Buffalo and Moravia duke it out

Buffalo and Moravia, N.Y., are vying for a piece of the Millard Fillmore action. The two communities both claim this mostly forgotten president, whose very name is associated with mediocrity, and whose oft-cited greatest achievement—installing a bathtub in the White House—was a hoax perpetrated by the writer H.L. Mencken . The U.S. Mint this week is releasing the Millard Fillmore presidential dollar coin, with an official launch ceremony on Thursday in Moravia (pop. 4,000), near his birthplace. Some people in Buffalo are miffed.

Fillmore, you see, is buried in Buffalo, where he made his mark as the first chancellor of the University at Buffalo, founding member and first president of the Buffalo Club, and founder of the Buffalo Historical society.

Members of Moravia's historical society say there's more than enough Millard Fillmore to go around. Buffalo can claim Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th president, who began his career there. "As a small town, we just have a few moments of history that are ours—and Fillmore is one of them," says Roger Phillips, president of the Cayuga-Owasco Lakes Historical Society.

This has to prove that there is a website for nearly everything.

Joyce Hackett Smith, former president of the historical society and a distant cousin of Fillmore's, notes that the 13th president is more apt to be overlooked in a big city like Buffalo, which has a population of about 272,600, while every child at Millard Fillmore Elementary School in Moravia learns a lot about Fillmore

A quarter of a million a big city? What does that make NYC?

"We spent quite a lot of time in history class going over the things that Fillmore did," says 57-year-old Lee Conklin, a lifelong Moravian and owner of an auto-parts store there. The late Robert Scarry, a Moravia history teacher, wrote a book detailing the president's life.

Long Beach Library owns the book.

Millard Fillmore was born on Jan. 7, 1800, several miles outside Moravia in what is now Summerhill and became president following the death of Zachary Taylor in 1850. Fillmore's presidency is marked by his signing and enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act providing for the return of runaway slaves. History has punished him for that, but supporters say it was his way of trying to keep the country united. Fillmore made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1856 as a member of the American party, derisively known as the Know-Nothing party, after his former party, the Whigs, fell apart over the issue of slavery.

Not a great record.

His name is attached to cartoonist Bruce Tinsley's "Mallard Fillmore" comic strip, which features a right-leaning duck reporter who goes after the media, not to mention liberal politicians. And Fillmore's reputation for being ignored takes center stage in George Pendle's fictional and tongue-in-cheek account of Fillmore's life in "The Remarkable Millard Fillmore: The Unbelievable Life of a Forgotten President," published in 2007.

 

Fillmore did get a burst of recognition in 2008 from auto maker Kia Motors and its "Unheard of Presidents' Day" sale. The commercial made reference to the bathtub "legacy," and featured a Millard Fillmore soap-on-a-rope. The historical society in Moravia got its hands on a box of soaps-on-a-rope for its collection, says Mr. Phillips.

One self-proclaimed Fillmorephile, Jeff Amdur of Baltimore, has been anticipating the launch of the Fillmore dollar, even though he won't be able to make it to either of the two ceremonies.

"After I got a Zachary Taylor dollar in change last year, I knew Millard's time was coming up," he says.

I voted against him

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg celebrated his re-election Tuesday night at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers




For the first time in years, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg finds himself governing New York City from a most unaccustomed vantage point: Vulnerability.

Ninety million dollars and a near-constant loop of negative commercials about his opponent later, the mayor ended election night in possession of a surprisingly modest margin of victory — far narrower than pollsters had predicted and with 100,000 fewer votes than he won in 2005. This could have profound implications for the tenor of a third Bloomberg term, not least that it is likely to hinder the mayor’s well-honed ability to cow Democrats and liberal interest groups.

Somebody should stand up to him; hopefully John Liu will have the spine to do so.

What perhaps was missing all along, and what will be his challenge now, is to find a more tactile, emotional connection with New Yorkers.

It is not in his DNA to be emotional. He is the remote technocrat.

“It’s not a vote of repudiation; it’s a vote of no confidence,” said Fred Siegel, a history professor at the Cooper Union and a longtime chronicler of urban America. “A lot of people are going to think twice before showing him deference.”

Hopefully.











New Yorkers Have Their Say
Slide Show
Election Day 2009
Graphic
Profile of New York City Voters

Who is the bright guy?

In today's Wall Street Journal there is a full page a kind of parody the the lost baseball season of the New York Mets: it details the woes that have beset the team this year. An interactive version takes it further. Both include this gem: "Starting in 2011, you must pay Bobby Bonilla, who hasn't played for you in a decade, $1.2 million every year until 2035."

Bonilla retired in 2001. I remember him from his days in Pittsburgh, when he and Barry Bonds were a great 1-2 punch. The Mets signed him as a free agent, and gave him a $29 million contract. The 1991 article has it this way:

Bonilla received a $1.5 million signing bonus, and will earn salaries of $5.5 million in 1992, $5.6 million in 1993, $5.7 million in 1994, $4.7 million in 1995 and $4.5 million in 1996. He will also receive $1.5 million for commercial endorsements.

That is 29 million, indeed, but clearly the exact arrangements weren't detailed, or, perhaps, known. So, now it turns out, there were deferred payments. One point five million a year for 25 years is $37.5 million, which is more than the original value of the contract. Yes, I know the arguments about the discounted value of cash flows over time, about present value versus future value, but the fact remains that 20 years after signing, and for the subsequent 25 years, the man is going to receive a million and a half dollars every year. Nice annuity.

O, and who was the bright guy who approved that contract?

Economic Meltdown No Laughing Matter

Jon Stewart on the "Daily Show" with his guest Jim Cramer who hosts the "Mad Money" show on CNBC. They have been feuding about the economy this week.


Click for video.







It wasn’t a “Brawl Street,” or a thrilla in vanilla. It wasn’t a “Daily Show” friendly feud or even much of a discussion. Mostly, the much-hyped Thursday night showdown between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer, the mercurial host of “Mad Money” on CNBC, felt like a Senate subcommittee hearing.

Cramer is a buffoon. He has rubber chickens, bells, and makes his show seem a game show. It trivializes what should be fairly serious business. Not that investing needs to be dry and boring, but it is not a game.

Mr. Stewart treated his guest like a C.E.O. subpoenaed to testify before Congress — his point was not to hear Mr. Cramer out, but to act out a cathartic ritual of indignation and castigation.

Well deserved, by CEOS and Cramer.

“Listen, you knew what the banks were doing, yet were touting it for months and months, the entire network was,” the Democratic Senator from Comedy Central said. “For now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that nobody could have seen coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.”

Exactly.

And while it’s never much fun to watch a comedian lose his sense of humor, in an economic crisis, it’s even sadder to see supposed financial clairvoyants acting like clowns.

Ditto.

Part of his frustration may stem from the fact that while Mr. Stewart clearly won the debate, Mr. Cramer and CNBC stood to profit from the encounter. In today’s television news market, the cable network and its stars are like the financiers they cover — media short-sellers trading shamelessly on publicity, good or bad, so long as it drives up ratings. There isn’t enough regulation on Wall Street, and there’s hardly any accountability on cable news: it’s a 24-hour star system where opinions — and showmanship — matter more than facts.

Fair and Balanced? Gimme-a-break.

The “Daily Show” has shown clip after clip from last year that show Mr. Cramer assuring his “Mad Money” viewers that Bear Stearns was not in trouble — shortly before the heavily leveraged investment firm imploded. He has apologized to his viewers several times since then. (“I have always thought they were honest,” he said on Thursday. “That was my mistake.”)

Oops, sorry.

Once he had Mr. Cramer at his desk, Mr. Stewart showed fresh, and even more embarrassing clips from a 2006 interview with the Web site he founded, TheStreet.com, in which he too candidly explained how hedge fund market manipulation really works.

And the “Daily Show” host pointedly questioned the hyped-up theatricality and dubious claims of CNBC shows like “Mad Money” and “Fast Money.” When Mr. Cramer explained, “There is market for it and you give it to them,” Mr. Stewart stared at him in disbelief, exclaiming. “There’s a market for cocaine and hookers!”

Mr. Stewart kept getting the last word, but Mr. Cramer may yet have the last laugh.

It is all about ratings.

Betrayed by Madoff, Yeshiva U. Adds a Lesson

Rob Bennett for The New York Times -Students in the library.

This is a startling case which is rocking many worlds; people have lost entire fortunes, and toltal losses are in the billions.

One institution affected is Yeshiva University: Madoff was on its board, and Yeshiva has lost $110 million.

In Intermediate Accounting I, undergraduates analyzed how he seemingly tap-danced around the Securities and Exchange Commission. In Rabbi Benjamin Blech’s philosophy of Jewish law course, students pondered whether Jewish values had been distorted to reward material success.

And he did tap-dance, successfully, for decades.

“This overrides everything else,” said Rabbi Blech, who has taught at Yeshiva for 42 years. “It is an opportunity to convey to students that ritual alone is not the sole determinant of our Judaism, that it must be combined with humanity, with ethical behavior, with proper values, and most important of all, with regard to our relationship with other human beings.”

Yeshiva is home to a seminary that ordains more modern Orthodox rabbis than any other. The school, which was founded in 1886, models itself on the Hebrew phrase Torah Umadda, which articulates the interweaving of secular and Jewish studies. Students do not have to be Jewish, but undergraduates do have to spend time studying religious texts.

A surprising fact: students at Yeshiva University do not have to be Jewish.

Some on campus said in interviews last week that Mr. Madoff’s arrest showed those values were in need of realignment. Several students said they felt dual, even competing, pressures to achieve material success as well as religious devotion, and worried that some might be prone to follow immoral paths if the rewards were alluring.

Material success is defined as success all too often. Billionaires are lionized.

“There’s no such thing as wanting to be a professor in this community,” said Josh Harrison, 23, a graduate student pursuing Jewish philosophy. “All my friends who are intelligent and interesting and asking questions are pre-med and beginning law school.”He added, “This will force a whole reassessment.”

One can only hope so.

“In elevating to a level of demiworship people with big bucks, we have been destroying the values of our future generation,” he said. “We need a total rethinking of who the heroes are, who the role models are, who we should be honoring.”

Time out of Mind

A fascinating Op-Ed piece in today's NYT. Discusses time and money, how the brain perceives time, and how we perceive money. ("Our society is obsessed as never before with making every single minute count. People even apply the language of banking: We speak of “having” and “saving” and “investing” and “wasting” it.")