How to Spot Aggressive Drivers

I was reading about the new High Occupancy Toll or HOT lanes on Interstate 95 and had the following thoughts:

• If the weekday commuters total between 250K and 300K on that I-95 stretch, then the typical commuters from Broward to Dade must number at least 200K. I've never seen numbers on that.
• I agree with the concept that commuters would pay heavy tolls to avoid traffic.
• Biggest obstacle will be safety, as confused and aggressive drivers will likely lead to terrible accidents initially.

The question is, when those terrible accidents occur initially, who would be in position to bring pressure on the FDOT to abandon the program. Truckers unions? Liberty City residents who are unable to participate given the location of the limited entry points? This is a classic case of the main group being affected [commuters], being so heterogeneous, that they are unable to effectively organize an opposition to the higher tolls which will affect them. Those commuters don't have enough in common each other beyond their commute. I can't think of any constituency which would be in a position to block this, but then again, I thought McCain had a shot.

The more I think about the idea, the better it gets. Imagine someone deciding to use the lanes and pay the toll. Then imagine that 3 miles into the 7 mile stretch, they notice that traffic in the free lanes is moving just fine. So they make a note not to pay the toll on certain days. But everyone else in the HOT lanes is going through the same decision process. So the next time, all those who noted the good movement in the free lanes would then have also selected the free lanes, now making them crowded again and causing them to revert back to the HOT lanes the next time. Beautiful.

So if the program is here to stay, how do the rest of us avoid those potentially dangerous drivers? Avoiding the young and the elderly on the roads is always a prudent first step. But beyond the obvious, is there another way to identify the type of drivers who put the rest of us in harms way?

Yes, avoid cars with bumper stickers. See the post from the always interesting Marginal Revolution blog.

That's the surprising conclusion of a recent study by Colorado State University social psychologist William Szlemko. Drivers of cars with bumper stickers, window decals, personalized license plates and other "territorial markers" not only get mad when someone cuts in their lane or is slow to respond to a changed traffic light, but they are far more likely than those who do not personalize their cars to use their vehicles to express rage -- by honking, tailgating and other aggressive behavior.

It does not seem to matter whether the messages on the stickers are about peace and love -- "Visualize World Peace," "My Kid Is an Honor Student" -- or angry and in your face -- "Don't Mess With Texas," "My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student."

...Drivers who do not personalize their cars get angry, too, Szlemko and his colleagues concluded in a paper they recently published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, but they don't act out their anger. They fume, mentally call the other driver a jerk, and move on.

"The more markers a car has, the more aggressively the person tends to drive when provoked," Szlemko said. "Just the presence of territory markers predicts the tendency to be an aggressive driver."

Article referenced is copied in full at end of post.

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What you need to know before tolls open on Interstate 95

BY LARRY LEBOWITZ

The state's grand experiment converting the underenforced High Occupancy Vehicle or HOV lanes into High Occupancy Toll or HOT lanes on Interstate 95 is finally ready to begin.

Tolls will officially begin in the northbound express lanes between downtown Miami and the Golden Glades interchange at 6 a.m. Dec. 5. On a typical weekday, 250,000 to 300,000 vehicles ride through this stretch of I-95.

The idea is that the tolls will rise, especially during the weekday afternoon rush hours, when traffic is heaviest and fall when vehicles are freely flowing.

For more information, check out our daily Q&A or call 1-877-959 -3368 or click on www.95express.com.

Q. Why is the state doing this?

A. Because it can't widen I-95 without taking a lot of homes or building a wildly expensive elevated tier of new lanes above the current roadway. Because growth outstripped road capacity decades ago. Because the HOV lanes didn't work well. Because the U.S. Department of Transportation is ponying up $63 million in ''seed money'' for new approaches to a nationwide urban congestion problem and to enhance more public transportation options.

Q. So, how will it work?

A. It's an electronic tollway. Solo drivers must have a SunPass to use the express lanes on the left-hand side. It is a straight seven-mile shot, with no exits, from downtown to Golden Glades. Car poolers and others don't need the SunPass (more on this later).

Q. What if I want to exit before the Golden Glades interchange?

A. No can do. You must stay to the right in the four ''free'' local lanes.

Q. Aw, c'mon. Really?

A. Really. Dodging between the candlestick lane markers is incredibly dangerous to all of the vehicles behind you in the express lanes and especially for the drivers you're about to cut off in the '''ree'' lanes. Besides the obvious safety issues, drivers could face reckless driving violations starting at $100.

Q. Can't they make another entry/exit point -- say, somewhere between the 95th and 103rd street exits?

A. Good question.

Original plans called for an entry/exit merging point between the 95th and 103rd Street exits in Miami Shores. But all of the computer models and engineering studies found that it would have only made congestion worse. The area was too tight to support all of the weaving, so it was eliminated.

Q. OK. So when do I need to get over to the right to avoid getting stuck in the toll lanes?

A. If you're approaching from the south, stay to the right near the exit for State Road 112, also known as the Airport Expressway, and Interstate 195, a k a the Julia Tuttle Causeway.

If you're coming from the west on State Road 112, watch the signs right after the tollbooth. Local traffic that needs to exit before the Golden Glades must stay to the right. The express lane begins on the old HOV ramp to northbound I-95 on the left.

Q. Can I get in the express lanes from the Julia Tuttle Causeway?

A. Not legally. If you live in Miami Beach and want to use the express lanes to get to the turnpike or the Palmetto Expressway (State Road 826) or points north, you maneuver south from the beach side and enter I-95 north via Interstate 395, a k a the MacArthur Causeway. Translation: The Express won't be worth it to most people whose journey starts north of 23rd Street.

Q. How much are these toll lanes going to cost?

A. Once they're in effect, the tolls will vary.

It's basic supply and demand. The state is trying to provide a reliable 45 to 50 mph trip in the express lanes. When traffic is light, the toll might be 25 cents to get from downtown to the Golden Glades. When the lanes are full, the price will rise. It could cost $2.65 -- and possibly rise as high as $6.20 when traffic in the ''free'' lanes is at a standstill.

Q. How often will the price change? And how will I know when it does?

A. Prices could change every five to six minutes depending on traffic. The price will be posted on electronic signs as you approach the express lanes.

Q. What happens if the price changes after I enter the toll lanes but before I exit?

A. Your price is locked in as your vehicle passes under the SunPass readers hanging over the lanes. If the toll rises $1 two minutes after you enter the lane, it's not going to affect you.

Q. How will I know I haven't been charged the wrong amount?

A. SunPass customers should frequently check their accounts online to make sure they are being charged appropriately.

Q. When will they start charging tolls?

A. At 6 a.m. Dec. 5.

Q. What happens if I get stuck in the toll lanes and don't have a SunPass?

A. Once tolls are in effect, cameras will snap photos of vehicle license plates that enter the lanes without a SunPass. Violation notices starting at $100 will be mailed to vehicles' registered owners. You'll also owe the toll.

If you get in the lane and don't have a SunPass, don't try to exit before Golden Glades.

When you get home, call SunPass toll free at 888-865-5352, explain what happened and offer to pay the toll. They'll probably let you slide for a one-time violation and urge you to buy a SunPass. Don't try it twice.

Q. How do I get a SunPass?

A. The new $5 mini SunPass is available at local Publix supermarkets and CVS, Navarro and Sedano's stores.

You can still buy the old, chunky white plastic transponders -- which cost $25, plus another $25 to open a prepaid toll account -- from the state. Both will work on I-95, the Miami-Dade expressways and the turnpike. For more information, check out www.sunpass.com or call 888-865-5352.

Q. Is there any way to use the toll lanes for free?

A. Yes. Take a bus. Or participate in a registered carpool that has at least three people. Or ride a motorcycle. Or buy a hybrid and register it with the state. Or get a job as a firefighter, paramedic or police officer. (Emergency vehicles can use the toll lanes without paying as well.)

Q. If I own a hybrid, what must I do to get toll-free access?

A. First, register the hybrid with the state of Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. Download the application at www.flhsmv.gov/dmv/HOV.html for a special decal. Fee: $5 a year.

Then, visit the South Florida Commuter Services website at www.1800234ride.com or call 800-234-RIDE for an application to register for the express lanes exemption.

Q. What must I do to register my car pool for free access?

A. Visit the South Florida Commuter Services website at www.1800234ride.com or call 800-234-RIDE to register. Provide name, home and work addresses and phone numbers, work schedule, driver's license number and license plate number. All car pool participants must sign the form. Riders only need to provide home and work information.

You'll have to renew the special ''3+'' decal every six months, or your car pool will be considered inactive and your license plate removed from the eligible list.

Q. What if I have a SunPass but am registered to use the express lanes for free?

A. If you're using a new ''mini'' SunPass, the commuter services agency will send you a deflector shield that you will need to place over the unit as you approach the I-95 tolling area. Older SunPass users need to place the transponder in the special shield bags.

Q. Why are the express lanes only on northbound I-95 in Miami-Dade? Traffic's awful on the southbound side, especially in the morning rush hour.

A. This is just the first phase. Crews are already working on the southbound side. It will require a lot more construction work and extensive road closings and delays next spring to raise two bridges at the State Road 112/Interstate 195 interchange. The southbound tolls are likely to start around this time next year.

The last phase, in both directions between the Golden Glades and Interstate 595 in Broward County, won't be finished until late 2010 or 2011, depending on funding.

Q. What about those traffic signals that have been sitting at the end of the on-ramps, unused since 2004?

A. They are going to start working soon and will surely prove to be as wildly unpopular as the express lanes were in July when the roadway was reconfigured.

Originally, the DOT was saying that the ramp meters would start at the same time as the tolls. But agency leaders retreated a bit. After all the accidents and chaos that followed the roadway reconfiguration in early July, DOT decided it might not want to try to introduce two new revolutionary changes at the same time.

DOT is not committing to a date, but anticipate that the lights will start flashing -- only on the northbound entry ramps between Northwest 62nd Street and Golden Glades -- in early to mid-January.

The idea is to create a steady flow of vehicles entering I-95 that will improve not only the merging onto but the exiting from the interstate. The signal will pretty much remain green when the interstate is flowing freely and pulse red every few seconds when it's heavier. The DOT insists that traffic will not be backing up on the ramps and into the arterial feeder roads.

Q. That's crazy. Don't they realize too many South Florida drivers treat red lights as optional nuisances?

A. A lot of people think the ramp meters won't work -- largely because there won't be enough police officers and traffic court judges to enforce all the tickets. After an initial shakeout period, ramp metering programs have proven effective in a lot of North American cities with even worse traffic congestion than South Florida.

Q. Does the road seem narrower?

A. Yes. The state restriped and reconfigured the existing roadway to create a consistent sixth travel lane in the seven-mile corridor -- four free local lanes, two express. Most of the old lanes were narrowed from 12 feet to 11 and the remainder was carved from the center median and right shoulder areas.

Q. So what happens if there's an accident or a breakdown in express area?

A. If your vehicle will move, pull it to the left shoulder, close to the center wall and dial *FHP (*347) on your cellphone.

An operator will dispatch a Road Ranger for help. Wait in your vehicle with the doors locked. Do not stand behind your car or next to the lane of moving traffic. The tolls are supposed to help pay for extra Road Rangers and troopers assigned specifically to the corridor.
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Varsity High School Basketball - Joseph Garcia

Did you notice the Miami Herald's high school basketball preview on Nov 25th? You might have easily missed it, it was on the last page of the last section [8D] of the paper that Tuesday. Roughly 40 teams were covered and on average about 4 players were mentioned from each team. In between extended family and friends--let's say 20 persons per each of the 160 kids--that's about 3,200 intensely interested people checking out the last page of the Sports section that day. [I would have happily linked it, but none was available-JC]

The front page of the Sports section that day was dominated by a picture of Joey Porter of the Dolphins and a column by Armando Salguero about his conduct. In other words, regrettable attention was given to a forgettable player on a day when the back page was full of success stories and dreams in various stages of fulfillment. Too bad for us readers. Remember that the next time you read an article about how newspapers are going broke. But I digress.

Do you know how hard it is to play a major '6A' high school sport in Miami-Dade county. It is extremely difficult. You either bring a unique blend of size and talent or you have to outwork about 10 other similarly skilled wannabes. In cases where both size and talent are present, full college scholarships can be the rewards. For a rarefied few [Udonis Haslem], earning a living as a professional is an option. But my interest is in those for whom high school will be the culmination of their athletic careers, which is to say the over-whelming majority of the 160 kids mentioned.

It is an achievement that will likely resonate with their family and friends as long as they can reminisce. Many of them have been so enamored and dedicated to their sport, that their school grades have either recently suffered or always been average or below. In fact, they may have come to believe that they lack the smarts to do well in high school, let alone college. It's understandable of course, the differentiation between jocks and brains in high school is the stuff of legend and many a crappy movie.

Too bad. Here is what those who believe that are missing. Before they were out of their teens, they had set a tough goal for themselves and succeeded. In effect, they reached the upper echelon of their profession. In doing so they displayed an ability to work with others, discipline and mental toughness. Exactly the type of skills which will be asked of them when they move on to other professions. The technical knowledge most jobs require are very teachable. How you handle high school [went to class, socially active, avoid drugs], is a better indicator of your future prospects than what you specifically learned there.

I know one of the kids on the list. I got to watch him grow up. He had the tremendous advantage of dedicated, albeit nonathletic, parents, and an extended family support system--difficult to be a slacker when your 90-ish grandfather, one of 17 kids, has been up at dawn since the early 1940's. He has worked hard and made himself a key player on the 2nd ranked 6A team in Miami-Dade county. That is already an achievement. But then again, since I have the advantage of knowing this young man, I am not surprised that he achieved success, but rather that it came so soon and in this area, given the odds. God willing, future successes will compliment this early one.

So here's my advice to Joseph and the other 159 kids as they consider their future job competitors:

What they know, you can still learn.
What you've already accomplished,
they can [and will] only dream of.

Post-post - Nov 29 - The problem with sending a blogger to do a journalist's job is that mistakes can happen:

• Turns out the Grandfather Garcia began rising at sunrise in 1926, not the 1940's.
• Mom Garica, far from being nonathletic, was a budding track star until she ruptured both Achilles heels during a rescue of orphans from a burning building.
• Dad Garcia - Alas, the nonathletic description stays. In the vernacular of our old neighborhood, while a great guy don't get me wrong, athletically he is 'un cero a la izquierda' [worth equivalent to the value of a zero to the left of an integer--trust me, it's quite offensive in Spanish]. As common insults go, its only peer is 'si se cae come yerba' [if he fell down, he would just eat the grass].

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Classic Latin Songs Labeled as Insensitive

Preemptive Federal Administrative Ruling

[AP-BHO Newswire] In a move sure to be controversial, especially across South Florida's Latin communities, a Department of Justice Civil Rights Division ruling has issued a list of songs which have been deemed insufficiently deferential to the nation's first African-American president. Most prominent among the banned songs is 'Mami, que sera lo que quiere el negro.' The song has long been a staple of Latin music. Whenever it or Caballo Viejo is played at weddings or interminable house parties, it serves as a clarion call for all to head to the dance floor. Even the rhythmically-challenged enjoy the song because the crowded dance floor it inevitably generates is seen as a great eraser of missteps and outright kicks [don't ask me how I know this].

In total, there were 374 songs banned along with a brief description of why the ban was deemed necessary. The ruling ran over 700 pages long. The banned list was the product of a diverse committee whose 83 members included Prince, Jane Fonda, 50 Cent(s), a grandmother member of the Mexican Zapatista guerrilla movement, former The View host Star Jones and Alan Alda.

Explanations given for the banned songs:

• Mami, que sera lo que quiere el negro [Mother, what could that black man want] - The committee felt that the lyrics would serve as a constant reminder of Obama's race and foster unnecessary distrust. Committee Chairmen Eric Holder, noted that 'this special period requires special measures.'

• Caballo Viejo [Old Horse] - The use of the horse imagery as a psychosexual symbol of a sexually agressive black male preying upon supposedly unwilling Caucasian women represents an ugly period in American history. The Obama administration is committed to change in this area particularly.

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New York Sting Nabs Tax Preparers

WSJ Tax article
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New York Sting Nabs Tax Preparers

NOVEMBER 26, 2008, 12:06 A.M. ET

By TOM HERMAN

New York State tax officials say they have uncovered evidence of significant fraud among professional tax-return preparers in a statewide sting operation in which undercover agents posed as clients.

Officials say they're startled not only by the unexpectedly large amounts of tax evasion they witnessed -- such as hiding taxable income and inflating deductions -- but also by the brazen nature of the cheating, which was caught on secret recordings. In one case, for example, a preparer told an undercover investigator: "I did not declare your full gross income from your business because you will pay a lot of taxes," according to a criminal complaint filed recently against a Queens, N.Y., preparer.

In another case, a tax preparer said he is going to report only $13,188 as taxable income, instead of the $131,884 the undercover agent had said was the correct amount, says an official at the New York Department of Taxation and Finance. Another preparer, referring to records given to him by the undercover agent, said: "This one and this one, I never saw this. It's going into the shredder."

Officials have already begun prosecuting some preparers on criminal charges, and they expect additional criminal prosecutions against other preparers -- as well as some clients, says William Comiskey, the tax department's deputy commissioner, office of tax enforcement. Officials will also be seeking civil fraud penalties against preparers. Mr. Comiskey says some preparers have agreed to cooperate and go undercover to show that their clients knew of the fraud and build evidence against those clients -- and, in some instances, against other preparers.

"They are cooperating against their former clients in other ways as well," such as sharing client lists and identifying fraudulent returns, Mr. Comiskey says. He says the state hasn't yet investigated tax-preparation chains, and that most of the preparers "were sole practitioners or were in small group practices."

Officials say they found evidence of fraud among about 40% of the 85 professional tax-return preparers they visited. If all the phony returns that were prepared had actually been filed, "it would have cost the federal, state and local governments approximately $4 million" in taxes, says Mr. Comiskey.

The sting operation, which began in fall 2007 and is continuing today, is part of New York's greatly increased crackdown on tax cheating. In the seven months through October, New York's tax department opened 1,378 criminal fraud investigations -- more than in any prior year and more than twice as many as the 581 cases opened in all of fiscal 2007. The department referred 329 cases to prosecutors in the past seven months, up from 271 in the entire prior fiscal year and 198 the year before that. The department also has increased the number of staffers devoted to fraud enforcement to about 125, up from 25 in early 2007, and hopes to expand further.

"We are trying to project a decidedly different persona" than in the past, Mr. Comiskey says. "We're trying to make it clear we are becoming much more aggressive" in the battle against tax fraud.

With state and local budget woes mounting rapidly, more revenue-hungry states are likely to follow New York's example and beef up tax-enforcement efforts. Although state-tax officials acknowledge today's bloated budget deficits can't be eliminated solely by tougher enforcement, they say increased enforcement can help close the gap -- and also help reassure honest taxpayers that they aren't chumps. Moreover, cracking down on fraud is considered smarter and politically safer than raising taxes on law-abiding voters, especially during this grim economic slump.

The results of the New York sting operation could bolster congressional efforts to expand regulation of paid preparers -- such as requiring certain training and competency standards and imposing stiffer punishment on wrongdoers -- as a key ingredient in government efforts to combat cheating. Lawmakers have been leaning hard on the Internal Revenue Service to do a better job of closing the nation's $290 billion-a-year "tax gap," the difference between what's actually collected and what the IRS estimates should be. Already, IRS and Justice Department officials have begun stepping up their efforts to nab tax cheating by preparers.

In recent years, growing numbers of taxpayers have hired someone else to do their returns. Some 60% of all individual taxpayers now hire a preparer to do their returns, up from 46% in the mid-1980s, according to IRS data. While nobody knows exactly how many preparers there are, estimates generally have ranged as high as 1.6 million. That list includes many highly trained pros -- such as tax lawyers, certified public accountants and enrolled agents -- who already face stiff professional regulation. But it also includes hundreds of thousands of other preparers, such as sole practitioners in storefront operations who have little or no training or credentials and face little or no regulation.

In New York, tax-department officials say the results of their sting operation and their beefed-up enforcement efforts have convinced them that the tax-cheating problem is significantly greater than they previously had thought.

In almost all the cases, tax-department staffers posed as people who worked in all-cash businesses. In some cases, they sought help with sales-tax returns and brought books and records of their "business."

In one case, a preparer told an undercover agent to step outside his office and return with a different set of records. When he returned, the preparer told him: "You know why I asked you to do that? Because if I have to swear it, I can say I swear to God that these are the papers you brought to me."

IRS studies have demonstrated that people tend to be far more honest in reporting their income when that income is subject to tax withholding and when the taxpayer reports the income to the IRS. Income that isn't subject to tax withholding or to separate reporting is far more likely to be misreported.

New York officials have opened criminal investigations against dozens of clients and also sent out some 1,570 letters to other former clients who used the preparers. "Returns prepared by your tax preparer are being examined for potential misstatements," the letter says, adding that the preparer "has admitted to assisting taxpayers in the filing of fraudulent and inaccurate" returns.

It goes on to warn taxpayers that their returns may be audited and urges them to act now to avoid possible penalties by participating in the state's new voluntary-disclosure and compliance program.
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Power and Blame Have Now Shifted

Something interesting happened over the past few days. The financial crisis ceased being a President Bush creation and became strictly a President Obama problem. The financial crisis exploded during Bush's tenure and McCain and other Republicans paid the price at the polls. That is as it should be in politics, it's called accountability and it's not based on fairness.

But now, Obama having been safely elected [from a MSM perspective], the basic facts of the financial crisis do not place any of the major Federal responses outside the ability of the Obama administration to alter, including TARP:

• No Bush legislation can be tied to the financial crisis. The one piece of legislation which is seen as directly contributing to the crisis, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 was passed prior to Bush taking office.
• The initial response of the Bush Administration to the financial crisis has now been officially endorsed by the new Obama regime given the nomination of Timothy Geithner for Treasury Secretary. Geithner has been a part of all the key decisions made during the past few months of the crisis. If Paulson and Bernanke were moving in the wrong direction, you wouldn't know it from Geithner.
• The latest bailout--Citigroup--was handled in a manner consistent with other bailout scenarios [negotiations were secret] and again involved Geithner. However, having Rubin proteges negotiate a bailout of Rubin's bank, was at best problematic.
  
• The Rubin sandwich effect. When the history of the financial crisis is written, Robert Rubin will have had a very large role at every stage - here is an excerpt of the WSJ's Editorial about him:

  "Citi never sleeps," says the bank's advertising slogan. But its directors apparently do. While CEO Vikram Pandit can argue that many of Citi's problems were created before he arrived in 2007, most board members have no such excuse. Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin has served on the Citi board for a decade. For much of that time he was chairman of the executive committee, collecting tens of millions to massage the Beltway crowd, though apparently not for asking tough questions about risk management.

  The writers at the Deal Journal blog remind us of one particularly egregious massaging, when Mr. Rubin tried to use political muscle to prop up Enron, a valued Citi client. Mr. Rubin asked a Treasury official to lean on credit-rating agencies to maintain a more positive rating than Enron deserved. What signal will President-elect Barack Obama send if his Administration, populated with Mr. Rubin's protégés, allows this uberfixer to continue flying hither and yon on the corporate jet while taxpayers foot the bill?

So it's official, all of the Federal government's response to the financial crisis comes with the blessings of the new Obama Administration, otherwise they would be reversing course, not doubling down. The phrase, 'you further break it, you bought it,' comes to mind.

But hey, not all is the news is bad. William Greider, a big-time lefty is starting to feel a little used:

A year ago, when Barack Obama said it was time to turn the page, his campaign declaration seemed to promise a fresh start for Washington. I, for one, failed to foresee Obama would turn the page backward. The president-elect's lineup for key governing positions has opted for continuity, not change. Virtually all of his leading appointments are restoring the Clinton presidency, only without Mr. Bill. In some important ways, Obama's selections seem designed to sustain the failing policies of George W. Bush.

This is not the last word and things are changing rapidly. But Obama's choices have begun to define him. His victory, it appears, was a triumph for the cautious center-right politics that has described the Democratic party for several decades. Those of us who expected more were duped, not so much by Obama but by our own wishful thinking.

Music to my right-wing ears. This opposition party stuff may be fun after all.

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.

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Citi's Taxpayer Parachute - Why are Robert Rubin and other directors still employed?
NOVEMBER 25, 2008

Another Sunday night, another ad hoc bank rescue rooted in no discernible principle. U.S. taxpayers, who invested $25 billion in Citigroup last month, will now pour in another $20 billion in exchange for preferred shares paying an 8% dividend.

Taxpayers will also help insure $306 billion of Citi's mortgage-backed securities. Citi will cover the first $29 billion in losses on these toxic assets, and then taxpayers will cover 90% of the rest, in exchange for another $7 billion in preferred. Dilution for Citigroup investors? Yesterday's 58% pop in the bank's share price suggests the bailout is a good deal for equity holders. For taxpayers, it is another large exposure for uncertain benefits.

More than a year into the financial crisis and decades into the perception that Citi is too big to fail, we once again have three tired guys making it up as they go. We wish Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, New York Federal Reserve President Tim Geithner and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke cared as much about their obligations to U.S. taxpayers as they do about the expectations of Asian investors. Few would argue that a bank with Citi's size and scope wasn't too big to fail, but is it too much to ask Washington to develop a policy that isn't crafted in a scramble of private phone calls?

To be fair, there are virtues here, when placed in the context of this year of bailouts. Unlike the initial AIG "rescue," this deal appears to be helping the intended beneficiary. In contrast to Bear Stearns, there is a more plausible case for systemic risk. What is missing is a statement that at least some American bankers still have the freedom to fail, an essential ingredient if we hope to restore functioning capital markets. Not a single one of Citigroup's senior managers and directors will be let go as a condition of taxpayer assistance that now totals close to $350 billion.

"Citi never sleeps," says the bank's advertising slogan. But its directors apparently do. While CEO Vikram Pandit can argue that many of Citi's problems were created before he arrived in 2007, most board members have no such excuse. Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin has served on the Citi board for a decade. For much of that time he was chairman of the executive committee, collecting tens of millions to massage the Beltway crowd, though apparently not for asking tough questions about risk management.

The writers at the Deal Journal blog remind us of one particularly egregious massaging, when Mr. Rubin tried to use political muscle to prop up Enron, a valued Citi client. Mr. Rubin asked a Treasury official to lean on credit-rating agencies to maintain a more positive rating than Enron deserved. What signal will President-elect Barack Obama send if his Administration, populated with Mr. Rubin's protégés, allows this uberfixer to continue flying hither and yon on the corporate jet while taxpayers foot the bill?

Chairman Sir Win Bischoff has held senior positions at Citi since 2000. Six other directors have served for more than 10 years -- including former CIA Director John Deutch, Time Warner Chairman Richard Parsons, foundation executive Franklin Thomas, former AT&T CEO C. Michael Armstrong, Alcoa Chairman Alain Belda, and former Chevron Chairman Kenneth Derr.

When taxpayers are being asked to provide the equivalent of $1,000 each in guarantees on Citi's dubious investments, how can these men possibly say they deserve to remain on the board? All the more so given that Citi's board has lately been airing dirty laundry about Mr. Bischoff's role and leaking petty grievances. The directors all but started a run on the bank themselves, even as the bank assured the world it was sturdy enough to withstand any losses.

Oh, and to get the FDIC on board, Citi has agreed to implement the agency's proposal to modify delinquent mortgages to avoid foreclosures. The White House believes the program will cost almost three times FDIC estimates. And even though more than half of modified mortgages go delinquent again, Citi will modify mortgages to create lower payments now, in the hope that escalating payments later will avoid more delinquencies down the road.

While other banks can claim to be victims of the current panic, Citi is at least a three-time loser. The same directors were at the helm in 2005 when the Fed suspended Citi's ability to make acquisitions because of the bank's failure to adhere to regulatory and ethical standards. Citi also needed resuscitation after the sovereign debt disaster of the 1980s, and it required an orchestrated private rescue in the 1990s.

Such a record of persistent failure suggests a larger -- you might even call it "systemic" -- management problem: If taxpayers have to risk so much to save Citigroup, then regulators should at least exert the discipline to break up this behemoth so it is never again too big to succeed, much less to fail.
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Where Was Geithner in Turmoil?
November 25, 2008
Dealbook Column
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

President-elect Barack Obama unveiled on Monday an economic team with deep experience handling economic crises. But does the man at the center of this star-studded cast, Timothy F. Geithner, the nominee for Treasury secretary, have what is needed to take the nation in a new financial direction?

That is what a number of Wall Street chieftains are quietly asking, even after the stock market surged with relief after his nomination.

One reason Mr. Obama gave for nominating Mr. Geithner was his “unparalleled understanding of our current economic crisis, in all of its depth, complexity and urgency.” More important, he suggested, “Tim will waste no time getting up to speed. He will start his first day on the job with a unique insight into the failures of today’s markets — and a clear vision of the steps we must take to revive them.”

Mr. Geithner is clearly a 47-year-old wonder boy.

A graduate of Dartmouth, he has a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, did a turn with Henry Kissinger’s consulting firm, a stint in the Clinton administration and, for the last five years, has been the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

He will effectively lead the team Mr. Obama has chosen to mend a crippled economy. That’s important because they won’t just be debating economic theory — they will be making deals Wall Street-style, negotiating billion-dollar bailouts and restructuring entire industries on behalf of their client, the taxpayers.

But Mr. Geithner’s involvement in several ultimately ill-fated efforts to buttress the American financial system is the very reason some Wall Street C.E.O.’s — a number of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of piquing the man who regulates them — question whether he’s up to the challenge.

“We have only two things to say about Tim Geithner, who we do not know: A.I.G. and Lehman Brothers,” said Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics. “Throw in the Bear Stearns/Maiden Lane fiasco for good measure,” he said.

“All of these ‘rescues’ are a disaster for the taxpayer, for the financial markets and also for the Federal Reserve System as an organization. Geithner, in our view, deserves retirement, not promotion.”

Ouch.

“He was in the room at every turn of the crisis,” said another executive who participated in several such confidential meetings with Mr. Geithner. “You can look at that both ways.”

While Henry M. Paulson Jr., the current Treasury secretary, has taken a drubbing for the changeable nature of the government’s efforts to bolster the financial industry — some of which clearly contradicted each other — Mr. Geithner has managed, for the most part, to remain unscathed. He’s been widely praised as a bright, articulate out-of-the box thinker who is a bailout expert, to the extent anyone can truly be an expert at fast-changing emergencies.

Behind the scenes, Mr. Geithner was the point person for weeks of sleep-deprived Bailout Weekends. It was Mr. Geithner, not Mr. Paulson, for example, who put together the original rescue plan for the American International Group.

And, of course, Mr. Geithner also oversaw and regulated an entire industry whose decline has delivered a further blow to an already weakened American economy. Under his watch, some of the biggest institutions that were the responsibility of the New York Fed — Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and most recently, Citigroup — faltered. While he was one of the first regulators to smartly articulate the potential for an impending disaster, a number of observers question whether he went far enough to stop the calamity.

Perhaps what has most people on Wall Street stirring is Mr. Geithner’s role in the fall of Lehman. At the time of its bankruptcy, he, along with Mr. Paulson, appeared to be the most vocal in supporting the government’s refusal to bail out the firm, according to people involved in various meetings. With hindsight, many in the financial industry blame a deepening of the global financial crisis on the government’s decision to let Lehman crumble.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there have been moves afoot in recent weeks by some in the New York Fed and Obama team to put distance between Mr. Paulson and Mr. Geithner, whose salary was $398,200 last year and who will take a pay cut to $191,300 in his new role.

These include the suggestion that Mr. Geithner was not in league with Mr. Paulson over Lehman; that Mr. Geithner pressed to save the firm from bankruptcy; that he was a lone voice on the subject and was overruled by Mr. Paulson and Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, on this issue.

The validity of this new claim is hard to verify. The New York Fed declined to comment.

Many executives suggest it may be a bit of revisionist history. “If that’s true, he did a good job of hiding it,” said one executive who spent the weekend at the New York Federal Reserve the weekend of Lehman’s fall.

Mr. Paulson has only praise for Mr. Geithner. “I have the highest regard for Tim — his judgment and creativity have been critical to designing and implementing the necessary actions we’ve taken to protect and strengthen our financial system,” he said.

Let’s hope he’s right.
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An Obama Tilt in Washington Post Campaign Coverage

By Deborah Howell
Sunday, November 9, 2008; B06

The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.

My assistant, Jean Hwang, and I have been examining Post coverage since Nov. 11 of last year on issues, voters, fundraising, the candidates' backgrounds and horse-race stories on tactics, strategy and consultants. We also have looked at photos and Page 1 stories since Obama captured the nomination June 4.

The count was lopsided, with 1,295 horse-race stories and 594 issues stories. The Post was deficient in stories that reported more than the two candidates trading jabs; readers needed articles, going back to the primaries, comparing their positions with outside experts' views. There were no broad stories on energy or science policy, and there were few on religion issues.

Bill Hamilton, assistant managing editor for politics, said, "There are a lot of things I wish we'd been able to do in covering this campaign, but we had to make choices about what we felt we were uniquely able to provide our audiences both in Washington and on the Web. I don't at all discount the importance of issues, but we had a larger purpose, to convey and explain a campaign that our own David Broder described as the most exciting he has ever covered, a narrative that unfolded until the very end. I think our staff rose to the occasion."

The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on Sen. John McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces about McCain, 58, than there were about Obama, 32, and Obama got the editorial board's endorsement. The Post has several conservative columnists, but not all were gung-ho about McCain.

Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Reporters, photographers and editors found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics.

The number of Obama stories since Nov. 11 was 946, compared with McCain's 786. Both had hard-fought primary campaigns, but Obama's battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton was longer, and the numbers reflect that.

McCain clinched the GOP nomination on March 4, three months before Obama won his. From June 4 to Election Day, the tally was Obama, 626 stories, and McCain, 584. Obama was on the front page 176 times, McCain, 144 times; 41 stories featured both.

Our survey results are comparable to figures for the national news media from a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It found that from June 9, when Clinton dropped out of the race, until Nov. 2, 66 percent of the campaign stories were about Obama compared with 53 percent for McCain; some stories featured both. The project also calculated that in that time, 57 percent of the stories were about the horse race and 13 percent were about issues.

Counting from June 4, Obama was in 311 Post photos and McCain in 282. Obama led in most categories. Obama led 133 to 121 in pictures more than three columns wide, 178 to 161 in smaller pictures, and 164 to 133 in color photos. In black and white photos, the nominees were about even, with McCain at 149 and Obama at 147. On Page 1, they were even at 26 each. Post photo and news editors were surprised by my first count on Aug. 3, which showed a much wider disparity, and made a more conscious effort at balance afterward.

Some readers complain that coverage is too poll-driven. They're right, but it's not going to change. The Post's polling was on the mark, and in some cases ahead of the curve, in focusing on independent voters, racial attitudes, low-wage voters, the shift of African Americans' support from Clinton to Obama and the rising importance of economic issues. The Post and its polling partner ABC News include 50 to 60 issues questions in every survey instead of just horse-race questions, so public attitudes were plumbed as well.

The Post had a hard-working team on the campaign. Special praise goes to Dan Balz, the best, most level-headed, incisive political reporter and analyst in newspapers. His stories and "Dan Balz's Take" on washingtonpost.com were fair, penetrating and on the mark. His mentor, David S. Broder, was as sharp as ever.

Michael Dobbs, the Fact Checker, also deserves praise for parsing campaign rhetoric for the overblown or just flat wrong. Howard Kurtz's Ad Watch was a sharp reality check.

The Post's biographical pieces, especially the first ones -- McCain by Michael Leahy and Obama by David Maraniss -- were compelling. Maraniss demystified Obama's growing-up years; the piece on his mother and grandparents was a great read. Leahy's first piece on McCain's father and grandfather, both admirals, told me where McCain got his maverick ways as a kid -- right from the two old men.

But Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama's acknowledged drug use as a teenager.

The Post had good coverage of voters, mainly by Krissah Williams Thompson and Kevin Merida. Anne Hull's stories from Florida, Michigan and Liberty University, and Wil Haygood's story from central Montana brought readers into voters' lives. Jose Antonio Vargas's pieces about campaigns and the Internet were standouts.

One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama's running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission. However, I do not agree with those readers who thought The Post did only hatchet jobs on her. There were several good stories on her, the best on page 1 by Sally Jenkins on how Palin grew up in Alaska.

In early coverage, I wasn't a big fan of the long-running series called "The Gurus" on consultants and important people in the campaigns. The Post has always prided itself on its political coverage, and profiles of the top dogs were probably well read by political junkies. But I thought the series was of no practical use to readers. While there were some interesting pieces in The Frontrunners series, none of them told me anything about where the candidates stood on any issue.

Deborah Howell can be reached at 202-334-7582 or ombudsman@washpost.com.
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Restore TARP to Its First Purpose

By Peter Ackerman and John Vogelstein
Wednesday, November 26, 2008; A13

This month, the stock market dropped precipitously after the announcement that the emphasis of the Troubled Assets Relief Program would be shifted to direct equity infusions into banks and away from buying their "toxic" mortgages. This change was especially confounding because, when he first proposed TARP, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson suggested that the financial crisis would not end until the mortgage market stabilized. The favorable reaction to the plan to backstop Citigroup's mortgage portfolio, as well as the government's announcement yesterday that it will buy additional mortgage-backed securities, is powerful evidence that Paulson had it right the first time.

The market wants to understand the dimensions of the losses that banks face from their mortgage holdings. We believe that using a significant portion of TARP's remaining assets for its original purpose -- buying distressed mortgage assets -- is the fastest and most reliable way to achieve that.

In 1988, we participated in a fundamental restructuring of the Mellon Bank that holds many lessons for today. At the time, the market had no confidence regarding the size of Mellon's asset problem. Instead of trying to convince investors that Mellon's assets were valued accurately, chief executive Frank Cahouet asked that an entity be designed to hold all of Mellon's nonperforming loans.

The Grant Street National Bank (In Liquidation) was formed, capitalized with Mellon's troubled assets and financed as much as possible through debt secured against those loans. Over the next several years, loans were sold expeditiously to private buyers. Substantially all of the proceeds from the financing and the remaining liquid assets after debt repayment went back to Mellon.

Once Mellon no longer had nonperforming loans on its books, the write-downs taken by the bank from asset transfers into Grant Street could be quickly replenished through equity offerings. Mellon did not go through the trauma that other major American banks (including Citi) experienced in the early 1990s. Despite the dilution from the sale of new equity, its stock went up more than tenfold when it merged with the Bank of New York.

This "bad bank" model has been repeated many times since. The concept was used in the savings and loan bailout and in Korea in the 1990s. TARP can similarly foster a virtuous circle by facilitating:

· Investor confidence in the soundness of the banks (after their sale of toxic mortgage assets into TARP), leading to the injection of hundreds of billions of dollars of private equity. To grasp the potential, consider Wells Fargo's recent sale of $10 billion of equity organized in just four days for the purchase of Wachovia.

· Accelerated activity by private investors already linked up with mortgage servicing organizations to research and bid for TARP assets. Many such pools of capital are being organized to compete aggressively for this business.

· A simple mechanism for individual borrowers to go back to their original banks to get mortgages they can handle. Individuals can use those proceeds to buy out, at a discount, the original mortgage held in TARP. The proceeds of the smaller mortgage may well exceed the value allocated to the mortgage held by the government. Everyone wins: The government makes money and a new, affordable mortgage is issued to the homeowner.

· A visible way for the public and lawmakers to see a resolution that is considered fair to all. The market would then be able to assess the dimensions of the mortgage crisis. The problem may well be less significant than most people assume. But whatever the number, clarity will create confidence.

Critics of TARP's purchase of toxic mortgage assets say it is impossible to know whether the government is getting a fair price. To address that, the government can accept a price the banks deem fair but insist on a "true up" revision three years later. If the government fails to earn a significant return, it would get equivalent debt of that bank to make up the shortfall. With a "true up" system, banks would be reluctant to seek a windfall on sales to TARP.

Others argue that there are simply too many loans to track and renegotiate through these obscure investment vehicles. But we advocate Marshall Plans for every conceivable urgent public need. Why not devote a similar level of commitment to the creation of a database including a detailed accounting of every troubled mortgage in America? That way, TARP -- working with local banks -- could focus first on restructuring loans with the highest likelihood of foreclosure.

Finally, it is also said that it will take too long for TARP to do its work and that TARP does not have enough capital to buy all troubled mortgages. But TARP does not have to restructure every loan in America to be effective. Once the mechanism is clear for a fraction of the loans, the likely outcomes for the whole TARP asset base will be visible to all. In the meantime, taxpayers may even get lucky and see home prices stabilize and growing numbers of aggressive bidders for TARP assets start going directly to banks still holding toxic mortgages.

A financial crisis with many dimensions cannot be solved by putting Band-Aids on each tear in the system. The correct approach is to take the biggest wound and stitch it up. Once people see that the contours of the mortgage problem are known and are being dealt with, consumer confidence will return, leading, in turn, to profound improvements in the stock and corporate credit markets.

In the early 1990s, the Japanese government encouraged banks to keep nonperforming loans on their balance sheets and value these loans as if they were not impaired. The loss of transparency (as well as the failure to put these loans into the hands of those who would restructure them) contributed to over a decade of slow growth and an underperforming stock market.

The Obama administration should not make the same mistake. If its economic team uses TARP to enhance price and value discovery of mortgages held in the banking system, we will be a lot closer to the end of the financial crisis.

Peter Ackerman is managing director of Rockport Capital Inc. John Vogelstein is senior adviser at Warburg Pincus LLC, New York.
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Our Ballpark and $3 Billion Extrapolations

In a Miami Today article, Michael Lewis argues that Miami-Dade Convention Development [MDCD] taxes would be better spent on upgrading existing convention facilities than being applied towards a ballpark for a MLB team. He does so under a splashy headline, 'Building ballpark could cost county $3 billion every year.' Given the fanfare, I was surprised that he put forth such an unsubstantiated main argument--uninterrupted investment in convention facilities are required to maintain tourism.

Some of the facts Mr. Lewis' produces--amount of revenues derived from MDCD taxes--to make his case are mistaken. Mr Lewis is a well-respected commentator in Miami, I have no doubt it was an honest mistake, and I will show you exactly how it happened. But herein lies the beauty and utility of blogs. In a time not so long ago and not very far away, only a handful of individuals would have had access to the kind of information needed to refute a published commentator. Even then, the challenge of getting acknowledged still remained. No more.

Case in point, I read the article and wanted to dig a little deeper into his arguments. So I googled 'Miami-Dade Convention Development Taxes 2007" and the first 2 hits were relevant. The first one seems right, but the figures don't match the ones quoted in the article. I try the second one, which did match the article. Which was right? Easy, the second one, the one Lewis quoted, is based on year-to-date figures [thru August] for comparison purposes. An honest mistake which really didn't impact the argument, but still a nice reminder of the watchdog role over the media blogs can legitimately play.

I'll cut through a lot of hokey baseball analogies--'stadium deal is the equivalent of trading the Phillies' starting lineup for Marlins' mascot'--and list the arguments made by Lewis:

1. Given the contracting economy, no time to use scarce tax revenues for MLB stadium.
2. Economic benefits of a new stadium are exaggerated.
3. Using the taxes for improving convention facilities is a better buy. Basing his arguments on statistics provided by the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, he notes that the average visitor stayed 5.85 days and spent $245 daily, for a total outlay of $1,430. He then speculates that if visitors could be increased by 100,000 that would lead to $1,430,000 in additional monies spent. He further speculates that 'spending multiples' could double [actually closer to 210%, but we get it, he's going for the nice round number] the economic impact of the 100,000 increase in visitors, giving him the big and round $3 Billion dollar amount he splashes on his headline.

Wow, this is going to be fun. First, let's do some numbers:

• If the average visitor spent $1,430 and they were taxed at a rate of 3%, then the average visitor paid $43 in MDCD Taxes.
• Just to fill out our example, since there was $47.250 million in tax revenues in 2007, that would mean that the number of 'average' visitors would have totaled approximated 1.1 million in 2007.

A brief response to each point:

1. Lewis disingenuously ignores the fact that the stadium is in fact part of a larger project--Megaplan--which includes infrastructure improvements, especially in downtown Miami. It is exactly those type of projects which governments should be engaged in during the current recession. The timing turned out to be very useful.
2. I would not dispute his point that the economic benefits of a [any] sports franchise are exaggerated in terms of actual employment or taxes generated. But that's the equivalent of a fan of the New York Cosmos in the 1970's complaining about the signing of Pele, based on the fact that he was clearly past his prime. The fan would have been missing the point about what Pele would do for the entire league in terms of exposure. The fact that he actually played well was gravy.
3. I applaud Mr Lewis' restraint. He could have indicated that if the $3 BILLION were denied to the county for 100 years, the ballpark would cost us $300 BILLION!!! As Shakespeare once dryly never noted, you doth extrapolate too much sir!

Let me not be too coy, Lewis is full of it on point #3 and I'll point out why. But first, here's my main point for the stadium in terms of our community--leaving aside my selfish desires as a sports degenerate to continue having a hometown team. From reading Lewis' article or other criticisms of the ballpark plans which focus on what the monies could be used for--important to note that they are specifically designated for 'tourist-related facilities'--do you ever get the sense that those people understand why people visit South Florida?

I don't. From Lewis' article, you would think that there was a direct correlation between additional spending on convention centers and tourists. To paraphrase Malcolm Gladwell, convention facilities are like intelligence, beyond a certain competent threshold, the marginal utility of the benefits decrease significantly.

A lot of money is spent on advertising to promote tourism. No matter how good the ad campaign, they can't approach what we get when--for example this past Sunday's Dolphin's game--announcers gush over the weather as a particularly beautiful image of our town fills the screen. I was going to say you can't buy that kind of exposure, but we can. But it's a front-end buy. The exposure ad buy is the ballpark. The Dolphins, Heat, Hurricanes and Marlins give us the kind of exposure that makes competing tourist markets teal with envy and inserts a subliminal bomb inside of head of tourists which goes off when they approach travel agents or log into Expedia. As such, we can not disentangle the overall lure of Miami from the aura of being a major league city, one of less than 30 nationwide.

You know how many people hear sports scores every day. The kind of people who want to get away to fun places on vacation. The kind of people who call up their organizations and say, 'I don't give a bleep about how nice the San Antonio convention facilities are, if you schedule this year's convention somewhere other than Vegas or South Beach, I'm sure my kid's gonna have a recital that weekend.' Nobody stares off in the middle of the day fantasizing about upgraded convention facilities. The idea that a city with a tourism based economy should sacrifice the opportunity to have a MLB team because it's other tourist facilities would rather not share tax revenues [shocking I know], seems to be short-sighted in the extreme.

Getting back to the horrors which will occur if we don't spend another year's worth of MDCD taxes on non-ballpark tourist facilities. A few questions which Mr Lewis fails to address in his article; Hasn't money already been flowing into the those very facilities year in and year out? Why weren't those upgrades noted made last year or the year before, or the year before that? Can the logic of 'spending multiples' be brought into a budget line item? Is there an identifiable or finite amount of spending required for 'state of the art' convention facilities? What studies or examples did Mr Lewis rely upon to believe that an additional year of undiluted MDCD tax revenues spent on existing convention facilities would cause tourism to increase by 10%?

Ballpark critics would do well to come with better arguments, lest they resemble Aesop's [not Hee-Seop's] classic tale.

Article referenced copied in full at end of post.

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Building ballpark could cost county $3 billion every year

By Michael Lewis

Stadium talks between governments and the Florida Marlins are in extra innings. Contract deadlines have passed. Now dealings come up against a recession unanticipated during ballpark euphoria.

When tax revenue seemed endless, using a half billion dollars to help a team owner boost profits was rationalized as the price for keeping us Major League. But now, with taxes constricted and needs soaring, governments must exercise greater care with scarce resources.

Key criteria must be how spending can add jobs, buttress the economy and prepare us to overcome the doldrums. Under such criteria, baseball ranks dead last.

Set aside a deal Miami and Miami-Dade County have outlined with the Marlins that's equivalent to trading the world champion Philadelphia Phillies' starting lineup for Billy, the Marlins' mascot.

The only defense of this well-documented giveaway is to claim it would give the community a huge economic boost even while it enriches Jeffrey Loria and his unnamed Marlins partners.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't give any such jolt. Worse, it would rob us of alternate uses of funds to leverage our way out of the economic vice that's squeezing us.

Baseball fans love trade talk and statistics. They'll debate recent Marlins trades of two stars for a man with exactly 169 Major League at bats, a .240 batting average and no home runs, and their closing pitcher for a low-level minor leaguer who weighs 275 pounds. Net gain to the Marlins: dumping three large salaries and adding about $8 million to the bottom line.

Similarly, tradeoffs and statistics dominate the economics of community resources.

Building a stadium for $515 million, garages for $94 million to $156 million (depending on whom you believe) and infrastructure at untold costs (because nobody has totaled them) could yield four short-run public benefits.

One: construction jobs. They are vital, but any construction spending would create them. Costs per job would be similar.

Two: stadium jobs. They are also real, but they're just shifted. They guy selling you a hot dog at Dolphin Stadium would either move to the new ballpark or lose his role to some new vendor. Shifting jobs is no gain.

Three: sales of tickets, advertising, sponsorships, concessions, parking and more. All those benefits would flow to Jeffrey Loria and Co. But again, the ones the Marlins don't get today would just shift from the account of H. Wayne Huizenga, Dolphin Stadium owner. Shifting dollars is no gain.

Benefit Four is all a stadium could really boast: luring cash-spending visitors. That's the only rationale for using Convention Development Tax receipts for the stadium and garages, because those funds by law must be used to spur visitor spending.

So it is in luring visitors that we'll play the tradeoff and statistical game that baseball fans like me love. And those Convention Development Taxes could be spent far, far more effectively to boost our economy than by building a ballpark.

Convention Development Taxes here last year generated $33.6 million, all earmarked to aid the visitor industry. It is through bonding future collections that the county and city would generate cash for a stadium and garages.

Because this area has been booming, governments have relied on those taxes expanding forever. Last year collections were up 9.3%, the year before 8.9% and before that 17.9% following 18.1%.

But days of straight-up growth may not last. The first eight months of 2008 collections rose just 2% — and that was before the economy crumbled. We can't bet on bigger forever, even with a Sept. 1 projection of 43 tax-generating hotels with 9,975 rooms scheduled to open in Miami-Dade.

Suppose that instead of baseball those taxes were traded to the visitor industry, where they belong. For just one example, put some into expanding and upgrading the Miami Beach Convention Center and suddenly we get a far bigger bang for far fewer bucks.

Like a stadium, hundreds of thousands of area residents use that center every year. But unlike a stadium, it also has a broad reach elsewhere.

That convention center competes nationally for meetings that attract both businesses and consumers. To compete in the future, however, it needs a ballroom that could serve banquets, better parking and high-tech electronic and audio-visual capabilities. A study soon will detail those needs.

Orlando and other communities have captured the biggest meetings. But, combined with Miami-Dade's other advantages, an upgraded center still could lure hundreds of thousands more visitors a year. That's statistically a far better use of the taxes than baseball.

By the numbers: The Marlins this year averaged 16,888 ticket sales a game (far fewer actually attended). That's lowest in baseball by more than 3,000.

The Marlins play 81 games here a year. At most 1% of all Major League Baseball fans visit an area primarily to see a game, so the Marlins lured at most 13,689 out-of-town visitors this year. Compare that with Art Basel at the convention center, which in just three days next month will draw 10,000.

Even if the Marlins were to get the 37,000-seat stadium they seek, however, and even if they could sell every seat instead of the 45.9% they do now (worst in baseball), they'd lure just 29,970 out-of-town visitors a year.

Meetings and conventions, however, now attract hundreds of thousands a year more than that, and they face no ceiling other than community capacity. Adding 9,975 hotel rooms plus filling all present rooms would add far more. Hotels in Miami Beach, where 40.9% of all visitors stay, used only 76.9% of capacity in 2007, so growth can be huge. With billions invested in the new hotels, they deserve community support from a convention center enhancement.

The Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau lent staffing last year to 421 meetings and conventions that had 243,000 attendees — and, unlike baseball, which lasts six months, they came here year-round.

That doesn't include the large meetings that didn't need bureau aid. Think of 8,500 people due in January at the Jewelers International Showcase, or 20,000 from around the hemisphere in February for the Printing Association of Florida, or 5,000 in April for the International and American Association of Dental Research. The list runs on.

With better facilities, we'd lure far more conventions bringing big spenders. Without upgrades, we could lose some of what we have.

And those meetings are vital to every county resident. Last year, according to the convention bureau, an average overnight visitor spent $244.54 daily, stayed 5.85 days and spent $1,430.56 while here, not including air fare. And he or she didn't come alone: parties averaged 2.09 persons.

Add 100,000 visitors annually at an upgraded convention center and we add $1.43 billion in outside spending in restaurants, hotels, taxis, stores and more. Most workers in those industries live in Miami, Hialeah and throughout this county, so visitor spending in Miami Beach benefits all.

And each visitor dollar multiplies as it's spent again, perhaps doubling. So we could easily add $3 billion a year spending impact by upgrading our convention center — or lose $3 billion of current impact by building a ballpark instead.

We could get that $3 billion annual bang for our buck for a $100 million one-time upgrade. Who'd want to trade that impact for spending half a billion dollars on a stadium to add just 16,000 out-of-town baseball fans per year?

These are days for smart spending to target economic growth. A ballpark just shifts dollars from H. Wayne Huizenga to Jeffrey Loria. A convention center upgrade brings billions a year to our community. The choice is obvious. A stadium strikes out.
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Cris Arreola

Miami Herald boxing article by Santos Perez on Cris Arreola.
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Arreola: A boxer on rise

Posted on Mon, Nov. 24, 2008

BY SANTOS A. PEREZ

Evander Holyfield and Cris Arreola define the current extremes and wilderness that have become American heavyweight boxing.

One fighter clings to his name and history for one additional payday and championship thrill while the other pushes for a breakthrough and provide the weight class its first established attraction in a decade.

Sadly, American heavyweights have failed to captivate since a younger Holyfield, Mike Tyson, Riddick Bowe and Michael Moorer ruled the division.

Similar to an aging golf champion receiving annual invitations to participate in the Masters, Holyfield continues to land title fights. The 46-year-old, four-time heavyweight champion will face World Boxing Association titleholder Nicolay Valuev Dec. 20 in Zurich, Switzerland.

Holyfield has not fought since October 2007, when he lost a lopsided decision against Sultan Ibragimov for the World Boxing Organization belt. Despite Holyfield's lengthy inactivity and diminished skills, the WBA rewards him with another title bid against the seven-foot Valuev.

The casual fan will likely recognize Holyfield instead of Arreola if both fighters were spotted in public. But Arreola, 27, soon could cure the American heavyweight malaise, considering his convincing rise through formative bouts and now to television performer.

''There are a lot of young heavyweights that are good, but the problem with the division is the matchmaking,'' Arreola said Saturday. ``Who wants to see Valuev-Holyfield?

``People are trying to live off their names. No offense but [ Hasim] Rahman is still living off his knockout win over Lennox Lewis years ago. More power to him.''

Arreola has won his first 25 fights, 22 by knockout. The Los Angeles native will fight on his second HBO telecast with a scheduled 10-round bout against Travis Walker on Saturday in Ontario, Calif.

A victory over Walker (28-1, 22 KOs) could move Arreola into a line of fights against former champions -- the progression fighters usually make before earning the title bout.

ELSEWHERE

Ricky Hatton scored an 11th-round technical knockout over Paulie Malignaggi late Saturday in Las Vegas.

Malignaggi (26-2) stunned Hatton with a right to the head late in the second but could not follow up with telling shots. Hatton (45-1, 32 KOs) recovered and increased punch volume for the remainder of the junior-welterweight bout.

Miami promoter Felix Zabala Jr. will present his final card of the year at Miccosukee Resort and Gaming on Dec. 5.

The eight-bout card will be headlined by a regional super-flyweight title fight between Mexico's Jesus Jimenez and Colombia's Luis Melendez.

Miami's Joey Hernandez remained undefeated with a fourth-round technical knockout victory over Jesse Davis Friday night in Hammond, Ind. A junior-middleweight, Hernandez is now 14-0 with seven knockouts.
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Thomas Friedman on Auto Industry

Thomas Friedman on auto industry.
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November 12, 2008 - Op-Ed Columnist - How to Fix a Flat

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Last September, I was in a hotel room watching CNBC early one morning. They were interviewing Bob Nardelli, the C.E.O. of Chrysler, and he was explaining why the auto industry, at that time, needed $25 billion in loan guarantees. It wasn’t a bailout, he said. It was a way to enable the car companies to retool for innovation. I could not help but shout back at the TV screen: “We have to subsidize Detroit so that it will innovate? What business were you people in other than innovation?” If we give you another $25 billion, will you also do accounting?

How could these companies be so bad for so long? Clearly the combination of a very un-innovative business culture, visionless management and overly generous labor contracts explains a lot of it. It led to a situation whereby General Motors could make money only by selling big, gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s and trucks. Therefore, instead of focusing on making money by innovating around fuel efficiency, productivity and design, G.M. threw way too much energy into lobbying and maneuvering to protect its gas guzzlers.

This included striking special deals with Congress that allowed the Detroit automakers to count the mileage of gas guzzlers as being more than they really were — provided they made some cars flex-fuel capable for ethanol. It included special offers of $1.99-a-gallon gasoline for a year to any customer who purchased a gas guzzler. And it included endless lobbying to block Congress from raising the miles-per-gallon requirements. The result was an industry that became brain dead.

Nothing typified this more than statements like those of Bob Lutz, G.M.’s vice chairman. He has been quoted as saying that hybrids like the Toyota Prius “make no economic sense.” And, in February, D Magazine of Dallas quoted him as saying that global warming “is a total crock of [expletive].”

These are the guys taxpayers are being asked to bail out.

And please, spare me the alligator tears about G.M.’s health care costs. Sure, they are outrageous. “But then why did G.M. refuse to lift a finger to support a national health care program when Hillary Clinton was pushing for it?” asks Dan Becker, a top environmental lobbyist.

Not every automaker is at death’s door. Look at this article that ran two weeks ago on autochannel.com: “ALLISTON, Ontario, Canada — Honda of Canada Mfg. officially opened its newest investment in Canada — a state-of-the art $154 million engine plant. The new facility will produce 200,000 fuel-efficient four-cylinder engines annually for Civic production in response to growing North American demand for vehicles that provide excellent fuel economy.”

The blame for this travesty not only belongs to the auto executives, but must be shared equally with the entire Michigan delegation in the House and Senate, virtually all of whom, year after year, voted however the Detroit automakers and unions instructed them to vote. That shielded General Motors, Ford and Chrysler from environmental concerns, mileage concerns and the full impact of global competition that could have forced Detroit to adapt long ago.

Indeed, if and when they do have to bury Detroit, I hope that all the current and past representatives and senators from Michigan have to serve as pallbearers. And no one has earned the “honor” of chief pallbearer more than the Michigan Representative John Dingell, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee who is more responsible for protecting Detroit to death than any single legislator.

O.K., now that I have all that off my chest, what do we do? I am as terrified as anyone of the domino effect on industry and workers if G.M. were to collapse. But if we are going to use taxpayer money to rescue Detroit, then it should be done along the lines proposed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday by Paul Ingrassia, a former Detroit bureau chief for that paper.

“In return for any direct government aid,” he wrote, “the board and the management [of G.M.] should go. Shareholders should lose their paltry remaining equity. And a government-appointed receiver — someone hard-nosed and nonpolitical — should have broad power to revamp G.M. with a viable business plan and return it to a private operation as soon as possible. That will mean tearing up existing contracts with unions, dealers and suppliers, closing some operations and selling others and downsizing the company ... Giving G.M. a blank check — which the company and the United Auto Workers union badly want, and which Washington will be tempted to grant — would be an enormous mistake.”

I would add other conditions: Any car company that gets taxpayer money must demonstrate a plan for transforming every vehicle in its fleet to a hybrid-electric engine with flex-fuel capability, so its entire fleet can also run on next generation cellulosic ethanol.

Lastly, somebody ought to call Steve Jobs, who doesn’t need to be bribed to do innovation, and ask him if he’d like to do national service and run a car company for a year. I’d bet it wouldn’t take him much longer than that to come up with the G.M. iCar.

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Amazing Grace

The story of how John Newton came to Christianity is inspiring and instructive. After his conversion had begun, he continued to participate in the slave trade in the 1750's. By itself, that fact could be a source of criticism of Newton by some. But those critics would likely not include any Christian who has struggled to determine what their faith is calling them to do and then to actually follow through when they finally do realize.

A movie was made in 2006 of Newton's story.

Amazing Grace"

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promis’d good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call’d me here below,
Will be forever mine.

John New­ton, Ol­ney Hymns (Lon­don: W. Ol­i­ver, 1779)

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An Attack on Reasonableness

I love arguing [talking] about politics. In the good old days, people staked out a position on the right or left and went at it. However, lately I have been encountering a particularly vicious strain of pseudo-impartiality that is sweeping across Cuban-American circles. The reasonable, open-minded, just weighing all the facts person, who miraculously always ends up opposing conservative positions. They are 'the reasonable guy or gal' [RG].

In the good old days, this person would have constituted a liberal in good-standing. But since Liberalism has fallen into such ill-repute--even Barack Obama can not afford to be seen with her--they pretend not to recognize familiar views. Too bad, some things are worth being mocked about, as young conservatives or old conservatives with bad memories will learn. Apparently having a consistent political philosophy is too '20th century' for these cutting-edge, new-age firecrackers. You can almost feel their desire to have an original political thought, or at least one not recently spewed out on the CNN, MSNBC and Fox meat grinders of political discourse, they're so ... common.

So moved am I by their practicality, their high-mindedness, their oneness with rationality, that I have been moved to poetry--coming to a wedding near you:

RG is patient, RG is kind. RG does not envy nor boast, RG is not proud. RG is not rude, RG is not self-seeking, RG is not easily angered, RG keeps no record of wrongs. RG does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. RG always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

RG's will always eventually oppose whatever they sense to be prevailing view among their tribe, it's a way of differentiating themselves. The impartiality dance is their way of holding out for the intellectual version of dinner and a movie. In effect, those of up front about our ideologies are the intellectual version of 'hey, just no motels OK.' For me there are 3 political points of view, the honorable left, the honorable right and the gutless pretenders mucking up punching lanes like some drunk Richard Steele wannabees.

You're So Reasonable - The Musical

You walked into a room designed for spin
Like you were undecided on the day of a caucus
Your vote strategically hidden behind a Baldwin
If you switch, it could really focus [last word to be pronounced as if an elderly Cuban guy was speaking]
You think this post is about you, don't you

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Bolt, The First Presidential Target?

Washington D.C. -- January 20th 2009:

[AP-BHO Newswire] At his 2nd press conference, President-elect Obama today surprised many by issuing a threat against Disney Studios. He stated that unless they agreed to remake its most recent animated movie, Bolt, he would request a review of all existing contractual agreements with the entertainment conglomerate to determine improprieties, real or otherwise.

Bolt's plot is based on the adventures of a white German Shepherd. President Obama stated that, given the Olympic record-setting performance of the Jamaican sprinter, Usain Bolt, he considered it 'unacceptable' for Disney to have released a movie bearing his name, while failing to capitalize on the natural tie-in promotions. While there were no explicit charges of racism, the implication was inescapable. Excerpts from the President's comments:

It's not just that -- that -- that the dog is uh, er, uh, white. The fact that uh, er, uh, breed is German, certainly poses, I think, an unnecessary uh, er, uh, challenge to our Jewish friends. I have contacted the New York Times, MSNBC and uh, er, uh, Ms Winfrey and ask that they take no immediate retribution, but everyone has their uh, er, uh, limits. I have also spoken with uh, er, uh, director Spike Lee, and he assured me that he stands ready to help in uh, er, uh, by whatever means necessary that the right thing uh, er, uh, be done, uh, here.

Disney sought to assure all that they meant no offense. The studio, whose animated projects are typically in development for years, assured the White House--or 'Primera Casa' as it is referred to by many of the President-elect's staff to avoid the wrath of the First Lady in-waiting, who intensely dislikes what the use of the word 'white' may subliminally denote to some--that the only white character currently in development involved a polar bear.

Top White House officials suggested that the polar bear's appearance could easily be altered by an oil spill, which would bring with it a bonus synergy of calling attention to the dangers of drilling for oil [i.e. alternative energies]. Disney was urged to focus on other similar potential upsides to Obama's Bolt-vision, drawing parallels with Coca Cola's initial missteps with Coke Classic.

Some cynics, probably racists, ridiculed the move as a 'reverse bolt of lightening.' Defending the president's forays into what might be considered unusual areas, one top official noted, 'Ancient Jews did not reject manna from heaven just because they did not understand from whence it came. We urge small-minded Americans not to try his patience.'

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Tony Roman Win

Miami Herald boxing article by Santos Perez on Tony Roman.

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Miami's Tony Roman still undefeated

Posted on Thu, Nov. 20, 2008

BY SANTOS A. PEREZ

The pounding on the canvas to signal the final 10 seconds of his fight allowed Tony Roman for a brief celebratory shuffle.

Roman had reason to celebrate. This Dominican Republic native and Miami resident won a unanimous decision over Alexis Division in the main event of Wednesday night's card at the Mahi Temple Shrine Auditorium.

The victory earned Roman, in his first year of professional boxing, a regional junior-middleweight title. ''It is a great feeling. I worked very hard for this victory,'' said Roman, who improved to 8-0.

Roman solidified the victory when he dropped Division with a short right to the head late in the sixth round for the fight's only knockdown. ''I thought I had him finished at that point, but the bell was able to save him,'' Roman said.

After an uneventful first round, as both fighters looked for openings, the pace intensified in the second. Roman scored with left jabs to the head and rights to the body.

Despite a height and reach advantage, Division could not offset Roman with distance-maintaining jabs. Instead, Roman connected frequently with left jabs to the head.

Earlier, Boca Raton resident Eric Leander barely broke a sweat with a 31-second, first-round knockout over Derek Walker.

Leander (5-0, 4 KOs) charged at Walker immediately after the opening bell and pressed the action. As soon as he found his opening, Leander knocked Walker out cold with a straight right and a left hook to the head.

In other bouts: Featherweight Daniel Lorenzana won by unanimous decision over Kato Ferguson; junior-middleweight Jean Carlos Prada won by split decision over Akilles Adnan; middleweights Omar Coffi and Angel Martinez fought to a draw.
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I Know Mil Mascaras, But Whose the Kid?

I want to take you back to a different time and different place, backstage at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami. How different? The room was filled with professional wrestlers. It was there on the evening of March 5th 1977 that something odd and magical happened. Elsewhere in America, Kiss was playing at the Rupp Arena and Wally Szczerbiak was being born, so not all was right. But Miami on that night was different.

Professional wrestlers. The thought of them either brings a smile or a smirk. For you smirkers, take your politically-correct, oh-so-sophisticated-practically-effete sensibilities back to watching Oprah or MSNBC, talking about defining elections and speculating about the 'best restaurant in town.' This ain't for you'se.

This tale is retold for anyone who appreciated that wrestlers had jobs--we speak now of the pre-Vince McMahon, pre-WWF era. Their jobs involved athleticism and showmanship. In that way they remind me of Melville's great reflection in Moby Dick about those of us with jobs:

"What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain't a slave? Tell me that."

That December evening, after their jobs were done, the guys of the Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling sat around having a few beers, the finished bottles referred to as dead soldiers.When in through the door walks the tall scrawny kid who had been taking photographs. Everyone assumed someone else had asked him to do that. But no one had, and it didn't matter. The kid was accepted as one of the guys that night. The kid would never forget it.

Mil Mascaras, Thunderbolt Patterson, Johnny Weaver and the kid with the camera were all part of the show that night. The wrestling worker bees didn't 'take' their act on the road, their act was always on the road. You get the sense that they loved what they got to do and constantly wondered how long they would get to do it. Maybe that's why they seem to appreciate all who helped them along the way, even unofficial kid photographers. That makes them very unlike our 'performers' today. I went a few times, dragging my Dad along and praying that the darn Commie--Boris [The Great] Malenko--wasn't on the card that night.

We don't know what became of the kid with the camera. He might be pushing up daises or just pushing bromeliads, but we are pretty certain that he got to pay forward the kind and classy way that professional wrestlers treated him on that night.

Everything you ever wanted to know about 1970's Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling is copied in full at end of this post.

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Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling Roster

Comprehensive lists of the wrestlers and other personnel that appeared for Crockett Promotions during the 1st quarter of 1977, broken down by the main eventers, mid-carders & under-carders, big-name visitors, plus a list of those who entered and exited the area during the time period.

(N) denotes newcomer to area. (D) denotes departure from area. (R) denotes returnee to area.

MAIN EVENT

(Faces) Dino Bravo, Mighty Igor, Paul Jones (D), Rufus R. Jones, Wahoo McDaniel, "Mr. Wrestling" Tim Woods (D)

(Heels) Kim Duk, Ric Flair, Blackjack Mulligan, Masked Superstar, Greg Valentine


MID-CARD

(Faces) Tony Atlas (D), Red Bastien, Tiger Conway, "Cowboy" Frankie Lane, Ricky Steamboat (N), Johnny Weaver (R)

(Heels) Brute Bernard, Jerry Blackwell, Jerry Brown (Hollywood Blondes) (N), Sgt. Jacques Goulet, Lanny Poffo, Randy Poffo, Buddy Roberts (Hollywood Blondes) (N)

LOWER CARD

(Faces) Klondike Bill, Steve Bolus (D), Dan Burdick (N), "Big" Bill Dromo (N), Johnny Eagle, Francisco Flores, Keith Franks, Dr. Fujinami (D), Herb Gallant, Rick McGraw (N), Danny Miller, Vic Rosetani (D), Joey Rossi (D), Ron Starr

(Heels) Dennis Condry (N), Jack Evans (D), Ricky Ferrara (R), George "Two Ton" Harris, Scott Irwin (N), Butch Malone (N), Angelo Poffo (D), Tony Russo Larry Sharpe (R) Blue Scorpion, Doug Sommers, Bill White, Mr. X (N)

MANAGERS

"Professor" Boris [Great - JC] Malenko (Kim Duk & Masked Superstar), Ivan Kamikoff (Mighty Igor)

WOMEN - None

MIDGETS - None [these were the dark times - JC]

GUEST SHOTS

Gene Anderson (Georgia), Ole Anderson (Georgia), Andre The Giant, Giant Baba (All Japan), Dory Funk, Jr. (Florida/Texas), Gladiators, Superstar Billy Graham (WWF), "Professor" Boris Malenko (wrestled infrequently), Mil Mascaras (WWF/Mexico), Ken Patera (WWF), Thunderbolt Patterson (Georgia), Harley Race (NWA Champion), Dusty Rhodes (Florida), Tenriu (All Japan), Jumbo Tsuruta (All Japan), Baron Von Raschke (AWA)

REFEREES

Sonny Fargo, Zack Murray, Tommy Young

TV ANNOUNCERS

Ed Capral (Wide World Wrestling), Bob Caudle & David Crockett (Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling)

TV RING ANNOUNCERS

Carl Murnick, Elliott Murnick, Joe Murnick

PROMO ANNOUNCERS

Ed Capral, Les Thatcher

CUMULATIVE RANKINGS

SINGLES

1. Wahoo McDaniel (2)

2. Blackjack Mulligan (4)

3. Masked Superstar (5)

4. Dino Bravo (10)

5. Rufus R. Jones (6)

6. Greg Valentine (7)

7. Mighty Igor (NR)

8. Kim Duk (NR)

9. Paul Jones (3)

10. Ric Flair (1)



TAG TEAMS

1. Ric Flair & Greg Valentine (2)

2. The Hollywood Blondes (NR)

3. Wahoo McDaniel & Rufus R. Jones (NR)

4. Dino Bravo & Tiger Conway, Jr. (NR)

5. Dino Bravo & "Mr. Wrestling" Tim Woods (3)
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