Stimulus today, federal debt tomorrow

News reports today say that President Obama has rediscovered the federal budget deficit, and he's going to promise to do something about it. Good for him.

There has been little discussion of the budget deficit or how our grandchildren will repay all this money as Congress has debated the stimulus package. We are now looking at annual budget deficits in excess of $1 trillion! Remember all the grief Ronald Reagan took when deficits under his watch reached $100 billion? Several times that amount has disappeared into the banking system in the past six months, and no one seems to know where it has gone.

Obama says he wants to cut the deficit in half by the end of his current term. If that promise sounds familiar, it should. George W. Bush expressed the same wish, and I seem to recall Reagan and George H.W. Bush making the same or a similar promise. Funny thing about cutting something in half: You can cut by half for 50 years, and you never quite get rid of it. Still, it's a starting point.

Few economists fault Obama's push for federal spending to bolster the feeble economy. Now, they say, is not the time to worry about deficits. But we will need to worry about deficits sometime, and Obama deserves some credit for bringing up the topic now. After spending trillions of dollars salvaging banks and boosting the economy, cutting the deficit will be difficult.

Obama is calling a meeting this week to discuss long-term budget problems, which includes the long-term insolvency of Social Security and Medicare. Democrats, whose campaign rhetoric denied any problem with Social Security's finances, have to tackle this issue. George W. Bush's futile effort to shift SS investments to the stock market never got going, and all Americans are now grateful for that, since the market has lost nearly half of its value in the past year or so. The federal deficit is greater than usually acknowledged because Social Security revenues now mask the depth of the deficit.

The nation's long-term fiscal health depends upon finding a solution to the Social Security and health care problems. The federal debt has now topped $10.8 trillion, which is more than two-thirds of the gross domestic product of around $14 trillion. Annual payments on that debt are around $500 billion, nearly as much as the Defense budget. As a nation, we cannot sustain this forever. Obama is right to address the deficit issue now and to think ahead about how we are going to get our spending back into balance and thereby provide for the economic growth we and our grandchildren will need.

Wilson gets double dose from Our State

Wilson gets a double dose in the March issue of Our State magazine. Two articles in this outstanding magazine feature Wilson prominently. Wilson is one of the "11 Perfect Weekends" featured on the cover, and a culinary feature on barbecue entrepreneur Ed Mitchell cites his Wilson roots.

The weekend getaway to Wilson is a baseball weekend, featuring the city's historic Fleming Stadium and its adjacent North Carolina Baseball Museum. It's a nice portrait of the city's love of baseball, beginning with sports advocate and hot dog king Lee Gliarmis. Writer Chris Gigley of Greensboro suggests a hot dog at Dick's Hot Dog Stand, owned by Gliarmis, both for the cuisine and for the photographs that cover the landmark restaurant's walls, then a trip to circa 1938 Fleming Stadium. The stadium, as Wilson residents know, was refurbished by the city in the 1990s to provide a home for a college summer league team, the Wilson Tobs, but it still retains the charm and close-up seating of old ballparks. The Baseball Museum gets a few paragraphs, but no mention of plans to expand the museum and no photos of the museum or its exhibits.

While you're in Wilson, the writer suggests, take a side trip to Kinston or Zebulon for more baseball. The Kinston Indians play in the 1949 Grainger Stadium, and the Carolina Mudcats play in modern, new, downright extravagant Five County Stadium. The near-major-league-quality Five County Stadium features a white-linen restaurant, Cattails, on its top deck.

The infobox with the story suggests staying at the Whitehead Inn, the city's only B&B — a natural choice for a travel magazine that garners lots of B&B ads. It also suggests checking out the cuisine at Parker's Barbecue (naturally) and Bill's World Famous Barbecue and Chicken. I thought the old Bill's Barbecue was now named Bill Ellis Barbecue. Maybe I'm behind. But the writer is definitely behind in recommending Inner Banks Market, which has been closed for about a year or more.

If you're going to suggest Wilson restaurants, you shouldn't overlook JAC's Grill, Fifty-Fifty Lounge or Quince for fine food, or Sylvia's for traditional down-home cooking. Or Griff's, Beefmastor or Rocky's for traditional steakhouses. Or Silver Lake or Worrell's for seafood.

And speaking of food, the other Wilson story is about Ed Mitchell's ascent as a barbecue chef. Bob Garner, who did a series with WUNC-TV on North Carolina barbecue and wrote a book on the subject, tells Mitchell's story of being "discovered" by the New York Times' Calvin Trillin and of his setbacks as he expanded his family's former neighborhood store into a big restaurant on U.S. 301. Mitchell is now expanding his legend in Raleigh, where he operates The Pit at 201 E. Davie St. (919-821-3098).

I ate at Mitchell's Wilson restaurant several times before it closed in a financial and legal mess a few years ago, but I haven't been to his Raleigh restaurant. Mitchell is an engaging, friendly guy who is as good at public relations and promotion as he is at barbecuing. His current fame and success are based on more than the taste of his barbecue. In his overalls and cap, he also looks and acts the part of the good ol' hometown boy who's just a natural-born pork cooker.

I miss Mitchell's restaurant in Wilson, but I wish him well in the big city.

Retirement dreams crumble before reality

When my 401(k) statement came in the mail earlier this year, I refused to open it. I knew the balance would be nauseatingly bad. I didn't need more bad news. I had not gone online to look at my statement since last July, before the credit crisis sledgehammer battered all investments. That was when I took the advice of a couple of former colleagues who were more experienced investors and closer followers of the markets than I and converted some of my cash account into an Asia-Pacific fund on the sage advice that Asian markets would do well even when U.S. markets were down.

Today, half the money I put into that fund is gone. Bravely, I called up my account this morning to see how bad the damage was. From the peak of my retirement investments, which I had built up over 20-some years of sacrificial, consistent saving, I had lost about a third of what I had. Even through the end of last year, knowing that my paychecks were coming to an end, I kept saving, thinking that, with the market down, I'd be buying cheap.

Now, with no more money coming in and no more money going into my 401(k),  I'm no longer "buying cheap." I'm just watching my investments dwindle, and with them the financial security I had hoped to gain for retirement. When 401(k)s and IRAs were first marketed in the early 1980s, the television commercials touted the possibility of retiring as a millionaire. Given the double-digit interest rates at the time and 30 or 40 years to invest, such a scenario seemed plausible. More of a realist, I never thought I'd reach those lofty levels, but I did hope that my persistent savings and investing luck might lead to a nest egg of as much as $500,000. After the tech bubble and NASDAQ collapse around 2000 wiped out about a third of my funds, I recalculated my dreams and hoped I might reach $300,000 by the time I reached retirement age, and I seemed on track to achieve that, or come close to it.

But last year's worldwide market collapse and the loss of my job has shattered even that downgraded dream and forced me into a new reality. Today, after looking at all the negative returns from every fund in my account, except cash, I surrendered and transferred a large chunk of what was left in stocks and bonds to a cash fund. The cash fund won't stay ahead of inflation, paying maybe 2 percent, if that, but a tiny increase is better than a big decrease.

My experience is multiplied by the millions as American workers have been led to believe that 401(k)s and IRAs would provide for their retirements, supplementing the Social Security checks that will provide for a subsistence existence, at best. Defined-benefit pensions, which once dominated American corporations, have largely disappeared, replaced by individual investment accounts. Only governments and a few large corporations are still offering pensions; the rest of us are left at the mercy of the stock market.

For people my age, there is little time for the market to recover its losses, and the lost income while the market tanked might never be recovered. The golden age of retirement has passed. I have already conceded that, once I find a job, I'll need to work well past my usual retirement age. Millions of others in my age cohort are reaching the same conclusion.

The 1980s promise of retiring a millionaire has been replaced with the reality that, for many of us, retirement will never happen.

Something's missing from online news

Since leaving the newspaper business, I've been reading more news online because I don't have access to the print editions of some newspapers, and I've dropped one of my newspaper subscriptions. Although free online news is seen as the monster devouring newspapers, with one popular news Web site dedicated to proposals to save newspapers, my experience has been that you miss an awful lot by reading news online, even when you're reading from newspaper Web sites.

Online reading has one huge disadvantage: You read only what you're looking for, not what you happen to stumble across. A print newspaper reader usually starts at the front page (OK, in some cases at the Sports front) and reads sequentially through the paper, opening up each page in succession. Some pages contain news the reader is interested in or is searching for. Some contain nothing of interest and are quickly flipped through. Other pages include interesting news that the reader was not anticipating or that he was not aware of. The beauty of a daily newspaper is that these serendipitous moments are informative and enlightening. They broaden our perspectives. They make us better informed on a wider variety of topics. They might even give us insight into ideas or perspectives we've never thought about. Your chances of finding serendipitous moments in an online search are largely nil. The strength of online search engines is that they find what you're looking for. That is also their weakness; sometimes what you're looking for is not what you need to know or what you'll find most interesting.

Online reading also denies readers access to most of the advertising in the newspaper. I've discovered that grocery stores' weekly fliers are available online; I don't have to buy a newspaper (or go to the store) to see what's on sale. But I still prefer to hold the fliers in my hands and compare prices, not flip from one supermarket Web site to another. Ads printed in the paper, known as ROP (run of press) ads, are another missing element in online newspapers. Web sites carry annoying advertisements, but not as many as are in the paper, and these print ads are often informative. And they're less intrusive and annoying than online ads. They announce new products, new businesses, new prices, etc. The Readership Institute has recognized that newspaper readers actually want to see the print ads because they consider them informative and helpful, just as the news stories are.

Surveys indicate more and more people are getting their news from online sources. Too bad. They don't know what they're missing.

Arts Council, City Council taking risks

The Arts Council of Wilson's decision to decline Wilson City Council's gift of the Edna Boykin Cultural Center might have been the only option it could afford to take, but it was still a risky decision. City Council, hastily and without real discussion, voted last month to hand the historic theater over to the Arts Council, which had been managing the theater since its reopening in 1996. The circa 1919 former vaudeville theater, with its restored plaster work and new seating, has been host to numerous concerts, Playhouse plays, Theater of the American South and other events. Accepting the deed would have meant accepting responsibility for insuring the public venue and maintaining/repairing it. The costs the Arts Council would be accepting are unknown.

The Arts Council's risk, of course, is that its snub might anger City Council, which has a stranglehold on the group's finances. City Council contributes $100,000 annually to the nonprofit, in part to cover the expenses of a youth theater program the city used to provide through its recreation program. Additional Arts Council funding comes from grants and membership dues. The group has a broad and enthusiastic membership, constituting a potentially powerful political force. The city also owns the Wilson Arts Center, the former BB&T headquarters office that was given to the city by the bank.

So while the Arts Council's refusal of the theater deed was a risky decision, forcing the deed onto the Arts Council would be risky for City Council. Wilson has a growing, statewide reputation as an arts haven in eastern North Carolina, and the Arts Council enjoys faithful support from a broad array of city residents, ranging from funky artists to wealthy benefactors.

Pushing the deed transfer makes little sense for City Council. It risks offending a large voting bloc while saving little money for the city. Including the Boykin Center on the city's umbrella insurance policy amounts to a tiny fraction of the city's expenses. Even if substantive repairs are needed in the future, the city's long-term outlay would be relatively small.

The only group benefiting from this controversy is the vocal anti-arts, anti-downtown, anti-Wilson malcontents who submit their tirades anonymously to online forums, including this blog's comments section. Let's hope City Council won't put them in charge.

In cyber age, I have no "friends"

I was on my university alumni association's Web page a few months back when I noticed a link to "My Page." I clicked on it and discovered the alumni association's in-house version of a social networking site, a Facebook or MySpace limited to alumni association members. On "my page" I found the message: "You have no friends."

I had to go to have the alumni association tell me that? And how did they know?

Of course, the "friends" the page referred to were not "friends" in the usual sense; that is, people you talk to face-to-face, confide in and call upon for advice and help. These "friends," of whom I have none, are the people who sign up to share your thoughts, photos and whatnot on social networking sites. I declined to get  involved in the alumni association's network, chose no "friends," and did not offer myself as a "friend."

A few years ago, I assigned a young reporter, fresh out of college, to do a story on social networking sites, including Facebook and MySpace. To my amazement, the young reporter was not familiar with either network and struggled with the assignment. We old geezers in the newsroom had assumed everyone  in college spent half their time on Facebook or MySpace. That's what recent adulatory news stories had indicated. Since that time about four years ago, Facebook has expanded beyond its college campus corral and is accepting members who do not have collegiate e-mail addresses. This has opened the network to older people who are using Facebook to reconnect with childhood, high school and college friends. They're "friending" (a new verb the social networks have launched) their old friends and catching up on their children and grandchildren. (Sometimes they also "unfriend" people they decide aren't worth keeping up with.) MySpace, meanwhile, has been in the news as an alleged haven for sexual predators and has signed an agreement to eliminate those dirty old men masquerading as teens.

My wife has recently posted herself on Facebook and has "friended" some high school classmates and reconnected with old friends (old in the sense of aged) from when we were young parents. She occasionally points out to me the comments or photos of people I know or knew, and she has frequently suggested that I, too, join Facebook. A reader of this blog even suggested that if I were on Facebook, I could promote the blog and gain more readers.

I'm still resistant. For all the joyful connectedness that social networking promises, I still find it artificial, especially for those folks who lay claim to hundreds and hundreds of "friends." Even the most extroverted and interdependent among us can probably claim no more than a dozen or so "real" friendships, not hundreds and hundreds.

And though I would enjoy retaining connections to high school classmates and others, I haven't made the leap into the ocean of connections in social networking, where I might drown in the sheer numbers. Reconnecting to high school classmates? I recently did that at a funeral, and it was real, not cyber.

The sentence is in; the case is over

Superior Court Judge Milton F. "Toby" Fitch has given James Johnson, who entered an "Alford plea" this morning, a prayer for judgment continued for his admission of misprision of a felony in the 2004 murder of Brittany Willis. Johnson, who has been out on bail since the charges and bond against him were reduced a year ago, is free to go. By admitting the evidence could convict him of misprision of a felony, Johnson was admitting that evidence existed that he delayed reporting of a felony.

That admission will not satisfy some critics who were convinced that Johnson not only was an accessory after the fact of murder, the charge he faced had he gone to trial this week, but actually had a larger role in Willis' kidnapping, rape and murder. But Johnson's admission should disillusion some of his staunchest defenders, who asserted he was a hero for pointing police toward Kenneth Meeks, who is serving a life term after pleading guilty to the murder. The case against a third suspect, Julian Deans, remains to be adjudicated.

Judge Fitch went out of his way to pronounce the seriousness of a prayer for judgment continued when he handed down the sentence. It cannot be appealed and cannot be expunged, he said. It will hang over Johnson forever. But any defendant who ever asked for a PJC probably didn't see it as quite so serious as Fitch claimed.

Except for the loose end of Julian Deans, who was never seen as a major participant, this case is over, and Johnson's light sentence implies Deans' case will disappear quickly. It will now be up to the divided community to resolve that the court system has spoken, and it's time to for division and antagonism to end. Kenneth Meeks will spend the rest of his life in prison. James Johnson will have to live with the knowledge of what he did or didn't do. And the community will have to try to heal the wounds of a cruel, senseless murder and deep, caustic division.