Memoratorium

To: John Kerry and Howard Dean

Come on, guys, why can’t you focus and seize the moment? The time couldn’t be more palpable for a new deal here. We’re going to hell in a hand basket, as they say, and everyone seems to want to take turns carrying it. The Republican robber barons are bleeding us to death—financially, socially, environmentally, diplomatically, and morally—and the mainstream media seem to be so thoroughly embedded that they’re just stumbling around like a bunch of clowns. And while you’re at it, put a muzzle on Lieberman. Who does he think he is, Ariel Sharon?

Abracadabroff

Abramoff raised more than $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, making him an honorary Bush "Pioneer." But the campaign is giving up only $6,000, which came directly from Abramoff, his wife and one of the Indian tribes the lobbyist represented. The money will be donated to the American Heart Association.

The gesture was criticized by the watchdog group Public Citizen, which called for an accounting of all the money that Abramoff had raised for the campaign.

"President Bush needs to . . . reveal just how much money Abramoff raised for him and who that money came from," said Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch.

[By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 5, 2006; A01]

FSBO

Once again the New York Times reveals a puerile lapse in editorial vision by publishing a story on the front page today about two young women in fuzzy slippers who have a Web site devoted to selling real estate by homeowners (“Owners’ Web Gives Realtors Run for Money,” January 3, 2006, A1). What a scoop, you might conclude. The whole issue of FSBOs (For Sale by Owner), however, is just another non-story in the broader trumped-up national controversy surrounding commissions earned by qualified and licensed REALTORS®. There is simply no story here, and there is no issue—except what the press seems to want to wad up in its shorts. Citizens have been selling homes to one another on their own since the first deed changed hands in the colonies several hundred years ago. And to this day, no one is required or even obligated to pay anybody a commission to sell real estate that they have not contracted of their own free will to pay. What’s more, there is no set commission rate for a REALTOR® in a real estate transaction. It could be 7 percent; it could be 6 percent; it could be 4.75 percent, or 3 percent, or whatever the traffic will bear. Real estate is a very competitive business for REALTORS®. This translates into a wide range of choices that are ultimately most advantageous to the educated consumer and not to the real estate professional, who is bound by extensive licensing laws, required education, and codes of conduct to hold both buyers and sellers they represent harmless from any financial or moral injustice that either party to the transaction may wish to perpetrate.

Some observers in the press, not to mention the Department of Justice, seem to have a fixation on real estate brokers that reflects the bad rap earned by used car or snake oil salespeople. After all, this is not brain surgery, they seem to think. Well, compared to used cars and snake oil, it is brain surgery. A real estate transaction for many people is one of the most significant and complex financial decisions in their lives. The transaction is subject to a variety of legal, financial, social, and government regulations, taxations, and fees that usually require the services of informed professionals, even attorneys, to execute. In other words, REALTORS® earn every penny of their commissions, unlike those who aren’t.

Brush

Bush clears brush. The picture published in the press recently of Bush clearing brush on his “ranch” in Crawford, Texas, is worth a thousand words. There he is grimacing at the camera with a stiff lower lip behind his designer sunglasses under his crispy white cowboy hat holding up a gnarled prairie log like he was pumping a hundred pounds of iron. What self-confidence he exudes, such masculine zeal, in his skillful mastery of that ancient ritual—picking up the yard. You can almost hear a nagging female voice in the background intoning, “George, when are you gonna pick up that stuff?” It's the kind of yard work many of his fellow Americans pay illegal immigrant to do. This snapshot of our hapless president is reminiscent of a home movie clip aired on television of a Bush family party when G.W. was a teenager in which he keeps running in front of the camera and vamping unabashedly like a toddler starved for attention. What a clown. Don’t you just love him? To death.