36 Hours in Fort Lauderdale
By Michael McElroy
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: November 24, 2010
http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/travel/28lauderdale-hours.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a210
FORT LAUDERDALE continues to mature beyond its spring-break days, with posh resorts now rising along the beach. Meanwhile, Las Olas Boulevard, the lively commercial strip that links the beach to downtown, has welcomed an array of new boutiques and restaurants. Sure, a smattering of raucous bars still dot the beach, and the rowdy clubgoers of Himmarshee Village can be three deep in the middle of the week. But at the end of a sunny, water-logged day, the resort town now offers a sophisticated evening that doesn’t involve neon bikinis and syrupy daiquiris.
Friday
5 p.m.
1) SEASIDE DUSK
There are a slew of beachfront spots where you can have a drink, watch the clouds roll over the ocean, soak up the sea air and catch the parade of sun-soaked tourists and residents going home in suits and ties. Two of the more welcoming places are Margarita Cantina Crab and Seafood House (201 Fort Lauderdale Beach Boulevard; 954-463-7209), where you can sip a chardonnay and listen to the steel band, and the H2O Café (101 South Fort Lauderdale Beach Boulevard; 954-414-1024; h2ocafe.net) next door, if you prefer a bit more quiet.
7 p.m.
2) WATERFRONT WAHOO
Fort Lauderdale’s dining scene is alive and well inland as well as on the water. The local hotshot Steve Hudson bought the Bimini Boatyard Bar and Grill (1555 Southeast 17th Street; 954-525-7400; biminiboatyard.com) in 2008 and spent $1.2 million to snazz it up. It now evokes a New England-style boathouse, with its crisp blue and white décor, enormous cathedral ceiling, gleaming oak floors and portal-style windows. A new outdoor bar is on a marina, bringing in a nautical mix of young and old who dine on fresh seafood like wood-grilled wahoo ($19) and yellowtail snapper ($22).
9 p.m.
3) NICE AND COOL
For a cool nightcap, slide over to Blue Jean Blues (3320 Northeast 33rd Street; 954-306-6330; bluejeanblues.net), where you can sit at the bar and listen to live jazz and blues bands. The club has a tiny stage and a dance floor, should the mood strike. The music can go from jazz to Caribbean depending on the evening.
Saturday
8 a.m.
4) DAWN PATROL
Take an early morning stroll along the wide, white beach. It is open to joggers, walkers and swimmers, and is surprisingly clean. For a leafier, more secluded adventure that is a favorite with resident runners and walkers, try the two-mile loop through the woods in the Hugh Taylor Birch State Park (954-468-2791; floridastateparks.org/hughtaylorbirch; fee, $6 for a car with two passengers; $2 for joggers). Its entrance is only steps from the beach at the intersection of A1A and Sunrise Highway. If you are not a jogger, take a drive through anyway.
10 a.m.
5) SUNNY NOSH
Finish off the jog at the beachside Ritz-Carlton (1 North Fort Lauderdale Beach Boulevard; 954-465-2300; ritzcarlton.com/fortlauderdale). The company bought the former St. Regis and put its own stamp on the property. For a relaxed breakfast (served until 11 a.m.), either indoors or out, go to Via Luna, the hotel’s restaurant, where you can choose from a $28 buffet with omelets, smoked salmon, cereals and fruits.
1 p.m.
6) ECCENTRIC ESTATE
Bonnet House (900 North Birch Road; 954-563-5393; bonnethouse.org) was the vacation home of the artists and art patrons Frederic Bartlett and his wife, Evelyn, whose first husband was the grandson and namesake of the founder of Eli Lilly and Company. They created an eccentric, brightly painted retreat, now a museum — more Caribbean mansion than Florida estate — near a swamp where alligators thrived. Window bars protected the house from the panthers that once roamed the estate, and the monkeys that still live there.
3:30 p.m.
7) CRUISING THE PIER
If you want to go a bit off the beaten track, drive up A1A to Commercial Boulevard and hang out on Anglin’s Pier. There is a little shopping area for swim gear, and you can rent fishing poles for $16. Or just sit and have a coffee. They close the area off from 7 to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays for free musical entertainment.
7 p.m.
8) CRABS AND PIZZA
One of the trendier new restaurants is Truluck’s by the Galleria Mall (2584A East Sunrise Boulevard; 954-396-5656; trulucks.com). An elegant room with dark woods and red leather upholstery, the year-old restaurant adds a bit of glamour to the popular mall and has a busy bar where a piano player entertains all evening. It has a surf-and-turf menu, but is perhaps best known for stone crabs. Dinner for two, about $75 to $100. For lighter fare, try D’Angelo (4215 North Federal Highway, Oakland Park; 954-561-7300; pizzadangelo.com). Opened in March, the modern Tuscan-style restaurant attracts a fashion-aware young crowd with its meatball tapas ($10) and Napoletana pizzas ($11).
9 p.m.
9) MALL PARTY
It may not be spring break, but you would never know, looking at the huge crowds at the Blue Martini by the Galleria Mall (2432 East Sunrise Boulevard; 954-653-2583; bluemartinilounge.com). But the patrons are decidedly more upscale. By 8 p.m. when the band is playing, the bar is packed with young professionals and snow birds, schmoozing and dancing. A newer spot is SoLita Las Olas (1032 East Las Olas; 954-357-2616; solitalasolas.com), which opened this year and has a lively bar. Fort Lauderdale also has a booming gay night-life scene, including the ever-popular Georgie’s Alibi (2266 Wilton Drive; 954-565-2526; georgiesalibi.com).
Sunday
11 a.m.
10) SOUTHERN COMFORT
The Pelican Grand Beach Resort (2000 North Ocean Boulevard; 954-568-9431; pelicanbeach.com) offers a Sunday brunch from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The plantation-style restaurant overlooks the beach, with a big veranda with white wicker tables and rocking chairs that catch the sea breezes. The Sunday prix fixe menu ($33.95) includes eggs Benedict, rice pilaf, bloody marys and mimosas.
12:30 p.m.
11) SUPER SWIMMERS
Water enthusiasts should stop in at the International Swimming Hall of Fame (One Hall of Fame Drive; 954-462-6536; ishof.org). Did you know that both Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin experimented with swim fins? Or that Polynesian swimmers used palm leaves tied to their feet? That and other swimming trivia are lovingly displayed at the sleek white building on the Intracoastal.
2 p.m.
12) LAS OLAS STROLL
In an era when shopping in new cities can remind you of every mall back home with the same stores lining the streets, Fort Lauderdale has kept its streak of independence: nothing fancy but fun. East Las Olas Boulevard has a rash of one-off stores like Kumbaya (No. 1012; 954-768-9004), which carries colorful T-shirts ($20) and equally colorful straw bags (from $20). Seldom Seen Gallery (No. 817; 954-527-7878; seldomseengallery.com) has a riot of wall clocks (from $35) as well as brightly painted walking sticks ($20). If you want to take edible gifts home or you can’t resist them yourself, drop in at Kilwin’s Ice Cream, Chocolates and Fudge Shop (No. 809; 954-523-8338; kilwins.com). Its motto is “Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.” Ponder that with a bag of caramel corn ($4.75), as you explore the rest of the shops.
IF YOU GO
Opened in 2004, the Pelican Grand Beach Resort (2000 North Ocean Boulevard; 954-568-9431; pelicanbeach.com) is situated north of the main strip, directly on the beach. The Southern plantation-style hotel has 156 rooms, from $169.
The Ritz Carlton Hotel (1 North Fort Lauderdale Beach Boulevard; 954-465-2300; ritzcarlton.com/fortlauderdale) opened in 2008 in the former St. Regis hotel. It has a sleek pool on the seventh floor overlooking the water, a full-service spa and a wine room with more than 5,000 bottles. The 192 spacious and elegant rooms start at $269.
W Fort Lauderdale (401 North Fort Lauderdale Beach Boulevard; 954-414-8200; whotels.com/ftlauderdale) is a sleekly modern hotel that opened last year along the beach with 517 rooms. It has a Bliss Spa and two pools, one with a D.J. who plays from noon to 6 p.m. on weekends. Rooms from $289.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Sunday, November 14, 2010
How to Make the Dollar Sound Again
How to Make the Dollar Sound Again
By JAMES GRANT
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: November 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/opinion/14grant.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a212
BY disclosing a plan to conjure $600 billion to support the sagging economy, the Federal Reserve affirmed the interesting fact that dollars can be conjured. In the digital age, you don’t even need a printing press.
This was on Nov. 3. A general uproar ensued, with the dollar exchange rate weakening and the price of gold surging. And when, last Monday, the president of the World Bank suggested, almost diffidently, that there might be a place for gold
Let the economists gasp: The classical gold standard, the one that was in place from 1880 to 1914, is what the world needs now. In its utility, economy and elegance, there has never been a monetary system like it.
It was simplicity itself. National currencies were backed by gold. If you didn’t like the currency you could exchange it for shiny coins (money was “sound” if it rang when dropped on a counter). Borders were open and money was footloose. It went where it was treated well. In gold-standard countries, government budgets were mainly balanced. Central banks had the single public function of exchanging gold for paper or paper for gold. The public decided which it wanted.
“You can’t go back,” today’s central bankers are wont to protest, before adding, “And you shouldn’t, anyway.” They seem to forget that we are forever going back (and forth, too), because nothing about money is really new. “Quantitative easing,” a k a money-printing, is as old as the hills. Draftsmen of the United States Constitution , well recalling the overproduction of the Continental paper dollar, defined money as “coin.” “To coin money” and “regulate the value thereof” was a Congressional power they joined in the same constitutional phrase with that of fixing “the standard of weights and measures.” For most of the next 200 years, the dollar was, in fact, defined as a weight of metal. The pure paper era did not begin until 1971.
The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 — by coincidence, the final full year of the original gold standard. (Less functional variants followed in the 1920s and ’40s; no longer could just anybody demand gold for paper, or paper for gold.) At the outset, the Fed was a gold standard central bank. It could not have conjured money even if it had wanted to, as the value of the dollar was fixed under law as one 20.67th of an ounce of gold.
Neither was the Fed concerned with managing the national economy. Fast forward 65 years or so, to the late 1970s, and the Fed would have been unrecognizable to the men who voted it into existence. It was now held responsible for ensuring full employment and stable prices alike.
Today, the Fed’s hundreds of Ph.D.’s conduct research at the frontiers of economic science. “The Two-Period Rational Inattention Model: Accelerations and Analyses” is the title of one of the treatises the monetary scholars have recently produced. “Continuous Time Extraction of a Nonstationary Signal with Illustrations in Continuous Low-pass and Band-pass Filtering” is another. You can’t blame the learned authors for preferring the life they lead to the careers they would have under a true-blue gold standard. Rather than writing monographs for each other, they would be standing behind a counter exchanging paper for gold and vice versa.
If only they gave it some thought, though, the economists — nothing if not smart — would fairly jump at the chance for counter duty. For a convertible currency is a sophisticated, self-contained information system. By choosing to hold it, or instead the gold that stands behind it, the people tell the central bank if it has issued too much money or too little. It’s democracy in money, rather than mandarin rule.
Today, it’s the mandarins at the Federal Reserve who decide what interest rate to impose, and what volume of currency to conjure.
The Bank of England once had an unhappy experience with this method of operation. To fight the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century, Britain traded in its gold pound for a scrip, and the bank had to decide unilaterally how many pounds to print. Lacking the information encased in the gold standard, it printed too many. A great inflation bubbled.
Later, a parliamentary inquest determined that no institution should again be entrusted with such powers as the suspension of gold convertibility had dumped in the lap of those bank directors. They had meant well enough, the parliamentarians concluded, but even the most minute knowledge of the British economy, “combined with the profound science in all the principles of money and circulation,” would not enable anyone to circulate the exact amount of money needed for “the wants of trade.”
The same is true now at the Fed. The chairman, Ben Bernanke, and his minions have taken it upon themselves to decide that a lot more money should circulate. According to the Consumer Price Index, which is showing year-over-year gains of less than 1.5 percent, prices are essentially stable.
In the inflationary 1970s, people had prayed for exactly this. But the Fed today finds it unacceptable. We need more inflation, it insists (seeming not to remember that prices showed year-over-year declines for 12 consecutive months in 1954 and ’55 or that, in the first half of the 1960s, the Consumer Price Index never registered year-over-year gains of as much as 2 percent). This is why Mr. Bernanke has set out to materialize an additional $600 billion in the next eight months.
Related
Times Topic: Gold Standard
The intended consequences of this intervention include lower interest rates, higher stock prices, a perkier Consumer Price Index and more hiring. The unintended consequences remain to be seen. A partial list of unwanted possibilities includes an overvalued stock market (followed by a crash), a collapsing dollar, an unscripted surge in consumer prices (followed by higher interest rates), a populist revolt against zero-percent savings rates and wall-to-wall European tourists on the sidewalks of Manhattan.
As for interest rates, they are already low enough to coax another cycle of imprudent lending and borrowing. It gives one pause that the Fed, with all its massed brain power, failed to anticipate even a little of the troubles of 2007-09.
At last week’s world economic summit meeting in South Korea , finance ministers and central bankers chewed over the perennial problem of “imbalances.” America consumes much more than it produces (and has done so over 25 consecutive years). Asia produces more than it consumes. Merchandise moves east across the Pacific; dollars fly west in payment. For Americans, the system could hardly be improved on, because the dollars do not remain in Asia. They rather obligingly fly eastward again in the shape of investments in United States government securities. It’s as if the money never left the 50 states.
So it is under the paper-dollar system that we Americans enjoy “deficits without tears,” in the words of the French economist Jacques Rueff. We could not have done so under the classical gold standard. Deficits then were ultimately settled in gold. We could not have printed it, but would have had to dig for it, or adjusted our economy to make ourselves more internationally competitive. Adjustments under the gold standard took place continuously and smoothly — not, like today, wrenchingly and at great intervals.
Gold is a metal made for monetary service. It is scarce (just 0.004 parts per million in the earth’s crust), pliable and easy on the eye. It has tended to hold its purchasing power over the years and centuries. You don’t consume it, as you do tin or copper. Somewhere, probably, in some coin or ingot, is the gold that adorned Cleopatra.
And because it is indestructible, no one year’s new production is of any great consequence in comparison with the store of above-ground metal. From 1900 to 2009, at much lower nominal gold prices than those prevailing today, the worldwide stock of gold grew at 1.5 percent a year, according to the United States Geological Survey and the World Gold Council.
The first time the United States abandoned the gold standard — to fight the Civil War — it took until 1879, 14 years after Appomattox, to again link the dollar to gold.
To reinstitute a modern gold standard today would take time, too. The United States would first have to call an international monetary conference. A chastened Ben Bernanke would have to announce that, in fact, he cannot see into the future and needs the information that the convertibility feature of a gold dollar would impart.
That humbling chore completed, the delegates could get down to the technical work of proposing a rate of exchange between gold and the dollar (probably it would be even higher than the current price of gold, the better to encourage new exploration and production).
Other countries, thunderstruck, would then have to follow suit. The main thing, Mr. Bernanke would emphasize, would be to create a monetary system that synchronizes national economies rather than driving them apart.
If the classical gold standard in its every Edwardian feature could not, after all, be teleported into the 21st century, there would be plenty of scope for adaptation and, perhaps, improvement. Let the author of “The Two-Period Rational Inattention Model: Accelerations and Analyses” have a crack at it.
James Grant, the editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, is the author of “Money of the Mind.”
By JAMES GRANT
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: November 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/opinion/14grant.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a212
BY disclosing a plan to conjure $600 billion to support the sagging economy, the Federal Reserve affirmed the interesting fact that dollars can be conjured. In the digital age, you don’t even need a printing press.
This was on Nov. 3. A general uproar ensued, with the dollar exchange rate weakening and the price of gold surging. And when, last Monday, the president of the World Bank suggested, almost diffidently, that there might be a place for gold
Let the economists gasp: The classical gold standard, the one that was in place from 1880 to 1914, is what the world needs now. In its utility, economy and elegance, there has never been a monetary system like it.
It was simplicity itself. National currencies were backed by gold. If you didn’t like the currency you could exchange it for shiny coins (money was “sound” if it rang when dropped on a counter). Borders were open and money was footloose. It went where it was treated well. In gold-standard countries, government budgets were mainly balanced. Central banks had the single public function of exchanging gold for paper or paper for gold. The public decided which it wanted.
“You can’t go back,” today’s central bankers are wont to protest, before adding, “And you shouldn’t, anyway.” They seem to forget that we are forever going back (and forth, too), because nothing about money is really new. “Quantitative easing,” a k a money-printing, is as old as the hills. Draftsmen of the United States Constitution
The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 — by coincidence, the final full year of the original gold standard. (Less functional variants followed in the 1920s and ’40s; no longer could just anybody demand gold for paper, or paper for gold.) At the outset, the Fed was a gold standard central bank. It could not have conjured money even if it had wanted to, as the value of the dollar was fixed under law as one 20.67th of an ounce of gold.
Neither was the Fed concerned with managing the national economy. Fast forward 65 years or so, to the late 1970s, and the Fed would have been unrecognizable to the men who voted it into existence. It was now held responsible for ensuring full employment and stable prices alike.
Today, the Fed’s hundreds of Ph.D.’s conduct research at the frontiers of economic science. “The Two-Period Rational Inattention Model: Accelerations and Analyses” is the title of one of the treatises the monetary scholars have recently produced. “Continuous Time Extraction of a Nonstationary Signal with Illustrations in Continuous Low-pass and Band-pass Filtering” is another. You can’t blame the learned authors for preferring the life they lead to the careers they would have under a true-blue gold standard. Rather than writing monographs for each other, they would be standing behind a counter exchanging paper for gold and vice versa.
If only they gave it some thought, though, the economists — nothing if not smart — would fairly jump at the chance for counter duty. For a convertible currency is a sophisticated, self-contained information system. By choosing to hold it, or instead the gold that stands behind it, the people tell the central bank if it has issued too much money or too little. It’s democracy in money, rather than mandarin rule.
Today, it’s the mandarins at the Federal Reserve who decide what interest rate to impose, and what volume of currency to conjure.
The Bank of England once had an unhappy experience with this method of operation. To fight the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century, Britain traded in its gold pound for a scrip, and the bank had to decide unilaterally how many pounds to print. Lacking the information encased in the gold standard, it printed too many. A great inflation bubbled.
Later, a parliamentary inquest
The same is true now at the Fed. The chairman, Ben Bernanke, and his minions have taken it upon themselves to decide that a lot more money should circulate. According to the Consumer Price Index, which is showing year-over-year gains of less than 1.5 percent, prices are essentially stable.
In the inflationary 1970s, people had prayed for exactly this. But the Fed today finds it unacceptable. We need more inflation, it insists (seeming not to remember that prices showed year-over-year declines for 12 consecutive months in 1954 and ’55 or that, in the first half of the 1960s, the Consumer Price Index never registered year-over-year gains of as much as 2 percent). This is why Mr. Bernanke has set out to materialize an additional $600 billion in the next eight months.
Related
Times Topic: Gold Standard
The intended consequences of this intervention include lower interest rates, higher stock prices, a perkier Consumer Price Index and more hiring. The unintended consequences remain to be seen. A partial list of unwanted possibilities includes an overvalued stock market (followed by a crash), a collapsing dollar, an unscripted surge in consumer prices (followed by higher interest rates), a populist revolt against zero-percent savings rates and wall-to-wall European tourists on the sidewalks of Manhattan.
As for interest rates, they are already low enough to coax another cycle of imprudent lending and borrowing. It gives one pause that the Fed, with all its massed brain power, failed to anticipate even a little of the troubles of 2007-09.
At last week’s world economic summit meeting in South Korea
So it is under the paper-dollar system that we Americans enjoy “deficits without tears,” in the words of the French economist Jacques Rueff. We could not have done so under the classical gold standard. Deficits then were ultimately settled in gold. We could not have printed it, but would have had to dig for it, or adjusted our economy to make ourselves more internationally competitive. Adjustments under the gold standard took place continuously and smoothly — not, like today, wrenchingly and at great intervals.
Gold is a metal made for monetary service. It is scarce (just 0.004 parts per million in the earth’s crust), pliable and easy on the eye. It has tended to hold its purchasing power over the years and centuries. You don’t consume it, as you do tin or copper. Somewhere, probably, in some coin or ingot, is the gold that adorned Cleopatra.
And because it is indestructible, no one year’s new production is of any great consequence in comparison with the store of above-ground metal. From 1900 to 2009, at much lower nominal gold prices than those prevailing today, the worldwide stock of gold grew at 1.5 percent a year, according to the United States Geological Survey and the World Gold Council.
The first time the United States abandoned the gold standard — to fight the Civil War — it took until 1879, 14 years after Appomattox, to again link the dollar to gold.
To reinstitute a modern gold standard today would take time, too. The United States would first have to call an international monetary conference. A chastened Ben Bernanke would have to announce that, in fact, he cannot see into the future and needs the information that the convertibility feature of a gold dollar would impart.
That humbling chore completed, the delegates could get down to the technical work of proposing a rate of exchange between gold and the dollar (probably it would be even higher than the current price of gold, the better to encourage new exploration and production).
Other countries, thunderstruck, would then have to follow suit. The main thing, Mr. Bernanke would emphasize, would be to create a monetary system that synchronizes national economies rather than driving them apart.
If the classical gold standard in its every Edwardian feature could not, after all, be teleported into the 21st century, there would be plenty of scope for adaptation and, perhaps, improvement. Let the author of “The Two-Period Rational Inattention Model: Accelerations and Analyses” have a crack at it.
James Grant, the editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, is the author of “Money of the Mind.”
Saturday, November 13, 2010
God Interviews George Bush on the book tour By John M Conley
God Interviews George Bush on the book tour
By John M Conley
Let's imagine for a moment that George W. Bush is being interviewed by God while on his book tour.
(and George's replies are actual quotes from Bush.)
God: Okay, George, you’re out peddling your book, let’s talk …
Bush: Okay, Lord. Shoot! Hallelujah.
God: In 1989 you made the following comment: "You know I could run for governor but I'm basically a media creation.
I've never done anything. I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business. But that's not the kind of profile you
have to have to get elected to public office."
Bush: Did I say that?
GOD: Yes, you did, George.
BUSH: If you say so.
GOD: What caused you to change your mind?
BUSH: About what?
GOD: About your decision to run for Governor of Texas! You really don't pay attention.
Bush: "I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself,
about why I do things."—Aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003
God: And you didn't have much interest in keeping up with current events, do you?
Bush: "I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get
briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves." (Washington, D.C., Sept. 21, 2003)
GOD: But, you ended up running for Texas governor. Why?
Bush: "When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us vs. them,
and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there."
—Iowa Western Community College, Jan 21, 2000
God: What's that supposed to mean?
Bush: What?
God: Never mind. Let's move on. What was your priority as Governor of Texas.......the number
one problem you wanted to see solved?
Bush: "[T]he illiteracy level of our children are appalling." (Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004) "Rarely is the question
asked: Is our children learning?" (Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000)
God: Well, do you believe your own daughters did well learning within the Texas school system?
Bush: "Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis."
(CNBC, April 15, 2000) "Then you wake up at the high school level and find out that the illiteracy level of our
children are appalling." George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004
God: Hmmmm. Ok. Can you summarize the job you feel you did as Governor?
Bush: "One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'."
God: And you believe your judgements were fair?
Bush: "I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future." ''I know what I believe.
I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe—I believe what I believe is right."—Rome, July 22, 2001
God: "Only I know the future, George.
Bush: "The future will be better tomorrow."
God: I wouldn't say that's true for the 152 people you executed as Governor.
Bush: "The only things that I can tell you is that every case I have reviewed I have been comfortable with the innocence
or guilt of the person that I've looked at. I do not believe we've put a guilty ... I mean innocent person to death in
the state of Texas." All Things Considered, NPR, June 16, 2000
God: Oh, but you did George. Based on your own human statistics 16 or 17% of all people executed are actually innocent.
Out of 152 people, do you know how many innocents you've allowed to die?
Bush: "I'm the master of low expectations." (Aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003)
God: And are you aware that the vast majority of those on death row are too poor to hire an attorney
who can represent them adequately?
Bush: "First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich
doesn't mean you're willing to kill." (Washington, D.C., May 19, 2003)
God: My, my. How good of you. As a Christian, are you aware that even a sparrow cannot fall
to the ground without my notice?
Bush: "Just remember it's the birds that's supposed to suffer, not the hunter." (Advising quail hunter and
New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, Roswell, N.M., Jan. 22, 2004)
God: There are several you've executed at this very moment living here in my Kingdom and they've been
interested in visiting with you.......if you make it in, that is.
Bush: "My answer is bring them on." (On Iraqi militants attacking U.S. forces, Washington, D.C., July 3, 2003)
God: One of them is Karla Faye Tucker. Remember the one you taunted when she asked you for mercy?
Bush: Oh, yeah....her. What a whiner. But, God, with all due respect, should I have pardoned her just
because Pat Robertson asked me to?
God: Who?
Bush: Pat Robertson.
God: Doesn't ring a bell. Let's move on....... Tell me, George, in your heart of hearts, what do you think of war?
Bush: "I think war is a dangerous place." (Washington, D.C., May 7, 2000)
God: Do you believe you worked for piece?
Bush: "The second pillar of peace and security in our world is the willingness of free nations, when the last resort
arrives, to retain aggression and evil by force." (Bush, speaking in London, England, Nov. 19, 2003)
God: What about the families of those who have fought and died in Iraq so that you, Cheney, Rimsfeld,
and Wolfowitz could get control of their oilfields?
Bush: "Obviously, I pray every day there's less casualty." (Fort Hood, Texas, April 11, 2004) But, we went there to
free the Iraqi people from Sadaam Hussein! [my words]
God: George, George. This is God you're talking to, remember?
Bush: "The truth of that matter is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he were president of the
United States, and we’d be a lot better off." (Bush at the second presidential debate in St. Louis, Oct. 8, 2004.)
God: Say, what?
Bush: "The world is more peaceful and more free under my leadership." (Source: The Boston Globe, Oct. 29, 2003)
God: What are your feelings for those families who have lost loved ones in the war?
Bush: "There's only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids upon the death
of their loved one. Others hug but having committed the troops, I've got an additional responsibility to
hug and that's me and I know what it's like." (Source: ABC News Transcripts, "President Bush and First Lady Bush
'20/20' Year-End Interview," Dec. 13, 2002
God: Let's move on. Do you believe you did a good job with the economy as president?
Bush: "By making the right choices, we can make the right choice for our future." (Bush, sharing insights into improving
Americans' health and fitness Source: The White House, "President Bush Highlights Health and Fitness Initiative: Remarks by the
President on Fitness," July 18, 2003)
God: But, did you bring experts in to consult about the best economic path to take for the country?
Bush: "We don't believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans." (Scranton, Pa., Sept. 6, 2000)
God: Okay, but you do have a budget, right?
Bush: "It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."- (Reuters, May 5, 2000)
God: Having an MBA degree from Harvard, I need to know your economic philosophy once and for all.
Bush: Okay. "Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits
are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases.
There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers,
affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be
— or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's
a series of things that cause the — like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed
to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate — the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed
to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast
benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those — if that growth is affected, it will help on the red."
—George W. Bush, explaining his plan to save Social Security, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005
God: There's a talking ass in the Old Testament that made more sense than you, but let me take a stab at it.....
Are you talking about Social Security?
Bush: Over your head a little?
God: Way over my head. Why didn't you listen more to the Democrats?
Bush: "They want the Federal Government controling Social Security like it's some kind of Federal program."
(ST. CHARLES, MO., NOV. 2, 2000)
God: But........never mind. You gave huge tax cuts to the absolute wealthiest Americans, George. Why?
Bush: "We ought to make the pie higher." (SOUTH CAROLINA REPUBLICAN DEBATE, FEB. 15, 2000)
God: You want the pie higher?
Bush: "See, without the tax relief package, there would have been a deficit, but there wouldn't have been the commiserate—
not 'commiserate'—the kick to our economy that occurred as a result of the tax relief."
God: But, George, all the money you gave away is the main reason for the deficit! It kicked the economy alright. Right in the ribs!
Bush: "Let me tell you my thoughts about tax relief. When your economy is kind of ooching along, it's important to let people
have more of their own money." (Boston, Oct. 4, 2002) "It's very important for folks to understand that when there's more
trade, there's more commerce." (Quebec City, Canada, April 21, 2001)
God: That's not a smart answer at all. And you actually graduated from Harvard with an MBA degree?
Bush: "I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating [me]." (U.S. News & World Report, April 3, 2000)
God: You're forgetting, George. I'm God. Anyway, let's try foreign policy. What was the driving force behind your foreign policy?
Bush: "This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating." (as quoted by the New York Daily News, April 23, 2002)
God: Yeah, tell me about it. But, what is your general theory to solving the problems of mankind?
Bush: "[W]hether they be Christian, Jew, or Muslim, or Hindu, people have heard the universal call to love a neighbor just like
they'd like to be called themselves." (Washington, Oct. 8, 2003)
God: Okay.....I guess. What else?
Bush: "We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur."
God: What?
Bush: "It's time for the human race to enter the solar system."
God: You are in the solar system, George.
Bush: Well, I guess you oughta know! (henh, henh, henh, henh, henh)
God: (I should have given him a different laugh) Listen carefully. Give me something specific that you've done that
showed you cared for my people around the world.
Bush: "We had a good Cabinet meeting, talked about a lot of issues. Secretary of State and Defense brought us up to
date about our desires to spread freedom and peace around the world." (Washington, D.C., Aug. 1, 2003)
God: Were any decisions made?
Bush: "Security is the essential roadblock to achieving the road map to peace." (Washington, D.C., July 25, 2003)
God: What!?
Bush: I don't chew my cabbage twice.
God: Do you know who you're talking to?
Bush: "I don't bring God into my life to—to, you know, kind of be a political person." (Interview with Tom Brokaw
aboard Air Force One, April 24, 2003)
God: And I'm not "kind of a political person." I'm neither Democrat or Republican. But, you've convinced so many people
on earth that you were such a moral, Christian man of God who only wanted to follow my instructions and do the
right things, I just think it's fair that you convince me, too....especially if you think you're going to park your butt
inside these gates for eternity!!
Bush: Okay, okay......don't get your robes in a wad. What is it you have to know, God? No offense, but I'm in
a bit of a hurry. Laura's waiting, you know.
God: What is your idea of justice, George?
Bush: "Justice ought to be fair." (speaking at the Whitehouse Economic Conference, Dec 15, 2004)
God: I'm really concerned about you. Do you have any concept at all about the huge problems on earth?
Bush: Yes, I do. "In 2000, alone, obesity costs totaled the country an estimated cost of $117 billion."
(Bush, promoting his Health and Fitness Initiative)
God: I see no purpose in pursuing this any longer. I may as well let you in with the others.
Bush: "Do you have blacks, too?" (Bush, speaking to Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Source: Salon.com, "Bushed," Jake Tapper, June 20, 2002)
God: Yes, George. And guess what? There are gays here, also!
Bush: Seriously?
God: Is there anything else you want to know before you go in? Any question you've had all your
life that you knew only I could answer?
Bush: Yeah, as a matter of fact.
God: Okay, what is it?
Bush: "Will the highways on the Internet become more few?" (CONCORD, N.H., JAN. 29, 2000)
God: Let me get back with you on that, George.
Bush: Okay. Do you have any questions for me?
God: Yeah, Have you ever been bitch-slapped?
By John M Conley
Let's imagine for a moment that George W. Bush is being interviewed by God while on his book tour.
(and George's replies are actual quotes from Bush.)
God: Okay, George, you’re out peddling your book, let’s talk …
Bush: Okay, Lord. Shoot! Hallelujah.
God: In 1989 you made the following comment: "You know I could run for governor but I'm basically a media creation.
I've never done anything. I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business. But that's not the kind of profile you
have to have to get elected to public office."
Bush: Did I say that?
GOD: Yes, you did, George.
BUSH: If you say so.
GOD: What caused you to change your mind?
BUSH: About what?
GOD: About your decision to run for Governor of Texas! You really don't pay attention.
Bush: "I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself,
about why I do things."—Aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003
God: And you didn't have much interest in keeping up with current events, do you?
Bush: "I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get
briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves." (Washington, D.C., Sept. 21, 2003)
GOD: But, you ended up running for Texas governor. Why?
Bush: "When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us vs. them,
and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there."
—Iowa Western Community College, Jan 21, 2000
God: What's that supposed to mean?
Bush: What?
God: Never mind. Let's move on. What was your priority as Governor of Texas.......the number
one problem you wanted to see solved?
Bush: "[T]he illiteracy level of our children are appalling." (Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004) "Rarely is the question
asked: Is our children learning?" (Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000)
God: Well, do you believe your own daughters did well learning within the Texas school system?
Bush: "Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis."
(CNBC, April 15, 2000) "Then you wake up at the high school level and find out that the illiteracy level of our
children are appalling." George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004
God: Hmmmm. Ok. Can you summarize the job you feel you did as Governor?
Bush: "One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'."
God: And you believe your judgements were fair?
Bush: "I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future." ''I know what I believe.
I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe—I believe what I believe is right."—Rome, July 22, 2001
God: "Only I know the future, George.
Bush: "The future will be better tomorrow."
God: I wouldn't say that's true for the 152 people you executed as Governor.
Bush: "The only things that I can tell you is that every case I have reviewed I have been comfortable with the innocence
or guilt of the person that I've looked at. I do not believe we've put a guilty ... I mean innocent person to death in
the state of Texas." All Things Considered, NPR, June 16, 2000
God: Oh, but you did George. Based on your own human statistics 16 or 17% of all people executed are actually innocent.
Out of 152 people, do you know how many innocents you've allowed to die?
Bush: "I'm the master of low expectations." (Aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003)
God: And are you aware that the vast majority of those on death row are too poor to hire an attorney
who can represent them adequately?
Bush: "First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich
doesn't mean you're willing to kill." (Washington, D.C., May 19, 2003)
God: My, my. How good of you. As a Christian, are you aware that even a sparrow cannot fall
to the ground without my notice?
Bush: "Just remember it's the birds that's supposed to suffer, not the hunter." (Advising quail hunter and
New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, Roswell, N.M., Jan. 22, 2004)
God: There are several you've executed at this very moment living here in my Kingdom and they've been
interested in visiting with you.......if you make it in, that is.
Bush: "My answer is bring them on." (On Iraqi militants attacking U.S. forces, Washington, D.C., July 3, 2003)
God: One of them is Karla Faye Tucker. Remember the one you taunted when she asked you for mercy?
Bush: Oh, yeah....her. What a whiner. But, God, with all due respect, should I have pardoned her just
because Pat Robertson asked me to?
God: Who?
Bush: Pat Robertson.
God: Doesn't ring a bell. Let's move on....... Tell me, George, in your heart of hearts, what do you think of war?
Bush: "I think war is a dangerous place." (Washington, D.C., May 7, 2000)
God: Do you believe you worked for piece?
Bush: "The second pillar of peace and security in our world is the willingness of free nations, when the last resort
arrives, to retain aggression and evil by force." (Bush, speaking in London, England, Nov. 19, 2003)
God: What about the families of those who have fought and died in Iraq so that you, Cheney, Rimsfeld,
and Wolfowitz could get control of their oilfields?
Bush: "Obviously, I pray every day there's less casualty." (Fort Hood, Texas, April 11, 2004) But, we went there to
free the Iraqi people from Sadaam Hussein! [my words]
God: George, George. This is God you're talking to, remember?
Bush: "The truth of that matter is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he were president of the
United States, and we’d be a lot better off." (Bush at the second presidential debate in St. Louis, Oct. 8, 2004.)
God: Say, what?
Bush: "The world is more peaceful and more free under my leadership." (Source: The Boston Globe, Oct. 29, 2003)
God: What are your feelings for those families who have lost loved ones in the war?
Bush: "There's only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids upon the death
of their loved one. Others hug but having committed the troops, I've got an additional responsibility to
hug and that's me and I know what it's like." (Source: ABC News Transcripts, "President Bush and First Lady Bush
'20/20' Year-End Interview," Dec. 13, 2002
God: Let's move on. Do you believe you did a good job with the economy as president?
Bush: "By making the right choices, we can make the right choice for our future." (Bush, sharing insights into improving
Americans' health and fitness Source: The White House, "President Bush Highlights Health and Fitness Initiative: Remarks by the
President on Fitness," July 18, 2003)
God: But, did you bring experts in to consult about the best economic path to take for the country?
Bush: "We don't believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans." (Scranton, Pa., Sept. 6, 2000)
God: Okay, but you do have a budget, right?
Bush: "It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."- (Reuters, May 5, 2000)
God: Having an MBA degree from Harvard, I need to know your economic philosophy once and for all.
Bush: Okay. "Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits
are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases.
There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers,
affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be
— or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's
a series of things that cause the — like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed
to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate — the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed
to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast
benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those — if that growth is affected, it will help on the red."
—George W. Bush, explaining his plan to save Social Security, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005
God: There's a talking ass in the Old Testament that made more sense than you, but let me take a stab at it.....
Are you talking about Social Security?
Bush: Over your head a little?
God: Way over my head. Why didn't you listen more to the Democrats?
Bush: "They want the Federal Government controling Social Security like it's some kind of Federal program."
(ST. CHARLES, MO., NOV. 2, 2000)
God: But........never mind. You gave huge tax cuts to the absolute wealthiest Americans, George. Why?
Bush: "We ought to make the pie higher." (SOUTH CAROLINA REPUBLICAN DEBATE, FEB. 15, 2000)
God: You want the pie higher?
Bush: "See, without the tax relief package, there would have been a deficit, but there wouldn't have been the commiserate—
not 'commiserate'—the kick to our economy that occurred as a result of the tax relief."
God: But, George, all the money you gave away is the main reason for the deficit! It kicked the economy alright. Right in the ribs!
Bush: "Let me tell you my thoughts about tax relief. When your economy is kind of ooching along, it's important to let people
have more of their own money." (Boston, Oct. 4, 2002) "It's very important for folks to understand that when there's more
trade, there's more commerce." (Quebec City, Canada, April 21, 2001)
God: That's not a smart answer at all. And you actually graduated from Harvard with an MBA degree?
Bush: "I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating [me]." (U.S. News & World Report, April 3, 2000)
God: You're forgetting, George. I'm God. Anyway, let's try foreign policy. What was the driving force behind your foreign policy?
Bush: "This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating." (as quoted by the New York Daily News, April 23, 2002)
God: Yeah, tell me about it. But, what is your general theory to solving the problems of mankind?
Bush: "[W]hether they be Christian, Jew, or Muslim, or Hindu, people have heard the universal call to love a neighbor just like
they'd like to be called themselves." (Washington, Oct. 8, 2003)
God: Okay.....I guess. What else?
Bush: "We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur."
God: What?
Bush: "It's time for the human race to enter the solar system."
God: You are in the solar system, George.
Bush: Well, I guess you oughta know! (henh, henh, henh, henh, henh)
God: (I should have given him a different laugh) Listen carefully. Give me something specific that you've done that
showed you cared for my people around the world.
Bush: "We had a good Cabinet meeting, talked about a lot of issues. Secretary of State and Defense brought us up to
date about our desires to spread freedom and peace around the world." (Washington, D.C., Aug. 1, 2003)
God: Were any decisions made?
Bush: "Security is the essential roadblock to achieving the road map to peace." (Washington, D.C., July 25, 2003)
God: What!?
Bush: I don't chew my cabbage twice.
God: Do you know who you're talking to?
Bush: "I don't bring God into my life to—to, you know, kind of be a political person." (Interview with Tom Brokaw
aboard Air Force One, April 24, 2003)
God: And I'm not "kind of a political person." I'm neither Democrat or Republican. But, you've convinced so many people
on earth that you were such a moral, Christian man of God who only wanted to follow my instructions and do the
right things, I just think it's fair that you convince me, too....especially if you think you're going to park your butt
inside these gates for eternity!!
Bush: Okay, okay......don't get your robes in a wad. What is it you have to know, God? No offense, but I'm in
a bit of a hurry. Laura's waiting, you know.
God: What is your idea of justice, George?
Bush: "Justice ought to be fair." (speaking at the Whitehouse Economic Conference, Dec 15, 2004)
God: I'm really concerned about you. Do you have any concept at all about the huge problems on earth?
Bush: Yes, I do. "In 2000, alone, obesity costs totaled the country an estimated cost of $117 billion."
(Bush, promoting his Health and Fitness Initiative)
God: I see no purpose in pursuing this any longer. I may as well let you in with the others.
Bush: "Do you have blacks, too?" (Bush, speaking to Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Source: Salon.com, "Bushed," Jake Tapper, June 20, 2002)
God: Yes, George. And guess what? There are gays here, also!
Bush: Seriously?
God: Is there anything else you want to know before you go in? Any question you've had all your
life that you knew only I could answer?
Bush: Yeah, as a matter of fact.
God: Okay, what is it?
Bush: "Will the highways on the Internet become more few?" (CONCORD, N.H., JAN. 29, 2000)
God: Let me get back with you on that, George.
Bush: Okay. Do you have any questions for me?
God: Yeah, Have you ever been bitch-slapped?
THE SENIOR ALPHABET
THE SENIOR ALPHABET
A is for Apple, and B is for Boat,
That used to be right, But now it won't float!
Age before Beauty is what we once said,
But let's be a bit more realistic instead:
Now A's for arthritis; B's the bad back,
C is the chest pains, perhaps cardiac?
D is for dental decay and decline,
E is for eyesight, can't read that top line!
F is for fissures and fluid retention,
G is for gas which I'd rather not mention.
H is high blood pressure--I'd rather it low;
I for incisions with scars you can show.
J is for joints, out of socket, won't mend,
K is for knees that crack when they bend.
L for libido, what happened to sex?
M is for memory, I forget what comes next.
N is neuralgia, in nerves way down low;
O is for osteo, the bones that don't grow!
P for prescription's, I have quite a few,
Just give me a pill. I'll be good as new!
Q is for queasy, is it fatal or flu?
R for reflux, one meal turns to two.
S for sleepless nights, counting my fears,
T for Tinnitus; there's bells in my ears!
U is for urinary; big troubles with flow;
V is for vertigo, that's "dizzy," you know
W is for worry. Now what's going 'round?
X is for X ray, and what might be found.
Y is another year I'm left here behind,
Z is for zest that I still have in my mind.
I've survived all the symptoms, my body's deployed,
And I've kept twenty-six doctors fully employed
A is for Apple, and B is for Boat,
That used to be right, But now it won't float!
Age before Beauty is what we once said,
But let's be a bit more realistic instead:
Now A's for arthritis; B's the bad back,
C is the chest pains, perhaps cardiac?
D is for dental decay and decline,
E is for eyesight, can't read that top line!
F is for fissures and fluid retention,
G is for gas which I'd rather not mention.
H is high blood pressure--I'd rather it low;
I for incisions with scars you can show.
J is for joints, out of socket, won't mend,
K is for knees that crack when they bend.
L for libido, what happened to sex?
M is for memory, I forget what comes next.
N is neuralgia, in nerves way down low;
O is for osteo, the bones that don't grow!
P for prescription's, I have quite a few,
Just give me a pill. I'll be good as new!
Q is for queasy, is it fatal or flu?
R for reflux, one meal turns to two.
S for sleepless nights, counting my fears,
T for Tinnitus; there's bells in my ears!
U is for urinary; big troubles with flow;
V is for vertigo, that's "dizzy," you know
W is for worry. Now what's going 'round?
X is for X ray, and what might be found.
Y is another year I'm left here behind,
Z is for zest that I still have in my mind.
I've survived all the symptoms, my body's deployed,
And I've kept twenty-six doctors fully employed
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Panel Seeks Social Security Cuts and Tax Increases
Panel Seeks Social Security Cuts and Tax Increases
By JACKIE CALMES
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: November 10, 2010
WASHINGTON — The chairmen of President Obama’s bipartisan commission on reducing the national debt outlined a politically provocative and economically ambitious package of spending cuts and tax increases on Wednesday, igniting a debate that is likely to grip the country for years.
The plan calls for deep cuts in domestic and military spending, a gradual 15-cents-a-gallon increase in the federal gasoline tax, limiting or eliminating popular tax breaks in return for lower rates, and benefit cuts and an increased retirement age for Social Security.
Those changes and others, none of which would take effect before 2012 to avoid undermining the tepid economic recovery, would erase nearly $4 trillion from projected deficits through 2020, the proposal says, and stabilize the accumulated debt.
“It’s time to lay it out on the table and let the American people start to chew on it,” said Alan K. Simpson, the former Republican Senate leader who is one of the co-chairmen, along with Erskine B. Bowles, who was White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton.
Their outline will be the basis for negotiation within the commission, which has a Dec. 1 deadline for submitting a final plan. It represents a challenge to both parties: to Mr. Obama and the Democrats, to show in the wake of the midterm election that they are serious about their pledges to address long-term deficits, and to Republicans, who for the most part have ruled out consideration of tax increases even as they have promised new adherence to fiscal responsibility.
Liberal groups immediately condemned the plan when news of it broke, for its Social Security and Medicare changes and for the scope of the spending cuts. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in a statement called it “simply unacceptable.”
The furor on the left was not matched — yet — by a similar outcry from the right to the draft’s proposed revenue increases, cuts to the military or other options.
The plan has many elements with the potential to draw intense political fire. It lays out options for overhauling the tax code that include limiting or eliminating the mortgage interest deduction, the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit. It envisions cutting Pentagon weapons programs and paring back almost all domestic programs.
The plan would reduce cost-of-living increases for all federal programs, including Social Security. It would reduce projected Social Security benefits to most retirees in later decades, though low-income people would get higher benefits. The retirement age for full benefits would be slowly raised to 69 from 67 by 2075, with a “hardship exemption” for people who physically cannot work past 62. And higher levels of income would be subject to payroll taxes.
But the plan would not count Social Security savings toward the overall deficit-reduction goal that Mr. Obama set for fiscal year 2015, reflecting the chairmen’s sensitivity to liberal critics who have complained that Social Security should be fixed only for its own sake, not to help balance the nation’s books.
Mr. Obama created the commission last February in the hope it would provide political cover for bold action against deficits in 2011. His stance now, in the wake of his party’s drubbing, will go a long way toward telling whether he tacks to the political center — by embracing such proposals — or shifts to the left and leaves them on a shelf.
For Republicans, the chairmen’s proposals and a similar report coming next week from a private bipartisan group will challenge their contention that the budget can be balanced by spending cuts alone. That is a claim that many conservative economists and budget analysts reject, given the scale of projected debt as the baby boom generation retires and begins claiming costly federal benefits, after a severe recession.
Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson said their plan was “a starting point” as members of the commission met behind closed doors to consider it.
That was clear from the initial reactions of the members, nine of them Democrats, seven Republicans. None embraced the package and several made clear they would not support it without big changes.
“I think every member of the commission would agree that this is not the plan,” said Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, who is perhaps the panel’s most liberal member.
The group had made no decisions before the midterm elections, to avoid politicizing the painful options. Even so, the election results — by emboldening victorious antitax conservatives and having led to the defeat of many fiscally conservative Congressional Democrats — are widely seen as having reduced the already slim chance that a supermajority of the commission could agree to a package of proposals by Dec. 1.
Under Mr. Obama’s executive order creating the panel of 12 members of Congress and six private citizens, 14 of the 18 commissioners must agree in order to send any package to Congress for a vote in December. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and Ms. Pelosi, who will remain the speaker until January, have promised in writing that the Senate would vote first and, if it approves a plan, the House would vote.
“I think it’s possible” that 14 members will agree, said Senator Tom Coburn, a conservative Oklahoma Republican who worked closely with the chairmen on proposed reductions from the military and in so-called tax expenditures, the myriad tax breaks for individuals and businesses that cost more than $1 trillion a year. “You don’t know until you see what the final plan is.”
In five hours of deliberations on Wednesday, the commission did not discuss the plan’s particulars much but instead talked at length about whether a lame-duck Congress would have time to write specific legislation and then vote, members said in interviews. It was unclear, they said, whether that was a sign other members thought the commission actually could reach agreement, or whether they were hiding behind concerns about legislative procedures to avoid tough policy decisions.
“At least people stayed in the room,” Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union, said in an interview, recalling his concerns and others’ that Republicans would walk out if taxes were on the table and Democrats if Social Security and other spending programs were.
Right now the biggest issue facing the lame-duck Congress is whether to extend the Bush-era income tax cuts, which expire Dec. 31, for all taxpayers, as Republicans want, or for income below $250,000, as Mr. Obama and Democrats want. The Bowles-Simpson plan includes one option that assumes only the lower-income rates are extended and another that ends all Bush tax rates and replaces the tax code with simpler, lower rates and many fewer tax breaks.
Extending all the Bush tax cuts through 2020 would add more than $4 trillion to the debt — coincidentally, about the same amount that the chairmen’s painful options are designed to cut in the same time frame.
Their proposed simplification of the tax code would repeal or modify a number of popular tax breaks — including the deductibility of mortgage interest payments — so that income tax rates could be reduced across the board. Under one option, individual income tax rates would decline to as low as 8 percent for the lowest income bracket (it is now 10 percent) and to 23 percent for the highest bracket (now 35 percent). The corporate tax rate, now 35 percent, would be reduced to as low as 26 percent.
But how low the rates are set would depend on how many tax breaks are reduced or eliminated. Some of them, including the mortgage interest deduction and the exemption from taxes for employees’ health benefits, are political sacred cows.
The 18.4-cents-a-gallon federal gasoline tax would rise by 15 cents between 2013 and 2015 so that transportation spending no longer requires money from the general treasury.
The plan would cut $2 from spending for every $1 in new revenues. Total spending would be about 22 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, and revenues would be held to 21 percent.
Cuts in annual discretionary spending, domestic and military, would be the largest in recent decades. Farm subsidies would be reduced. To further reduce growth in the fast-growing entitlement programs, the plan would expand on the hard-won Medicare cost savings in Mr. Obama’s health care law. And it would limit malpractice awards, long a Republican goal.
David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting.
By JACKIE CALMES
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: November 10, 2010
WASHINGTON — The chairmen of President Obama’s bipartisan commission on reducing the national debt outlined a politically provocative and economically ambitious package of spending cuts and tax increases on Wednesday, igniting a debate that is likely to grip the country for years.
The plan calls for deep cuts in domestic and military spending, a gradual 15-cents-a-gallon increase in the federal gasoline tax, limiting or eliminating popular tax breaks in return for lower rates, and benefit cuts and an increased retirement age for Social Security.
Those changes and others, none of which would take effect before 2012 to avoid undermining the tepid economic recovery, would erase nearly $4 trillion from projected deficits through 2020, the proposal says, and stabilize the accumulated debt.
“It’s time to lay it out on the table and let the American people start to chew on it,” said Alan K. Simpson, the former Republican Senate leader who is one of the co-chairmen, along with Erskine B. Bowles, who was White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton.
Their outline will be the basis for negotiation within the commission, which has a Dec. 1 deadline for submitting a final plan. It represents a challenge to both parties: to Mr. Obama and the Democrats, to show in the wake of the midterm election that they are serious about their pledges to address long-term deficits, and to Republicans, who for the most part have ruled out consideration of tax increases even as they have promised new adherence to fiscal responsibility.
Liberal groups immediately condemned the plan when news of it broke, for its Social Security and Medicare changes and for the scope of the spending cuts. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in a statement called it “simply unacceptable.”
The furor on the left was not matched — yet — by a similar outcry from the right to the draft’s proposed revenue increases, cuts to the military or other options.
The plan has many elements with the potential to draw intense political fire. It lays out options for overhauling the tax code that include limiting or eliminating the mortgage interest deduction, the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit. It envisions cutting Pentagon weapons programs and paring back almost all domestic programs.
The plan would reduce cost-of-living increases for all federal programs, including Social Security. It would reduce projected Social Security benefits to most retirees in later decades, though low-income people would get higher benefits. The retirement age for full benefits would be slowly raised to 69 from 67 by 2075, with a “hardship exemption” for people who physically cannot work past 62. And higher levels of income would be subject to payroll taxes.
But the plan would not count Social Security savings toward the overall deficit-reduction goal that Mr. Obama set for fiscal year 2015, reflecting the chairmen’s sensitivity to liberal critics who have complained that Social Security should be fixed only for its own sake, not to help balance the nation’s books.
Mr. Obama created the commission last February in the hope it would provide political cover for bold action against deficits in 2011. His stance now, in the wake of his party’s drubbing, will go a long way toward telling whether he tacks to the political center — by embracing such proposals — or shifts to the left and leaves them on a shelf.
For Republicans, the chairmen’s proposals and a similar report coming next week from a private bipartisan group will challenge their contention that the budget can be balanced by spending cuts alone. That is a claim that many conservative economists and budget analysts reject, given the scale of projected debt as the baby boom generation retires and begins claiming costly federal benefits, after a severe recession.
Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson said their plan was “a starting point” as members of the commission met behind closed doors to consider it.
That was clear from the initial reactions of the members, nine of them Democrats, seven Republicans. None embraced the package and several made clear they would not support it without big changes.
“I think every member of the commission would agree that this is not the plan,” said Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, who is perhaps the panel’s most liberal member.
The group had made no decisions before the midterm elections, to avoid politicizing the painful options. Even so, the election results — by emboldening victorious antitax conservatives and having led to the defeat of many fiscally conservative Congressional Democrats — are widely seen as having reduced the already slim chance that a supermajority of the commission could agree to a package of proposals by Dec. 1.
Under Mr. Obama’s executive order creating the panel of 12 members of Congress and six private citizens, 14 of the 18 commissioners must agree in order to send any package to Congress for a vote in December. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and Ms. Pelosi, who will remain the speaker until January, have promised in writing that the Senate would vote first and, if it approves a plan, the House would vote.
“I think it’s possible” that 14 members will agree, said Senator Tom Coburn, a conservative Oklahoma Republican who worked closely with the chairmen on proposed reductions from the military and in so-called tax expenditures, the myriad tax breaks for individuals and businesses that cost more than $1 trillion a year. “You don’t know until you see what the final plan is.”
In five hours of deliberations on Wednesday, the commission did not discuss the plan’s particulars much but instead talked at length about whether a lame-duck Congress would have time to write specific legislation and then vote, members said in interviews. It was unclear, they said, whether that was a sign other members thought the commission actually could reach agreement, or whether they were hiding behind concerns about legislative procedures to avoid tough policy decisions.
“At least people stayed in the room,” Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union, said in an interview, recalling his concerns and others’ that Republicans would walk out if taxes were on the table and Democrats if Social Security and other spending programs were.
Right now the biggest issue facing the lame-duck Congress is whether to extend the Bush-era income tax cuts, which expire Dec. 31, for all taxpayers, as Republicans want, or for income below $250,000, as Mr. Obama and Democrats want. The Bowles-Simpson plan includes one option that assumes only the lower-income rates are extended and another that ends all Bush tax rates and replaces the tax code with simpler, lower rates and many fewer tax breaks.
Extending all the Bush tax cuts through 2020 would add more than $4 trillion to the debt — coincidentally, about the same amount that the chairmen’s painful options are designed to cut in the same time frame.
Their proposed simplification of the tax code would repeal or modify a number of popular tax breaks — including the deductibility of mortgage interest payments — so that income tax rates could be reduced across the board. Under one option, individual income tax rates would decline to as low as 8 percent for the lowest income bracket (it is now 10 percent) and to 23 percent for the highest bracket (now 35 percent). The corporate tax rate, now 35 percent, would be reduced to as low as 26 percent.
But how low the rates are set would depend on how many tax breaks are reduced or eliminated. Some of them, including the mortgage interest deduction and the exemption from taxes for employees’ health benefits, are political sacred cows.
The 18.4-cents-a-gallon federal gasoline tax would rise by 15 cents between 2013 and 2015 so that transportation spending no longer requires money from the general treasury.
The plan would cut $2 from spending for every $1 in new revenues. Total spending would be about 22 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, and revenues would be held to 21 percent.
Cuts in annual discretionary spending, domestic and military, would be the largest in recent decades. Farm subsidies would be reduced. To further reduce growth in the fast-growing entitlement programs, the plan would expand on the hard-won Medicare cost savings in Mr. Obama’s health care law. And it would limit malpractice awards, long a Republican goal.
David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
THE TEABAGGER
THE TEABAGGER
The Teabagger gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning pot of tea. He fills
his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for
minimum water quality standards.
He takes his daily psychotropic medication with his first swallow of tea.
His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure
their safety and work as advertised.
All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employer's (FOX News)
medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for
paid medical insurance reform, now The Teabagger gets it too.
He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. The Teabagger's
bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the
meat packing industry.
The Teabagger takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle
is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents,
because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on
his body and how much it contained.
The Teabagger dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he
breathes is clean because some tree-hugging liberal fought for laws to stop
industries from polluting our air.
The Teabagger begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay,
medical benefits, sick days, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because
some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards.
The Teabagger's employer accepts these standards, because The Teabagger's
employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.
If The Teabagger is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a
worker compensation or unemployment check, because some liberal didn't
think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
It's noon time.
The Teabagger needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills.
The Teabagger's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC or FDIC because
some liberal wanted to protect The Teabagger's money from unscrupulous
bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.
The Teabagger has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his
below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided
that The Teabagger and the government would be better off if he was
educated and earned more money over his lifetime.
The Teabagger is home from work. He plans to visit his father this
evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the
drive to dad's; his car is among the safest in the world because some
liberal fought for car safety standards.
He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live
in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration, because bankers
didn't want to make rural loans.
The house didn't have electricity until some big government liberal
stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.
(Those rural Republicans would still be sitting in the dark)
He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social
Security and his union pension, because some liberal made sure he could
take care of himself so The Teabagger wouldn't have to.
After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.
He turns on a radio talk show, the host keeps saying that liberals are
bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn't tell The Teabagger that
his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit
The Teabagger enjoys throughout his day)
The Teabagger agrees, “We don't need those big government liberals
ruining our lives.”
The Teabagger gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning pot of tea. He fills
his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for
minimum water quality standards.
He takes his daily psychotropic medication with his first swallow of tea.
His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure
their safety and work as advertised.
All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employer's (FOX News)
medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for
paid medical insurance reform, now The Teabagger gets it too.
He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. The Teabagger's
bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the
meat packing industry.
The Teabagger takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle
is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents,
because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on
his body and how much it contained.
The Teabagger dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he
breathes is clean because some tree-hugging liberal fought for laws to stop
industries from polluting our air.
The Teabagger begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay,
medical benefits, sick days, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because
some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards.
The Teabagger's employer accepts these standards, because The Teabagger's
employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.
If The Teabagger is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a
worker compensation or unemployment check, because some liberal didn't
think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
It's noon time.
The Teabagger needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills.
The Teabagger's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC or FDIC because
some liberal wanted to protect The Teabagger's money from unscrupulous
bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.
The Teabagger has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his
below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided
that The Teabagger and the government would be better off if he was
educated and earned more money over his lifetime.
The Teabagger is home from work. He plans to visit his father this
evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the
drive to dad's; his car is among the safest in the world because some
liberal fought for car safety standards.
He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live
in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration, because bankers
didn't want to make rural loans.
The house didn't have electricity until some big government liberal
stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.
(Those rural Republicans would still be sitting in the dark)
He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social
Security and his union pension, because some liberal made sure he could
take care of himself so The Teabagger wouldn't have to.
After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.
He turns on a radio talk show, the host keeps saying that liberals are
bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn't tell The Teabagger that
his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit
The Teabagger enjoys throughout his day)
The Teabagger agrees, “We don't need those big government liberals
ruining our lives.”
Saturday, November 6, 2010
36 Hours in St. Martin/St. Maarten
36 Hours in St. Martin/St. Maarten
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: November 4, 2010
http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/travel/07st-martin-36hours.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha29
AMONG the accolades awarded to Caribbean islands (most beautiful beach, easiest on the budget, most relaxing), the award for most densely developed probably goes to St. Martin/St. Maarten — the half-Dutch, half-French island in the West Indies. That is not to say the island’s natural beauty is ruined. It remains a stunningly picturesque place with some of the Caribbean’s most arresting scenery (here it could win a prize, too). But all that development — boutique hotels, casinos, marinas, high-rise resorts — means visitors are never short on options. And thanks to a seemingly endless construction boom, those options keep multiplying.
A Weekend in St. Martin/St. Maarten
Friday
5 p.m.
1) FOR WINE LOVERS
Conventional wisdom holds that the Dutch side of the island (St. Maarten) operates at a faster pace than the French side (St. Martin). In truth, both are bustling — the main difference being that the Dutch side has more branded full-service resorts, while the French side has more mom-and-pops. For a warm introduction to the island, head to the French town of Grand Case and the bar at the Love Hotel (140 Boulevard de Grand Case; 590-590-29-87-14; love-sxm.com), which sits on stilts over the sand, offering an idyllic perch to watch the sun dip into the sea. Opened last year by a young French couple, the hotel has a stellar wine list (5 euros, or $6.80 at $1.36 to the euro, a glass), and predinner appetizers like a beef carpaccio (11 euros).
8 p.m.
2) ANDES ON THE CARIBBEAN
You’ll have plenty of time to sample the buttery-rich French cuisine. Opt for something a little less conventional at Patagonia (Plaza Puerta del Sol, Simpson Bay Yacht Club; 599-544-3394; www.patagonia-restaurant.com), an Argentine steakhouse that opened this summer on the Dutch side. No Caribbean kitsch here: the atmosphere is modern and sleek, with dark gray slate and stone walls. The tenderloins and rib eyes, grass-fed and flown in from Argentina ($25 to $38), come with your choice of sauce (criolla, chimichurri or malbec), a salad and a side dish.
10 p.m.
3) ROLL THE DICE
Gambling is one of St. Maarten’s biggest draws. And aside from the blare of a yacht horn or the squeak of a tree frog, the synthesized ping of the slot machine might be the island’s most recognizable sound. Near the French border, the Princess Casino at Port de Plaisance (Cole Bay; 599-544-4311; princessportdeplaisance.com) feels removed from the ceaseless drumbeat. In addition to the usual blackjack, poker and roulette tables, the casino is known for its colorful floor shows with dancers in feather headdresses and billowing gowns gliding across the stage.
Saturday
10 a.m.
4) PRIME BEACH
Few experiences are as uniquely St. Martin as a stroll down the beach at Orient Bay, known for its pulsing beach bars at one end and a naturist resort at the other. You’ve been warned: this is a clothing-optional beach. It faces east, so get there early and rent a chair and umbrella from one of the dozen or so bars that line the beach. The going rate for two chairs and an umbrella is about 15 euros, and a couple of drinks are usually part of the deal. Kakao Beach (on Orient Bay; 590-590-87-43-26; kakaobeach.com) has one of the biggest spreads on the water and some of the nicest scenery, offering not only chairs in the sand but also thatch-canopied tables spread out in a small grove of palm trees.
Noon
5) SEAFOOD RIVIERA
The small town of Grand Case, on the French side, is the island’s culinary center. Elegant French bistros line both sides of the main street, which hugs the beach. Talk of the Town Too (Boulevard de Grand Case) won’t win awards for refinement. Its open-air dining area consists of little more than picnic tables, a grill and a chalkboard menu. But there is a satisfying sea breeze, and you can haggle for your meal. Tell the servers what the competition is charging for a grilled lobster, and they might cut you a deal. For about $20, expect a decent-size lobster tail with a couple of homemade sides like rice and beans and corn on the cob. For dessert, just a minute on foot down the street is La Crepe en Rose (Boulevard de Grand Case), a pink-and-white food cart that serves crepes with a variety of flavors, including strawberry and apricot jam and Nutella, for 3 or 3.50 euros.
2 p.m.
6) JUST A LITTLE FARTHER
Some of the island’s natural beauty is hidden behind artificial eyesores. Case in point: the hike through the nature preserve known as the Wilderness on the island’s northernmost tip. To get there, you have to first walk past a landfill. But once you clear the trash-strewn first leg of the trail, you will be rewarded with some of the island’s most sweeping vistas. The trail hugs a steep hill through fields of cactus and then deposits you on a rocky beach. Keep going, and you will shortly reach your reward — the pristine, secluded Petites Cayes beach.
5 p.m.
7) JET BLAST
The signs — they say “Danger” in bright red letters and depict a man getting blown off his feet by a landing jet — could not be clearer. Yet that doesn’t seem to deter people from lining up on the beach at the foot of the runway at Princess Juliana International Airport to jump up as if they could touch the approaching aircraft with their fingertips. This spectacle poses several confounding questions: Don’t they realize they can’t jump high enough to reach the planes? And don’t they realize what would happen to them if they did? Save your dignity and watch from a safe distance at nearby Sunset Beach Bar and Grill (Caravanserai Resort; 599-545-2084; sunsetsxm.com). The rumble from the approaching aircraft will still rattle your table as you savor a bottle of beer ($3) and snack on their pizzas ($11 to $15).
8 p.m.
8) QUAY-SIDE DINING
One of the most ambitious and pricey new developments to land on St. Maarten is the Porto Cupecoy (portocupecoy.com), a marina, condo, retail and restaurant complex built by Orient Express Hotels. Everything is immaculate, like the neatly arranged beach tables with umbrellas, and the carefully manicured landscaping. The same goes for its restaurants. Maximo Cafe (Porto Cupecoy; 599-554-0333), a seafood-heavy French restaurant, is gaining a reputation as one of the island’s top spots. Pastas include tagliatelle with scallops ($22); main courses include a filet of turbot with a riesling sauce ($55).
11 p.m.
9) RED RUM
Bars with traditional Caribbean flair — life preservers on the wall, an umbrella in your drink — are easy enough to find on the island. For something decidedly lacking in tropical flair, head to the Red Piano on the Dutch side (Pelican Resort; 599-544-6008). The piano, along with the walls and tabletops, is, indeed, red. Live bands play many nights, and the action goes well into the early morning hours. Try the guavaberry rum, a local specialty, made from, you guessed it, guavaberry ($8).
Sunday
9 a.m.
10) PAIN ET CHOCOLATE
A decent, and decently priced, breakfast can be hard to come by. But along the waterfront boulevard in Marigot, the capital of the French side, are dueling bakeries that serve up fresh croissants (chocolate and plain), tarts (a variety of assorted fruits like strawberry and pineapple) and éclairs: La Sucrière (Boulevard de France; 590-590-51-13-30) and Sarafina’s (Boulevard de France; 590-590-29-73-69). Five euros is about as pricey as anything gets.
Noon
11) FRENCH DIP
Some beaches are overdeveloped. Some are untouched. For something in the middle, head to Baie Rouge on the island’s French side. The beach is a wide, gradually sloping crescent of pillowy, straw-colored sand. A natural jetty juts out at one end, offering views of the soaring cliffs that bookend the beach. Access is simple. The beach lies right off a main road and there is a parking lot a few steps from the sand, another sign that on the island they build wherever there is suitable land.
IF YOU GO
A rental car is recommended for getting around the island.
The Hotel L’Esplanade (Grand Case; 590-590-87-06-55; lesplanade.com) is a charming boutique hotel on the French side, overlooking downtown Grand Case and the beach. All rooms have private terraces and kitchens, with rates starting at $245 through Dec. 19.
The Love Hotel (140 Boulevard de Grand Case; 590-590-29-87-14; love-sxm.com) is right on the beach in downtown Grand Case. Its seven rooms were recently renovated with dark-wood furniture and bright white walls; from 105 euros ($142).
La Samanna Resort & Spa (Baie Longue; 800-957-6128; lasamanna.com) is the place to be on St. Martin if you want friends to gasp with jealousy. The entry price is high: rooms start at about $495 this month. But this is as full-service as resorts come, and on one of the island’s prettiest stretches of beach.
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: November 4, 2010
http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/travel/07st-martin-36hours.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha29
AMONG the accolades awarded to Caribbean islands (most beautiful beach, easiest on the budget, most relaxing), the award for most densely developed probably goes to St. Martin/St. Maarten — the half-Dutch, half-French island in the West Indies. That is not to say the island’s natural beauty is ruined. It remains a stunningly picturesque place with some of the Caribbean’s most arresting scenery (here it could win a prize, too). But all that development — boutique hotels, casinos, marinas, high-rise resorts — means visitors are never short on options. And thanks to a seemingly endless construction boom, those options keep multiplying.
A Weekend in St. Martin/St. Maarten
Friday
5 p.m.
1) FOR WINE LOVERS
Conventional wisdom holds that the Dutch side of the island (St. Maarten) operates at a faster pace than the French side (St. Martin). In truth, both are bustling — the main difference being that the Dutch side has more branded full-service resorts, while the French side has more mom-and-pops. For a warm introduction to the island, head to the French town of Grand Case and the bar at the Love Hotel (140 Boulevard de Grand Case; 590-590-29-87-14; love-sxm.com), which sits on stilts over the sand, offering an idyllic perch to watch the sun dip into the sea. Opened last year by a young French couple, the hotel has a stellar wine list (5 euros, or $6.80 at $1.36 to the euro, a glass), and predinner appetizers like a beef carpaccio (11 euros).
8 p.m.
2) ANDES ON THE CARIBBEAN
You’ll have plenty of time to sample the buttery-rich French cuisine. Opt for something a little less conventional at Patagonia (Plaza Puerta del Sol, Simpson Bay Yacht Club; 599-544-3394; www.patagonia-restaurant.com), an Argentine steakhouse that opened this summer on the Dutch side. No Caribbean kitsch here: the atmosphere is modern and sleek, with dark gray slate and stone walls. The tenderloins and rib eyes, grass-fed and flown in from Argentina ($25 to $38), come with your choice of sauce (criolla, chimichurri or malbec), a salad and a side dish.
10 p.m.
3) ROLL THE DICE
Gambling is one of St. Maarten’s biggest draws. And aside from the blare of a yacht horn or the squeak of a tree frog, the synthesized ping of the slot machine might be the island’s most recognizable sound. Near the French border, the Princess Casino at Port de Plaisance (Cole Bay; 599-544-4311; princessportdeplaisance.com) feels removed from the ceaseless drumbeat. In addition to the usual blackjack, poker and roulette tables, the casino is known for its colorful floor shows with dancers in feather headdresses and billowing gowns gliding across the stage.
Saturday
10 a.m.
4) PRIME BEACH
Few experiences are as uniquely St. Martin as a stroll down the beach at Orient Bay, known for its pulsing beach bars at one end and a naturist resort at the other. You’ve been warned: this is a clothing-optional beach. It faces east, so get there early and rent a chair and umbrella from one of the dozen or so bars that line the beach. The going rate for two chairs and an umbrella is about 15 euros, and a couple of drinks are usually part of the deal. Kakao Beach (on Orient Bay; 590-590-87-43-26; kakaobeach.com) has one of the biggest spreads on the water and some of the nicest scenery, offering not only chairs in the sand but also thatch-canopied tables spread out in a small grove of palm trees.
Noon
5) SEAFOOD RIVIERA
The small town of Grand Case, on the French side, is the island’s culinary center. Elegant French bistros line both sides of the main street, which hugs the beach. Talk of the Town Too (Boulevard de Grand Case) won’t win awards for refinement. Its open-air dining area consists of little more than picnic tables, a grill and a chalkboard menu. But there is a satisfying sea breeze, and you can haggle for your meal. Tell the servers what the competition is charging for a grilled lobster, and they might cut you a deal. For about $20, expect a decent-size lobster tail with a couple of homemade sides like rice and beans and corn on the cob. For dessert, just a minute on foot down the street is La Crepe en Rose (Boulevard de Grand Case), a pink-and-white food cart that serves crepes with a variety of flavors, including strawberry and apricot jam and Nutella, for 3 or 3.50 euros.
2 p.m.
6) JUST A LITTLE FARTHER
Some of the island’s natural beauty is hidden behind artificial eyesores. Case in point: the hike through the nature preserve known as the Wilderness on the island’s northernmost tip. To get there, you have to first walk past a landfill. But once you clear the trash-strewn first leg of the trail, you will be rewarded with some of the island’s most sweeping vistas. The trail hugs a steep hill through fields of cactus and then deposits you on a rocky beach. Keep going, and you will shortly reach your reward — the pristine, secluded Petites Cayes beach.
5 p.m.
7) JET BLAST
The signs — they say “Danger” in bright red letters and depict a man getting blown off his feet by a landing jet — could not be clearer. Yet that doesn’t seem to deter people from lining up on the beach at the foot of the runway at Princess Juliana International Airport to jump up as if they could touch the approaching aircraft with their fingertips. This spectacle poses several confounding questions: Don’t they realize they can’t jump high enough to reach the planes? And don’t they realize what would happen to them if they did? Save your dignity and watch from a safe distance at nearby Sunset Beach Bar and Grill (Caravanserai Resort; 599-545-2084; sunsetsxm.com). The rumble from the approaching aircraft will still rattle your table as you savor a bottle of beer ($3) and snack on their pizzas ($11 to $15).
8 p.m.
8) QUAY-SIDE DINING
One of the most ambitious and pricey new developments to land on St. Maarten is the Porto Cupecoy (portocupecoy.com), a marina, condo, retail and restaurant complex built by Orient Express Hotels. Everything is immaculate, like the neatly arranged beach tables with umbrellas, and the carefully manicured landscaping. The same goes for its restaurants. Maximo Cafe (Porto Cupecoy; 599-554-0333), a seafood-heavy French restaurant, is gaining a reputation as one of the island’s top spots. Pastas include tagliatelle with scallops ($22); main courses include a filet of turbot with a riesling sauce ($55).
11 p.m.
9) RED RUM
Bars with traditional Caribbean flair — life preservers on the wall, an umbrella in your drink — are easy enough to find on the island. For something decidedly lacking in tropical flair, head to the Red Piano on the Dutch side (Pelican Resort; 599-544-6008). The piano, along with the walls and tabletops, is, indeed, red. Live bands play many nights, and the action goes well into the early morning hours. Try the guavaberry rum, a local specialty, made from, you guessed it, guavaberry ($8).
Sunday
9 a.m.
10) PAIN ET CHOCOLATE
A decent, and decently priced, breakfast can be hard to come by. But along the waterfront boulevard in Marigot, the capital of the French side, are dueling bakeries that serve up fresh croissants (chocolate and plain), tarts (a variety of assorted fruits like strawberry and pineapple) and éclairs: La Sucrière (Boulevard de France; 590-590-51-13-30) and Sarafina’s (Boulevard de France; 590-590-29-73-69). Five euros is about as pricey as anything gets.
Noon
11) FRENCH DIP
Some beaches are overdeveloped. Some are untouched. For something in the middle, head to Baie Rouge on the island’s French side. The beach is a wide, gradually sloping crescent of pillowy, straw-colored sand. A natural jetty juts out at one end, offering views of the soaring cliffs that bookend the beach. Access is simple. The beach lies right off a main road and there is a parking lot a few steps from the sand, another sign that on the island they build wherever there is suitable land.
IF YOU GO
A rental car is recommended for getting around the island.
The Hotel L’Esplanade (Grand Case; 590-590-87-06-55; lesplanade.com) is a charming boutique hotel on the French side, overlooking downtown Grand Case and the beach. All rooms have private terraces and kitchens, with rates starting at $245 through Dec. 19.
The Love Hotel (140 Boulevard de Grand Case; 590-590-29-87-14; love-sxm.com) is right on the beach in downtown Grand Case. Its seven rooms were recently renovated with dark-wood furniture and bright white walls; from 105 euros ($142).
La Samanna Resort & Spa (Baie Longue; 800-957-6128; lasamanna.com) is the place to be on St. Martin if you want friends to gasp with jealousy. The entry price is high: rooms start at about $495 this month. But this is as full-service as resorts come, and on one of the island’s prettiest stretches of beach.
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