Don't Smokers Have Rights Too?

After reading a recent New York Times article Smoking Ban Hits Home. Truly. I felt that the anti-smoking zealots had finally gone too far.

During her 50 years of smoking, Edith Frederickson says, she has lit up in restaurants and bars, airplanes and trains, and indoors and out, all as part of a two-pack-a-day habit that she regrets not a bit. But as of two weeks ago, Ms. Frederickson can no longer smoke in the one place she loves the most: her home.

Ms. Frederickson lives in an apartment in Belmont, Calif., a quiet Silicon Valley city that is now home to perhaps the nation’s strictest antismoking law, effectively outlawing lighting up in all apartment buildings.

For the record, I have never been a smoker. Although as a younger man, just about everybody around me was a smoker. So I saw how many of them wanted to quit in the worst way but couldn’t. I decided what was best for me is that I never start in the first place.

But just as important, I feel I am no better than others who have chosen to smoke. If this is what they enjoy, more power to them. All I ask is that they keep their enjoyment to themselves and not force non-smokers to breathe the smoke they produce. Isn’t that fair enough?

So in general, I approve the banning of smoking in public places where non-smokers would be exposed to second-hand smoke. In addition to customers in restaurants and bars not being exposed to second-hand smoke, employees who work in these places should not have to endure a steady diet of second-hand smoke to earn a living. I still remember as a bartender many years ago going to work with freshly laundered clothes and coming home with clothes that reeked of tobacco.

But while the rights of non-smokers are of course important, we should at least be accommodating to those who choose to smoke by allowing them to do so where it doesn’t harm the rest of us. Unfortunately, the anti-smoking zealots all too often have an agenda of ridding the world of all smokers. And if they have to punish the smokers that remain by making their lives difficult and heavily taxing their habit, so much the better. After all, anybody with such a filthy habit deserves it. Right?

Wrong! This is little more than intolerance; a belief by some non-smokers that they are somehow superior to those who smoke. As a non-smoker, I do not believe smoking is right for me. But I do not believe we should impose our choices on others. And many of these anti-smoking ordinances appear to be trying to do just that.

Public health advocates are closely watching to see what happens with Belmont, seeing it as a new front in their national battle against tobacco, one that seeks to place limits on smoking in buildings where tenants share walls, ceilings and — by their logic — air.

I have lived in different apartments for a period of time and don’t honestly recall ever smelling odors from other apartments whether it was tobacco smoke or even food cooking. But perhaps the buildings I lived in were constructed better that those where the people in California live. Even so, unless all of the apartments in a complex have a single air-handling system, couldn’t we just separate the smoking tenants' apartments from the others? It's easy to say that smokers should just buy their own houses but obviously many cannot afford to do that.

The other thing that bothers me is the total banning of smoking in outdoor sports stadiums such as PNC Park in Pittsburgh.

"Even though the general seating area has been smoke-free since the ballpark opened, we always tried to responsibly accommodate those fans who choose to smoke with designated smoking areas," said Patty Paytas, Pirates VP of Communications. "However, like many other businesses in the county, we had to make the appropriate adjustments and PNC Park will now be a completely smoke-free facility."

So now that smokers are no longer able to congregate in out of the way corners of the ballpark that are exposed to the open air from outside the park, can't we at least let them leave the park to be able to smoke?

Fans will not be permitted to exit and then re-enter the ballpark as it is not allowed under Major League Baseball policy.

This is the final insult. No accommodation whatsoever! What makes it worse is that when looking at the list of Smoking Policies at Major League Baseball Stadiums, you will see that most of the other stadiums do have some accommodation in the way of either designated smoking areas within the stadium or a way to leave and re-enter for a smoke.

You may notice that the list was compiled by a group called the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation. And indeed nonsmokers do have rights not to have to breathe harmful tobacco smoke. But what about smokers? Don’t they have rights too? As much as we may not approve of their choice, shouldn’t we accommodate them and not subject them to anti-smoking crusades as long as they are not bothering nonsmokers?

It’s all about learning tolerance for and accomodating those who are different from us. It’s something that we need to do better!

Let's End Gratuitous Violence in Sports

A recent NYT blog The Disturbing Rise of Ultimate Fighting along with the comments it received raises some interesting questions on how violence is viewed by at least some of the sports watching public.

Unlike boxing which is attracting a smaller audience, ultimate fighting (now known as Mixed Martial Arts or MMA) is attracting an ever increasing audience especially on TV including lucrative pay-per-view cable. So what is the attraction, especially compared to boxing? While boxing matches can consist of fighters who spar with each other for several rounds before one side gets a decisive advantage, MMA matches provide almost instant intense action with usually a quick decisive result especially since kicking is allowed and the men do not use protective headgear or fully padded gloves.

While there are some like in the above article who would like to see this made illegal, the supporters of MMA in the article's comments have some interesting arguments in their favor.

For one thing, they argue that MMA has fewer serious injuries than in other sports, especially boxing. Boxing through its history has had a number of deaths as a result of knockouts in a single fight. But in addition, while boxing has padded gloves which may provide protection from immediate injury, boxers can then take hundreds of punches, many of them to the head over a career which is more likely to cause long term disability. For example, it is widely believed that the Parkinson’s disease that former boxing great Muhammad Ali suffers from is a result of repeated head trauma during his career. While having boxers wear headgear would likely result in fewer head injuries, there is little or no movement to adopt this for professional fights since it would apparently detract from the entertainment of seeing somebody get bloodied.

Then there is NHL hockey which has its share of hitting along with fights. While some would like to see fighting in hockey outlawed by the NHL, there are many who feel that fighting is an integral part of the sport. Often the TV highlights of a game will include some of the fights. And there are even websites like hockey-fights.com where as they say you can “Get your hockey fight fix here!”

And there is football (American football, not soccer) where hitting is not only necessary to block and tackle but an extra hard crushing hit on a ball carrier to jar the ball loose is an especially good thing. The loud sound of pads popping is part of the entertainment of football — until somebody doesn’t get up after the hit. Then we wonder if the violence all makes sense.

The question is whether it is appropriate to legislate against sporting activities that we feel are too dangerous for its participants even though they are there by their own choices. And if so, where do we draw the line? If for example, we choose to ban MMA, should we also ban boxing? And if so, what about other violent sports like football where players are sometimes paralyzed as the result of collisions that are totally within the rules of the sport?

Because of this, in most instances it is neither practical nor desirable for government to get involved in monitoring the conduct of sports. But the people running the individual sports should seriously ask whether they are catering to the fan that really appreciates the skill of the athletes — or is it really about satisfying some fans’ hunger for violence?

While cockfighting and dog fighting are illegal because it is cruel to animals, is it OK for us to watch two human beings try to hurt each other for our entertainment? I have a problem with that but I accept that sports like boxing and mixed martial arts are here to stay along with all of the other sports that have some violence as part of the game.

I think that boxing should be about the skill and endurance of one boxer landing more punches than the other. If professional boxing adopted the use of headgear like they do in amateur and Olympic boxing, there would likely be less brain injuries (although this article from Scientific American even disputes that) but at the price of not seeing boxers bloodied and beaten into submission. Isn’t that a reasonable trade off?

Does hockey really need the fighting? For the most part, it is not part of youth league, international and Olympic hockey. And even in the NHL, it is not often seen in the Stanley Cup playoffs since teams in these closely fought and all-important games don’t want to give any extra advantage to an opponent by taking fighting penalties.

Football has taken some steps to protect some of its players. For example, a quarterback in the pocket trying to throw the ball cannot be hit with the tackler’s helmet. But a runner with the ball can. This not only allows a tackler to inflict injury on a runner with a rock hard helmet but also endangers the tackler with a possibility of a spinal injury. We don’t need that! And it is OK to hit a defenseless quarterback after the ball is released as long as it is less than about a second after the ball is gone. Why it is necessary to hit the quarterback if the tackler can clearly see that the ball has left the quarterback’s hand?

While baseball is a far less violent sport than most, the act of intentionally throwing a baseball at somebody’s head is a needless act of violence and should not be condoned.

And while bullfighting can be a beautiful spectacle that pits the bullfighter’s skill and daring against a dangerous animal, why is it necessary to kill the bull?

I think that for too many of us, when it comes to violence in sports, we want it both ways. We enjoy the violence but are repulsed by it when somebody gets seriously hurt as a result of it. How many times have we seen a football player after a hard hit lay motionless on the turf and then see some of the players gathering around and praying or even shedding a tear for the fallen player?

I enjoy contact sports like football and hockey as much as the next guy and accept that some violence and hitting are an integral part of sports like these. It’s just the gratuitous violence we need to get rid of.

gratuitous
unnecessary and unjustifiable

But some others feel that any efforts to protect players no matter how sensible, is a questioning of our manhood. For example, NFL Pittsburgh Steelers star Troy Polamalu worries that the NFL may become "like a pansy game". And Steeler Hall of Famer Jack Lambert in response to rules protecting the quarterback is famous for the quote "Quarterbacks should wear dresses".

Common sense safety should not be treated as a macho issue. While it is regrettable that some participants in contact sports get seriously hurt even as a result of clean, legal hitting, for someone to get seriously hurt or even killed as a result of gratuitous violence is a needless tragedy that can and should be avoided.

A Crisis of Confidence

Many have already given their thoughts on President Obama's Inaugural Address. There is one theme from his speech that we need to especially think about.

Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.

Much has been made of the technical analysis of our problems. But underlying all of the technical issues is a psychological issue that is every bit as important for us to address. And that is confidence.

confidence
belief in own abilities: a belief or self-assurance in ones ability to succeed

Without confidence, even the best efforts to fix what’s wrong with the US and world economies may not be effective. It’s like getting a sick patient on the mend. All things being equal, a person who believes he or she will get better will more likely thrive than one who does not.

While some businesses have already felt the effects of the recession, many others like Ericcson did just fine in 2008. But even those businesses because of their loss of confidence in the future are cutting back on jobs.

Ericsson, the Swedish maker of wireless networking gear, posted an unexpectedly strong profit Wednesday but said it would cut as many as 5,000 jobs in anticipation of a slowdown.

Credit is the lifeblood of most businesses. But despite the infusion of capital by the government, many financial institutions lack the confidence to extend enough credit to keep the economy functioning normally.

Manufacturing in the US has taken a particularly bad beating. Can the struggling US automakers still make a car that enough people will want to buy? Today it was announced that for the first time since the early 1930s, General Motors is no longer the world’s largest automaker. That title now belongs to Toyota.

The Obama administration is preparing a large stimulus program to try and jump start the economy. But try as we may to pump more money into the economy, financial institutions that are not confident in the future are still going to be reluctant to lend money to both businesses and consumers. And businesses that are not confident in the future are going to continue cutting back on jobs. And without secure jobs, consumers are not going to be confident enough to spend money to keep the economy going. You can give out stimulus checks and tax cuts to consumers but without confidence in the future, they will be more likely to stash the money away or pay off debts instead of spending the money.

President Obama has inspired hope in a lot of people that things will someday get better. But he has been honest enough to say that the economy will likely get worse before it gets better. But for now, more companies are laying off workers. And that doesn’t instill confidence in anyone.

The only thing that keeps us going is the assurance that we have had difficult times before and gotten through them. Although this economic downturn has been called the worst since the Great Depression, some feel that the economy in the early 1980s was even worse than the one we are going through.

Hopefully our new president will address the economic crisis he has inherited with sound and effective economic solutions. But to ensure success, he must also be able to address the crisis of confidence in not only our economy but also in government to enable us to move forward.

Comparing Bush and Truman

To follow up his final press conference, President Bush decided to give a final farewell speech a couple of days later. But instead of building up his legacy as intended, it seemed to only give further ammunition to critics like Maureen Dowd who wrote a scathing article The Long, Lame Goodbye.

“You may not agree with some of the tough decisions I have made,” he said Thursday night. “But I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions.”

Actually, no. His decisions have been, for the most part, disastrous. If he’d paid as much attention to facts as fitness, 9/11, Iraq, the drowning of New Orleans, the deterioration in Afghanistan and the financial deregulation orgy could have been prevented.

Even so, those who still support Bush insist that he will someday be looked upon favorably just like Harry Truman is today despite also having low popularity numbers during his time in office. Are they on to something or is this a desperate attempt to rescue the legacy of a president who has been labeled by many as one of the worst in modern times?

Since many of us are not old enough to remember Truman’s presidency and we have examined Bush under the microscope of not only the print media but 24-hour cable news and the Internet, it may be hard to give a totally fair comparison between the two men. But we can try.

A sampling of scholar surveys through the years puts Truman solidly in the top 10 presidents of all time. So how do we explain a president who had such popularity problems being rated so highly today?

Truman certainly had both domestic and foreign policy difficulties in his second term (especially with the unpopular Korean War) that led to much of his lack of popularity. But it is generally acknowledged that his first term performance in office taking over after Franklin D. Roosevelt's death at the end of World War II was by itself enough to secure his high historical ranking.

Many have admired Truman for his folksy and plain speaking demeanor making famous the quotation, The Buck Stops Here. And unlike Bush with a Harvard MBA, Truman never even graduated from college. The story of how he was selected as FDR’s running mate — little more than back room political negotiations — is astounding when you consider that we were still in World War II and Roosevelt's health was known to be failing (at least by those on the inside of his administration).

But what made his performance all the more amazing was that FDR didn’t involve Truman in much of anything while he was living, not even disclosing anything on the Manhattan Project which was to produce the world’s first nuclear weapon. Shortly after assuming office, Truman then had to decide on if or how to use the atomic bomb on Japan.

Among other legacies of Truman’s presidency:

- The founding of the United Nations

- The Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after WWII

- The Truman Doctrine and creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to contain communism

- The establishment of a Jewish state (Israel) in Palestine

- The beginning of desegregation of the US armed forces

Perhaps the most controversial events during his presidency were the Korean War along with his firing of General Douglas MacArthur.

"I fired him [MacArthur] because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President... I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail."
—Harry S. Truman, quoted in Time magazine

Although MacArthur was clearly insubordinate in pressing for an expanded war against China, he was a WWII hero and Truman's firing of him resulted in (at the time) widespread condemnation, plummeting approval ratings and even calls for his impeachment.

So when Bush supporters simply refer to both Bush and Truman having low approval numbers when leaving office, they gloss over the significant accomplishments of Truman during those most difficult years following FDR’s death that have resulted in his high ratings by historians.

Will Bush receive significantly more favorable ratings from future historians as claimed by some? In my view, the only way this will happen is if the results of the war in Iraq turn out to be worth all of the blood and treasure that has been sacrificed there. But until then, there is the current popular view that in response to the major crisis of his presidency, the 9/11 attacks, Bush chose to wage war in Iraq, a country that did not attack us while neglecting those in Afghanistan who did. That in addition to leaving office with an economy in dire straits along with the memory of neglected Katrina victims may well result in future historians concluding that Bush’s all time low approval ratings were fully justified. Only time will tell.

How We Will Remember President Bush

So what is with politicians who like to talk about themselves long after most people are still interested in hearing about them? Back when Sarah Palin was selected to be John McCain’s VP pick, there was a line of people clamoring to hear her speak and answer questions. But her campaign did its best to make sure that only a few selected people could interview her. And most notably, she never appeared on any of the Sunday morning interview shows unlike the other three presidential and vice presidential candidates. But now that the campaign is over, she simply won’t go away and speculates on what went wrong in the campaign — due of course to the faults of others.

Most recently, we have President Bush who during his presidency was notorious for how few press conferences he held, has appeared (in addition to VP Dick Cheney) on a number of news and talk shows to give "exit interviews" defending the years of his presidency. Indeed both Bush and Cheney have repeatedly said while in office that polls and popularity are unimportant to them but now at the end of their terms they are now working on trying to make sure we remember them favorably. If they didn’t care what we thought of them while they were in office, why do they care now what we think of them?

The most recent installment was his final press conference which he used to mostly defend his record and reluctantly admit some mistakes although making no apologies. While it is easy for Bush’s many critics to list many things worth griping about, some of what he specifically said at the press conference is worth reflecting on.

In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession; I am ending on recession. In the meantime there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth.

But as even the conservative Wall Street Journal wrote, when it comes to job growth, Bush has the Worst Track Record on Record especially compared to Bill Clinton.

There have been disappointments. Abu Ghraib obviously was a huge disappointment during the presidency. Not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment. I don't know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were -- things didn't go according to plan, let's put it that way.

Abu Ghraib in graphic photos showed the world that we tortured. Our standing in the world community took a major fall. And while not finding those weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to justify our war in Iraq was a “significant disappointment”, his VP Dick Cheney said that based on what we now know about Saddam Hussein’s lack of WMDs, it was still the right decision to invade Iraq. So this gives ample ammunition to those who feel that Bush and/or Cheney had decided early on in their administration to invade Iraq whether they could find WMDs or not.

But while the president enjoyed support from especially his Republican base on the economy and Iraq, his mishandling of Katrina gave those of all political persuasions reason to believe that his administration was not only insensitive to those in need but also incompetent. For Bush, doing something apparently means flying into the disaster area for a photo-op instead of actually helping the people of New Orleans to recover from the disaster.

I've thought long and hard about Katrina -- you know, could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. The problem with that and -- is that law enforcement would have been pulled away from the mission. And then your questions, I suspect, would have been, how could you possibly have flown Air Force One into Baton Rouge, and police officers that were needed to expedite traffic out of New Orleans were taken off the task to look after you?

And the other thing is, when I get out of here, I'm getting off the stage. I believe there ought to be, you know, one person in the klieg lights at a time, and I've had my time in the klieg lights.

When many of us think of Bush in the klieg lights, we can't help but remember his address to Katrina victims from New Orleans’ Jackson Square.

Mr. Bush delivered his speech, carried live by the major television networks, in the middle of the city's darkened French Quarter, where Army troops from the 82nd Airborne Division were on patrol. The Bush White House, well practiced in the art of presidential stagecraft, provided its own generators for the lighting and communications equipment that beamed Mr. Bush's remarks to the nation.

"And tonight I also offer this pledge of the American people: Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives," Mr. Bush said.

It was a wonderful speech that gave the evacuees comfort and encouragement.

When Mr. Bush talked about breaking the cycle of poverty and increasing the rate of home ownership on the Gulf Coast, one evacuee shouted, "Thank you! Thank you!" Others at the shelter, at the civic center in Houma, a small city southwest of New Orleans, nodded in approval at several points during the speech.

"I feel very encouraged because he's accepted responsibility, and in doing that, I feel that he has stepped up to the plate," said Evelyn Green, 58, a retired health care worker from the New Orleans area. "He touched me. I know now he's going to be there to help us rebuild our cities and towns. I take him at his word. I want to see everything he said tonight fulfilled."

But for the many who took him at his word and gave him the benefit of the doubt, they soon found the speech to be little more than false hope.

In the president's State of the Union speech (in 2006), delivered just five months after the disaster, the devastation merited only 156 words out of more than 5,400.

On Tuesday night (in 2007), the president spoke for almost exactly as long before a joint session of Congress. But Katrina received not a single mention.

That pretty much says it all. Despite all of the “exit interview” fluff to the contrary, the economy, the war in Iraq, and the legacy of devastation and suffering still going on in some parts of New Orleans is how most of us will remember the presidency of George W. Bush.

Helping Others with the Digital TV Transition

As most of us know by now, the US is scheduled to transition to all digital TV on February 17, 2009 (now postponed until June 12) when stations around the country will discontinue their analog signal. This is not unique to the US. Other countries around the world have either completed their own switchover to digital or are in the process. Although this coversion to digital is a pain for many, digital has tremendous technical advantages, not the least of which is the ability to give us high definition TV.

But there is still a small percentage of people who are not ready for the transition. Let’s face it, this whole digital thing involves a lot of technology and some people find technology intimidating. Whether the transition date is pushed back as proposed or not, the same people are still going to be intimidated and resist doing what is necessary to get on board.

Help is available. But unfortunately most of the best help is via the Internet so it won’t do much good for those without computers. The only way to get around this is for those of you with an Internet connection who can read articles like this to volunteer to help those without this resource. And since I am a technical guy with an electrical engineering degree who likes to explain things, I will do my part to help you help others who may need it. Deal?

Step Number 1 is to determine which digital channels can be received and with what kind of an antenna.

Many people have just purchased a digital converter box only to find that their existing antenna will not pull in the digital forms of the same channels they watched before. This is especially true for those in outlying rural areas and in places with hilly terrain. Why? The nature of digital TV only allows us to enjoy a perfect picture or nothing at all. (For technical dweebs, check out this link on the cliff effect.) So locations that can get a less than perfect but acceptable picture on the present analog stations may now get nothing when only their digital forms are being broadcast. When this happens, the only choices are to buy and install a more expensive antenna or get cable/satellite service to pipe in the channels.

The good news is that there is a way to accomplish Step 1 without first spending money — but it requires going on to the Internet. For those without home computers or Internet connections, public libraries offer computers with Internet connections as a free service.

Just click on this link which takes you to the AntennaWeb.org website and fill in the address where the TV is and it will produce a list of stations and type of antenna that you will need. If all of the desired stations are marked with the “yellow uhf” label, there is a decent chance that the existing indoor antenna will work and a converter box (to provide the missing digital tuner) will do the job at no additional expense. If not, go to Step Number 2.

Step Number 2 is a decision on whether to invest in a bigger antenna setup or go with cable or satellite. An outdoor antenna running about $100 can sometimes be mounted in the attic. For those further away from stations, directional rooftop antennas (with a motor to point them in the right direction) along with amplifiers are needed which gets even more expensive. With the most basic service from cable to receive over-the-air networks (CBS, ABC, NBC, etc.) running about $15-20 per month, this is often a more practical choice than investing in expensive antenna equipment. And the antenna cannot receive networks like CNN and ESPN for those who may want to eventually receive channels like these.

For those in more remote areas, cable may not be available but satellite TV usually is. Satellite TV services offer local channels but require you to also bundle the local channel package with another package of programming. You can check out this link to see if Dish Network can offer local channels to your area for as low as $5.99 per month in addition to their least expensive $19.99 Family Package. And DirecTV offers a starter package for $29.99 per month which includes the local channels (where available) in addition to many of the traditional cable channels.

A more detailed article on all of the options is available in this link to an article by the people at Consumer Reports.

Because of difficulties in getting government $40 coupons to help defer the cost of converters for all who want them, a delay is being requested for the scheduled February 17 transition. In the meantime, we need to help those who have not made the digital TV conversion and I hope this article will help either you or help in your efforts to help somebody else make this transition to digital and preserve their TV viewing.

Colleges and Credit Cards

In the present recession we are enduring, one of the problems is said to be how difficult it is for both businesses and consumers to obtain credit. Despite the best efforts of the US government to lower interest rates and pump bailout money into the financial markets, banks are still very reluctant to loan money for mortgages, car loans and the like.

But then you see this NYT article Colleges Profit as Banks Market Credit Cards to Students and you then have to wonder what is really going on.

Bank of America’s relationship with the university (Michigan State) extends well beyond marketing at sports events. The bank has an $8.4 million, seven-year contract with Michigan State giving it access to students’ names and addresses and use of the university’s logo. The more students who take the banks’ credit cards, the more money the university gets. Under certain circumstances, Michigan State even stands to receive more money if students carry a balance on these cards.

In addition to colleges giving access to student names and addresses, many colleges now offer what is called an “affinity” credit card as described in this Business Week article The Dirty Secret of Campus Credit Cards.

"Students assume that if the university has an affinity contract with a bank to offer a credit card, the university will surely look after them. But these contracts are really money-makers for the school, and not about services to the students."

Nearly every major university in the country has a multi-million-dollar affinity relationship with a credit card company. The deals can be worth nearly $20 million to a single university. Schools, especially public universities supported by state revenues, are coming under increasing financial pressure to generate new revenue these days, and deals with credit card companies can provide a steady stream of income. And in most cases the worse the card terms are for students and alumni, the more profitable they are for the schools.

Isn’t it curious that the same financial institutions that are cautious about lending money to other relatively good credit risks are lined up to aggressively offer credit cards to students who often have no income and other than perhaps student loans often have no credit history whatsoever? What’s behind this? Could it be greed?

On one hand, giving students a chance to establish a credit history is a good thing. But all too often, the fine print in a credit card agreement can be a trap that is difficult to escape from. Although many cards have what looks to be attractive rates, sometimes these are just teaser rates that later go up. And while interest rates on credit cards are usually already higher than those on other types of loans, being late just one time with a payment by even a day can unleash punishing late charges and interest rates. Sometimes being late on paying one card will result in other cards also raising their interest rates to the borrower.

So how do stores offer deals like zero percent financing for two years on what they sell? The simple answer is that they hope you will slip up in getting in one of your payments on time. While the deal says you owe no interest, a small minimum payment on the principal is due each month. Miss a payment and a large interest rate on the complete balance is assessed. And for those who only pay the small minimum payment each month, a sizable balance awaits at the end of the loan period. Not paying that off by the due date results in those same large interest charges over the life of the loan being tacked on.

While sometimes people are late with payments because of money problems, many others who have busy lives (like college students) can simply forget to get a payment in on time. And lenders all too often take advantage of this situation to turn the screws on borrowers.

Today’s college students are facing a double whammy. Loan amounts needed to pay for rising tuitions keep going up while an economy in recession often means lower paying and harder to find jobs at graduation. Especially in these difficult times, for colleges to financially benefit from promoting more student debt is a clear conflict of interest.

Our recent Wall Street crisis shows that all too many lenders when given the choice between offering safer loans with lower interest rates and more risky loans with higher rates choose the latter. That explains why so many lenders got involved with sub-prime mortgages which generate higher interest rates and fees than conventional mortgages. And it also explains why lenders are still aggressively promoting credit cards which in addition to their higher interest rates, bring in lots more income in the way of fees and penalties.

In fairness, much of the problem comes from people who get into trouble because they cannot or will not live within their means. But the aggressive marketing of credit cards, especially to students is one where both the lenders and the colleges are financially benefiting from lending practices that are setting a trap that may take many years to escape or result in bankruptcy.

While we are considering more regulation for other lenders as a result of the recent Wall Street crisis, the Business Week article Fixing the College Credit Card Mess offers the following proposed fixes which you can check out in more detail in the article link:

A few key legislative and regulatory steps could help... Here are a few practical steps that would curb abuses and help college students and other consumers.

• Protect students by limiting the amount of credit extended.
• Bring more clarity to credit-card contracts.
• Require schools to disclose lucrative contracts.
• Eliminate the most egregious practices.

Trying to Make Sense of Gaza

At one time, understanding relations between Israel and the various Arab states in the Middle East was pretty straightforward. You had Israel surrounded by Arab states that did not recognize its right to exist. Some of those countries like Egypt, went to war with Israel and after being defeated, President Anwar Sadat decided that peaceful coexisting made more sense that fighting wars (especially losing ones) so Sadat signed the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty with the help of President Jimmy Carter and became the first Arab state to recognize Israel’s right to exist. But hate dies hard. Much of the rest of the Arab world condemned Sadat for this gesture of peace and he was later assassinated by Muslim radicals.

Since then, with the notable exception of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad who has openly condemned Israel’s right to exist, most of the rest of Middle East has since softened their previously hard line towards Israel. The Palestinian people (looking for their own homeland) were represented by Yasser Arafat, who also waged war against Israel as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) later did a similar act as Sadat and along with Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords with the help of President Bill Clinton. But this time it was the Israeli who was then assassinated by one of his own radicals.

The result of Oslo was that Arafat’s PLO Fatah party was given authority over the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza. But free elections in 2006 resulted in a surprise victory for a rival group, Hamas who is considered worldwide to be a terrorist group and does not recognize the right of Israel to exist.

Hamas is popular in Gaza because of its social welfare and education programs it has provided. But at the same time, they have been firing rockets deep into Israel following the recent end of a 6 month truce. Rockets flying into Israel are nothing new. But especially with Hamas now using improved rockets that fly farther and are more accurate, Israel decided that the time had come to finally deal with Hamas. This leads us to the present conflict that is dominating the news.

Unlike a more conventional war when a country sends an army to attack, Hamas is firing rockets from locations in Gaza with heavy concentrations of civilians. Israel has responded with surgical airstrikes at Hamas targets in Gaza but the civilian casualties are mounting and Hamas is still launching rockets at Israel. Now Israel has just made the difficult decision to launch a ground attack on Gaza which is leading to more civilian casualties, many of them children.

What can anybody do? We can only guess what the incoming Obama administration will do since they do not assume office until January 20th and any number of things can happen between now and then. Meanwhile, President Bush appears to be doing little more than blaming Hamas for starting the conflict by launching rockets into Israel which is true but doesn’t do anything to defuse the situation and address the problem of civilian casualties and a destroyed infrastructure in Gaza.

For the time being, the perhaps the best hope to bring the two sides to peace is Anwar Sadat’s successor in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt is the crucial, if reluctant, intermediary between Israel and Hamas, which is no great friend of this moderate secular government. Still, a sustained Israeli ground operation in neighboring Gaza would sharply increase public pressure on President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to do more to help the Palestinians there.

Mr. Sadat’s successor, Mr. Mubarak, has successfully negotiated the complicated issues of regional security, solidifying a relationship with Washington, maintaining cool but correct ties with Israel and sharply suppressing Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. But it is a delicate balancing act..

With Israel now taking the step of a ground invasion of Gaza, even if they are successful in attacking the Hamas positions and stopping most of the rocket fire, they know that they cannot get to all of them. And furthermore, withdrawing later from Gaza means that Hamas can then simply rearm and start launching rockets at Israel again.

So the only hope of ending the civilian bloodshed in Gaza is for others to help forge a truce which will allow Israel to withdraw while at the same time, making sure that Hamas does not use the truce to gear up for more attacks. This is a tall order but one that is urgently needed for humanitarian reasons.