It would be easy to dismiss the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, longtime pastor and friend of presidential candidate Barack Obama, as a whackadoodle. Some in the media, especially on talk radio, would have us believe just that. To do so not only would be inaccurate, but it would let the pastor off the hook all too easily.
Just the opposite is true. Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a bright, learned, passionate, and articulate person. He is capable of delivering these qualities wrapped in very cunning logic. But many of his messages are filled with a virulent hatred for America and for a large contingent of its population.
In three recent, serial public appearances: on the Bill Moyers TV show; before the NAACP; and before the National Press Club, Wright expressed a series of views about America and about his relationship between him and Senator Obama which, yesterday, the Senator felt it necessary to completely and totally reject. Good for Obama. It was a long time in coming.
Way back in the first century, there was man who roamed the hills and pathways of Palestine preaching a message of hope and change, while striving to be true to his own faith and beliefs. I wonder how He would rate the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Note: The word “whackadoodle” may be found in the contemporary online dictionary, http://www.urbandictionary.com/
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Gulf vs. Getty
Yesterday morning, after completing two exercise loops on each of the three levels at the Bridgewater Commons Mall, I drove the car into Somerville for a few errands and to gas up. It’s startling to see how much the price of fuel can vary within the distance of just a few blocks.
Not so long ago, the Gulf station on the corner of Mountain Avenue and West End Ave. (across the street from the Skylands Community Bank) regularly posted some of the very lowest prices in the area. Yesterday, the price was $3.599. Only a few blocks away, at the corner of Cornell Blvd. and West End Ave. (across from Thul Auto Supply) Getty was pumping the same stuff for $3.439, or $.16 less per gallon. That’s worth driving a couple of blocks to save significantly on a fill-up.
Sunday, along Route 22 West, beyond the Somerville circle, gas prices hovered around the $3.479 mark. None of us knows how long gas prices will continue to spike, but it looks like the good old boys from Riyadh and Houston have us all over a barrel.
Not so long ago, the Gulf station on the corner of Mountain Avenue and West End Ave. (across the street from the Skylands Community Bank) regularly posted some of the very lowest prices in the area. Yesterday, the price was $3.599. Only a few blocks away, at the corner of Cornell Blvd. and West End Ave. (across from Thul Auto Supply) Getty was pumping the same stuff for $3.439, or $.16 less per gallon. That’s worth driving a couple of blocks to save significantly on a fill-up.
Sunday, along Route 22 West, beyond the Somerville circle, gas prices hovered around the $3.479 mark. None of us knows how long gas prices will continue to spike, but it looks like the good old boys from Riyadh and Houston have us all over a barrel.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Hope for Muhlenberg
The lead headline and front-page story in Sunday’s print edition of the Courier News reads, “Muhlenberg backers ready to rally.” For weeks now, I’ve been reading about how the Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center is planning to close its 396-bed acute-care facility, leaving several other operations in place.
Blogger Herb Kaufman (http://cnplainfield.blogspot.com/) has had passionate posts on the topic, and the C-N has covered the matter extensively with news reports, as well as on its editorial page.
In a complex issue such as this one, there is often one person who crystallizes the issue in cogent terms, with a clarity that cannot be ignored. This time, it’s the words of Dr. Brian Fertig, a doctor associated with both Muhlenberg and its sister hospital in the Solaris Health System, the JFK Medical Center.
Quoted in the C-N, Fertig asks, “How does this happen with all the wealth in New Jersey?” Fertig’s question cuts right through to a key factor in this equation and, when he answers his own question, “This should not have happened,” he confronts us with a very uncomfortable conclusion.
It becomes rather clear – at least to me – that the health care needs of a community the size of Plainfield cannot be ignored (the 2006 census counted 47,353 people, compared to Bridgewater which came in at 44,818, and which has a nearby hospital in Somerville). Plainfield’s loss of a 396-bed facility would be a major blow. Fertig’s plaintive words need to be heard over and over again. I am not so naïve as to think that the state of New Jersey can simply write a check for Muhlenberg’s operating deficit, or that the parent company, Solaris, can indefinitely continue to absorb financial losses from Muhlenberg.
But there is something very much out-of-kilter when we U.S. citizens can observe the government in Washington spending billions of dollars for a mismanaged war with Iraq, while a local community in New Jersey is expected to lose a major health facility to the detriment of its own citizens. My mom was fond of saying, “Charity begins at home.”
Note: 1. For Sunday’s April 27, 2008, report on Muhlenberg and Shaun O’Hara’s involvement (he’s the center for the New York Giants), see http://www.c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080427/NEWS/804270385. The web site of the Solaris Health System is at http://www.solarishs.org/. 2. Although I have not analyzed any of the data associated with Muhlenberg’s predicament, I was once involved with a major business assessment of the health industry at a time when the firm which employed me was evaluating entry into this market segment.
Blogger Herb Kaufman (http://cnplainfield.blogspot.com/) has had passionate posts on the topic, and the C-N has covered the matter extensively with news reports, as well as on its editorial page.
In a complex issue such as this one, there is often one person who crystallizes the issue in cogent terms, with a clarity that cannot be ignored. This time, it’s the words of Dr. Brian Fertig, a doctor associated with both Muhlenberg and its sister hospital in the Solaris Health System, the JFK Medical Center.
Quoted in the C-N, Fertig asks, “How does this happen with all the wealth in New Jersey?” Fertig’s question cuts right through to a key factor in this equation and, when he answers his own question, “This should not have happened,” he confronts us with a very uncomfortable conclusion.
It becomes rather clear – at least to me – that the health care needs of a community the size of Plainfield cannot be ignored (the 2006 census counted 47,353 people, compared to Bridgewater which came in at 44,818, and which has a nearby hospital in Somerville). Plainfield’s loss of a 396-bed facility would be a major blow. Fertig’s plaintive words need to be heard over and over again. I am not so naïve as to think that the state of New Jersey can simply write a check for Muhlenberg’s operating deficit, or that the parent company, Solaris, can indefinitely continue to absorb financial losses from Muhlenberg.
But there is something very much out-of-kilter when we U.S. citizens can observe the government in Washington spending billions of dollars for a mismanaged war with Iraq, while a local community in New Jersey is expected to lose a major health facility to the detriment of its own citizens. My mom was fond of saying, “Charity begins at home.”
Note: 1. For Sunday’s April 27, 2008, report on Muhlenberg and Shaun O’Hara’s involvement (he’s the center for the New York Giants), see http://www.c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080427/NEWS/804270385. The web site of the Solaris Health System is at http://www.solarishs.org/. 2. Although I have not analyzed any of the data associated with Muhlenberg’s predicament, I was once involved with a major business assessment of the health industry at a time when the firm which employed me was evaluating entry into this market segment.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Saudi Arabia: A U.S. Friend?
While catching a break from my backyard chores today, I caught a TV glimpse of Bernie Sanders (I), Senator from Vermont, excoriating the Saudis for capping the production of oil from their fields in the Middle East. The man from Vermont has a point.
Sanders wants the U.S. Senate to prevent a pending arms deal with Saudi Arabia from going through, until the desert monarchy decides to pump significantly more oil in order to throttle down the speculative activity in this commodity. I think Sanders is onto something fundamental.
Yesterday, the price for crude oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) was $118.30 per barrel. A year ago, on April 02, 2007, it was just above $65 a barrel. The year before that, it was significantly lower. The issue is complex, and there are many reasons why oil prices are skyrocketing. But Sanders has hit on a point which I have advocated for many years: Break up the OPEC oil cartel.
If any consortium of U.S. producers were to conspire to control the output and, thereby, the price of a basic commodity by meeting regularly to set production targets (as OPEC does), the whole lot of them would be set upon by the U.S. Justice Department like a Peregrine falcon hurtling from the sky toward its prey.
Somehow, our erstwhile friends from the Middle East (15 of the 19 terrorists who attacked America on 9/11 were Saudi citizens) continue to demand more U.S. oil dollars, blithely ungrateful that U.S. forces saved their collective rear ends in the first Gulf War.
They seem to have an institutionally short memory of the time when New Jersey native, General Norman Schwarzkopf, led a U.S. expeditionary force which prevented Saddam Hussein from annexing Kuwait and from threatening the security of Saudi Arabia.
Good friends remember. They return favors. Just how good are the Saudis as friends of America?
Sanders wants the U.S. Senate to prevent a pending arms deal with Saudi Arabia from going through, until the desert monarchy decides to pump significantly more oil in order to throttle down the speculative activity in this commodity. I think Sanders is onto something fundamental.
Yesterday, the price for crude oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) was $118.30 per barrel. A year ago, on April 02, 2007, it was just above $65 a barrel. The year before that, it was significantly lower. The issue is complex, and there are many reasons why oil prices are skyrocketing. But Sanders has hit on a point which I have advocated for many years: Break up the OPEC oil cartel.
If any consortium of U.S. producers were to conspire to control the output and, thereby, the price of a basic commodity by meeting regularly to set production targets (as OPEC does), the whole lot of them would be set upon by the U.S. Justice Department like a Peregrine falcon hurtling from the sky toward its prey.
Somehow, our erstwhile friends from the Middle East (15 of the 19 terrorists who attacked America on 9/11 were Saudi citizens) continue to demand more U.S. oil dollars, blithely ungrateful that U.S. forces saved their collective rear ends in the first Gulf War.
They seem to have an institutionally short memory of the time when New Jersey native, General Norman Schwarzkopf, led a U.S. expeditionary force which prevented Saddam Hussein from annexing Kuwait and from threatening the security of Saudi Arabia.
Good friends remember. They return favors. Just how good are the Saudis as friends of America?
Monday, April 21, 2008
What Recession?
The official measure of a U.S. recession is two successive quarters of negative economic growth. But, as I heard one commentator recently, present economic expansion – though still positive – is very low and, he opined, if it feels like a recession, then it is.
I don’t know if that last statement is true or not, but anyone who found himself at Costco in Bridgewater Sunday afternoon would have to rethink this whole recession issue. Every checkout register was busy recording purchases. Each line reached into the shopping area, and all of Costco’s oversized checkout carts were brimming.
My wife and I were in one of those serpentine lines that day with only an outdoor table umbrella. At $99.99, it would be hard to find a better comparable value. But the place is a madhouse on weekends. Anecdotally, at least, most people who shop at Costco in Bridgewater don’t seem to have changed their consumption habits much.
I wish we could get a micro-economic assessment of GDP growth specifically for Somerset County, New Jersey. If that number were reported side-by-side with national data, it might show better results, even though the housing market in Somerset County is still depressed.
Within spitting distance from our home, there is a better-than-new ranch house on a large parcel of land that is on the market at a price far below what it would have fetched just 18 months ago. Now, that’s depressing!
I don’t know if that last statement is true or not, but anyone who found himself at Costco in Bridgewater Sunday afternoon would have to rethink this whole recession issue. Every checkout register was busy recording purchases. Each line reached into the shopping area, and all of Costco’s oversized checkout carts were brimming.
My wife and I were in one of those serpentine lines that day with only an outdoor table umbrella. At $99.99, it would be hard to find a better comparable value. But the place is a madhouse on weekends. Anecdotally, at least, most people who shop at Costco in Bridgewater don’t seem to have changed their consumption habits much.
I wish we could get a micro-economic assessment of GDP growth specifically for Somerset County, New Jersey. If that number were reported side-by-side with national data, it might show better results, even though the housing market in Somerset County is still depressed.
Within spitting distance from our home, there is a better-than-new ranch house on a large parcel of land that is on the market at a price far below what it would have fetched just 18 months ago. Now, that’s depressing!
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