Bailout

Below is the text of an email I sent to all of our Congressional representation (Goodlatte, Warner and Webb) this morning on the proposed Wall Street Bailout. It's a bad idea to act in haste without collecting the facts. That is part of the reason we have a bicameral legislature with a seperate executive branch capped by judicial review, but I digress.

I know email is not nearly as good as actually sending them a letter but they are getting serious pressure to "Do Something Now". The basic points are lifted directly from Robert Reich, who I thought had an early and accurate view of the proposal (and it seems that his points were incoporated into the legislation floated by Dodd)

Dear [insert name here],


Don't let fear drive a hasty decision towards a poorly structured bailout
that leaves the taxpayers holding the bag. Although some kind of bailout may be
a political necessity, there are some conditions that should be attached for
Wall Stree to see a dime of taxpayer money:


1. The government (i.e. taxpayers) gets an equity stake in every Wall
Street financial company proportional to the amount of bad debt that company
shoves onto the public (possibly through warrants or some other structure). If
Wall Street shares rise, taxpayers are rewarded for accepting so much risk.


2. Wall Street executives and directors of Wall Street firms relinquish
their current stock options and this year’s other forms of compensation, and
agree to future compensation linked to a rolling five-year average of firm
profitability.


3. All Wall Street executives immediately cease making campaign
contributions to any candidate for public office in this election cycle or next,
all Wall Street PACs be closed, and Wall Street lobbyists curtail their
activities unless specifically asked for information by policymakers.


4. Wall Street firms agree to comply with new regulations over disclosure,
capital requirements, conflicts of interest, and market manipulation. The
regulations will emerge in ninety days from a bi-partisan working group, to be
convened immediately. Inadequate regulation, lack of oversight and opaque
dealings got us into this mess.


5. Wall Street agrees to give bankruptcy judges the authority to modify the
terms of primary mortgages, so homeowners have a fighting chance to keep their
homes. This is an extraordinary measure, but this is an extraordinary request.


I know you stand for fiscal responsibility. If you can't bring yourself to
work against the bailout, at least give the taxpayer fair treatment instead of
handing billions of our children's dollars to Wall Street.

Chances are, they will pass a bad bill to "Do Something Now", but I can at least feel like I tried.

Routing

I had a meeting in Alexandria, VA yesterday and used my wife's Garmin GPS to help navigate me to the hotel. It's a nice little system and works well, but the routing it took me on was very strange. By far, the most obvious route from Roanoke to Alexandria is I-81 to I-66. However, the Garmin routed I-81 to I-64 and then through the country to I-95 and then up to Alexandria. Since that seemed a little bit more interesting, I went with it.

The route features very nice bucolic scenery but there was one big problem. I had a rental car (a crappy little Kia Sportage) and I was about out of gas near Charlottesville. No problem - I'll hit the point of interest button on the Garmin and it'll find me the nearest gas station. It was only a couple of miles up but when I got there, they were out of gas. Hmm. I'm right at empty and in the middle of the country. The next closest station was a little out of my way, but I think I can make it there, so I turn off the main route and head towards the station. I'm on fumes when I pull up to this place where I was fully expecting Gomer Pyle to walk out and notice that they hand scrawled "Out" signs on two of their three pumps. Luckily, they have some left in the third and I get $20 worth (5 gallons) which is enough to get me to civilization. I guess those little hurricanes that blew through really did limit the amount of gasoline available.

Oddity

This is a strange house that I've run and ridden past in Roanoke many times. It's very neatly boarded up on the back and sides, but the front and insides are in good condition. It's got beautiful stonework with a lot of detailing.

It is located between Black Dog Salvage and a defunct trailer park and makes you realize that neighboorhoods are not forever - I bet rich people lived here 50 years ago. Of course, a lot of SW Roanoke has that effect.

Volt

GM unveiled the Volt today. It isn't a bad looking car, but certainly not as futuristic as the concept cars were. They are sticking to the story that it will be available in "late 2010". The expected price is somewhere between $30000 and $40000. If it is at the middle of that range, I'd definitely be interested. I wonder if Goldie is going to hold together that long?

More

The finding that more cyclists are actually safer than fewer concurs with my own experiences. Riding around Roanoke is scary because drivers are don't have much experience with cyclists and you just don't know what they are going to do. Even though Seattle was a much busier city with quite a bit more traffic and things to hit, drivers know what the deal is and can navigate alongside cyclists with reasonable aplomb. I guess it is just one more reason to invest in local cycling infrastructure.

Advice

For some reason, our Internet connection went down this morning. I called Cox to see what they could do for me and waded through 20 minutes of automated support (which was basically shut down and restart the cable modem) to finally get to a human being.

Josh didn't really inquire much on the problem and immediately suggested that we replace the Motorola Surfboard modem we have. It is about 8 years old, so the idea made some sense to me. On the way to the RAC, we were going to stop by the Cox service center to pick up a new one. Luckily, they have the convienent hours of 9-12 on Saturday and since we were there at 1 PM or so, we were unable to receive any service. When we got home, I tried the television and the cable box was kind of hung (it showed a screen saying the channel it was tuned to was unavailable and wouldn't respond to any commands at all). After it cleared itself up in a few minutes, the cable modem went back online and is happily working away.

Besides the size of the bill, this is the only negative experience I've had with Cox. The cable service has been very reliable and the tech support has usually been reasonable. This time, I just got lucky to avoid spending $75 I didn't have to.

Regional

I can't quite figure out the logic used to decide which NFL games are shown in the Roanoke market. The Redskins are always shown over anyone else. But why aren't the next two closest teams (Carolina and Baltimore) always shown as well? Carolina is the closest NFL team by about 60 miles and I would imagine have some following in the region (although I'm not personally a fan). Baltimore is also fairly close (although I could see Pittsburgh or Cincinnati also making some sense).
Instead of having any of those games, we had Jets at Miami and St. Louis at Philadelphia. What possible sense do either of those games make? I guess the premier of Favre for the Jets had some intrigue nationally, but the premier of Joe Flacco was just as interesting to me.

Out

I'm going to have to bow out of the this year's New York Marathon. After 3 years of trying to get in and a decent start to training, I hit a patch of plantar fasciitis that I couldn't get over. Even if I get better tomorrow, I don't think I would be able to make up for the three weeks I've been on the shelf and be properly trained for the event. No sense risking further injury when I can defer my entry until next year. Since I can't run, maybe I need to pick something else to do.

Hen

Before you ask, of course I'm voting for the Obama/Biden ticket. How many chances do you think I'm going to get to have a fellow Blue Hen in the House?

Laker

Not only is she the governor of Alaska, a hockey mom and darn good looking, but apparently she led the Lakers in 3-pointers in 1992.