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Howard Eskin is feeling angry these days. The self-styled king of sports talk radio is so angry he wants to leave the country for good. Eskin’s outrage is directed at the politicians in Washington ("every one of them, from the top down"). Like all of us, he is angry at the AIG bailout and the subsequent bonuses that were paid out.
Listening to his rant last week, you realize his biggest concern is he might have to pay higher taxes down the line. Consequently, Eskin is looking for some safe haven where taxes are low and there’s plenty of sunshine. An Iraq veteran took him to task for his statement "America stinks" — and with good reason. Eskin’s whining was the worst self-serving crap I’ve ever heard on the radio and that covers a lot of territory.
Eskin makes a lot of money doing what he does in this "stinkin’" country. He has a high school diploma, but unlike most other high school grads, he drives a Lexus and wears a Rolex. Apparently no one told him this is a global crisis. Eskin can’t just fly to Monaco or Cannes and escape it all. Maybe he thinks he could make the same kind of living doing a bombastic sports talk show on the French Riviera. Eskin ought to stop kissing Andy Reid’s butt and start kissing Uncle Sam’s.
While we are all angry at AIG, I don’t think you can ex post facto tax the bonus money at 90 percent. It’s Congressional grandstanding at its worst. Even with no legal background, I feel confident such legislation would be ruled unconstitutional. Shaming the execs into giving back the money is our best bet, as well as conditioning future help on no bonuses being paid out.
While a lot of the public rage has been directed at Sen. Chris Dodd, it turns out he wasn’t the one who slipped a clause into the bailout allowing the bonuses. It was Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who has been nothing short of a disaster so far. His plan to stabilize the banks lacks details. His public presence is as impressive as stale bread. He can’t get anybody to take the job of working with him because the administration vetting process is so onerous and the pay relatively lousy. So Geithner is understaffed and overworked. One more misstep and the president will be searching for a new secretary of the Treasury. Maybe he should already be looking.
Local outrage has been divided between Vince Fumo and Mayor Michael Nutter. Some of the same folks who are moralizing about Fumo’s downfall are the same ones (and I include myself in this category) who voted for him time and again, fully aware of the stories circulating about his arrogance and questionable ethics. Weren’t we really telling Fumo every time we re-elected him we didn’t care if he abused his political power so long as we got our cut? Please don’t tell me we didn’t know what was going on. Much of what came out in his trial just confirmed what we already knew from the lurid stories in the Inquirer. In the end, those of us who supported Fumo made him what he became: A politician who couldn’t tell the difference between public interest and self-interest.
When we elected Nutter, we knew what we were getting, a politician honest to a fault. We always claim we want our leaders to be straight shooters. Well, we got one in Nutter, who has had to make the most difficult decisions of any Philadelphia mayor in my lifetime.
The mayor has presented a budget that saves the essential services we have been screaming we didn’t want cut — police and fire jobs, libraries and rec centers. He pays for it honestly through a property tax increase and savings achieved through city workers. You can argue, as some do, he should have raised taxes on wages and businesses, too, but I don’t agree. He knows higher taxes on wages and businesses would just drive wage-earners and jobs out of the city, something we can’t afford, especially during these hard economic times. City property taxes, for the most part, are much lower than in other major cities. Municipal unions are unhappy, but in the end the benefit cuts will save many of their jobs. The mayor knows his courage in facing up to these problems could limit him to one term. It makes him all the more courageous.
I have saved some of my outrage for the pope and his recent incredibly irresponsible remarks in Africa. In the middle of an AIDS epidemic, the pope has determined condoms are not only ineffective, but help increase the problem. His remarks are likely to inflame the crisis. Condoms are about 90 percent effective in fighting the disease, according to most medical experts, so the pope is either deceptive or misinformed. It has been a cultural struggle for African women to get their men to accept the use of condoms. The Pope’s statements will likely make their job more difficult, and worse, cost lives — a reason for outrage.
