Pound-foolish complaint

Enough with the false frugality.
This Labor Day weekend ends a summer that was long, hot,* and dismal. Economic news? Bad to worse. So too analyses of what’s to come.
Having predicted downturn long before many in the mainstream media, this ’Grrl is hardly a Pollyanna on fiscal policy. Nonetheless, I can’t wait for a theme running through much commentary to run its course.
The theme cropped up again a few days ago, in Maureen Dowd’s kvetch about a White House makeover. Key quote among many swipes:

The recession redo, paid for by the nonprofit White House Historical Association, was the latest tone-deaf move by a White House that was supposed to excel at connection and communication. Message: I care, but not enough to stop the fancy vacations and posh renovations.

As we've posted in another context, concern about poor Presidential communication is well founded.
Concern about spending, not so much.
As any student of ECON 101 well knows, underdemand means oversupply. Not a good thing. If no one buys, sellers lose out. Stores close and employees are out of work.
Recovery requires that persons who can – CEOs, persons who saved well during the last bubble, and yes, the 1st Family – should spend. New carpets and remade couches. R&R at the Vineyard, and the Gulf coast. Spain, even.
Stirring of the economic pot is what's in order – not a populist tune that may sound good but is, in the end, unsound.

　
* So it’s reported, from reaches of the United States outside the zone of cold coastal fog that cloaked the San Francisco Bay Area lo! these many months.

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

The judge’s full retreat from the notion that a different life experience is valuable was more than necessary and somewhat disappointing.

-- Maureen Dowd in a New York Times column about the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor (above) to the U.S. Supreme Court.

California marriage equality back in Court

'I think people are beginning to look at it differently, I know it’s happened for me. I started out not supporting it. The longer I’ve lived, the more I’ve seen the happiness of people, the stability that these commitments bring to a life. Many adopted children who would have ended up in foster care now have good solid homes and are brought up learning the difference between right and wrong. It’s a very positive thing.'

-- U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Cal.), quoted yesterday in Maureen Dowd's column. Feinstein (above right) was among the precious few high-ranking politicians who cut a television ad against Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that aimed to limit marriage in California to opposite-sex couples. (Prior posts here and here.)
Prop 8 passed by a margin of 52.1% to 47.9%. But it remains to be seen whether it will take effect. The California Supreme Court (below) has agreed by this order to hear petitions contending that the simple-majority-rules initiative process cannot be used to take a fundamental right like marriage away from a group that the Court has declared a suspect class -- as the Court did for same-sex couples in In re Marriage Cases (May 2008) (prior post). Invoking the Equal Protection Clause, petitioners argue that the only way to effect such a deprivation is by the state's more cumbersome, super-majority-needed "revision" process.
Throughout the course of this new round of litigation, filings by litigants and the many amici curiae may be found here.

'Nuff said

(Occasional item taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

But when you use sexism as an across-the-board shield for any legitimate question, you only hurt women.

-- Maureen Dowd, in her New York Times column.

What is it with Dowd & food?

The effort to green next month's Democratic National Convention in Denver drew sneers this week from New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd (right). She noted a report that convention planners've "hired the first-ever Director of Greening, the environmental activist Andrea Robinson [below left]," who "hired an Official Carbon Adviser to 'measure the greenhouse-gas emissions of every placard, every plane trip, every appetizer prepared and every coffee cup tossed,'" and instructed caterers to be "'lean ‘n’ green'": No fried food, and, Dowd reports,

'on the theory that nutritious food is more vibrant, each meal should include "at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white." (Garnishes don’t count.) At least 70% of the ingredients should be organic or grown locally, to minimize emissions from fuel during transportation.

In Dowd's view all this is a distraction from real problems like "the economy that's depressed" -- a distraction due to what she calls the "eat-your-arugula chiding and chilly earnestness," the "seeming too prissy about food" perception of the Democrats' presumptive nominee, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
This week's column was by no means the 1st in which Dowd ranted at Obama for acknowledging the existence of arugula, let alone for an aversion to sweets. She's cited such traits as indicative of a political candidate -- and, now, a political party -- out of step with America.
Seriously?
Hard to figure what's "un-American" about stating a preference for food grown in the heartland state of Colorado. Hard to figure too what's "patriotic" about limiting oneself to iceberg lettuce.
Biodiversity can be a good thing, not only because it forestalls species extinction, but also because it increases variety for consumers and markets for producers. Same too with carbon-counting: there's potential not only to slow climate change, but also to grow the economy by expanding production of recyclable implements and energy-efficient transportation. And at a time when obesity threatens America's physical and economic health, isn't attention to caloric content a welcome sign of American leadership?

On July 12, ...

... 1984, U.S. Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro was chosen as the Democratic nominee for Vice President, making her the 1st woman to run at the top of a major party's slate. In November the New York native and her running mate, U.S. Sen. Walter F. Mondale, received only 40.56% of the popular vote, and lost every state except his home of Minnesota. By a margin of 57%-42%, women voters preferred the GOP ticket of Ronald Reagan-George H.W. Bush, reported Maureen Dowd at the time, adding: "All nine female challengers for the Senate lost their bids. And of 41 female challengers for the House, only two won, with the chance for a third in a Utah race still too close to call.'" In 1993 Ferraro led the United States' delegation to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
... 1954, U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party-Minn.) was born in South St. Paul, Minn.