The Bigot Belt

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An interesting piece at the Freakonomics blog looks into the "bigot belt" which is the swath of counties from Texas to West Virginia that actually went more Republican from 2004 to 2008 in the presidential elections.  The question, simply put, was whether or not the reason was Obama's race.  The answer ended up being yes, but the details of the research offered some enlightening conclusions.

The author, Eric Oliver, looked at whether it was really just race or perhaps the fact that these counties tended to be in heavy coal mining and oil drilling areas had something to do with it.  Or maybe it was that these counties had a different racial breakdown than other areas.  His conclusion was very interesting: these counties tended to have large white populations in states that were otherwise racially diverse.  From the article:

The answer comes in looking at both the county and the state together.
One of the biggest demographic differences between “scarlet” and
“azure” counties is the racial composition of the state population: 72
percent of the “scarlet” counties are in states that are over 10
percent black compared to only 49 percent of the “azure” counties. In a
multivariate regression analysis using all the variables listed above,
the best predictor of a county’s Republican vote margin is its white
racial percentage relative to its state’s black population size. In
other words, the counties where Republican margins grew the largest
tended to be predominantly white places in otherwise racially mixed
states.

These patterns are consistent with research on individual racial
attitudes. Historically, the greatest levels of racial violence
occurred within white enclaves near larger black populations,
particularly when these enclaves are poor and uneducated. Even today,
whites who live in poor, racially segregated neighborhoods within more
diverse metropolitan areas tend to be more racially hostile than whites
who live in either integrated neighborhoods or within largely white
regions. In more diverse settings, locally segregated whites have less
contact with nearby minorities yet also feel greater competition for
jobs and public goods. The combination of both increased racial
competition and racial isolation seems to be a recipe for generating
racial animosity.

As the author concludes we should not be fooled into thinking that this election has somehow catapulted us into an era of racially harmony.  The fear of "other" has been with us since we crawled out of the primordial ooze, and I fear it will be ever thus.

Rumor Update

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A couple of days ago I posted about some rumors I'd heard,
namely that the Winston-Salem downtown stadium project had come to a
halt and that Mike Mulhern, the Journal's NASCAR columnist had been let
go.  I heard directly from Mike that he had indeed been let go, which
is a bummer but it sounds like he's already working on his next act.

As for the stadium, I got an email yesterday from Jake at the Chamber
of Commerce and he'd checked it out and been told that the project was
still going to meet its deadline of being ready for the first pitch of
the 2009 season.  Then I saw in this morning's Journal that reporter Laura Graff had asked the mayor about it after the city's economic forum last night.  From the article:

Construction on the $22.6 million baseball stadium in downtown
Winston-Salem is being slowed but that should not affect the scheduled
April 2009 opening, officials said yesterday.

Mayor Allen Joines said in an interview after the city's economic
forum last night that the delay was caused by negotiations between two
of the Winston-Salem baseball team's owners, Billy Prim and Andrew
"Flip" Filipowski.

Joines said that Prim, who is also the chairman and chief executive
of Primo Water Corp., could buy out Filipowski, who is also the
chairman and chief executive of SilkRoad Technologies Inc. Earlier this
month, Filipowski's company laid off at least 12 employees…

"There have been some delays in the stadium's construction while we
work on restructuring of ownership of the team and stadium," said the
spokesman, Kevin Mortesen. "We anticipate finalizing that in the near
future and that everything will proceed to enable the team to play in
the new stadium for the '09 season."

Mortesen said in an e-mail that construction would continue during
the delay. He said that crews were at the stadium yesterday and will be
there today.

Now that the thing is started I really hope they get it done, but with
the ongoing financial mess and its unexpected, long reach into all
kinds of business sectors it's not a stretch to believe that this
project could eventually become a victim too.  I'm not implying that
the Prim folks are misleading us, rather I'm hoping that they don't get
blindsided like so many other institutions have been over the last few
months.  After all I seriously doubt the folks at Lehman Brothers saw their demise coming either.

If a Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words Then…

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Since Google's hosting the archives of Life Magazine's photos they must be worth, uh, a googol of words.

Here are all the pictures that turned up for a search of Winston-Salem, the vast majority of which seem to have something to do with a clocks project by the Winston-Salem Evening Sentinel in 1951.  Kind of weird in a good way. Below is a picture of the paper with info about the clock premium (can anyone tell me if that's a newspaper box or microfiche reader?), I think, and a completely unrelated picture from Hanes Hosiery Mills.  Click on them to view the full size image:
EveningSentinelBig
 

HanesHosiery
 

Now THAT is a Subject Line

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I get enough email on any given day that it really takes a special subject line to grab my attention.  My Dad managed it today with one word: Pricks.

Now my Dad's not a cusser so when he uses salty language it really sticks out.  His email was in response to this post about how I'd like our next leader of the financial sector to be described. I really like what he wrote:

Most of the high net worth people I see in my marketing efforts work
with people they like. Many times this is a tragedy because the client
seldom does the due diligence they should when following the advice of
someone they like. Neither party wants to offend the other. The prick
(he may or may not really be a prick) doesn't care since he is more
concerned with communicating or doing what he perceives to be right. We
just hope that that person(s) is principled and competent. May our
public officials take principled positions and may we as members of our
society accept what we don't want to hear. How do you like that shift
from the Micro to the Macro.

Put another way, I'll take a competent jerk over an incompetent clown any day, especially when it comes to my money.

Now I'm just waiting for an email from my Mom with the subject "A-holes" and I'll have seen everything.

When You Want to Leave Your Wife a Message but Not Actually Talk to Her

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Admit it, there are times you want to call someone and be guaranteed you don't actually talk to them but are still able to leave them a message.  You know the scenario: your wife calls and leaves you a message but you're getting ready for a meeting and don't have time to talk so you don't call her back and while you're in your meeting you get another message, left in that "I'm pissed that you're ignoring me" voice, asking where the blankety-blank you are and why you're being such a wank.  You can't very well say to her, "Honey I wanted to let you know I got your message but I didn't want to talk to you, because if I had you'd have kept me on the phone for 10 minutes about something totally trivial and out of my control and I really had to go into my meeting."**  Well, you could say that but then you'd be on the couch for a week.

**Please note that I've never, ever thought these things myself.  I swear.

My friends, technology has once again come to the rescue.  My friend Dan emailed me a link to a great service called SlyDial that allows you to dial a number and it automatically bypasses the ring and takes you directly to voice mail.  I downloaded the version for Blackberry and it works like a charm.  To be honest I have no idea how it works behind the scenes, but it's cool and it's free so I recommend it for any of you who love voice mail but don't like actually talking to anyone.

Can you think of scenarios where this could come in really handy?  Feel free to share.

Winston-Salem Rumors, November 17, 2008 Sports Edition

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Over the past few weeks I've heard two rumors that are unverified but came from some pretty good sources so I'm wondering if they're true.

  1. Construction is allegedly coming to a halt on the new ballpark downtown.  I don't get down there enough to see it on a day-to-day basis, but the last few times I've been downtown during the day I haven't seen any construction activity.  Anyone know if the funding is okay and if construction is ongoing?  Given the market meltdown I'm worried about everybody's funding, not just the ballpark!
  2. Mike Mulhern is allegedly being let go by the Winston-Salem Journal now that the NASCAR season is over. Although any cuts by the paper come as no surprise, I'm wondering why they'd cut the one guy covering a professional sport that actually makes sense here in Winston-Salem?  Obviously there's no need for pro basketball or football coverage here, but NASCAR's an institution and Mulhern is one of the old hands covering it.  Maybe the folks at the paper figure Mulhern will have as easy a time finding a job as anyone given his knowledge of, and connections to, the racing industry.  Maybe, but I think they miss one of their best multimedia opportunities by letting him go.  I suspect they could have made a pretty penny finding ways to get his expertise syndicated to other outlets as those folks cut back their non-core assets.  How many markets don't have NASCAR as a core asset but have plenty of NASCAR fans?  I'd say much of the south, southwest and western states.

    Update: Received an email from Mike Mulhern this evening and he indeed was let go. He mentions it on his last video for JournalNow.  He also mentions that he'll be back on another channel, most likely MikeMulhern.net.  Go get 'em Mike.

Feel free to leave comments regarding either rumor. Like I said these aren't confirmed, just things I've heard through the grapevine, which is why I carefully inserted the word "allegedly" in the opening sentence of both rumors.

Description of the Person Hired to Lead Our Financial Institutions

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Michael Lewis, he of Liar's Poker fame, has written a long article on the "end of Wall Street as we know it" and he writes about one guy who foresaw the meltdown of the financial institutions who is described by a friend thusly:

“He’s sort of a prick in a way, but he’s smart and honest and fearless.”

That, my friends, is how I want to be described the person that the Obama administration assigns the task of overseeing the country's economic recovery.

If It Works for Mortgages, Why Not Car Loans?

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Mark Cuban has a fun post asking why we should bail out underwater mortgages and not car loans:

You all do realize that anyone who buys a new car is UNDERWATER
the minute you sign the papers and drive off the lot ? That you get
further and further underwater every single day ? Maybe thats why so
few are  buying new cars ?  We havent instituted a bailout for their
underwater car loans.

There’s Gloom and Then There’s Doom

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Gerald Celente of Trends Research Institute, who apparently correctly predicted lots of events like the 1987 stock market crash, the fall of Soviet Union, the 1997 Asian currency crisis and the sub-prime real estate market crash, had this to say to Fox News (via LiveLeak.com):


"We're going to see the end of the retail Christmas….we're going to
see a fundamental shift take place….putting food on the table is
going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas
tree," said Celente, adding that the situation would be "worse than the
great depression".



"America's going to go through a transition the likes of which no one
is prepared for," said Celente, noting that people's refusal to
acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a
problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis...


"There will be a revolution in this country," he said. "It’s not going
to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to
see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of
Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless
coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen."



"The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts. That’s going to be
the big one because people can’t afford to pay more school tax,
property tax, any kind of tax. You’re going to start seeing those kinds
of protests start to develop."



"It’s going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot
of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities
are already sprouting up around the country and we’re going to see many
more."



"We’re going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and
squatters living in them as well. It’s going to be a picture the likes
of which Americans are not going to be used to. It’s going to come as a
shock and with it, there’s going to be a lot of crime. And the crime is
going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929
Depression, people’s minds weren’t wrecked on all these modern drugs –
over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be. So,
you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds
chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension."

I feel better now, don't you?  Maybe I'm being naive, but I just don't see it getting this bad.  Bad, yes, but not this bad.  Homelessness might get worse, but who profits from houses sitting empty?  Certainly not the creditors and certainly not the government.  There's literally a glut of housing right now and I think it's more likely that banks and other creditors would end up writing off losses and keeping people in homes.

And that last bit about a drug addled underclass?  Makes it sound like the invasion of the zombies doesn't it?  But he ignores the point that the major crime doesn't come from the drug addled underclass, but from the folks who traffic the drugs and control the drug markets.  So we might get more drug gang activity but I wouldn't worry too much about meth addicts invading your neighborhood.

Finally, revolution?  Maybe protests but America has a long way to fall before revolution will set in. Truth be told we could use some protests and some house cleaning in Washington and on Wall Street, but he's not giving Americans enough credit.  Our system, as messy as it is, has survived much harder times and will likely do so through my lifetime and that of my children's.