RussSpencer's Blog

The first time I saw a Lincoln Navigator, I couldn't quite believe how big it was.  You'll remember they came into vogue when gas prices in the US were ridiculously low by historical standards. 

Over time, huge SUVs came to seem "normal".

Not anymore.

Is 4 dollars a gallon the tipping point for you to buy a more fuel efficient car?  Is it 5 dollars?

The reality is that car dealers are already having serious trouble selling their SUVs and trucks.

As the herd moves in the direction of hybrids, maybe now is the time to save big and buy a big vehicle, especially if you've got a short commute.

How are the gas prices changing your habits?  I find myself slowing down ( I had a lot of room to slow down.) 

Are you cutting back on other luxuries, like a 2 dollar cup of coffee, or bottled water?

And what happens if, as some suggest, the price of a gallon of gas goes to 7 dollars in the next few years?

The TSA is expanding use of a new scanner that gives screeners a pretty good look at what you'd look like naked.

The scanner uses low energy millimeter waves, so health safety is not an issue.

But the ACLU says it's intrusive -- a virtual strip search.

Do you think that kind of scanner goes too far?

For my money, I like what I've read the Israelis do.  They employ people to watch the behavior of people coming through security and do expanded searches based on what they observe.

The idea that my mother would have to give a TSA employee a glimpse under her dress strikes me as absurd. 

And until middle aged white guys start bringing down airplanes, I don't think I should have to step in the scanner either.

I think the process for pre-screening law-abiding citizens should be expanded to expedite the security process at airports.

And, yes, as callous as it may sound, I think the government should employ profiling in some way.

Not everyone presents the same potential threat to an airplane, and there's not good reason, beyond political correctness, to pretend that they do.

Imagine building Manhattan from scratch and you have some idea what's happening. I've had many reputable people tell me that the land my huge hotel and the rest of the Pudong development sits on was all farm fields 20 years ago, and I still have a hard time believing it.

We were not allowed to document the welcoming ceremony for Delta's non-stop flight from Atlanta because the Chinese Government didn't want us to turn on our cameras in the Shanghai airport. Censored from a ribbon cutting? I don't get it.

The trip from the airport to downtown took us on a multi-billion dollar maglev train, built with German technology, with a top speed of more than 250 miles an hour.

No seatbelts, by the way -- not that they would help.

The guide who led us to the bus and accompanied us to the hotel talked with immense pride about China's economic rise. He spoke excellent English -- taught by an American, he said, at a University in Shanghai. He unselfconsciously referred to the country and the city as "Our China" and "Our Shanghai" and rattled off how much the new villas were worth on the way to the financial district. Twelve million Chinese Yuan, he said -- which is almost 2 million dollars.

We met Jack Portmann today, an architect and developer from Atlanta who studied at Georgia Tech and Harvard and came to the Far East to make a name for himself in a business in which his father was already famous. Portmann figured out how to do Real Estate business here in a western way before almost anyone else. He talks to us about the propects of Georgia capitalizing on the almost unprecedented potential of the Chinese market, in a story that will air Tuesday on Fox 5.

Photographer Fred Plummer and I have been up for almost 30 hours straight. If there are typos in this blog, you'll understand and forgive.

More coming....

Delta is celebrating its first non-stop flight from Atlanta to China. Nice bragging rights, and a full plane. The gentleman sitting next to me flew into Atlanta early from Indiana. He travels to China four or five times a year as a Sales and Marketing VP for a Die Casting company in Kentucky. Loves the new convenience.

The State of Georgia will open its first economic development office in Beijing later this week, near the seat of Chinese Government.

I spoke to Governor Perdue before we took off and again here on the plane about the unfortunate timing of making this trip as the unrest in Tibet generates talk -- in Europe, at least -- of possible Olympic boycotts. I asked him in several different ways whether it will complicate the state's business efforts -- whether he has any misgivings given China's human rights record -- and he insisted China's internal politics is not his concern. He pointed out that this trip to China has been in the works for about 6 months.

I'm experiencing a few firsts myself on this trip. It's my longest flight ever, by far. I hear a baby crying behind me and can relate well to that parent's predicament. A lot of people are trying to sleep. My daughter Daniela gave a similar performance on a flight to Spain to see her grandparents when she was three years old. The flight attendant asked me whether I could make her stop crying. The answer, obviously, was "No." But thanks for asking.

I've never been this far north before. This flight grazes the north pole, far above Prudhoe Bay, as high as the 81st parallel. We'll come down the west coast of Russia into Shanghai.

I've never been to China before. Neither has the Governor, by the way.

And, as a father of six who travels often with the kids, I've never flown in Business Class before. I'm afraid its a little like skiing in Colorado -- it spoils you completely.

Check back here. I'll be blogging all week, provided I can figure out how to make the technology work from my hotel room -- and assuming the censors don't object to my musings.

I'm off to China tomorrow with Governor Perdue and a few dozen political and business people who hope to make some contacts -- and some money -- on the other side of the Earth.

I'm trying out the laptop computer the station loaned me for the trip.  So far, so good.

The principle reasons for the trip are essentially two ribbon cuttings -- for Delta's new non-stop service from Atlanta to Shanghai, and the state's new economic development office in Beijing.

Both are said to be big opportunities for expanding the Georgia-China connection, which is significant and growing.

But beyond that, these are fascinating times in China.

The world spotlight is on Tibet at the moment, in no small part because China has so much at stake in the run-up to the Summer Olympics in August.

And China is the fastest growing economy in the world for the last several years, its more than 1.3 billion people competing with the US for energy, while its Central Government tries to encourage economic vitality without losing its political grip.

Socialism with Chinese Characterictics, they call it.

I am as excited as I can be to see Asia for the first time and to share with you not only the official business of the trip, but as many other impressions as time will allow.  After all, we're coming back on Friday.

What do you want to know about China?  What questions should I be asking of our business and political leaders looking to do business there and recruit Chinese businesses to set up shop here?  How do you feel about European rumblings about perhaps boycotting the Opening Ceremonies?

I'll be blogging all week from China, especially on the way there, I suspect.  What else am I going to do for 15 hours, 40 minutes on an airplane?

Besides drink.  Water. 

It's looking increasingly unlikely that either Florida or Michigan will redo their Democratic Primary votes.

Which means it's probably a mathematical impossibility for Hillary Clinton to catch Barack Obama in either pledged delegates or the popular vote.

She will argue -- is already arguing -- that she's more electable in November, particularly in the big states Democrats need to win.

And her allies are correct that the Superdelegates are supposed to vote their consciences, irrespective of the votes in the primaries.

But many of the Superdelegates are officeholders themselves, and they have their own survival, and their Party's, to consider.

Does anyone really believe those honchos (a majority of whom are White) will overturn the result of the primary season and give the nomination to Hillary?

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is on record saying it would devastate the Party.

Politico.com quotes several unnamed Clinton aides as saying she has only a 10 percent chance of winning the nomination.

If it's really over, why beat up Obama for the next several months?

If it's not over, how does Clinton win?

What do you think?

Barack Obama will need all of his considerable oratorial skills tomorrow to explain his 20-year association with a pastor whose anti-american and racially inflammatory comments he has repudiated.

Obama says Jeremiah Wright is more complicated than the caricature painted by the exerpts of his sermons on YouTube. 

I'm sure that's true.

But it seems equally true that Rev. Wright is an angry man. 

If Obama shares some of those feelings, he hides it well.

If he doesn't, why has he been a member of that Church for so long and asked Wright to officiate at his wedding and baptize his children.

Will it matter in the Presidential race?  Should it?

What do you want to hear from Obama when he addresses the race question tomorrow?

Let's hear what you think.

Is the U.S. already in a recession?  I don't know, and I'm not sure it matters.

What matters is that some people are suffering..  with foreclosures, layoffs, and higher gas prices.

The unemployment rate has risen to 4.8 percent.

The Dow was down 146 points today..  closing well below 12,000.  Remember 14,000 last summer?  That seemed too good to be true, didn't it?  And yet, even then, some economists were predicting Dow 15,000.

I don't have much faith that the tax "rebates" will make much of a difference.

But I do think -- or is it hope? -- the U.S. economy will come out the other end of this natural cycle in decent shape.

That's small comfort, I know, to people who've lost their jobs or their homes to the slow down.

I'm no economist, but it seems like this would be the exact wrong time to raise taxes.

What do you think?

I don't understand how reasonable adults can argue with a straight face that the results from Florida and Michigan should count in the race for the Democratic nomination.

The candidates agreed not to campaign in either state.

Barack Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan.

The candidates and the states understood beforehand the penalty imposed by the Party when those states decided to move their primaries ahead of Super Tuesday.

They wanted to increase their influence and ended up making a bad bet.  Oh, well.

To turn around now and suggest that the punishment amounts to disenfranchising the voters and that the earlier Florida and Michigan votes should affect the delegate count is shameful, petty politics. 

I don't suppose I have anything against a do-over, but the Democratic Party should pay for it, not the taxpayers.

Your thoughts?

The effort to move the Georgia state line a mile to the north to tap into the Tennessee River is a day late and a dollar short -- to say the least.

The drought is a problem, but correcting a surveying mistake almost two centuries old is probably not the solution.

If I put myself in the shoes of our Volunteer neighbors, I can see why they think the idea is laughable.

But they should try a little empathy themselves, and by "they," I'm specifically referring to the Chattanooga Mayor and his tacky stunt in sending water bottles to the State Capitol.

I know funny.

That wasn't funny.

I respect those who respect the Sabbath.

I understand why some people are opposed to buying alcohol on Sundays.

But I don't understand how in this modern age, with our evolved(!) conception of the separation of Church and State, how anyone thinks it's the state's business to ban alcohol sales on Sunday, particularly in such a haphazard way.

You can drink yourself drunk at a restaurant but can't buy a six pack at Kroger.

Honestly, what sense does that make?

Opponents of Sunday sales say people should plan ahead.  Why?  Because the sales offend their religious sensibilities?

It seems more reasonable to me that people who oppose Sunday sales should refrain from buying themselves, and let everyone else face God on their own terms -- right or wrong.

One man's opinion.

I talk about money hesitantly because I'm fortunate to have more than I need.

And I acknowledge that, for some Americans, $600 dollars is a lot of money.

But when politicians on both sides of the aisle in Washington agree on anything as quickly as they've agreed on this Economic Stimulus Package, it makes me suspicious.

The 150 billion dollar giveaway strikes me as bipartisan political pandering -- an incumbent protection plan. 

There's no question the economy is slowing.  And it's equally clear that the short term will be painful for some people.  But $600 or $1200 seems like small consolation to individuals and families who are suffering. 

At the same time, it seems that some of the economic problems we face as a nation, including the shrinking dollar, stem from our habit of spending beyond our means.  Given the current deficit, writing millions checks seems irresponsible.

The markets will correct themselves, eventually.  In the meantime, the pain of this slowdown will hurt some people a lot more than others. 

It's not fair, but I'm not convinced the government can make it fair -- not this way, at least.