Evil Euphemism of the Day Award

Upon acquiring DoubleClick and then laying off 300 Human Beings from their jobs in the middle of a recession, the Google spokeshead said, "As with many mergers, this review has resulted in a reduction in headcount at the acquired company."

A reduction in HEADCOUNT? That's a new one. (Maybe it's not, but it's the first time I've heard that euphemism for HUMAN BEINGS -- except in terms of checking you've got all the kids on the bus after the field trip.)

Quote from today's NYTimes, by Miguel Helft: "Google Cutting 300 Jobs at DoubleClick"

This nice lady needed a freezer

for her tiny store in Paraguay. I loaned her a little money ($25), and so did a few other people from the US, Canada, France, and Australia. She got the freezer, improved her income, and paid us all back in no time.

I could do this thanks to the microfinancing website called Kiva, which I heard about in an interview with Bill Clinton (before he turned vicious and sniping, remember? Back when he was all about giving?). You may have heard about microfinancing; it's pretty obvious now that it's been created. Poor people can't afford a big loan -- but if you loan them $25 or $100 or so, they can start a small business and make a little headway, and they're more likely to be able to pay the loan off without being, for all intents and purposes, indentured to their loan.

So Kiva sets up the loans, you contribute to the person you want to loan to (via PayPal), and within a few months, the money comes back and you can reinvest or get your money back. I've loaned to a pig farmer in Indonesia, a carpenter in Bolivia, a small consortium of fruit and vegetable saleswomen in Peru, a weaver in Peru, and someone who sells home decor in Peru. They've all either paid back their loans or are close to doing so. It feels very rewarding.

A fat lot of help he'll be!

George W. Bush never was a successful oilman, really. How did he make all his money? Via corporate welfare and eminent domain. Here's a slice of a very informative article that I read back in 2000, in the New York Times:

Mr. Bush became a multimillionaire in the process, setting himself up financially for his run for the presidency. In one blow, he acquired not only wealth but also the resume he would need to triumph in politics.

Yet a close look suggests that Mr. Bush got the opportunity to be a baseball owner mostly because of his connections. Moreover, his investment was immensely profitable in part because he and his co-owners were shrewd bargainers who charmed and bullied the city of Arlington into giving them a great deal, with the local taxpayers paying more than $135 million to help build the Rangers a stadium.

''The largest welfare recipient in the state of Texas is George W. Bush,'' said Mark S. Rosentraub, a sports economist who formerly taught in Arlington and is now at Indiana University. ''The numbers speak for themselves. You cannot accept $135 million from the taxpayers of Arlington and then be against welfare.''

Mr. Bush and his fellow owners even got the local government to seize the property of other landowners and, in effect, hand it over to the Texas Rangers so that they could make a profit on it. All this was shrewd business and a tribute to Mr. Bush's savvy and vision, but critics complain that it is hard to reconcile with his speeches about limited government and private property rights.

''If a conservative is one who believes in limited government, this whole transaction shows how hypocritical it is for Bush to claim to be a conservative,'' said Jim Runzheimer, a lawyer in Arlington who opposed the public subsidy to build the stadium. ''He got the government to pay his expenses, and that flies in the face of capitalism.''

Yet Mr. Bush was simply doing, exceptionally successfully, what sports franchises everywhere have frequently tried: getting taxpayers to swallow some of their business costs. And to the extent that Mr. Bush's job at that time was to make money for the team's owners, he was eminently successful. ("The 2000 Campaign: Breaking into Baseball; Road to Politics Ran Through a Texas Ballpark, by Nicholas D. Kristof, Published Sept. 24, 2000.)

Yup, they seized private land for the new stadium complex. So much for small gummint.

I recall reading that he never really made any money in oil, but kept getting jobs in the industry because of his dad's connections. And that he'd always wanted to be baseball commissioner. Why didn't he get that job instead?