Lead, follow or get out of the way!
George S. Patton
Turner (R) Beats Weprin (D) in NY-9 Special Election
As of midnight, the AP and NY1 have called the race to replace disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner with Turner leading Weprin 53%-47%. This Brooklyn/Queens district is 3:1 registered Democrat.
This is state senator Dave Weprin, whose day job clearly must be rocket scientist:
Daily News: “Right now, how big is the debt?”Perhaps he thought the interviewer was referring to the $4T Obama and the Democrats alone have added to the national debt since January 20, 2009... I'm just trying to give him the benefit of the doubt here.
Weprin: (Pause) “Trillions.”
News: “But how many?”
Weprin: (Deer in headlights look.) “I got caught up on this once before,” referring to his inability while running unsuccessfully for city controller in 2009 to state that office’s budget.
News: “This is central to what is going on in Washington.”
Weprin: “About 4 trillion.”
News: “Four trillion is the debt?”
Weprin: “Right.”
Other analysts suggest that Weprin was getting pushback from conservative Democrats in his district for his vote failing to stand by the traditional definition of marriage, and former Democrat Mayor Ed Koch endorsed Turner, characterizing (the Jewish) Weprin as not strong enough on Israel.
My Choice for America's Got Talent 2011
The Silhouettes. I had telegraphed my choice by embedding videos of two performances in blog posts. Depending on when you read my post (to early morning Wednesday), you may still be able to vote at the show site. The Silhouettes performed last, but there were technical (lighting?) problems that affected the start of the performance and, unfortunately, during the performance (my TV screen went black about two-thirds of the way through the performance). This is grossly unfair: if you are doing dance silhouettes against a screen and there is no light, how can you dance or even pick up exactly when light is restored? The dancers were performing brilliantly as usual to the Louis Armstrong 1960's classic "What a Wonderful World". I hope that America does the right thing.
My 1000th Post
When I started this blog back in July 2008, I expected to publish on a periodic/ad hoc (breaking news) basis. I never really thought of publishing on a daily basis; I have never been a supporter of Obama and knew the nation had just made a tragic decision electing him; I know many people (e.g., Gene Simmons, the politically independent lead singer of KISS, on a recent Dennis Miller podcast) never seriously thought Obama was the best candidate in 2008, but they felt there was something historic about America electing its first African American President, and they want to be on the side of history. Everyone in America knows that if the voters in November 2008 knew then what we know today about what Obama and the 111th Congress, Obama would never have been elected.
I personally overestimated Barack Obama. I thought that he was an intelligent, savvy politician in the mold of a Bill Clinton. Let me be clear: I thought the elections of Clinton were also big mistakes, and I think America today would have been in a different, better place without Clinton. But Clinton explicitly told the country that he got the message of the 1994 mid-terms: "The era of Big Government is over." He found a way to address welfare reform; he cooperated with the Republicans to do investment tax policy reform, to bring around long overdue financial services reform, in order for American companies to be able to compete globally.
I never believed in the hype and myth behind Obama. Here was a guy whom was preaching post-partisan politics, but what was the record? Was he part of the Gang of 14, a bipartisan group, which defused a crisis caused by a Senate Democratic minority which abused the minority rights of filibuster, making it a standard strategy for blocking judicial nominations? No. Senate Majority Leader Frist threatened the "nuclear option"--to strip away the minority abuse of filibuster in the area of judicial nominations, because de facto the Democrats were requiring super-majority of judicial nominations, unconstitutional in intent: in essence, the minority was vetoing judicial nominations. The Gang of 14 brokered an agreement whereby the GOP members would agree not to change the rules in exchange for the Democrat members agreeing to allow at least some of the controversial nominees to reach the Senate floor for a vote. Was Obama part of the Gang? Of course not. He voted against both of Bush's successful nominations to the Supreme Court--simply because he didn't like their judicial philosophy and decisions. This was a deliberate, knowing reversal of the historical treatment of judicial confirmations, which held that a President is entitled to his nominations barring some disqualifying defect of character or record. Not only that, but he was already on the record wanting to filibuster Judge Alito's nomination: someone whom had been approved for his existing post by an overwhelming bipartisan vote and had 14 years on the appeals court bench at the time of his nomination.
Then there was immigration reform where Obama opposed Democratic concessions involving temporary work visas (opposed by unions) and a greater emphasis on merit-based (vs. relative/familial) factors (opposed by certain ethnic groups wanting to protect the existing bias in favor of low-skilled foreign relatives). What did Obama use to "prove" his bipartisan bona fides? Working with the senior senator (Lugar) from Indiana on a nonproliferaton bill, a logical extension to Lugar's prior bipartisan work with former Georgia Senator Nunn.
Obama has always been more interested in symbolism than substance: it seems clear now that what he meant by changing the tone in Washington had more to do with style. All he is really doing is window-dressing the nature of partisanship. Maybe he doesn't criticize Bush directly; generally speaking, there is a code against criticizing your predecessor, but he has gone after Bush almost obsessively over the past 5 years, with repetitious references to "8 failed years" (which, of course, I would naturally interpret as referring to the Clinton Administration). Does he honestly believe that people are fooled by his being more subtle?
What proven problem solvers like myself know is that we don't go around finger-pointing; the milk is spilled. We think some things should be intuitively obvious: if you are trying to built a fire, say, growth in the economy, the last thing you want to do is to smother the fragile fire by overloading it with wood. When you are looking to encourage American employers is to give them reasons not to hire low-skilled workers (e.g., the minimum wage) or add to their costs with new benefit mandates (ObamaCare), you don't have the government picking winners and losers in the marketplace, you don't have the government increasing reporting and regulatory burden, you don't have the government blocking trade treaties effectively lowering your products' cost to foreign consumers, you don't have regulators siding with union interests or attacking mergers you think gives your company scale to compete in tomorrow's economy, you lower business tax rates to become more globally competitive, and your borrowing doesn't compete against business for investment dollars.
I've made similar points in various posts. But we are dealing with someone in the Oval Office who, as recently as this past week, keeps banging his head stubbornly into the wall pushing politically dead issues like class warfare tax hikes, green energy and high speed rail boondoggles, shovel-ready infrastructure projects, and state/local budget bailouts.
What do we not hear very much? Streamlining government processes and cutting critical paths for marketing new products and services, e.g., oil drilling permits, drug approvals, and granting of patents and trademarks; implementing lockboxes for existing infrastructure revenue sources (e.g., gasoline excise taxes); simplifying the status quo convoluted tax code which reflects special interest tax breaks and crony capitalism, requiring other individuals and businesses to subsidize their rightful tax burden; balancing the tax code tilted in favor of consumption versus investment; and ensuring everyone has a vested stake in the efficient operation of government (to paraphrase Bob Dylan: "everyone must get taxed").
Obama can talk a good game about how many federal agencies regulate salmon: for example, we can talk about bureaucratic finger-pointing and turf battles, duplicate efforts and costs, manageability and accountability, not to mention usability from the perspective of the regulated entity (for example, fishermen should get a single point of government contact, one of my usability criteria). One of the most irritating things I find about Obama is that he really isn't a good communicator; this is different than whether he has good oratorical skills. What point is he making, what does he expect from his audience? [Yes, I do realize he implored his audience to pass his jobs bill, but more usually it hasn't been that clear.] Is it simply to explain to people that the government is complex? Is he motivated to address the hassles businesses have in trying to deal with multiple government agencies and how we can improve the process? Is he trying to talk about the costs or accountability of government? Most importantly, what's he planning to do with that fact? Also, do similar issues exist in other contexts (say, farming)?
When I heard and read the recent speech Obama gave at the American Legion recently, I felt like redlining about 80% of the speech. What's the point about summarizing an extensive list of veteran accomplishments, even during the Vietnam War? Is it that the veterans needed to be educated on what exactly they did overseas? Or is it simply "I know about the historical contributions of the American military; let me prove it to you..." It came across to me as a campaign speech where he rattled off a number of benefits or policies from a benefits perspective he's signed into law. I don't speak for other veterans here, but I think it cheapens the Office of the Presidency and the role of Commander in Chief, especially at a non-campaign event.
What would have been better? One of the big issues for any active-duty person, especially those are deployed on isolated tours (i.e., without family), is time spent apart from family, particularly multiple tours in harm's way; another is a validation, a worthiness of one's mission. This is particularly important given the context of Barack Obama's very public international apology tour. People who serve, putting their health and life at risk, are not mercenaries; it's not just a job, but an abiding faith in the principles of our way of life. I might have also addressed the lessons learned from the past generation in terms of nation building, some of our challenges (technical and resources), and our vision of meeting the future self-defense needs of the US. But then I'm not the President's speechwriters.
Obama has given so many speeches but there is too much time resorting to trite observations, well-rehearsed talking points, etc. For example, what I wanted to hear from Obama in the jobs speech last week is for him to talk about what was specifically new in his bill, what were the lessons learned from the 2009 stimulus, why he was taking these steps now, what he expected, the costs, the benefits, and net payoff, etc.
You also need to see less of a contradiction between talk and action. When Obama talked about the tone and uncivil discourse after the Giffords' assassination attempt, we needed to see less condescending lecturing from the White House during the serious debt ceiling increase debate and Obama's doing more to tone down the broadsides from Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I still haven't heard Obama apologize for his unprofessional Bush bashing or his unconscionable attack on the Supreme Court (i.e., Citizens United v FEC) during last year's State of the Union Address.
Getting back to the discussion of Obama's "intelligence", you have to wonder how smart Obama was, in the aftermath of the economic tsunami, to recruit an administration with almost no business expertise; how wise it was, in the middle of a difficult economy, to focus more on so-called health care reform, the Clinton first-term experience--and right after a Republican Senator, openly campaigning as filibuster sustaining vote #41, was elected to replace Ted Kennedy, whose signature issue was health care, to ram a widely unpopular Senate bill through by a handful of votes in the House. It would have been much smarter to have co-opted the GOP politically and to have avoided political blunders like wanting to try KSM in New York City and the infamous international apology tour. Yes, indeed, Obama was so smart he presided over the most sweeping Congressional House turnover in multiple generations, which drastically weakened his hand to build on his agenda.
I can honestly say since I started daily publication in the fall of 2009, I've almost never had writer's block. On to the next 1000 posts...
Jimmy Carter: Still Hubris After All These Years
According to the Guardian,
What [Carter is] most proud of, though, is that he didn't fire a single shot. Didn't kill a single person. Didn't lead his country into a war – legal or illegal. "We kept our country at peace. We never went to war. We never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet. But still we achieved our international goals. We brought peace to other people, including Egypt and Israel. We normalised relations with China, which had been non-existent for 30-something years. We brought peace between US and most of the countries in Latin America because of the Panama Canal Treaty. We formed a working relationship with the Soviet Union."Hmmm. Who lost Iran, Mr. President? What about the Holocaust denier Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom is determined to "eradicate" Israel? What about Operation Eagle Claw, the Iran hostage rescue mission where 8 servicemen died (not at the hands of the Iranians) which you yourself aborted?
The GOP Presidential Tea Party Debate:
Some Comments Based On Secondary Sources
I was prepared to publish my first Presidential endorsement post earlier this week when former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty announced his endorsement of Mitt Romney. (I'm not sure my endorsement win any votes for the candidate; in fact, it just may help his competition...) Any regular reader of this blog probably knows who it will be.
I didn't watch the GOP debate last night because, first of all, I already know the candidates, their qualifications and basic stands on the issues. Most "debates" in recent Presidential history really don't have candidates cross-examining each other (although I did see, for once, a good exchange between Romney and Perry on social security).
I saw a Lentz focus group on Hannity tonight where I had completely different positions than the UNANIMOUS focus group on two issues. I don't know where Lentz got these people, but they are dead wrong on both and are ideologues whom are absolutely clueless about the political center of the country whose votes we must attract to beat Obama next year.
The first was a clip of Romney challenging Perry on the "Ponzi scheme" allegation. Romney is absolutely right. The panel felt that Perry was "genuine" whereas Romney came across as wishy-washy. Let me tell you I have studied this issue, I know Perry's and Romney's views on this. (Perry also argues that social security is unconstitutional and better off being run by the states.) As Thiessen points out, Romney in fact has been sharply critical of the way social security is being run (on a pay-as-you-go basis, with savings being "invested" to cover federal government overspending).
Romney is getting some pushback because his jobs plan also discusses a payroll tax cut, which I myself have criticized, in Obama's jobs bill, as worsening our unfunded liability issue and more importantly I don't like short-term tax gimmicks either: I've talked about simplified, consistent tax policy. But if you think that consumer confidence is heading south, if there is going to be stimulus, a payroll tax cut is the most direct way to get money in people's pockets. I suspect that Mitt would probably say is that failing to renew the existing payroll tax cut would be a de facto payroll tax hike in a weak economy with diminishing consumer confidence and argue that other social security reforms he's suggested--the computation of benefit increases and expanding the retirement age as well as diversification of a part of social security trust--would be more significant over the long run.
But here's the point: what Romney in particular is criticizing was the choice of words "Ponzi scheme". It has more to do with people reading shaky finances behind social security into a Madoff-like scheme with people discovering, almost overnight, their investments all but worthless. In terms of social security, I don't think the problem is so much fraud as incompetence and a short-term perspective. Let us keep in mind, if nothing else, the federal government can do one thing Bernie Madoff could never do: print money to pay its bills, including social security checks. Of course, that would probably result in inflation, a particularly egregious, regressive "tax". Romney is NOT saying Perry is wrong in his core point--that the base of social security is insufficient and we need to make serious changes. But he is saying with certain minor changes, the expected lifetime of the trust fund, now running to 2036, we can extend that lifetime of guaranteed payments. Romney is thinking that senior citizens are being scared to death because they don't understand what Perry is really saying.
The second point is that Perry is defending his record of providing Texas residents, regardless of their origin, to qualify for in-state tuition and he has also been skeptical of building fences along the Texas-Mexico border. I want to be on the record supporting Governor Perry's position on this issue. The media conservatives who have been vehemently against immigration reform are very unhappy with what they see as Perry being soft on illegal immigration, Several people in the focus group indicated they were willing to drop their support of Perry strictly on the immigration issue.
I've made it clear I'm very pro-immigration, but I've been more focused on modifying things like chained immigration, obsolete quota system, and merit-based factors, including expanded temporary worker programs from south of the border. I am a native Texan and all of my college degrees are from Texas. I have been friends with Latinos in high school and college, and I have dated Latinas. The vast majority of Latinos are honorable, good-hearted, hard-working, religious people, and I am livid over how they are being treated by many so-called conservatives. Perry's perspective is very similar to Ronald Reagan's own.
I have a CNN desktop alert gizmo installed on my PC, and it was going crazy last night with quotes from the debates. I want to focus on a few prominent points. First, there was a report about whether medically uninsured people should be denied life-saving treatment, and somebody in the audience reportedly shouting, "Let them die." I don't know whom that idiot was, but I just know that's the kind of story that the mainstream media picks up and brushes a group of people like the Tea Party with a broad stroke. Remember the kerfuffle back during the 2008 general campaign where Sarah Palin was once again on the Bill Ayers issue and at some point some unidentified bozo shouted "Kill him", and it was misleadingly reported that there were people at the rally calling for the death of Barack Obama.
Let's be clear: no hospital can refuse emergency care to anyone whom would likely die without prompt medical attention. No doctor worth his license would refuse to do what he could as a matter of professional ethics. You treat first, ask questions later. It's not conjecture at a debate; it's settled law. Now I'm sympathetic to Ron Paul's discussion here at looking outside of the federal government for financial assistance (e.g., charities). Here's the point: health insurance became a fixture as an end run around wage-price controls during WWII. Of course, as a pro-market libertarian, I am hostile to wage-price controls, which are no more effective than trying to grasp a balloon. Mark Perry has an interesting post in his Carpe Diem blog where he points out that about a third of the uninsured are members of the middle/upper middle-class, a number of others are young adults whom are generally in good health, and lower-income uninsured qualify for Medicaid (my comment, not Mark's). But the point is--what happened before health insurance became widespread? Well, among other things, doctors often waived or significantly cut fees for older patients. But you never hear the mainstream media discussing these points.
Finally, there was a widely-reported question from a 17-year-old whom asked a question about how much of the money I earn should I be allowed to keep. I don't know the responses to the question, but the first thing I start thinking about are flat rates that Laffer (a Democrat economist whom worked under President Reagan) and others have suggested: e.g., a 15% flat income tax and a 3% VAT. There is Hauser's Law, which describes federal revenues over the last several years since WWII as relatively steady at about 19.5% GDP (and this is an important note--has held steady across top marginal tax rates: in other words, Obama's strategy of class warfare tax hikes really won't add anything to federal revenues; however, lower tax rates do kickstart growth and higher tax rates--don't help).
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Air Supply, "Lonely Is The Night". This is the last performance in my Air Supply sources. The next post will start a series on Fleetwood Mac.
