaoui?

Now that Zacarias Moussaoui has been found guilty, the jury must determine whether he receives the death penalty for his role in the September 11 terrorist attacks.
My vote would be no. Moussaoui was willing to sacrifice his life in the attacks. Putting him to death would allow him to be considered a martyr for his cause. Instead, let him rot in prison for several decades, or choose to end his own life in a true showing of cowardice.

Do you think he got fired?

Why do we have to fight identity theft???

I heard a suggestion today that we need legislation to help consumers fight identity theft. That's a bunch of bull. Poor legislation has caused consumers to have to fight identity theft. With good legislation, identity theft could be mostly eliminated. Compare the levels of identity theft in Europe to the U.S. Most European countries have such low occurrence of identity theft that they don't even track it. The U.K. has an occurrence rate below 0.2% of its population. The U.S. rate is 17 times higher, at 3.4%. We need to learn from Europe. We need our legislators to pass comprehensive legislation protecting us from fraud, so we don't have to fight it on our own. Congressmen spend too much time raising funds and redistricting to ensure their reelection, and not enough time working on issues that would make us want to keep them in Washington. On the other hand, if they eliminated identity theft through good legislation, would the average American take note? Would the media report on it? Would it be "news-worthy?" Probably not. Until we invest in our democracy, we will not be able to hold politicians accountable for their actions. What good is a democracy without an engaged electorate?

No Spin, Indeed

A couple of days ago, Bill O'Reilly made two statements regarding newspapers, and in a classic example of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, implied that liberalism was causing the downfall of major U.S. newspapers. His statements, detailing some of the major U.S. newspapers whose editorial staffs were controlled by "extreme liberals", and those same papers' dwindling subscriptions, while almost certainly correct, fail to support his conclusion. Just because both are true does not mean that one is the cause of the other, and Bill O'Reilly is a smart enough man to know that.

Let's look at this objectively. Newspapers have been a primary source of news in the United States since the beginning of our country. Only in recent history has objectivity even been a concern of papers. In the late 1700's newspapers were used to spread propoganda for or against Colonial separation from England. The papers reflected the opinions of the ownership of the individual papers. Papers did not have the widespread distribution then that they have today, so the availibility of differing viewpoints was fairly limited. In the more recent past, the publishing industry has been forced to present a much more balanced format in order to survive. People will buy those papers that present what the people want to see. If people are concerned with the liberal nature of The New York Times, they can always purchase The Wall Street Journal. In this way, papers are held accountable more today than ever.

More recently, new media sources are displacing newspapers. People have been getting their news from television for several years now. Over the last decade, more and more people are getting their news from the internet. It is the competing sources of news that has resulted in the decline of newspapers' circulations. Over the last several decades, newspapers are more objective than ever before. Liberal editorial staffs have nothing to do with dwindling readership of newspapers, but that doesn't support the agenda of Bill O'Reilly. So much for the "No Spin Zone."