How Things Have Changed:

It used to be that the local car dealer was considered one of the biggest crooks in town. Selling cars was a license to steal. The dealer got the cars on consignment from Detroit, with little or nothing down, and then sold them to you for more than they were worth. You knew this because if you tried to turn around and sell the car you'd have to take a substantial loss. In addition, you'd have to pay cash for the car or arrange financing yourself at the local bank, whose president seemed a medieval lord with you as just another serf. The only person held in greater disrepute than the new car dealer was the used car dealer, who would sometimes end up in court or even jail for some misdeed in connection with selling faulty merchandise or being involved with stolen vehicles.

Clifford Krauss, writing in today's New York Times, presents a different image of the new car dealer, a man and a company at the center of the economy, whose well-being effects the whole community. So you have to ask yourself, partner, what does this tell us about the direction America has followed in the past fifty years?

What Kind of Presidential News Conference Would It Be?

Maureen Dowd writes in today's New York Times' Op-Ed pages, about a California newspaper that has "off-shored" its writing staff to India. She's wondering if this is the wave of the future. You have to love the irony of a woman in India reporting on the Rose Bowl parade as she watches it via Webcast on her cell phone.