Metro Magazine

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Carlos, an epic dramatic portrait of both the miscreant known as Carlos the Jackal and the era (the 1970s and 80s) of international terrorism he dominated, is the latest from French critic turned auteur Olivier Assayas. Last year Assayas beautifully muted family drama Summer Hours was number one on my annual 10- ... read more

Many fine examples of Raleighs well-known reputation for family friendly suburban communities are found west of center city. If you turn off Leesville Road to Rest Haven Drive, you wend your way through gently rolling topography and an enclave of handsome transitional residences. But tucked away behind a curving driveway concealed from the street ... read more

Glistening performing arts and athletic venues, plus more areas for socializing and a new dining hall are now available to more students at Raleighs private Episcopal school.

Kevin Lockerbie is excited. The headmaster of St. Davids School in Raleigh where the values of faith, virtue and knowledge augment the tra ... read more

The Chinese media fawned, the crowd awed as the Duke Blue Devil worked the crowd.
No, Blue Devil basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski wasnt back in China to repeat his coaching feat leading the US to basketball gold in the Beijing Olympics. The media attention this time was focused on Duke University President Richard Brodhead.
Dapper as ... read more

Lucifer Is Loose In The Land
It was the devil himself who said the future is not what it used to be. Lucifer was disguised as Louis Cyphre (get it?) played by Robert De Niro in the edgy and disturbing film Angel Heart. This was 1987, before the election of Barack Obama and the beginning of the end of America as we knew it. Today, the future isnt just what it used to be, its now a menacing and gloomy reality that a new Congress may not be able to alter.

The key change in the construct is the end of home ownership as the American Dream, a goal agreed upon politically and, most importantly, economically. And the dream was backed by a government program that actually worked. Loans were secured through Fannie May and Freddie Mac and Congress obliged by allowing interest deductions for home mortgages. The result was increasing prosperity as Americans were able to create a secure investment to fall back on in troubled times. Home ownership became the largest asset in the portfolio of the majority of Americans and homebuilding generated the hottest sector in the economy, calling upon millions of small business sub-contractors that expanded job creation and stimulated the consumer sector.

But the devil didnt like that. He set about dismantling the dream relying on his favorite alchemy greed and corruption. Enticed by ever- rising homeprices, executives across the spectrum, including federal housing lenders, banks and Wall Street investment firms fell under a spell that led them to believe bubbles never burst. And homeowners were deceived too, leveraging their key asset to the hilt. The bubble burst, causing high-end homes to become millstones around the necks of owners and the economy to collapse. As to the future, many young people arent as interested in home ownership having witnessed older citizens lose the security of their latter years as houses become financial anchors, foreclosures quicken and the economy stalls. Without the home sector, an economy centered around families and small businesses is giving way to government command economy principles and the rise of an elite ruling class confident it knows whats best for the rest of us. The dignity, wealth and self-esteem of the vast middle class are fading away.

Erskine Bowles, about to step down as president of the University of North Carolina system of schools, can now spend more time working with former US Senator Alan Simpson, his co-chairman of the White House Deficit Reduction Commission. Their recent suggestions to confront the problem include cutting military spending, extending and trimming social security payments, reducing medicare benefits and removing the tax deduction for mortgage interest. Strapped with tyrannical local property taxes at the same time homes decrease in value across the board, owners are now forced to give up their tax deduction, the only bright spot in an otherwise grim reality.

The proposal to cut military spending is an old chestnut from the files of the liberal left since the 1950s. The idea comes over today like suggesting government workers use less paper clips. Military spending has remained 20% or less of the federal budget for decades. And Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a hold-over form the much-missed George W. Bush administration, has been streamlining military spending for several years.

To throw this out today as a budget saving salve is more political than practical, and does not take into account how defense spending stimulates the economy (via civilian contractors and the jobs created), contributes to the economies of states who host military bases, produces technologicalinnovations that assure our security and serves as the major contributor to the civilian technological sector. Cuts also negatively affect morale at a time everyone is nervous about terrorism and the nations who give them safe harbor.

Trimming Social Security and reducing medicare are additional blows to the benighted Baby Boomers. After home ownership, a monthly check in old age really is all that is left as a safety net in a disastrous economy. Worse, it was the boomers who made the contributiosn so their parents have enjoyed a far more secure retirement. So Bowles and Simpson have erred while staring them right in the face is the solution Americans desire: cut federal government salaries across the board.

Only two days before the suggested cutbacks were announced, Bowles and I exchanged emails on the task ahead. He wrote: there are too many federal employees and contractors. no State employee (in NC) has had a raise in the last three years while federal pay has gone up 3+% in two of those years 2% one year and is scheduled to go up again in January of 2011.

Federal employees are allegedly paid 30% more than their counterparts in the private sector. While the economy of Washington, DC and environs is booming, the rest of the country is suffering. Whats wrong with this picture? Ask Louis Cyphre.

Notes From La-La Land
The NPR/Juan Williams episode included a cultural and political cue to heed. After firing the black news commentator, who also serves in the same capacity at the conservative FOX News, for stating he feels uncomfortable boarding an airliner with Muslims wearing caftans, NPRs president Vivian Schiller commented that Williams behavior was between Juan and his psychiatrist. Williams opinion was honest and expressed the views of most Americans. But NPR is not interested in the views of most Americans. Even though the network is a non-profit public broadcasting entity, its managers consistently refract information through the prism of a highly biased left-wing view. Schillers repost to Williams that he must be mentally unbalanced not to understand NPRs objection to his comments - is a venerated tradition borrowed from the Soviets who imprisoned subjects who dared disagree with communist orthodoxy. Alexander Solzhenitsyns famous book Gulag Archipelago makes this clear. Vivian Schiller makes it clear the practice to label class enemies and those who disagree with you crazy is alive and well in the radical redoubt of NPR.

Just as the economy seems to have bottomed, the Federal Reserve plans to purchase $600 billion of US debt, supposedly to guard against inflation. With interest rates nearly zero, and prices deflated in most economic sectors, why is the Fed doing this? Could it be that the good faith and credibility of the United States, the core asset that encourages others to buy our debt, is slipping more than we feared? Are investors saying the rates we pay on our debt are too low that for them to keep buying, the interest rate has to be higher because our economy is worse than we know? That does explain why the Fed says it fears future inflation: If the rate we have to pay to sell our debt has to be raised, the rates paid for loans go up too, thus creating inflation. Another concern is that the Fed purchase of US debt lowers the value of the dollar, which irritates our trading partners. Is it dj vu all over again? Is dollar devaluation that inhibits trade the equivalent of the tariffs the US implemented at the beginning of the Great Depression that caused the financial collapse to spread around the globe? What say Louis Cyphre?