The Blue Grotto

"Good Boy!" Pic of the Day. . .

     I cropped this one from the cover of a book of George Booth cartoons:

 

Here Are Some Pics of the 2007 World Champion-To-Be Red Sox Relaxing En Route to Their Next Victory. . . .

     Thanks to Lindsey B. for these:

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The indispensable Papelbon and Lowell:

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Josh Beckett and His Wife, I Suppose:

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Is This Big Papi's Wife?

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Manny with Someone Who I Think Might Be Dice-K Matsuzaka's Interpreter

New Yorker Cartoon of the Day

Here's a Fitting Quote for August 2007. . . .

     "Liquidity is an illusion.  It's always there when you don't need it, and rarely there when you do."

Michael Milken

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Eastern Promises, Despite Its Cheesy Title, Looks Promising. . . .

     On September 14th, we'll be able to settle in at the theater for a great cast in Eastern Promises.  It stars Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, and the sinister Armin Mueller-Stahl.

     Here's the synopsis from ComingSoon.net:

The mysterious and charismatic Russian-born Nikolai Luzhin (Mortensen) is a driver for one of London's most notorious organized crime families of Eastern European origin. The family itself is part of the Vory V Zakone criminal brotherhood. Headed by Semyon (Academy Award nominee Armin Mueller-Stahl), whose courtly charm as the welcoming proprietor of the plush Trans-Siberian restaurant impeccably masks a cold and brutal core, the family's fortunes are tested by Semyon's volatile son and enforcer, Kirill (Vincent Cassel), who is more tightly bound to Nikolai than to his own father.

But Nikolai's carefully maintained existence is jarred once he crosses paths at Christmastime with Anna Khitrova (Academy Award nominee Naomi Watts), a midwife at a North London hospital. Anna is deeply affected by the desperate situation of a young teenager who dies while giving birth to a baby. Anna resolves to try to trace the baby's lineage and relatives. The girl's personal diary also survives her; it is written in Russian, and Anna seeks answers in it.

Anna's mother Helen (Sinead Cusack) does not discourage her, but Anna's irascible Russian-born uncle Stepan (Jerzy Skolimowski) urges caution. He is right to do so; by delving into the diary, Anna has accidentally unleashed the full fury of the Vory.

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     Click on this link for the trailer:

http://www.focusfeatures.com/viewer.php?f=eastern_promises&c=trailer&ext=mov&w=480&h=260

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Here's One You Might Find (If You're Lucky) Nestled in Tiny Print on a Back Page of the New York Times

How to Raise Revenue

Wall Street Journal

August 24, 2007

The Congressional Budget Office reported yesterday that the famously fearsome budget deficit is plummeting almost as fast as Congress's approval ratings. The deficit this fiscal year is expected to be $158 billion, a meager 1.2% of GDP. Since the Bush tax cuts of 2003, the budget deficit has fallen by $217 billion mostly because of a continuing torrid pace of revenue growth.

 

Quite a success story, but one that isn't likely to be embraced by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel of New York. Last week he gave a sneak preview of his tax strategy for this fall by announcing he wants to put "more equity into the system." Mr. Rangel then provided the translation: It's time, he says, to "take a look at the upper [marginal tax] rate to see if there can be a more equitable distribution of the tax."

OK, let's talk equity. It's almost an article of faith on Capitol Hill these days that the Bush tax cuts tilted the income tax system in favor of the rich. If this were true, it would be reflected in the actual data on the distribution of the income tax.

For the Bush tax cuts to have been a give-away to the rich, people paying the higher marginal tax rates would have to be carrying a smaller share of the income tax load. But the IRS data indicate that they are not paying less. Instead, they are paying more -- lots more. More surprisingly, the richest 1%, 5% and 10% of the taxpayers are shouldering a larger percentage of the income tax burden at the federal level than the tax estimators said they would had the Bush tax cuts never materialized. The data nearby tell the story.

The preliminary 2005 data just released from the Treasury Department show more of the same. The amount of tax paid by those earning more than $1 million a year increased to $236 billion in 2005, up from $132 billion in 2003, the year of the tax cut. This was a 78% increase in taxes paid by millionaire households.

 

Another indication of the expanded tax base is that after the tax cuts there were more millionaires for Uncle Sam to tax. In 2003 about 182,000 Americans declared gross income of $1 million or more. In 2005 the number of millionaire households leapt to 300,000. The number of Americans with declared income of $10 million or more doubled to 13,000 from 6,000 in the years after the tax rate cuts. This is a "problem" only if Democrats have come to believe that earning money is an ignoble pursuit.

The boom in the stock and housing markets clearly had a lot to do with the expansion in the number of millionaires in America, but lower tax rates on capital gains and dividends also caused a huge jump in reported income. The National Bureau of Economic Research found an "unprecedented surge in regular dividend payments after the 2003" Bush tax cut. Likewise, the lowering of the capital gains tax was followed by a 150% increase in the amount of capital gains unlocked by the 15% tax rate. Lower tax rates expanded the tax base.

We hope that before "putting more equity into the system" Mr. Rangel also takes a look at the longer term picture on revenues and tax rates, because it shows that raising tax rates may not be a wise strategy. With a few exceptions, tax rates in America have been steadily falling for the past 25 years starting with the Reagan tax cuts of 1981. When Ronald Reagan entered the Oval Office in 1981, the highest tax rates on income, capital gains and dividends were roughly twice as high as today. The top marginal income tax rate in 1981, for example, was 70% compared to 35% today. These tax rate reductions haven't meant that the rich have escaped paying their "fair share" of taxes or that the burden has shifted to the middle class. The opposite has occurred. Over the past 25 years tax payments by the wealthy have continually risen almost in inverse proportion to the tax rates, as shown by the surprising results below. The real bite on the middle class comes from payroll and state taxes; include them and their tax share rises relative to the wealthy. So yes, cut those taxes, too.

The supply-side revenue effects on the rich are remarkable: Tax rates on higher incomes have been halved, but the federal tax share of the top 1% has nearly doubled. And the budget deficit has fallen. That's what happens when tax policy gets the incentives right.

New Yorker Cartoon of the Day

I Couldn't Agree With This Guy More. . . .

     From this past weekend's Financial Times:

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National Weather Service To Give Hurricanes Full Names

February 27, 2006

SILVER SPRING, MD — The National Weather Service announced Friday that, in response to the increasing number of hurricanes, it is revising its naming system. "The hundreds of hurricanes we expect in the North Atlantic in 2006 will receive both proper and surnames," Max Mayfield of the weather service said. "In fact, tropical storms Alberto Fergus, Beverly Stenwick-Brown, and Chris Stubbs Jr. have already received names under the new system." After all possible first and last names are exhausted, storms will be given titles, beginning with Hurricane Assistant Accounts Manager Alexander Epps, CPA.

The Closed Kingdom Is Beginning to Crack Open. . . .

NOTE: The Blue Grotto likes flags, so here's an image of the flag of Saudi Arabia:

(From the August 15, 2007 edition)

A Tipping Point in Saudi Arabia

By favoring merchants over clerics, Abdullah is making crucial reforms.

By Dana Moss and Zvika Krieger

Brussels; and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

When Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud was crown prince of Saudi Arabia, one of his most infamous decisions was banning the use of camera phones in 2004 – a demand from the country's Wahhabi clergy who claimed the devices were "spreading obscenity."

But the decision was quickly reversed when King Abdullah faced pressure from his government ministers and, allegedly, from a cadre of foreign businessmen who threatened to pull their companies from Saudi Arabia. "Abdullah was presented with a choice between the Wahhabis and good business," says one Riyadh-based businessman. "His decision [for the latter] was clear."

It is a decision that Abdullah has made time and again over the course of his reign as king, which hit its two-year mark this month. By sidelining the traditional clergy in favor of the merchant classes and more progressive religious voices, Abdullah has been challenging the "great bargain" of the Saudi state – namely the empowerment of the Wahhabi ulema (hard-line Islamic scholars) in exchange for their sanction of the House of Saud.

This unlikely reformer, who has unofficially led the kingdom since King Fahd's stroke in 1995, has propelled the country through a radical transformation. From accession to the World Trade Organization to the billion-dollar overhaul of the educational system to increased criticism of the religious "police" who enforce a strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law, the closed kingdom is beginning to crack open.

'The oil boom is over'

These reforms come at a critical time. Saudi Arabia is barreling toward an economic and social crisis if it does not act fast. Almost 75 percent of Saudi citizens are under age 30 and youth unemployment is approaching 30 percent – a potential breeding ground for terrorists and regime dissidents. Current high oil prices are not enough to paper over the economic ravages of the past two decades. "The oil boom is over and will not return," Abdullah told his subjects. "All of us must get used to a different lifestyle."

Economic restructuring of the kingdom is no easy task, nor can it be separated from social reform, such as increasing women's participation in economic life and creating a business environment and laws suitable for foreign companies.

Faced with resistance from the conservative official ulema, Abdullah has adopted a strategy of "circumvention" to coerce these reforms – officially toeing the Wahhabi line, but quietly giving more leeway to the private sector.

Education, for example, had traditionally been firmly under Wahhabi control, with a focus on creating more imams than businessmen. But this won't help a country striving to become an international powerhouse. So private universities – previously shunned by the religious elite because of their relative independence – have recently been legalized, with a half-dozen Western-style institutions slated to open soon. The new King Abdullah University for Science and Technology, the kingdom's first coeducational institution, is an Abdullah initiative to create a global leader in technological innovation. He tasked the relatively secular Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources with running the project, keeping it away from the fundamentalists.

By sidelining the ulema, Abdullah has been forced to find a new source for religious legitimacy in order for him and his successors to rule over "the land of the two holy mosques."

His strategy has been to allow a wider base of voices to speak for Islam, both Sunni and Shiite. He instituted an annual forum titled "National Dialogue," which invited a variety of prominent intellectuals to make their views heard.

The forum included Sunni scholars such as Safar al Hawali, a former member of an opposition grouping called the "Awakening Sheikhs," many of which had been previously imprisoned for their biting criticism of palace policy.

Other invitees included prominent Shiite thinkers – a distinct change from earlier years, when the highest religious authority in Saudi Arabia had declared Shiites to be "apostates." Most important, the official ulema were pointedly left off the guest list.

Some have criticized the weak translation of the forum's rhetoric into real action. Yet even its existence is an accomplishment, and a new building has been set up in Riyadh to host this forum. This is a sign, in the words of Saudi Arabia expert Jean-François Seznec, of how the "National Dialogue" is becoming "systematized and routinized," reflecting long-term changes in the regime's attitude.

Of course, Abdullah's reforms have been highly limited when compared with Western expectations.

The country is still an iron-fisted dictatorship: The much-heralded municipal elections of 2005 excluded women, and the trumpeted majlis (parliament) remains a body undemocratically appointed by the king. Women can't drive, and religious freedom is nonexistent. Fundamentalist forces also remain significant in the kingdom, with characters such as Prince Naif, the ultra-conservative interior minister, still wielding enormous power.

Economic impetus for reform

At 83 years old, Abdullah's time left in office may be short, and it is uncertain that those next in line to the throne will have the will or the ability to continue making crucial reforms.

The challenges facing the desert kingdom require highly tuned maneuvering skills. Reformers are counting on the durability of Abdullah's reforms regardless of his successor. His legacy is likely to be protected by the new economic elite he is helping to create.

"You can't bury your head in the sand and expect to become a global economic power," said one administrator at a new Western-style university in Saudi Arabia. "The king knows this, and he's ready to accept the consequences of reform."

• Dana Moss is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Transatlantic Institute in Brussels. Zvika Krieger is a Middle East-based special correspondent for Newsweek magazine.

The Goodman Brothers Make Page Six!

     There is one piece of evidence that will end your nights of lying awake, wondering if you've finally arrived into the most hallowed of inner circles of fashionable society:  An invitation to the annual Goodman Softball Classic in Bridgehampton! 

     This year, the much-awaited August event fittingly made Page Six of the New York Post:

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The Dog Surfing Championships!

     I saw on the news over the weekend, out of the corner of my eye, a mention of the second annual dog surfing championships and thought to myself, "This is too good to be true!" 

     I mean, of all the very good boys out there, think how good the ones are that try to please their masters by practicing their little hearts out to win a trophy for surfing! 

     I Googled the event and only came up with an article from last year's, but here's an excerpt (Note that Dogs were judged on length of ride, style, and radical manuvers):

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Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 22 August, 2006 - The first dog surfing championships were held Sunday, August 20th in Imperial Beach CA. over 50 dogs participated in the event. . . . All proceeds went to benefit the PAWS organization of Coronado, CA.

Just about every breed of dog was in the event, with many having natural talent.  Scott Chandler swept the event when his 7 year old daughter Tyler was balancing on his shoulders standing and their Jack Russel Terrier dog Zoey was hanging 20 on the nose, all 3 rode 3 waves to the beach in perfect form to take the win and Zoey, became the first dog surfing champion.

Dogs were judged on length of ride, style, and radical manuvers.  Chandler said it is a great way to bond with his daughter and dog while showing a whole other side to the sport of surfing.   Chandler said he is also training his pet pig to surf, many can't wait to see that.

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Tyler, Scott Chandler and Zoey

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     Here are some other winners:

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The Politics of Envy: Turning a Vice Into a Virtue. . .

     This column mentioned the amazing study cited by the Grotto a month or two back, in which "a majority of people said they would rather make $50,000 if others earned $25,000 than earn $100,000 if others were making $200,000."

"With the exception of the self-esteem movement, which glorifies pride, it's difficult to imagine another area where we so shamelessly tout a sin as the basis of public policy."

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Envy: The Underrated Sin
By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, August 17, 2007

As my wife will attest, I often suffer from futterneid. This is the term Germans use to describe the envy we feel when, for example, someone orders a better meal than ours. I'm also prone to schadenfreude, the tendency to take pleasure in the misfortune of others. So if I get the braised short ribs and you get stuck with the snail tartare, your futterneid will fuel my schadenfreude.

Perhaps it's no coincidence the Germans have so many words for the chillingly petty emotions that run like cold streams through the human heart. Poor, dark and divided, Germany was an ideal location to harbor resentment against one's neighbor, be he a slightly more prosperous farmer, a Jew, a Catholic or even a nation. Latecomers to unification, industrialization and empire, Germany's 20th-century thirst for war and conquest might be blamed less on high-fallutin' philosophical theories or Romantic poetry and more on plain old envy. The Germans craved their "moment in the sun" and they were going to have it, no matter what.

Don't worry, this isn't a column about Germany. Rather, it's about envy, which Thomas Aquinas defined as sadness for the good of others.

We almost never discuss envy anymore. "One may admit to pride, avarice, lust, anger, gluttony, and laziness, and one may even boast of them," Gonzalo Fernandez de la Mora wrote 20 years ago in "Egalitarian Envy." "There is only one capital sin no one admits to: envy. ... Its symbol ought to be a mask." This is a shame; the most pathetic of the seven deadly sins is perhaps the most consequential.

Indeed, just look again on the 20th century. Envy turned Germany cruel. In Russia, the ideology of envy - socialism - likewise ran amok under the label Bolshevism and threatened to overrun the world.

The consequences of envy run even deeper. It will never be known how many millennia man endured in misery and darkness under the moldering blanket of envy. Helmut Schoeck writes in his timeless masterpiece, "Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior," that whole societies, hobbled by envy, rejected innovation and prosperity, preferring the arrested development of all to the advancement of the few.

In primitive societies, "No one dares to show anything that might lead people to think he was better off," Schoeck observed. "Innovations are unlikely. Agricultural methods remain traditional and primitive, to the detriment of the whole village, because every deviation from previous practice comes up against the limitations set by envy."

Bigotry has many wellsprings, but it always draws on the groundwater of envy. "How can that (choose your slur) have two horses when I only have one?" the envious man asks. Hence August Bebel's famous description of anti-Semitism as the "socialism of fools."

In America, we have our own politics of fools. John Edwards leads an all-star cast of liberal politicians and intellectuals (Edwards is decidedly not the latter) who worship at the altar of Invidia, praying that she will exact penance from the undeserving half of our "two Americas."

Like the "scientific socialism" that concealed envy behind a slide rule, today's liberals invoke social science as justification for their covetousness. In one famous study, a majority of people said they would rather make $50,000 if others earned $25,000 than earn $100,000 if others were making $200,000.

Such studies are deeply flawed. For starters, as Arthur Brooks notes in the current edition of City Journal, they don't address the question of whether people would be happier in a world of total equality. Rather, they ask whether people would be happier in a world of inequality so long as they could be richer than everybody else.

More damning, however, is that these studies turn a vice into a virtue. With the exception of the self-esteem movement, which glorifies pride, it's difficult to imagine another area where we so shamelessly tout a sin as the basis of public policy. All men lust in their hearts; shall we dole out concubines for those of us who can't live like Hugh Hefner?

Envy has its social utility, of course. Schoeck argues, along with Nietzsche, that envy helped hone our sense of justice. Fine. But America is supposed to be different, in part because unlike, say, Germany or Russia, America had no feudal past and hence lacked the historic breeding swamps of envy. America's egalitarianism is supposed to be political and nothing more: No man is the involuntary servant of another. Beyond that, he is the captain of his self.

The man who orders a better meal than me has done no harm to me. And it is no man's (or bureaucrat's) job but my own to cool the fever of my futterneid.

August 18th in History. . .

1227 : Genghis Khan dies

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1590 : Roanoke Colony deserted

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1977 : The Police play their first gig

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1982 : Wang Labs files for bankruptcy

. . . or, here's Wang from Caddyshack:

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1991 : Coup attempt against Gorbachev begins

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Happy Late Birthday, C. Goodman!

     There is a huge overlap between Grotto readers worldwide and fans of dashing international aesthete and bon vivant Mr. C. Goodman, so I apologize to all for missing the August 14th date!  The Grotto had some technical difficulties in the photo dept. 

     Given the high price that pics of this elegant style maven command in the tabloid marketplace, it took me several days to raise the funds to track down a suitable photo of the living legend posing with his beautiful, glamorous, charming wife, Julia.  (You may remember that The Blue Grotto dispatched its Editor to the over-the-top wedding in Miami this past March). 

     Happy Birthday, Buddy!

 

The Self Esteem Fraud: "Outlawing Competition and Celebrating Mediocrity"

     Three cheers for this column by a junior in college.  I've done some big-time underlining in hopes that you'll skim it.  At least check out the priceless part about "independent spellers!"

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The Self Esteem Myth
By Ashley Herzog
Thursday, August 9, 2007

Once upon a time – a time you probably don’t remember if you’re younger than 30 – American schools sought to teach children self-control, personal responsibility, and respect for others, especially adults. Students were corrected when they made mistakes and reprimanded when they slacked off or talked back. Most unfathomable to the current education establishment, teachers assessed students on qualities such as “gets along well with others” – and some children actually flunked. In the eyes of schoolteachers and parents, shaping kids into productive and responsible citizens was more important than protecting their egos.

Then, sometime in the 1970s, schools began to embrace the peculiar notion that kids should never be criticized or feel self-doubt. The “self-esteem” movement was born – and ushered in a generation of kids who think they can do no wrong.

In her new book, “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – And More Miserable than Ever Before,” Dr. Jean Twenge documents the spectacular failure of the self-esteem movement, from its birth in the 1970s to the present. Despite enthusiastic predictions to the contrary, raising kids’ self-esteem does not make them more successful or productive. It does, however, train them to always feel good about themselves, even when they do bad things.

Twenge makes clear the difference between self-esteem and self-respect. Self-respect – a value taught to older generations – is achieved gradually, by behaving morally and accomplishing things. Self-esteem is an entitlement. As Twenge explains, “most [self-esteem] programs encourage children to feel good about themselves for no particular reason.”

Is that really such a bad thing? According to Twenge, who spent years researching the subject, the answer is yes. Numerous studies show basically no relationship between high self-esteem and academic achievement, strong work ethic, or harmonious relationships with others.

In fact, Twenge’s research suggests that the self-esteem movement has wreaked havoc on schools. Instead of teaching children to learn from their mistakes, “There has been a movement against ‘criticizing’ children too much…One popular method tells teachers not to correct students’ spelling or grammar, arguing that kids should be ‘independent spellers’ so they can be treated as ‘individuals.’”

Elementary school students spend hours creating “All About Me” projects and reading books titled “Everyone Is Special,” but less time learning basic skills. Unsurprisingly, Twenge notes, “American children scored very highly when asked how good they were at math. Of course, their actual math performance is merely mediocre, with other countries’ youth routinely outranking American children.”

Grade inflation is appallingly high, as schools pass out good grades in order to avoid bruised egos. As Twenge reports, “In 2004, 48 percent of American college freshmen – almost half – reported earning an A average in high school, compared to only 18 percent in 1968, even though SAT scores decreased over the same period.” Students often demand good grades for substandard work, and their parents act as reinforcements: “Teachers described parents who specified that their children were not to be corrected or ‘emotionally upset,’ who argued incessantly about grades, and even one father who…challenged a teacher to a fistfight.”

Of course, children have no motivation to work harder when their schools outlaw competition and celebrate mediocrity. Many schools now refuse to publish the honor roll, since it might hurt the self-esteem of students who didn’t make the grade. According to the touchy-feely pop psychology of the current education establishment, recognizing high achievers is unnecessary and cruel. Twenge offers an example: “11-year-old Kayla was invited to the math class pizza party, even though she managed only a barely passing 71. The pizza parties used to be only for children who made A’s, but in recent years the school has invited every child who simply passed.”

While the self-esteem movement hasn’t made children any smarter, it has made them more self-centered, manipulative, and indulgent. Cheating in schools is on the rise, with 74 percent of high school students admitting to cheating in 2002. The link to the self-esteem movement is clear: if everyone deserves to feel good regardless of how they behave, why should a student feel bad about stealing a copy of the final exam? It doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. The self-esteem movement has indeed had enormous effects on children born since the 1970s – and almost none of them are good. The California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility spent a quarter-billion dollars trying to raise Californians’ self-esteem, only to find that it had no effect on teen pregnancy, juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, or chronic welfare dependency. On the other hand, people with high self-esteem tend to be unwilling to take responsibility for their own failures and bad behavior.

There is one personality trait that is definitely linked to achievement, and that is self-control. Although “discipline” and “obedience” have become dirty words in the education establishment, people with high levels of self-control are the most likely to succeed. They earn higher grades and finish more years of education, and they’re less likely to abuse drugs or have children out of wedlock. As Twenge says, “Self-control predicts all of those things researchers had hoped self-esteem would, but hasn’t.”

This short column cannot do justice to Twenge’s meticulously researched and revealing book. However, it’s a must-read for parents and teachers who hope to unravel the myth of self-esteem.

Ashley Herzog is a junior at Ohio University, studying journalism, and lives in Avon Lake, Ohio.

This One Starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe Looks Promising.

     Universal releases American Gangster on November 2nd.  Ridley Scott directs the script by Steve Zaillian.

     Here's the synopsis from ComingSoon.net:

Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Brian Grazer, Steve Zaillian and Ridley Scott team to tell the true juggernaut success story of a cult hero from the streets of 1970s Harlem in "American Gangster."

Nobody used to notice Frank Lucas (Oscar® winner Washington), the quiet driver to one of the inner city's leading black crime bosses. But when his boss suddenly dies, Frank exploits the opening in the power structure to build his own empire and create his own version of the American Dream. Through ingenuity and a strict business ethic, he comes to rule the inner-city drug trade, flooding the streets with a purer product at a better price. Lucas outplays all of the leading crime syndicates and becomes not only one of the city's mainline corrupters, but part of its circle of legit civic superstars.

Richie Roberts (Oscar® winner Crowe) is an outcast cop close enough to the streets to feel a shift of control in the drug underworld. Roberts believes someone is climbing the rungs above the known Mafia families and starts to suspect that a black power player has come from nowhere to dominate the scene. Both Lucas and Roberts share a rigorous ethical code that sets them apart from their own colleagues, making them lone figures on opposite sides of the law. The destinies of these two men will become intertwined as they approach a confrontation where only one of them can come out on top.

Washington ("Training Day") and Crowe ("Gladiator") lead a spectacular cast of accomplished and rising stars--including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Josh Brolin, Armand Assante, RZA, John Ortiz, John Hawkes and Ted Levine in this blistering tale of a true American entrepreneur directed by Oscar® nominee Ridley Scott ("Gladiator") and produced by Academy Award® winner Brian Grazer ("A Beautiful Mind") and Scott from a screenplay by Academy Award® winner Steve Zaillian ("Schindler's List").

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     Click on the link below to enjoy the trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/americangangster/large.html

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Exciting Healthcare Quote of the Day!

     

     Excerpt from a John O'Sullivan article in NR:

"All health-care systems aim to achieve three things: (a) cost control, (b) universal access, and (c) provision of the full range of medical services. Alas, only two of these can be achieved simultaneously by any system. Pick (b) and (c), for instance, and costs will spiral out of control. But all three can at least be reconciled — automatically and efficiently — in a free-market health system by the price mechanism. Once demand for health care is no longer limited by price, however, it will rise indefinitely until it consumes the entire national income. Nations with universal health systems in effect deny this. They promise their citizens good-quality health care free at the point of consumption. How do they keep their promise?"

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"Good Boy!" Pic of the Day

     Here's a very good English Setter sort of blending in with the landscape:

 

"It's Time We Got Over the Myth That the Government Helps the Heroic Family Farm."

      

     The two main points, for busy Grotto readers:

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1)  "Dairy farmers in New Zealand get along perfectly well without subsidies : 'Ever since a liberal but free-market government swept to power in 1984 and essentially canceled handouts to farmers -- something that just about every other government in an advanced industrial nation has considered both politically and economically impossible. ... Output has soared.'"

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2)  "Most crops are not subsidized. Yet we have no shortages of fruits, vegetables, livestock and poultry. America has plenty of peaches, plums, peas, green beans, etc., and farmers who grow those crops do fine. What makes wheat, cotton, corn, soybeans and rice different?"

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Dead Men Farming
By John Stossel
Wednesday, August 15, 2007

By now you've probably heard that a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report states:

From 1999 through 2005, the USDA "paid $1.1 billion in farm payments in the names of 172,801 deceased individuals. ... 40 percent went to those who had been dead for three or more years, and 19 percent to those dead for seven or more years." One dead farmer got more than $400,000 during those years.

And they say you can't take it with you.

Defending the USDA, the GAO adds, "The complex nature of some farming operations -- such as entities embedded within other entities -- can make it difficult for USDA to avoid making payments to deceased individuals."

Exactly. The agricultural section of the U.S. code is nearly 1,800 pages.

There's an easy way to avoid such absurdities: Abolish all farm subsidies.

Why are taxpayers forced to pay farmers $25 billion a year? Sure, farmers face droughts and floods, but that's been true since Moses' day. They can't say they weren't put on notice that farming has risks. Running a restaurant or a software company entails risks, too, but we don't guarantee their continued operation. Those businesses and America are stronger for it.

Farm subsidies are popular with politicians because Big Agriculture lobbies hard, and many people believe that without subsidies, we wouldn't have a reliable food supply.

But what an insane myth that is. As I wrote in "Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity", most crops are not subsidized. Yet we have no shortages of fruits, vegetables, livestock and poultry. America has plenty of peaches, plums, peas, green beans, etc., and farmers who grow those crops do fine. What makes wheat, cotton, corn, soybeans and rice different?

Last week, the New York Times reported that dairy farmers in New Zealand get along perfectly well without subsidies : "[E]ver since a liberal but free-market government swept to power in 1984 and essentially canceled handouts to farmers -- something that just about every other government in an advanced industrial nation has considered both politically and economically impossible. ... [O]utput has soared."

Yet in America, our congressmen enact a 742-page farm bill that, among other things, includes 10 times more money than in 2002 for "specialty crops," including citrus, tomatoes and melons, and an amendment to include goat meat in the mandatory Country of Origin Labeling Program.

An amendment that would have withheld subsidies from farmers with incomes of $250,000 or more was rejected by the House.

The farm program is repulsive welfare for the rich. The average farmer earns much more than the average American.

And even rich nonfarmers have received subsidies -- among them the late Ken Lay of Enron; Ted Turner, founder of CNN; my ABC colleague Sam Donaldson; and banker David Rockefeller.

And how absurd is this? "After handing out commodity subsidies that pay farmers to plant more crops," Heritage Foundation senior fellow Bruce Riedl notes, "Washington then turns around and pays other farmers not to farm 40 million acres of cropland each year -- the equivalent of idling every farm in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio".

It's time we got over the myth that the government helps the heroic family farm. Riedl points out that "federal farm policies specifically bypass family farmers. Subsidies are paid per acre, so the largest (and most profitable) agribusinesses automatically receive the biggest checks."

Besides all the obvious ones, there's another reason to end farm subsidies. They show us to be hypocrites. How can we preach free trade in talks with developing nations when we subsidize farmers who then dump their crop surpluses in poor countries and wreck their domestic farms?

Give me a break.

John Stossel is an award-winning news correspondent and author of Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel--Why Everything You Know is Wrong.

Happy Birthday, Alana!

    

This Book Reads Like a 318-page Footnote to a More Interesting Book You Didn't Buy. . . .

The Tycoons (2005)

How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy

By Charles R. Morris

.

 

.

     If the textbooks you've ordered on the history of mass production in America are not detailed enough for you, you need this volume!  I found it interesting indeed, but after reading it I felt like I had just spent a few days flipping through the balance sheets and income statements of a railroad or an oil refinery, not a pleasurable history of American business.

     I would recommend it to my friend Drew, who reads just about every book that is published in a given year, but others might find it a little on the dry and flaky side.

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New Yorker Cartoon of the Day

How Do These Charlatans at CAIR Live With Themselves?!

CAIR They Go Again!
By Joel Mowbray
Friday, August 3, 2007

Just over 24 hours before a scheduled speech it hosted by commentator Robert Spencer, Young America’s Foundation found something unexpected sitting in the fax machine: A thinly veiled threat of a lawsuit if the group allowed the talk to happen as planned.

Near the end of the one-page missive is the rather unsubtle sentence: “Our clients have instructed us to pursue every available and appropriate legal remedy to redress any false and defamatory statements that are made at the session.”

Although YAF, which is the nation’s largest conservative group catering to high school and college students, is used to campus leftists attempting to silence the right-wing speakers it helps sponsor, the apparent lawsuit threat likely came as a shock.

The attempted bullying, however, comes as little surprise to anyone familiar with the organization behind the move: CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

For years, CAIR has attempted to stifle debate and prevent inquiry into the domestic spread of radical Islam. Conservative columnist Cal Thomas was the latest target, when CAIR attempted to drum him out of his role as an official commentator at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C. The group was emboldened by its success in the same city two years earlier, when it got then-Disney-owned WMAL to can talk host Michael Graham. Similar such smear campaigns are legion.

If only CAIR could muster the same contempt—or any contempt, for that matter—for Islamic terrorists.

Contrary to the letter’s claim that the group “has consistently taken a principled position against terrorism and extremism,” CAIR simply has not done so. Never has CAIR condemned by name Islamic terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah. Given the opportunity to condemn Hamas by Newsweek last December, CAIR executive director and co-founder Nihad Awad refused, claiming that the question was “the game of the pro-Israel lobby.”

While CAIR incessantly hypes its 2005 fatwa against terrorism and extremism, the document intentionally avoided defining the two terms. Fundamentalist Muslims who wish harm upon the U.S. and Israel do not consider themselves “extreme.” Nor do Hezbollah and Hamas believe that they are terrorists.

This is CAIR’s modus operandi: appearing to oppose terrorism, while simultaneously leading the charge against those who actually seek to thwart it.

Its approach to the lecture circuit is no different.

Spencer, who has courted controversy with his JihadWatch.org web site and his best-selling book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, is a genuinely provocative figure with whom reasonable people can disagree. There’s little doubt, however, that he is a legitimate contributor to the public debate.

The threatening letter states that Spencer “has a history of false and defamatory statements.” Interestingly, CAIR couldn’t cite even one “false and defamatory statement.”

But no matter what statements Spencer critics might dig up, none could put him in the league of some of the characters who have headlined CAIR conferences.

CAIR’s primary objection in its attempted legal blackmail was that Spencer is “a well-known purveyor of hatred and bigotry.” But if the group objects to “purveyors of hatred and bigotry,” why would it feature a neo-Nazi at several of its conferences?

Speaking at various CAIR functions in New York, New Jersey, and Florida was Bill Baker, whom CAIR-NY billed as a “renowned Christian scholar.” This “renowned Christian scholar” is someone with a history of vicious anti-Semitism who for a time in the 1980’s ran the Populist Party, an organization populated by neo-Nazis and Klansmen.

But a neo-Nazi is not out of place in the CAIR universe. At a CAIR co-sponsored event in 1998 at Brooklyn College in New York, speaker Wagdy Ghuniem roused the crowd with a stirring ditty that contained the lyrics: “No to the Jews, descendants of the apes.” (Transcript provided by the Investigative Project.)

Also on the menu at CAIR functions are 9/11 conspiracy theories, not surprising since it appears that the group’s leader doesn’t believe that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks.

British journalist Yvonne Ridley, who suffered Stockholm Syndrome after being kidnapped by the Taliban and subsequently converted to Islam, asked at a 2003 CAIR-NY event, “Why would the Bush administration allow 9/11 to happen?” Her answer? “Because to use the war on terrorism became a useful bogus cover for achieving wider strategic geo-political objectives.” (Transcript provided by the Investigative Project.)

Stepping to the podium after Ridley's remarks was Awad, CAIR’s co-founder and executive director. Rather than chastise Ridley for her claim that it was Bush, and not bin Laden, behind 9/11, Awad indulged her delusions: “Also, having listened to sister Yvonne, there are many theories of course about 9/11. And there are many unanswered questions, and we always ask for answers.”

Given CAIR’s track record, YAF had no qualms ignoring CAIR’s threats. The speech happened Thursday, just as scheduled. But even with the possibility of a lawsuit, YAF would never censor a legitimate speaker; freedom of speech goes to the core of the group’s values. “CAIR picked the wrong group to bully and intimidate,” notes YAF spokesman Jason Mattera.

Plenty of reasonable people can take substantive issue with Spencer—and plenty do—but shouldn’t CAIR be more troubled by neo-Nazis, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and Islamic terrorists?

Joel Mowbray, who got his start with Townhall.com, is an award-winning investigative journalist, nationally-syndicated columnist and author of Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America's Security.

Word of the Day: Nebbish

     I first heard this Yiddish word last year from my pal Suzanne as she was describing various boyfriend candidates who had not quite cut the mustard, so I was pleased when Grotto wordsmith Amo sent it along to worldwide headquarters, Word-of-the-Day division.

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Nebbish

Pronunciation: 'ne-bish
Function: noun
Etymology: Yiddish nebekh poor, unfortunate, from Czech nebohý
: a timid, meek, or ineffectual person

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     Amo's sample sentence is short, sweet, and incontrovertibly accurate:

     "Mike Dukakis was a nebbish."

August 13th in History. . .

1521 : Aztec capital falls to Cortes

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1899 : Alfred Hitchcock is born

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1907 : First taxi hits NYC streets

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1926 : Fidel Castro born

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1940 : The Battle of Britain begins

Barry Bonds Rookie Card

     Thanks to Zach, who wears two hats for The Blue Grotto, as correspondent for both Southern California high-stakes Pro-Am golf & poker wagering, as well Asian night-desk grains and industrial & precious metals trading:

"Good Boy!" Pic of the Day

     Here's a golden chasing a fish.  My experience with this type of situation tells me two things.  First, the fish will be just fine.  Second, the golden will remember the whole experience, although a total failure, with the most positive, upbeat feelings possible!

Today in History. . .

378 : Romans routed at Adrianople

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1936 : Owens wins 4th gold medal

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1945 : Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki

Before:

After:

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1974 : Nixon leaves White House; Ford sworn in

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1995 : Jerry Garcia dies

"International Competitiveness for Dummies"

We're Number One, Alas

The Wall Street Journal

July 13, 2007

Some good news on the tax cutting front: Last week lawmakers approved an 8.9 percentage point reduction in the corporate income tax rate. Too bad the tax cutters are Germans, not Americans.

 

There's a trend here. At least 25 developed nations have adopted Reaganite corporate income tax rate cuts since 2001. The U.S. is conspicuously not one of them. Vietnam has recently announced it is cutting its corporate rate to 25% from 28%. Singapore has approved a corporate tax cut to 18% from 20% to compete with low-tax Hong Kong's rate of 17.5%, and Northern Ireland is making a bid to slash its corporate tax rate to 12.5% to keep pace with the same low rate in the prosperous Republic of Ireland. Even in France, of all places, new President Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed reducing the corporate tax rate to 25% from 34.4%.

What do politicians in these countries understand that the U.S. Congress doesn't? Perhaps they've read "International Competitiveness for Dummies." In each of the countries that have cut corporate tax rates this year, the motivation has been the same -- to boost the nation's attractiveness as a location for international investment. Germany's overall rate will fall to 29.8% by 2008 from 38.7%. Remarkably, at the start of this decade Germany's corporate tax rate was 52%.

All of which means that the U.S. now has the unflattering distinction of having the developed world's highest corporate tax rate of 39.3% (35% federal plus a state average of 4.3%), according to the Tax Foundation. While Ronald Reagan led the "wave of corporate income tax rate reduction" in the 1980s, the Tax Foundation says, "the U.S. is lagging behind this time."

Foreign leaders are also learning another lesson: Lower corporate tax rates with fewer loopholes can lead to more, not less, tax revenue from business. The nearby chart shows the Laffer Curve effect from business taxation. Tax receipts tend to fall below their optimum potential when corporate tax rates are so high that they lead to the creation of loopholes and the incentive to move income to countries with a lower tax rate. Ireland is the classic case of a nation on the "correct side" of this curve. It has a 12.5% corporate rate, nearly the lowest in the world, and yet collects 3.6% of GDP in corporate revenues, well above the international average.

The U.S., by contrast, with its near 40% rate has been averaging less than 2.5% of GDP in corporate receipts. Kevin Hassett, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute who has studied the impact of corporate taxes, says the U.S. "appears to be a nation on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve: We could collect more revenues with a lower corporate tax rate."

If only the tax writers in Washington would heed this advice. Congress is moving in the reverse direction, threatening to raise the tax rate on corporate dividends, which is another tax on business income. There's also movement in the Senate to raise taxes on the foreign-source income of U.S. companies. The effect would be to raise the marginal tax rate for companies that base their corporate headquarters abroad.

But one reason those countries chose to move to the Cayman Islands and elsewhere is because of the high U.S. corporate tax rate. The Laffer Curve analysis indicates that these corporate tax increases are likely to raise little if any additional revenue, because companies will have a new incentive to move even more of their operations out of the reach of the IRS.

For all the talk of "tax equity," this is also a recipe for further inequality by driving more capital offshore. Research from Mr. Hassett and others has shown that high corporate tax rates reduce the rate of increase in manufacturing wages (See our editorial, "The Wages of Growth¹," Dec. 26, 2006.). For that matter, most economists understand that corporations don't ultimately pay any taxes. They merely serve as a collection agent, passing along the cost of those taxes in some combination of lower returns for shareholders, higher prices for customers, or lower compensation for employees. In other words, America's high corporate tax rates are an indirect, but still damaging, tax on average American workers.

One immediate policy remedy would be to cut the 35% U.S. federal corporate tax rate to the industrial nation average of 29%. That's probably too sensible for a Congress gripped by a desire to soak the rich and punish business, but a Democrat who picked up the idea could turn the tax tables on Republicans in 2008. Meantime, as the U.S. fails to act, the rest of the world is looking more attractive all the time.

Word of the Day: Flagitious

Flagitious

Pronunciation: fl&-'ji-sh&s
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English flagicious, from Latin flagitiosus, from flagitium shameful thing
: marked by scandalous crime or vice : VILLAINOUS

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     "Well, I call it nothing short of flagitious, Count Zodiates pushing his way in to Mrs. Mountstuart’s soiree like that."

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Christian Science Pharmacist Refuses To Fill Any Prescription

More Beginner Pilots. . .

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Double Standard Column of the Day. . .

Why "Islamophobia" Is a Brilliant Term

By Dennis Prager

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

---

© 2007 

What do anti-Semitism, racism and Islamophobia have in common?

In fact, nothing.

But according to Islamist groups, Western media and the United Nations, they have everything in common. Anti-Semites hate all Jews, racists hate all members of another race, and Islamophobes hate all Muslims.

Whoever coined the term "Islamophobia" was quite shrewd. Notice the intellectual sleight of hand here. The term is not "Muslim-phobia" or "anti-Muslimist," it is Islam-ophobia – fear of Islam – yet fear of Islam is in no way the same as hatred of all Muslims. One can rightly or wrongly fear Islam, or more usually, aspects of Islam, and have absolutely no bias against all Muslims, let alone be a racist.

The equation of Islamophobia with racism is particularly dishonest. Muslims come in every racial group, and Islam has nothing to do with race. Nevertheless, mainstream Western media, Islamist groups calling themselves Muslim civil liberties groups and various Western organizations repeatedly declare that Islamophobia is racism.

To cite three of innumerable examples: The Guardian published an opinion piece titled, "Islamophobia should be as unacceptable as racism"; the European Union has established the European Monitoring Center for Racism and Xenophobia; and the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission of Australia notes that "Muslims have also been the target of racism in Australia, often referred to as Islamophobia."

Even granting that there are people who fear Islam, how does that in any way correlate with racism? If fear of an ideology rendered one racist, all those who fear conservatism or liberalism should be considered racist.

Of course, some may argue that whereas conservatism and liberalism are ideas, Islam is a religion, and while one can attack ideas, one must not attack religions. It is, however, quite insulting to religions to deny that they are ideas. Religions are certainly more than ideas – they are theological belief systems – but they are also ideas about how society should be run just as much as liberalism and conservatism are. Therefore, Islam, or Christianity, or Judaism, or Buddhism should be just as subject to criticism as conservatism or liberalism.

However, the only religion the West permits criticism of is Christianity. People write books, give lectures and conduct seminars on the falsity of Christian claims, or on the immoral record of Christianity, and no one attacks them for racism or bigotry, let alone attacks them physically. The head of the Anti-Defamation League announces that conservative Christians are the greatest threat to America today, and no one charges him with racism or Christianophobia.

The statement may be an expression of hysteria and of ignorance, but not of racism. But if one says that Islam does not appear compatible with democracy or that the Islamic treatment of women is inferior to the West's, he or she is labeled a racist Islamophobe.

One might counter that maligning people for criticism is not only true of those who criticize Islam, it is also true of critics of Israel and of America – the former, it is said, are immediately labeled "anti-Semitic" and the latter are immediately labeled "unpatriotic." Neither is true at all. Both are, and I use this word rarely, lies.

No one is labeled anti-Semitic for merely criticizing Israel. People are labeled anti-Semitic for denying Israel's right to exist, for siding with those who wish to exterminate it or for singling out the Jewish state alone among all the nations of the world for attacks that most other countries deserve far more.

And no one in any responsible capacity has called anyone "unpatriotic" just for criticizing America. Sen. Hillary Clinton claimed during the last Democratic presidential debate that the Defense Department called her "unpatriotic" for asking whether the Defense Department has a plan to withdraw American troops from Iraq. Yet the term "unpatriotic" was not only not used in the response to the senator, it was not even hinted at.

The fact remains that the term "Islamophobia" has one purpose – to suppress any criticism, legitimate or not, of Islam. And given the cowardice of the Western media, and the collusion of the left in banning any such criticism (while piling it on Christianity and Christians), it is working.

Latest proof: This past week a man in New York was charged with two felonies for what is being labeled the hate crime of putting a Quran in a toilet at Pace College. Not misdemeanors, mind you, felonies. Meanwhile, the man who put a crucifix in a jar of urine continues to have his artwork – "Pi-- Christ" – displayed at galleries and museums. A Quran in a toilet is a hate crime; a crucifix in pee is a work of art. Thanks in part to that brilliant term "Islamophobia."

Here's a Pretty Good Beach Read About Poker Savant Stu Ungar.

     One of a Kind

     The Rise and Fall of Stuey "The Kid" Ungar, the World's Greatest Poker Player

     by Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson

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     When you hear the best poker players in the world talk about Stuey Ungar, it's almost eerie how they speak of him as being so far up on a different plane.  He won the World Series of Poker three times, and if he hadn't been such a drug addict, who knows how much more successful he could have been.  It was as if he could see his opponents' cards, and in typical genius fashion, he had no idea how to run any part of his life away from his narrow field of expertise.  After winning millions of dollars playing cards, he died young and penniless in a fleabag motel in Vegas, his heart giving in to years of cocaine and crack.

     I would like to offer one excerpt here.  It's a hand that Stu played in a high stakes cash game against the previous year's World Series winner.  This is by far the creepiest (i.e. perfectly accurate) call I've ever heard of anyone making:

 

I Love Fast Vehicles, Even the Cheesy Ones.

     Although I am a big-time opponent of loud vehicles (e.g. motorcycles zooming through my nice little seaside village), I just love fast cars, and if I knew anything about boats I'd be way into fast boats.  I sometimes wish I had a split personality, and the other guy was a South Florida cheeseball who could tear around in a Ferrari Enzo and one of those cigarette boats from last summer's Michael Mann Miami Vice movie:

     Ferrari Enzo:

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     The boat that Crockett took Gong Li to Havana in for mojitos in the movie:

 

     I'm the first to admit, there's nothing cheesier than this boat, but the thrill of driving it fast would just edge out the shame of being seen in it.  I would have to wear a fake moustache, tank top, and lots of gold chains to blend in, but I'd do it.

     Then we have the fast, zippy Wallypower 118, which I first noticed in the dream sequence of the movie The Island.  Here it is, followed by a Wikipedia paragraph (keep in mind that the boat's 118' long):

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"118 WallyPower was created by Wally Yachts. The 118 is a narrow, angular, black-glass-housed superluxury go-fast yacht. It is 118 feet long and is capable of reaching speeds as fast as 60 knots (70 mph, 110 km/h).  It is capable of this feat due to three Vericor TF50 gas turbines generating 16,800 HP. The three gas turbines each drive a Rolls Royce Kamewa water jet, two steerable outboard and a non-steering booster on centerline. The steerable water jets also have a diesel engine input for a 370 hp Cummins diesel hence these two wing drive trains are Combined Diesel and Gas Turbine (CODOG). The 118 WallyPower won the MYDA, Millennium Yacht Design Award, organised by Seatec (the yachting and shipping technology show of Carrarafiere) for the "Layout of the Third Millennium." The WallyPower is also being honoured by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as the sole boat in its major architecture and design exhibition, 'Glamour: Fabricating Affluence', which ran from October 9 2004 to January 16 2005.  Wally Yachts has only produced one, and it currently resides in the Mediterranean. The 118 is known by most from its role as the "Renovatio" in the 2005 science-fiction film The Island."

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Dog In Purse Stares Longingly At Dog In Yard

New Yorker Cartoon of the Day

Pallbearers Move Bill Walsh's Coffin Down Church Aisle In Series Of Short, Precise Passes

August 2, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO — Funeral services for legendary football coach Bill Walsh began Wednesday as friends and family of the offensive innovator bore his coffin down the aisle of the San Francisco Unitarian church in a series of short but precise passes, finally placing Walsh's earthly remains on the bier with a moving display of West Coast-style pallbearing that took a respectful nine minutes to cover over 85 steps. "This was exactly the way Coach would have wanted it," said Joe Montana, who overcame his evident grief to lead multiple platoons of well-coordinated mourners including Mike Holmgren, George Seifert, Tony Dungy, Jerry Rice, and Walsh's wife and children in a series of scripted passes that took advantage of the timing and teamwork Walsh drilled into his loved ones during his life. "Bill Walsh believed that good football should be elegant, almost beautiful, and involve everyone's strengths, and though it might sound corny, we wanted his memorial service to be the same way." Several prominent football figures in attendance said it was the most impressive memorial display since the 1970 funeral of Vince Lombardi, who was finally laid to rest in a grinding series of brutal pulling-guard sweeps that utterly overpowered the opposing Chicago Bears.

I Took My Mother to Her First Red Sox Game at Fenway on Wednesday.

     My mother has become, over the past three years or so, the #1 Red Sox fan in all of New England.  I don't even bother keeping up with the team on the internet or ESPN anymore, because I know I can just ask my mother anything and she'll tell me.  Who's pitching tomorrow?  How many homers does Papi have now (not enough)?  Who's in a slump? 

     We had great seats between the on-deck circle and the Sox dugout.  It turned out to be a perfect first game for her to see.  She got to see all of her favorites hitting and fielding up close and personal:  Big Papi, Manny, Varitek, Youkilis, Lugo, Lowell, super-solid new guy Pedroia, and Coco.  And due to our come-from-behind victory, we got to see Papelbon sizzle the last three outs.

     New Celtic Kevin Garnett threw out an opening pitch to Big Papi:

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     Here we are:

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     Here's Grotto friend Amo moonlighting to earn some extra cash:

 

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     Papi and Manny:

Sunk vs. Marginal Costs in Economics and Life!

     Here's a good column for your basic economics file. 

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Economic Thinking
By Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Historical costs, sometimes called sunk costs, are irrelevant to decision-making because they are costs that have already been incurred. That's something that's not intuitively obvious, even for some trained economists. On a couple of occasions, I've recommended to a graduate student, having difficulty with his Ph.D. dissertation, that it might be wise to start all over again with a different topic. The response:

"Professor Williams, but I've spent so much time on the dissertation so far." I reminded the student that the time already spent should have nothing to do with his decision to either stick with his chosen topic or choose another one. His question should be: Which choice, sticking with the chosen topic or choosing another, will more readily lead to successful completion of his doctorate?

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, gasoline prices started rising immediately. Some people couldn't understand why prices rose for gasoline already in the pipeline long before Katrina struck. The fact that prices for gasoline produced before the disaster rose led to charges of price gouging. Many people believed that historical costs, what a retailer paid for it, should determine price.

That's patently wrong, and a simple example will demonstrate it. Say you've been selling me coffee from your large inventory for $4 a pound. A crop disaster in Brazil spikes the world coffee price to $10 a pound. What will you charge me now? If you said at least $10, go to the head of the class. Why? Because the opportunity cost, or replacement cost, of coffee is now $10. What coffee cost before the disaster is irrelevant.

You say, "Williams, I'm not greedy. I'd sell it to you for $4 until I ran out." That's great. I'd buy it from you for $4 and resell it for the world price of $10.

At the time of Katrina, gasoline retailers couldn't replace their gasoline at yesterday's prices. In other words, gasoline prices, coffee prices and any other price reflect conditions in the market today, not yesterday.

Today's debate over the Iraq War is so often discussed in terms of whether it should have been initiated in the first place, our faulty intelligence about Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction, and whether the Bush administration lied to the American people. Whether these observations and charges are true or false should in no way be a part of today's decision-making, for history is one of those immutable facts of life. We can change the future, but we cannot change the past, though we can learn from it.

The only costs relevant to decision-making are what economists call marginal or incremental cost; that's the change in costs as a result of doing something. That cost should be compared to the expected benefit. Think about pollution. Getting rid of pollution is a no-brainer. All that the authorities of, say, Los Angeles would have to do is to mandate that all pollution-emitting sources shut down. That would mean no driving, no manufacturing, no airplanes, no power generation and no lawn mowing. Angelenos would have perfectly clean air, but I doubt whether they'd agree that it's worth the costs. That means perfectly clean air is non-optimal, and so is perfectly dirty air. The question is, how much clean air do we want and at what cost? In other words, we should compare the additional benefit of cleaner air to the additional costs of getting it.

The idea of weighing the costs of doing something against its benefits are part and parcel of intelligent decision-making. If we only look to benefits, we'll do darn near anything because everything has some kind of benefit.

Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.