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January 30, 2009
Gimme a G!
.... gimme an R! .... gimme an E! .... gimme another E! .... gimme a D!
The economy is in a tailspin. Thousands of families are facing the
wretched experience of a job loss. Investors, from charitable
foundations and university endowments to owners of 401-K pension
accounts, are seeing asset value halved. Governments are curtailing
services in all 50 states. But it seems that the blinds are shut tight
in executive suites and boardrooms. From public proxy statements and
other sources we're learning that corporate executives are weathering
the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression under blankets of
unconscionably fat performance bonuses even where performance has been
shoddy. President Obama has called it "shameful". Senator Christopher
Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has said that, to the
extent that bonuses and pay raises came directly or indirectly from
public bailout money, he'll press to have the money returned. We suspect
that what has become public so far is but the proverbial tip of the
iceberg. While there apparently is no law to go after blatant abusers,
we would suggest that the Securities and Exchange Commission require
every public company to immediately file an electronic accounting of all
executives who during the past 12 months received bonuses of $100,000 or
more and salaries of $1 million or more. The lists should be posted on
the Internet and the media encouraged to further disseminate it. Then
customers, stockholders and others who deal in meaningful ways with
those companies should undertake by whatever lawful means are at hand --
product boycotts, protest meetings, demonstrations, picket lines and
such -- to demand redress. Such tactics have ended many untoward actions
up to and including wars. There is no reason they can't work now to
translate mere indignation into some degree of recognition that there
can be no protected privileged caste during troubled times.
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January 19, 2009
It was more than just hopeful thinking.
Standing in Tubman-Garrett Park awaiting the arrival of the symbolic
train carrying President-elect Obama one could not help but get caught
up in the enthusiasm around you. It was great political theater --
temperature in the teens, the bunting and oversize flag, and a cadre of
Secret Service officers in their uniform dark coats with tiny
identification buttons in the lapels. But as the wait went on you
realized that you were witnessing history and were actually a tiny part
of it. The nation was on the cusp of a defining moment and this was its
beginning. Obama's coming into office has been compared with the
inaugurations of Lincoln and Roosevelt, and you could appropriately add
Jefferson and Jackson. That he is the first man of color to hold the
highest office in the land just 40 years after blacks achieved full
citizenship with a guaranteed right to vote made the coincidence of the
weekend with the holiday commemorating Martin Luther King all the more
poignant. But there is much more to ponder. Obama assumes his office
with a clear mandate to bring about change -- not just to address the
economic crisis which grips the nation and to end a war that should not
have been begun but also with regard to health care, education, climate
change and virtually all the other important issues of our day. Both in
the process of achieving the office and preparing to assume it, Obama
has demonstrated his ability to govern in an open, even-handed and
reasoned manner. After the inaugural parade and the balls are over and
the crowd has returned home we will, by all accounts, have a leader we
can respect and follow.
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Not lost amid the rush of emotion was the fact
that Delaware is once again very much in prominence at a turn of the
national experience. Joe Biden, who has represented us well for 36 years
in the U.S. Senate, will now occupy the second highest office in the
land. What began with Caesar Rodney's ride from Dover to Philadelphia to
cast a key vote for American independence was continuing along the
Amtrak right-of-way from Philadelphia to Washington.
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May God bless Mr. President, Mr. Vice-President
and America.
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January 8, 2009
It should not come as a surprise, but
-- whadda ya know! -- DelDOT has done it again. As reconstruction of
Ferris Road between Prices Corner and Faulkland Road nears completion,
we realize it's not going to be an extension of the State Route 141
freeway after all. For well over a quarter century what was to have been
a western bypass around Wilmington -- Interstate 695 -- has come to an
abrupt halt at its interchange with Kirkwood Highway. Now, it seems, the
halt won't be as abrupt, but there will still be one. A through highway
with interchanges at Faulkland Road and Lancaster Pike and a
right-turn-only connector at Alapocas Drive would have been an obviously
more logical design. There would still be the McConnell Bridge
bottleneck -- How long ago was it that a painful public planning process
for a replacement was brought to naught? -- but that's another tale for
another day. It seems the same talent which produced, at great cost, the
inadequate and, in several ways, absurd and dangerous result at Blue
Ball is still calling the shots at the Delaware Department of
Transportation.
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We understand that state
representative Joseph Miro plans to once again introduce legislation to
outlaw use of cellular telephones while driving. With inattentive
driving second only to speeding as the major cause of collisions, it's
well past time that Delaware followed the lead of California, New York,
10 other states and the
District of Columbia and provide a tool to control a
traffic hazard which is as avoidable as it is obvious.
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January 1, 2009
It has been impossible to wish anyone a happy
new year without adding a desire that the coming 12 months will prove to
be better than the previous 12. There's a universal feeling that 2008
provided the worst possible combination of circumstances and events.
Taking a broader view, however, there have been many years that were
worse and many turns of the calendar when the outlook for the future has
been more grim. After all, there is nothing magic about January 1. It's
an arbitrary date used since ancient Rome to fix a point at which
Earth's journey around the sun begins again on an elliptical path to
return 365 sunrises later. To be sure, there are other dates on which
new years begin -- the Chinese lunar year at the appearance of a new
moon in what westerners regard as late January or early February; the
vernal equinox when spring overcomes winter; July 1 when numbers
crunchers begin a new fiscal ledger (The federal government has pushed
its accounting year back to October for some obscure reason.); Labor Day
when the vacation season gives way to workaday reality; Rosh Hashanah
later in September, decreed by God to be at the head of the Hebrew
calendar; the ever-retreating start of the 354-days Islamic year; and
many others. But whatever date is observed it's an annual point at which
we open a fresh page of human experience. From here we can look forward
with hope to whatever the future holds. All we can be sure of: there
will be good and bad, triumphs and challenges, hopes that are dashed and
dreams which come true. On that note -- Welcome, 2009; Happy New Year!
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