Month: November 2003

We get spam, lots and lots of spam

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

And you thought bunkers were so 1950s. Au contraire:

Constructed of 6500 PSI high tensile reinforced concrete and a proprietary blend of composite fibers and enhancers, the patented aerodynamic “DSS” boasts 12-inch thick steel reinforced walls that provide ample protection from normally unsurvivable forces including category 5 hurricane winds, flying debris, blizzards, fires, earthquakes and other all-too-common threats.

As the folks at U.S. Bunkers Inc. say, “It’s life assurance, not life insurance.”

A victory for the Republican Party, perhaps

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

The Democrats may feel they’ve been steamrolled by the GOP on the ginormous Medicare prescription-drug bill, but the Republicans are the ones who are truly lost.

What a stunning role reversal — well, it would be stunning if weren’t so damned predictable. Senate Democrats overwhelmingly vote against the biggest expansion of the welfare state in nearly 40 years, while the GOP rams it through and Dubya twists every arm to make sure it goes his way.

Supposedly it will cost $400 billion over 10 years, but that’s a vast understatement of the actual costs, as Doug Bandow points out:

Any legislator who takes fiscal responsibility seriously should be particularly concerned about the latter. Pegged at a ten-year cost of $395 billion, the real increase in the government’s presently unfunded liability will be several trillion dollars: Estimates ranged from $6 trillion for the House bill to $12 trillion for the Senate measure, with the compromise likely falling somewhere in between. The latter number is 40 percent of Medicare’s current projected future red ink.

Nor does anyone take the $395 billion figure seriously; if a private company offered that estimate, its officers would be headed for jail. For one thing, that number stops before the baby-boomer wave starts retiring, after which costs will explode. Leonard Burman of the Urban Institute projects the second decade’s costs will run $1 trillion, and even that figure, given current cost trends, “is likely to be an underestimate,” he says. But why should today’s elected officials worry? Many will be out of office when Medicare’s fiscal house collapses.

It’s OK, though. The Republicans stand for “freedom,” so a victory for them must be a victory for liberty. I should get that through my thick head already.

I keep mistakenly thinking that in the end principles don’t amount to much compared to the lure of political power. Silly me.

The only bright spot that could be found in any of this is that, along with the good economic news, whoever the Democratic presidential nominee is will have to lean heavily on foreign affairs in attacking Bush. Right now, that’s where he seems to be most vulnerable, and that’s where the Democratic nominee is most likely to have something of value to say.

It’s a long shot, perhaps, but what else have we got?

On second thought

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

“Damn!”

That was my first reaction to the news that the Cubs had traded promising young first baseman Hee Seop Choi to the Florida Marlins for very good-and-getting-better, older-but-still-only-28 Derek Lee.

But upon reflection, it seems like a good deal for the Cubs, especially if they can sign Lee to a longer-term deal (2004 is the last year of his current contract) and the player to be named later is not a top prospect, which it is unlikely to be since this was mostly a salary dump for the Marlins.

The Cubs organization may, as a whole and especially given Dusty Baker’s temparement, lost patience with Choi. A better way to phrase what has happened is that their 2003 season sped up their timetable for success.

A .500 team still developing its young pitching and young position players in a stronger dvision would have let Choi play regularly after coming back from his concussion. Certainly, the Cubs had enough confidence in Choi’s long-term future to politely say no to Jim Thome’s come-ons in the 2003 off-season. He was old and expensive.

Lee brings power, speed, defense and a good eye at the plate, in spite of more than 140 strikeouts. He’s an offensive upgrade at first base on a team that needs as much offense as it can get and couldn’t afford to hope that Randall “Sausage King of Chicago” Simon wouldn’t descend into his usual mediocrity.

The other below-average positions are tough to fill because of already existing contracts. Moises Alou has one year left at $9.5 million, Alex Gonzalez has a year left at $4.5 million and Damian Miller has another year at $3 million. None of them is worth the money, and it’s unlikely anyone else will take on that salary.

As far as second base goes, the most that can be hoped for is someone who has a little speed, gets on base and can field OK. The pickings this off-season are slim and likely to be overbid. It’s not the position to spend a lot of money on in terms of investing in offense.

So Hendry had to upgrade somewhere, and in spite of Choi’s enormous talent and potential, his gamble was that for 2004 at least Lee would be a big upgrade. That’s probably right. He may hit 40 home runs playing in Wrigley Field instead of the Fish Bowl.

The Cubs may yet get Javy Lopez or Ivan Rodriguez at catcher and be willing to bit the bullet on Miller’s $3 million salary as a backup. Ironically, the Lee trade puts the Marlins in a better position to sign Pudge.

We shall see.

Self-promotion

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Here’s my latest Insurance Journal story to become available online: “Insurers question NAIC budget reserves.”

The NAIC (National Association of Insurance Commissioners) is an interesting organization. It’s a private, quasi-governmental organization that charges a fee in the thousands to file their annual statement, which is required by every state insurance department.

Then it charges anybody who wants to get that data back out of the system additional, exorbitant fees. Nice gig if you can get it. And when they take in too much money in fees they say they need it for reserves. And the insurers complain. But the difference is now that the industry’s starting to think, as sources have told me, they’d rather deal with one gorilla (the feds) than 50 monkeys.

I doubt the trade would work out very well, but they’re using that threat as leverage to get the state regulators to be more friendly, since federal regulation would remove a $12 billion annual stream of income the states get from taxing insurance premiums.

And the beat goes on.

Immigration: America’s largest foreign aid program

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Hispanic American immigrants (mostly Mexican) will send nearly $30 billion home this year. That’s nearly twice the amount the United States government gives to foreign governments.

This is money earned fairly and freely in a competitive market and given with love, family-to-family. Compare that to the “foreign aid” donated with caveats and conditions, government-to-government. Which form of aid is more likely to actually help?

Add my voice to the chorus

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

You’ve probably heard lots of good things about “Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World.”

Here’s the kicker: they’re all true. The movie poster for “Master & Commander” should next to the dictionary definition for the word “entertainment.”

Every moment of this movie is entertaining, involving, engrossing and purely enjoyable. I say this as someone who’s not necessarily a fan of the naval adventure flick, a genre whose time had long passed well before “my time” started ticking.

The battle sequences were exciting, the relationships between the central and supporting characters were very well drawn, and Russell Crowe (as usual) is fantastic as “Lucky Jack” Capt. Aubrey.

I was in Indianapolis earlier this week covering an agents’ convention there and was looking to kill some time at night.

The other movies playing at the downtown mulitplex-in-a-mall were: “Tupac Shakur: Resurrection,” “Radio,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and two or three other movies I had absolutely no interest in seeing. I’d read favorable reviews of “M&C” in both Chicago papers, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

Often, my attitude or mood about a movie influences how much I enjoy it. So, I didn’t have a negative attitude toward “M&C” but I definitely wasn’t gung-ho to see it, either. Which is why I was so pleasantly surprised. Really, honestly, truly: it’s the best thing out there right now, and easily one of the best movies of the year.

Go see it.

Wake up, little Kevin, wake up!

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had difficulty waking up on my own at a regular time. Even an alarm clock is not a fail-safe.

I have gone so far as to, while drifting in and out of consciousness as the alarm-clock radio blares away, concoct elaborate rationales to explain to myself why it’s OK to oversleep.

  • The exam has been postponed
  • The prof said it was OK to miss one class a week
  • Class has been canceled; they just forgot to call me
  • I’ll probably get sick if I wake up too early, so I’d just have to call in sick anyway

And so on.

You can quit dreaming

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Chicago Tribune baseball columnist Phil Rogers fantasizes about a trade for Alex Rodriguez, “A dream shortstop.”

But if such a trade were to happen, it would be more like a nightmare. Rodriguez may be the best all-around player in the game today, but he is vastly overpaid and his interminable contract only calls for even higher salaries in the years to come.

If A-Rod were a basketball player who could pretty much win singlehandedly every game out, then it might be worth it. But, after all, he still only gets four or five at bats and a few chances in the field. To pour that much money ($179 million) into one player would handicap any kind of flexibility the Cubs might have down the road.

Yes, it’s quite possible the Cubs will find a way to screw up this golden opportunity to build a perennial contender, but at least they now have the option of not screwing it up. With A-Rod on board, all choice in the matter would be gone.

Everything that has a beginning has an end

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

And I, for one (and Karen, for two), thought the conclusion to “The Matrix” trilogy was pretty outstanding, in spite of the critical drubbing it has taken.

First and foremost, the guts of what made “The Matrix” a sensation in the first place — the action sequences — are amazing. The two big set pieces — the battle in Zion and the final showdown between Neo and Agent Smith — are both fierce, mind-blowing, edge-of-your-seat jawgapers. To the extent that anyone disagrees, they are simply spoiled; no “Matrix” sequel could have the same impact the original did. You can’t do anything again for the first time.

The other major criticism I’ve read here and there is that the conclusion to “The Matrix” trilogy is insipid and illogical. Huh? Were these people paying attention to the first film? Remember, when Trinity brings Neo back to life by kissing him passionately and declaring her faith in him as The One.

Yeah, that was totally consistent with the proclamation earlier in the film that if a person is killed in the Matrix he’s dead in reality as well because “the body cannot live without the mind.”

All Movie Guide’s Jeremy Wheeler, in a very insightful review linked above, sums it up this way:

In no way will ‘Revolutions’ please everyone — some have walked away completely disappointed, while others came in looking for flaws — but if you stand back and look at the entire trilogy, there’s an undeniable theme that each film completely embraces and is the backbone of the series. … ‘The Matrix’ ends with love causing a miracle. ‘Reloaded’ ends with love causing a miracle. ‘Revolutions’ ends with love affecting everything and creating a new world.

All of the people who have lambasted both “Reloaded” and “Revolutions” — critics and fanboys alike — seem to have forgotten the “rules” constructed by the Wachowskis from the very beginning. Those rules are that love, faith and the human will to choose freely one’s own destiny are ultimately more powerful than any external control. That may or may not be true, and it may or may not be logical in the strictest sense, but those rules are strictly adhered to across all three films.

By juxtaposing the hard, cold mechanical worlds of the Matrix, Machine City and even Zion with the ultimately transformative power of faith and love, the Wachowski brothers argue that those latter qualities can overcome anything — even an unconvincing temporary truce with the machines. Love conquers all, don’t ya know?

Exhibit A

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Today’s bombing of an Italian base, which killed 25 is exhibit A on why the United States can’t just “hand over” the Iraq mess to somone else.

Hopefully, the Italians, who lost 17 of their own in the bombing, will not pull out as a result of this, but it’s sure not the kind of thing that will dissuade other European nations from keeping their troops out of harm’s way (a novel idea, I know).

Folks like Andrew Sullivan will tell you that the very point of these attacks is to drive the United States and its allies out of Iraq. But we can’t do that, he says — we must show resolve.

Showing resolve is a lot easier to do when all it means is not having to admit you were wrong. When you’re on the battlefield it means you don’t know when or where or how the next attack is coming, it’s kind of hollow.

At this point, the danger to American lives of occupying Iraq far outweighs the danger to American lives of quickly returning sovereignty to the Iraqi people.

Whatever happened to sunk costs?

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Conservatives’ increasingly desperate defenses of the Iraq mess now turn more and more to a simple idea, “Well, it’s too late to stop now.”

They seem to have forgotten the notion of sunk costs, which in economics is the term for any costs already invested into a project which have to be conceded if the project is deemed a failure.

For example, no corporation in America would say, after spending millions to launch a new product, “Well, it’s failing miserably, but we’ve already spent so much money developing and marketing the damn thing, let’s just keep letting the losses pile up.”

No, after a certain point, you stop the bleeding. Call it a valiant try. Call it a mistake. Cut your losses and move on, to hell with your “credibility.”

This is especially the case with an optional war. In a sense, Dubya turned an optional war into a must-win war, because of the seeming alliance between Iraqi insurgents and foreign Islamic fundamentalits. How much of that is actually happening, though, is very unclear.

Still, the weapons threat — assuming there was one — is most assuredly gone now. While attacks targeting civilians in Iraq are obviously terrible, they are not obviously a priority for American foreign policy. Turn over authority ASAP to the Iraqis and come to terms with the new government on keeping a strike force in the country to hunt down any terrorist groups.

It’s this type of smaller-scale, more targeted action that the war on terror seemed to be headed in originally, before Dubya & Co. became obsessed with remaking the entire Middle East. There’s not much of a guarantee that this would go well, but it would mean bringing home the vast majority of the troops, getting out of the nation-building and recognizing when your costs are sunk.

Unlike in the private sector, however, there’s much less incentive for politicians to admit their mistakes, much less work to lessen the damage caused by them. It must be daunting for them to be faced with the fact that nine out of 10 things they’ll try will fail.

The only lever, ultimately, is the ballot box, as imperfect an institution as it might be. Yet the leading presidential candidate for the other major party also wants to stick it out in Iraq, albeit under NATO command. I’m sure it won’t be any problem to get the Europeans on board now that Iraq is a flaming disaster.