It’s always sad when one must displace Lou Guzzo at the top of the page, but a new day beckons. Welcome to what Goldy and I hope — if we can overcome our natural tendencies to laziness — will be a daily (at least on weekdays) feature: a brief overview of a few of the day’s top stories, as determined by our friends in the local corporate media, blogs and various other sources, and our own quirkiness, offered to You The Reader first thing in the morning.
Today, in case you hadn’t noticed, is Wednesday. It’s a slow news day.
Local pundits are already gushing over Hillary Clinton’s visit to valued donors supporters in Seattle next Monday. Yet someone who’s done far more good in the world — 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus — visited the Seattle area yesterday, and local media, with one exception, could not have cared less. Local TV ignored Yunus’s visit to speak at the Microsoft campus. So did the P-I. The only local story appeared in the Seattle Times.
Why is Yunus a big deal?
Yunus, 67, developed the system of microcredit, helping poor people improve their standard of living by using tiny loans to start businesses. Since giving out its first loans in 1983, the Grameen Bank he founded has reached more than 7 million borrowers who would have no access to credit through traditional banks. About 97 percent of them are women.
So why would Microsoft care?
“Microsoft is realizing that in the future a lot of their growth is going to have to come from poorer people of the world, so they’re interested from both a business and a philanthropy perspective,” [ex-Microsoft executive Paul] Maritz said.
More to the point, because their competitors care.
The ideas are starting to receive a warm reception from some corporate giants, too. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett last month visited Yunus in Dhaka and signed an agreement to help Grameen expand technology, broadband Internet access and education programs. IBM this week announced it would throw its support behind a new software system for microcredit institutions around the world.
And tellingly, Yunus sees a lot of parallels between the predations of capitalism in his native Bangladesh and the economy of George W. Bush’s America.
“Seattle has lots of pawn shops,” he said. “I see it in every city. Payday loans, check cashing. … It’s an indication the financial system doesn’t work here.”
Well, it works for some people. Comcast announced yesterday — in public notices quietly placed in newspapers around the state — a statewide $3/month hike in its cable rates, and a story in The Olympian (of all places) gives a clue as to why rates are rising (hint: it’s not the cost of the company’s commitment to outstanding customer service):
In counties where Comcast faces more competition, monthly cable TV rates tend to be lower…
Like where? Certainly not Seattle.
In Pierce County, Comcast faces competition in the form of the Click! Network, a fiber-optic cable TV service offered through Tacoma Power…
Ah, that evil, government-run Pierce County TV service we hear so many bad things about! Well, at least the free market offers superior content, right?
TV Tacoma, the City’s 24-hour government information channel, took home four national programming awards recently at the 22nd annual National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) video awards…
Right. Meanwhile, back in the world of commercial television, last night NBC deviated from its usual parade of reality TV freaks to present us with, um, a reality TV freak: an exclusive interview with disgraced Idaho Senator Larry “Happy Feet” Craig. The interview is likely to be commented upon mostly for Craig’s shot at the presidential candidate he until recently worked for, Mitt Romney: “He not only threw me under his campaign bus, he backed up and ran over me again.” (A line Craig stole directly from Keith Olbermann.)
But my favorite Craig line from the interview was a different one: our studly senator’s assertion that
“I go to bathrooms to use bathrooms.”
Uh, to do what, Larry? With his stony-faced wife also in the interview, he could hardly say…
Locally, Muhammad Yunus didn’t make the quality cut because it’s time instead for TV to trot out a perennial favorite story fetish this time of year: It Might Get Really, Really Windy Soon! Like, blowing leaves into a big swirling pile windy! Like, sustained winds of 20 mph windy! Like, whipping rippling the hair of the poor junior reporter stuck on the roof reporting live that it’s really gusting out here windy! Expect this “story” to dominate local media for the next three days.
To its marginal credit, KING-5 noted at the very end of its story that
There are two systems in the Pacific that are moving in, so what happens with those could lead to a change in the forecast.
In other words, stay tuned for updated forecasts! Or, as National Weather Service Johnny Berg put it in the PI’s nearly-as-breathless top story this morning,
“If the storm goes north toward Vancouver Island, we may not see anything out of the ordinary in Seattle.”
And that’s the news for Wednesday morning.
Hey, I’m liking this new feature!
You can say that again, re: Comcast not investing money in customer service. When Comcast took over from AT&T BI, immediately thereafter service took a dive into the dumps and has never recovered. I’ve never dealt with a worse utility company. It would be great if we had a public alternative that was fairly priced, but still delivered performance. Does such a thing exist anywhere?
Down with Lou Guzzo! Down with Comacast!
I had to file a consumer protection complaint with the AG before Comcast would delete my premium channels. Customer service my fluffy ass!
The Senator Craig stuff is SO OLD news. Get to the real news. Who gives a shit now that the novelty has worn off?
America faces real problems, foot tapping in bathrooms is getting stale. FOX news quality stuff.
In some ways, aside his politics which are horrid, the guy is a fighter. AND it was a police sting. Nice thought for progressives, police entrapments of all sorts. Vice cops sitting on shitters tapping back — not a great use of cops or their mega budgets.
I hope this is not too far of Geov’s turf, but I just posted an essay at SeattleJew in response to a statement by JD Watson, the co-discoverer of the DNA helix. Watson has come out for the arguement that Africans are genetically less intelligent than whites.
As a defender of the primacy of science, I think it is ironic that this statement is occurring one week after Gore’s Nobel. I try, in the essay, to briefly explain why Watson’s statements need to be tempered by an understanding what Jim is and is NOT expert in. This would be a great topic to hear more from Darryl.
I can’t believe I’m doing this…
All you Comcast subscribers out there…If you’re paying more than $33/month for either cable TV, Internet access or phone service, you paying too much. If you call Comcast and make noises as to how the Qwest or Verizon packages are looking pretty attractive, they’ll lower your rates for a year.
Now, if you have extras (premium channels, another phone line, an additional cable box), you’ll still pay extra for those, but you can drop your cable bill by quite a bit. I did.
But you also have to watch the bill because at the end of the year, it will go back up without warning.
And @1…YP…
I literally watched ATTBI disintegrate. It was a December morning – a Saturday, I believe – and I was at the computer (when am I not) when ATTBI went defunct. Subscribers had been both warned and promised that some other company would take over, but nothing definite was known at that point.
When Comcast did take over, service improved measurably. Certainly, it’s not perfect, but compared to what I’ve heard from others and experienced myself with DSL, it’s better than most. If for no other reason than the excellent job it does filtering spam, I’m satisfied.
But de-regulating its monopoly and allowing other cable companies to compete head-to-head would benefit us all.
I pay $33/month for my land line with a $10/month additional charge for a second, dedicated fax line for my business. Ever since I dropped Verizon for my home phone, they’ve been offering the sun, moon, and stars to get me to return. I enjoy the attention, of course, and I encourage it while, at the same time, letting Comcast now that it’s not as if we’re married or anything.
Since Comcast doesn’t service 1-800 numbers, though, I still maintain a business account with Verizon. But I make all my outgoing calls (no long distance charge) on the house line while receiving them on the business line. That’s cut my phone charges from an often seen high of several hundred dollars to about $70/month.
The point? You’re not as stuck as you think, and even in a regulated monopoly situation, you can dink around the edges to cut your costs if you pay attention. You’re not as helpless and stuck as you think.
As for Muhammad Yunus…
More power to him. Capitalism works, and he’s proving it.
Yet he’s critical of the maximization of profit, contending that runs counter to “social good.” I would counter by saying that maximizing profit is a social good since the creation of wealth, even in the hands of a few, benefits society.
It’s not as if the rich stick their money in Folger’s cans and bury it in the back yard. Back into the economy it goes.
A few years ago, Bill Gates visited India, where he was received like people here used to receive visiting gurus. Yet his remarks were greeted with disappointment because he spoke on how technology is used to make money, not that it was the basis of new spiritual insights.
Today, though, an expanded Indian middle class grows and prospers by using technology to make money and by servicing those of us who call tech service centers with our own technology issues.
Creative, hard working third-world entrepreneurs given even an eighth of a chance can develop self-sustaining business. I’ve worked with organizations in India for over 25-years that provide livings for widows and cast-offs manufacturing hand-crocheted lace products for export.
The lace doiley you buy in a gift shop put food on the table of an Indian woman keeping her from either prostitution or suicide, all too common alternatives in places like Calcutta.
So, three cheers for profit, capitalism, and Muhammed Yunus!
The Piper
And tellingly, Yunus sees a lot of parallels between the predations of capitalism in his native Bangladesh and the economy of George W. Bush’s America.
“Seattle has lots of pawn shops,” he said. “I see it in every city. Payday loans, check cashing. … It’s an indication the financial system doesn’t work here.”
Oh yeah, the economy around Seattle is so much worse now in 2007 under W than it has ever been. Back in the early 70s, and between 92 and 94, for example, things were so much better. We really should turn time back to those days.
Do the people who post such shit really live here? Our region is booming economically! Doesn’t anyone remember what is like during the Boeing busts? “Will the last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights?”
It is hard to remember a better time economically in Seattle. The only competition would be the dot-com boom of the late 90s. Unemployment is lower now than then, and inflation is about the same. What’s not to like?
@6
Seattle is doing considerably better than that rest of the country economically (where the housing market and other problems – crime, increased poverty, businesses moving away – growing), so unless you think that W only cares about Seattle for some reason then what you’re saying makes no sense.
@5
More power to him. Capitalism works, and he’s proving it.
Yet he’s critical of the maximization of profit, contending that runs counter to “social good.” I would counter by saying that maximizing profit is a social good since the creation of wealth, even in the hands of a few, benefits society.
It’s not as if the rich stick their money in Folger’s cans and bury it in the back yard. Back into the economy it goes.
Crackpiper, I take it you’re not familiar with the term “offshore tax shelter”?
Crackpiper is toking on the Larry Kudlow pipe.
Piper Scott, capitalist lacky:
“I would counter by saying that maximizing profit is a social good since the creation of wealth, even in the hands of a few, benefits society.”
Wow. Let’s all be allowed to initiate our arguments with an unquestionable assumption that has its own built in irrefutable conclusion! Note the seamless transition from ‘profit maximization’ to ‘creating wealth’ (As if no other system is capable of ‘creating wealth’). Note the easy rationale for the concentration of wealth in the hands of the annointed few, and the failure to address the questions of the nexus of wealth and power and market externalities and\or failures (such as the market failure that Yunus seeks to overcome).
The wingnuttae: Enemy of The People.
@8…Lee…
As much as you hate wealth, I know I’ll never convince you otherwise, but even an off-shore tax shelter doesn’t squirrel cash away in a dried out coconut buried in the sand. Some way or another, it’s working in the system creating new wealth.
Yunus’ central thesis, however – silly distractions about hock shops, etc., aside – remains that an effective way to lift people out of poverty is free enterprise. Their idea and skill (tatting lace, for example) and a little seed money will make the difference.
Yet there will always be those who simply have their hands out. I know a guy from Kenya who thinks it’s the job of Americans to give him money. When I asked whether it wasn’t possible to earn more of his own, he responded that nothing could be done, there were no jobs. Yet he also told me of the skills of the Kenyans he ostensibly was trying to help.
When I suggested that maybe he could translate that into at least a modicum of self-sufficiency, his answer essentially was that it’s easier to spend six-months a year guilt-tripping Americans into giving him money.
The difference between the Kenyan guy and the people I know in India together with Muhammed Yunus is that the one says only limits, while the others see possibilities.
The Piper
Click is run by Tacoma Public Utilities, not Peirce County. Big difference there.
@11
As much as you hate wealth, I know I’ll never convince you otherwise, but even an off-shore tax shelter doesn’t squirrel cash away in a dried out coconut buried in the sand. Some way or another, it’s working in the system creating new wealth.
First of all, I don’t hate wealth. That’s the kind of lazy assumption I expect from someone from you. The line of thinking that Yunus expresses is shared by people like Warren Buffett and George Soros. Are you going to argue that they hate wealth too? C’mon, stop embarrassing yourself.
As for whether or not it’s working in “the system” creating new wealth depends on who that new wealth is benefitting. Offshoring is one of a number of strategies that tends to just benefit the rich in general. What Yunus, and numerous other people understand, is that when you generate new wealth in the people who most need it, you build more equitable social systems across the world.
Yunus’ central thesis, however – silly distractions about hock shops, etc., aside – remains that an effective way to lift people out of poverty is free enterprise. Their idea and skill (tatting lace, for example) and a little seed money will make the difference.
Exactly, and what you’re saying is that when rich people do whatever is in their power to limit that seed money by protecting their own wealth, it’s somehow better for those in poverty. That’s ridiculous.
Yet there will always be those who simply have their hands out. I know a guy from Kenya who thinks it’s the job of Americans to give him money.
And what Yunus is saying is that the people who genuinely want to work will always outnumber the yahoos who just want handouts. His success has demonstrated this time and again. But the arguments you’re making rely on believing that what Yunus has done cannot work.
The weather forecast is of significance to all the people in Bellevue who still have fond memories of being without power for a week back in December.
Everyone simultaneously hates and envies success.
Here’s some news. Turns out Dick Cheney and Barack Obama are distantly related – something like 8th cousins. Saw it on Fox News this morning.
Do you think Obama minds having a honky in the woodpile?
I understand that Halliburton is a backer of Yunis also. Chew on that, Regressives!
@17
JM – is that you?
@16
Here’s some news. Turns out Dick Cheney and Barack Obama are distantly related – something like 8th cousins. Saw it on Fox News this morning.
Obama’s spokesperson had a hilarious response:
“Every family has a black sheep”
Lee,
Cheney could literally say the same thing!
LOL!!
@20
He could, except that if Cheney said it, he’d sound like a douchebag.
“And tellingly, Yunus sees a lot of parallels between the predations of capitalism in his native Bangladesh and the economy of George W. Bush’s America.
“Seattle has lots of pawn shops,” he said. “I see it in every city. Payday loans, check cashing. … It’s an indication the financial system doesn’t work here.”
The economy is WA is booming. Western WA is enjoying a real boom in employment and revenue. Our housing market is resiliant compared to the national average.
Finally my own ancecdotal evidence that the economy is booming.
“I cannot ever remember the number of cranes operating, erecting new buildings as I see today. I mean has anyone driven thru Bellevue or Seattle lately? It’s a freakin crane forest”
@4: It’s not clear to me whether James Watson is an expert in anything.
My impression is that Crick was the brains of their operation, and that the actual science done to articulate their DNA model was done by Rosalind Franklin. So how did Watson hitch his boxcar to this engine? Not sure. Haven’t read the history in any detail and am not a scientist.
I do know what a half-wit and a loon sounds like and, from interviews I’ve heard, Watson would qualify there.
Right Stuff @ 22
I agree that Washington’s economy is booming compared to other states. I have to attribute that phenomena to our state government being overwhelmingly dominated by Democrats.
Sounds like Watson has been eating the same moldy bread as William Shockley.
Hey Piper, Don’t read this! (Seattle Times)
It might make you doubt your precious GW doubters.
And we wouldn’t want that, now, would we?
-OM
22 The last time the crane count peaked in Seattle was quite a while after the “dot com” bubble had burst. Developers by nature have to be planning pretty far ahead. Of course, it’s also a lot easier to spend someone else’s money than your own.
We went to a timeshare presentation in Hawaii last month, and a lot of what was being peddled hasn’t been build yet. They were selling weeks on a development on the north side of Kauai which isn’t going to be ready for occupancy until 2009. Not that I expect it to be anything but wonderful, but it’s interesting that a mega-corporation is funding developments by having its customers borrow the money for them.
As to exactly what’s being built around here, it might be viewed as reflecting somewhat lowered expectations for what’s left of the “middle class”. A young couple who a few years ago would have been shopping for a house in Wedgwood may now consider themselves lucky to be able to scrape together the down payment for a unit in one of those pink stucco mega-condo blocks that seem to be popping up all over the place. There’s also a piece in last week’s Real Change about the large numbers of people who work in the service industries who are being forced out of Seattle as their apartments are converted.
It might be said that the world always looks pretty good to the fortunate.
Wingnuts: the business cycle hasn’t been obsoleted yet to the best of my knowledge.
Comcast sucks ass. I was paying $100/month for every last channel in the book (I could afford it then) and a second reciever, and they kept offering me cable-internet, but do ya think that they would’ve offered a ‘top-tier’ customer (their term, they actually called me that) even a tiny discount for their internet? Hell, no! $45 a month for service only slightly faster than the DSL I got when I dumped Comcast for Qwest. And I wound up paying less than what I was forking over to Comcast, and got DirecTV and cellphones as well as phone and DSL.
(Sorry for the Qwest plug)
Local cable monopolies are never very successful. Half of Clallam County abandoned the local cable company and got dishes before they decided to actually offer service the community wanted (they thought MTV was ‘too political’, yet were among the first systems to pick up Fox News and Pat Robertson’s odious Family Channel). The same thing is going on here in Reno, after Paul Allen’s Charter Communications secured exclusive rights for most of Northern Nevada, which no one is happy about, except for the guys who install dishes around here. One installer told me he’d worked on an average of about 10 new installs a day ever since Charter got its cable monopoly.
I wish the people who are counting cranes and millionaires would actually slow down and fucking read what Yunis is saying.
“Seattle has lots of pawn shops,” he said. “I see it in every city. Payday loans, check cashing. … It’s an indication the financial system doesn’t work here.”
Payday loan companies and pawn shops are not reflective of wealth, prosperity, or lack thereof. They are indicative of a defective portion of the financial system, and nothing more.
Payday loans and pawnbrokers are famously usurious. Yet, somehow, neither group are making huge quantities of money.
I recall one of our posters who has some finance experience under his belt looked at the publicly traded payday loan companies. They are producing profits of 12-15% annually. Not bad, but don’t sell your Google stock for it.
This tells you they are inefficient, and better alternatives should be found.
I’ve never known poor person to give someone a job.
Oh wait, I take that back….poor people keep lot’s of government folks employed.
@30: Couldn’t agree more. These nefarious institutions reflect market failure and\or inefficiency. Mini loans are not made by Chase Manhattan to starving peasants in Bengladesh. They simply can’t make any money on them. Yunus’ efforts are actually a social intervention into the so-called “free market” for capital.
Others: Development is booming because interest rates are way low. Suddenly the pro forma of a project pencils out at 6% that simply wouldn’t fly at 8% (or above) cost of borrowed funds.
A classical economist would argue that Yunus’ efforts distort capital markets, and thus lead to inefficient allocation of scarce resources. People like Piper celebrate Yunus….for all the wrong reasons.
Yunus demonstrates that social intervention into “free” markets can increase social good…anathema to the hidebound ideological wingnuttiae true believers like Piper Scott.
“Comcast announced yesterday — in public notices quietly placed in newspapers around the state — a statewide $3/month hike in its cable rates, and a story in The Olympian (of all places) gives a clue as to why rates are rising”
They need the money for the 250 pieces of direct mail advertising I get from them every year. Hardly a day goes by without another solicitation from Comcast, even though the 5,749 mailers the’ve sent to me so far have been totally ignored. Those folks at Comcast have one hell of an optimism! Either that, or someone else is paying for clogging my mailbox with their circulars, e.g., the ratepayers.
My stockbroker has been bugging me all year to buy Comcast. That company is making money hand over fist. They need this rate increase like I need another dozen of their mailers! Comcast customers were getting gouged — now they’re getting gouged even worse. Maybe it’s time I called my stockbroker.
I watched part of the Craig interview. Too bad Matt Lauer didn’t ask this question: “Isn’t someone who doesn’t know what a ‘guilty’ plea means too stupid to be a senator?”
Every time Craig opens his mouth, he digs a deeper hole for himself. He already looks like a seedy pervert; he’s determined to look like an idiot, as well.
I’m sure glad Craig reneged on his pledge to resign and is going to be the face of the Senate Republicans from now until Election Day — THANK YOU GREAT MOTHER RABBIT SPIRIT!!!
On a scale of seamy business practices, Comcast is right down there with strip-mall mortgage brokers.
@3 “Who gives a shit now that the novelty has worn off?”
Ummm … all the straight-laced churchgoing suburbanite moms and dads who comprise the GOP base? Who are, er … uncomfortable with how many of the GOP politicians THEY helped elect have been caught in squalid same-gender sex scandals? Go ahead, tell these folks you don’t give a shit about what Craig did … I dare you. In fact, I DOUBLE DARE you!
Lee @ 21,
But Cheney would be correct! Obama could be viewed as a “black sheep” from the Cheney perspective, just as Cheney would be viewed as a “black sheep” by Obama. But Cheny wold have the color of the sheep correct!!
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
PTBAA @ 33:
I’m not sure I follow you here.
From what I have understood, Yunus’s Grameen bank is a for-profit enterprise, not a social program. While it is probably a source for social good, I am not certain it is market-distorting in the sense I understand that phrase.
Grameen’s customers are poorer than the customers of any payday loan office.
Grameen manages to do all of this without usury.
So what does Yunus know about making loans that the Money Tree doesn’t?
I thought you liberal tards were all for a natural and wholesome gay lifestyle. Why aren’t you backing Craig in his quest?