Quote of the Day
The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.
George Eliot
Monthly Blog Update
I thought with a short month, plus one day last month where I got one of the highest pageview counts ever, it would be difficult to maintain my string improving pageview totals, but this month tied my highest over the past 14 months. (Today I had a lower count than usual (Google maintenance affecting reporting statistics?) plus the month I tied had 2 more days.) I thank readers for their continued interest in what I regard as a distinctive political blog.
Davy Jones, Lead Singer of the Monkees: RIP
The late John Stewart, once a member of the folk group the Kingston Trio, released one of my favorite all-time albums in the late 1970's ("Bombs Away Dream Babies"); I knew about his monster hit "Gold" with backing vocals from Stevie Nicks, but I'll never forget hearing "Midnight Wind" (one of my favorite songs, period) for the first time on my plane trip to Van Nuys, CA, the computing services company home headquarters for the Houston branch I worked for.
(Southern California really did fit the stereotype: Venice Beach, roller skates, etc; one of the executives' wives I met in passing was a young blonde bombshell whom really did say things like "mellow, man". In a past post, I mentioned that a different pretty blonde from headquarters I had befriended was really sad. When I asked why, she told me that because of travel, she was going to miss her car's birthday. She then brightened up and smiled up at me, saying she had found her car just the right birthday card; it was on the way and would get there on time. [I swear to God this really happened.] Anyway, during my Los Angeles stay, I didn't have a rental car and needed a ride; the young woman invited me to go with her in her car--and the first thing she did after I settled into the passenger seat was to point out a birthday card hanging via a lanyard from the dashboard mirror. Isn't life wonderful? I need to marry a woman whom mails her car birthday cards... By the way, it was really cool to drive on Ventura Highway with the America song playing in the background... )
The Monkees were a delightful takeoff on the early Beatles and their trendy movies. (I personally prefer the innocent love songs of the early Beatles.) Everyone knows the basic Monkee hits, but only one of them got me in trouble at work. Anne Murray in 1980 did a remake of John Stewart's "Daydream Believer", the Monkees' third #1 original hit; I wasn't even consciously aware I was (not that loudly) singing along with the song playing in the office, but my manager at the time was sufficiently annoyed. No doubt he thought somebody in the office had switched to the crappy singer channel and wanted to change it back... (have you ever met people whom sometimes are so into what they're doing that even the slightest interruption can startle them?)
I'm not sure when I last saw or heard Davy Jones; it may have been on one of those wonderful Dennis Miller Show podcasts when Dennis interviews these singers from the 60's like Peter Noone (remember Herman's Hermits?) where they give all these fascinating anecdotes about what was going behind the scenes and other pop stars they knew personally. I remember as a kid loving the series and the songs; my thoughts and prayers are with his surviving family members.
You once thought of me as a white knight on his steed
Now you know how happy I can be
Oh and our good time starts and end without dollar one to spend
But how much, baby, do we really need?
Cheer up sleepy Jean
Oh, what can it mean
To a daydream believer
And a homecoming queen
There's something endearing about hearing singers in their sixties reprising these golden chestnuts.
The Government Is Out To Get You (Maybe):
The "White Glove" Treatment
We know the stories: Al Capone was convicted--on tax evasion; Martha Stewart was convicted, not of insider trading, but of obstruction of justice and lying to investigators; in his first trial, Rod Blagojevich was convicted on only one count: lying to the FBI. Sometimes you get the feeling they throw every charge they can at a defendant in the hope something will stick. In fact, it seems odd when the defendant seems to walk away from a notorious case without even a minor charge conviction--take the biggest trials over the past 17 years: OJ Simpson and Casey Anthony. From what I understood of the cases presented and evidence, I agreed with the not guilty verdicts. (But I have to tell you--a suicidal OJ Simpson trying to flee police and a young mother whom delays reporting the disappearance of her daughter and goes out partying like she's making up for lost time are damning circumstantial facts. I'm sure there are sophistic psychologists whom can explain the reactions away.)
The tax laws are so convoluted not only do you sometimes get conflicting interpretations of tax law from the IRS and the Treasury Department Secretary has trouble doing his own taxes, but there are thousands of professionals whom make their living at it (it is part of what my CPA baby sister does for a living). We have thousands of politicians whom apparently think unless they keep feeding the bureaucracy and being Big Nannies and Busybodies, they aren't doing their jobs... I mean, I don't even know how sexual acts (e.g., sodomy) even come up for discussion (unless people are insisting on doing it in the public square...)
But we know the one sure thing: that if and when we violate any of tens of thousands of laws we don't know about--which violates the very essence of the rule of law--the elitist suits will say ignorance of the law is no excuse... I just want to stress in this regard (and I acknowledge here that I'm not a trained lawyer (thank God!), but I want to stress a couple of salient characteristics discussed by the World Justice Project and philosophers such as Joseph Raz: "the laws are clear, publicized, stable, fair, and protect fundamental rights, including the security of persons and property"; "the discretion of law enforcement and crime prevention agencies should not be allowed to pervert the law".
I usually don't use this blog to complain about law enforcement; in fact, I've usually gone out of my way to accommodate authorities. But let me give one example (even though it ended relatively well). I mentioned in past posts that I worked on a project in a suburban Milwaukee county starting in July 2001. I was still living in California, but the Wisconsin project company, located in the southwest Chicago suburbs, insisted I needed to relocate, which they would pay for, versus pay expenses (the relocation would pay itself off by not paying travel expenses). They agreed to pay expenses through the end of July. I issued notice to my apartment, arranged to have my car picked up in California and delivered in Wisconsin, and had arrangements for movers the last Monday of the month.
Two days before I was scheduled to fly back to California a final time, the company's VP showed up on site and with no advance warning, told me he wanted a new ERP upgrade test database up over the coming week; it was not a contractual requirement, but he wanted to show up at a client management meeting the next week saying he had a new upgrade database up. With 3 days back home packing up and moving, this was not physically possible (there are technical issues that crop up the first time you do a test upgrade involving everything from software issues to existing data issues. And (working as a subcontractor for another vendor in California) we allocated a full week of DBA's scheduled around the clock to do a simpler (within version) upgrade for a rehearsed go-live upgrade when I worked at a Los Angeles client the prior year. The bottom line is, I would not only have to cancel my trip back home and postpone my plans to move (and my apartment had already been leased out) but work around the clock to meet an arbitrary deadline. I got nowhere with the VP, the junior partner to the company president. I got nowhere with the company president. So I then had to spend hours pleading with my California landlord and rescheduling everything a week or two later.
The last item I had to deal with was extending my Best Western reservation over the weekend. I then discover that the county had a fair scheduled over that weekend, and the Best Western was fully booked. Now I'm stuck Friday trying to find another hotel room. I finally managed to squeeze in a reservation at a Motel 6 or a Travelodge through a travel service. What I didn't notice was that my reservation said in small print that confirmation was unofficial and subject to cancellation by the vendor. Working on the upgrade, I never checked my personal email during the day when a cancellation notice arrived mid-afternoon. I finally left the courthouse about 10:30PM --I had been onsite, except for a lunch break, for 15 straight hours, and I was exhausted, not even having dinner yet. I go to check in at the hotel, figuring to eat afterwards. That's when I find out I don't have a reservation. The hotel clerk was not very helpful about suggesting an alternate hotel (after all, "it's not [his] problem").
If anything, I left the hotel even more exhausted after the argument. I decide that I'm going to head I-94E towards Chicago--surely I can find a hotel in a county not hosting a state or county fair. For whatever reason, there was a long left turn lane with a physical barrier away from the main lanes--I can't cross the barriers so I have to cross over/under I-94, obviously looking for the first street where I can turn around, head back to I-94.
That's where I got in trouble. I didn't realize probably because of dim lighting that I was in a left-turn, no U-turn lane. And this intersection was 2 blocks away from the police station. And there was a police car sitting at the intersection at the time of my turn. There was absolutely no traffic in the other direction (that I was looking to move into).
So anyway I'm heading onto the access road to I-94E when I saw a police car with flashing lights behind me. I'm figuring that he is on some emergency call so I pull over--and then I notice that he's following my rental to a stop. I have absolutely no idea in the world why I've been pulled over, but I could tell from his initial questions that he didn't think I had stopped early enough. I knew he probably knew I was driving a rental and hence didn't know the local driving area. He insisted that I "knew" it was a no U-turn lane, and I was sorely tempted to argue the point that the U-turn violation was a ridiculous technicality in any event given the lack of oncoming traffic, but I bit my tongue and pleaded to be issued a warning. He finally agreed to give a warning but not before telling me if I get so much as a jaywalking ticket in the county over the next 3 months, he would personally see to it that my ass would be sitting in jail. [Totally unnecessary.] I spent the next several miles driving slower than a granny, on the lookout for any ticket-pushing cop along the way. I finally found a Holiday Inn Express around Kenosha.
Of course, I didn't get another ticket. And when I checked back into the Best Western the following Sunday night, the hotel manager told me that the checkout clerk hadn't talked to him, but because I had done so much business with them, they would have been able to accommodate me; they didn't know how to get in touch with me to let me know. EXPLETIVE DELETED.
Among other things, laws must be reasonable within context. I'll give a simple example. I once drove from El Paso to the Dallas area (at the time I had two siblings whom lived in the general area). I was exhausted when I reached the west Ft. Worth area. I'm doing the speed limit--55 mph or so--when all of a sudden these cars on both sides are literally shooting by me, like I'm a granny driving in a hospital zone. (There are lots of places in Texas except for speed traps like Selma where you might not see a police or sheriff's car for miles; I quickly realized by following the traffic laws, I was probably creating a driving hazard and moved to the rightmost lane. The point I'm trying to make here is that when people don't follow the laws anyway, it becomes arbitrary to pick any one violation, which violates the principle of equal protection. The obvious remedy is to junk the unnecessary law.
Prolific lawmaking is intrinsically unjust. We should demand that each lawmaker make a commitment to a Pareto principle like reducing 80% of laws (especially dubious rules and regulations that make government less efficient) in favor of the most critical 20%
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Paul McCartney & Wings, "Listen to What the Man Says"
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Miscellany: 2/28/12
Quote of the Day
If a man be gracious to strangers,
it shows that he is a citizen of the world,
and his heart is no island,
cut off from other islands,
but a continent that joins them.
Francis Bacon
Romney Beats Santorum in Michigan,
Wins Arizona Going Away, 2-1 Over Santorum
As I write, roughly 99% of the precincts in Michigan have reported and the race has been called, with Romney leading Santorum 41%-38%. Romney won this despite dirty tricks by pro-Obama forces out to sabotage and embarrass Obama's most viable opponent Romney's attempts to win the nomination from his home state, abusing Michigan's open primary:
In terms of the GOP Presidential race, Romney has stretched his lead to 5 over Santorum in the Gallup daily tracking poll (I expect tonight's victories to stretch that out more).and consistently runs better than his competition state by state and nationally. For example, although Georgia favorite son Newt Gingrich is polling well ahead of virtually tied Santorum and Romney, Romney has a bigger lead than Gingrich against Obama. Before tonight's double-win, Romney was trailing Santorum in the single-digit range in Ohio, and I saw one Tennessee poll where Santorum had a comfortable lead. Here's the point: Romney had 41% of the cumulative vote to date going into tonight, he's won 4 of 6 primaries and finished second in the two others. He is less than 10 points of an absolute majority in a field of 4 candidates. I do not know how the party can deny Romney the nomination. It should be interesting to see if Romney starts picking up some key endorsements and momentum this week heading into Super Tuesday.
Interesting: two potential recall election Democrat opponents against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker only have leads within statistical significance (i.e., a tie). Of course, you can expect union members to go all out during the recall, like they came out to get Harry Reid reelected, so if I was Walker, I would press the battle unless I have a 15-point lead. House Democrats seem to think they have a good shot to bounce back in 2012. I haven't looked at the races yet, but at least two Blue Dog Congressmen have announced their retirements, which I don't think they would do if they thought the Dems were going to win. I think in both cases the GOP should pick those seats up, plus there are at least 2 or 3 GOP seats in NY that the Dems are currently occupying and other seats were left on the table. Barring a meltdown in the Presidential contest, I think a successful Romney win has coattails. I'll probably start looking at the House races over the next month or two, but the Senate races are starting to look good for a takeover this fall, with Virginia's George Allen with his biggest lead to date against Kaine. If the Senate goes GOP, which I think is more likely than not, I expect the House GOP to hold serve.
Guest Talking Point of the Day:
Russ Roberts/Cafe Hayek,
"The Insanity of Health Insurance"
Reading Cafe Hayek economists Roberts and Boudreaux is like grabbing an exquisite chocolate from a Whitman's sampler box.
From real life, I recently worked on a subcontract where the client with budget problems had to let me go. It turned out my agency was taking half of the bill rate, although it had done little more than make the introduction and some minor payroll overhead. If we had arranged it directly, they would have gotten twice the service for the same amount of money.
These sorts of things happen with health care, too. For example, the tax-free basis of job-related health care premiums is effectively a government subsidy for health insurance. In turn, this provides the employer and/or employees with an incentive to buy more health care for the same amount of money or to shift taxable wages into higher-cost benefits. These tax subsidies must be offset by tax revenues elsewhere in the economy, and they reduce the natural incentive for insurance companies to achieve cost savings in order to protect margins and market share. Employers, with government mandates to require a particular type of compensation or benefit, find themselves losing control over their own cost structure to the government and/or crony special interest groups interested in socializing expensive health care, e.g., in vitro fertilization. Employers are still operating under the law of supply and demand. (Maybe the only way they can offset increased compensation costs is to lay off workers...) It would be better off if we simply rolled back the government mandates or subsidies and vested people in health care transactions. (I think the best role for any government involvement deals with catastrophic care.)
Drones in America?
Spying on American Citizens?
No Due Process?
Oh, the elites, the government bureaucrats will rationalize all of this high tech stealth surveillance. Let's give an example: a child abduction. If we monitor all movements outside one's house, we may have some leads to pursue--say, an auto arrives or leaves the area. If there is no surveillance, we'll not have that lead at all. Who has any legal rights of privacy beyond one's house?
There are various things to say about the courts seeming to have given broad deference to other authorities. Now, personally, I've worked on government computers, and I have had zero problems with their monitoring any and everything I do, and I'm used to companies being able to monitor emails on their systems. I simply think that people have a right to be left alone. For example, a lot of people reading newspapers hate someone reading their newspaper over their shoulder--go buy your own paper! Attractive women don't care for being leered at, and people don't like being stalked by strangers. Our privacy exists more than just within the confines of our homes.
The whole reason for the Bill of Rights was to flesh only a minimal, not an exclusive list of negative rights. But clearly the burden of proof of having to justify an invasion of another person's space, to stalk them--especially by the government, should be on the party in pursuit.
I remember when I had to conduct empirical research--even something as innocuous like administering a questionnaire--I had to go up before a committee for the protection of human subjects. I had to put into writing things like, say, if I administered a questionnaire at a place of business, employees had a right to refuse to participate. In the case of the government, they often need little,if any real justification. It isn't a question of whether we have anything to hide: it's about an arrogant government subjugating individual liberty without any real need to show probable cause. We don't need drones overhead--we do not live in a police state. Let the state go before a judge, but the burden is on the state.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Paul McCartney & Wings, "Junior's Farm"
If a man be gracious to strangers,
it shows that he is a citizen of the world,
and his heart is no island,
cut off from other islands,
but a continent that joins them.
Francis Bacon
Romney Beats Santorum in Michigan,
Wins Arizona Going Away, 2-1 Over Santorum
As I write, roughly 99% of the precincts in Michigan have reported and the race has been called, with Romney leading Santorum 41%-38%. Romney won this despite dirty tricks by pro-Obama forces out to sabotage and embarrass Obama's most viable opponent Romney's attempts to win the nomination from his home state, abusing Michigan's open primary:
"I have to tell you a lot of my Democratic friends will vote for Santorum in something they are calling Operation Hilarity," Michael Moore said at the end of an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.
However, Santorum also hypocritically, pathetically reached out to Michigan Democrats through robocalls over the weekend in a desperate attempt to keep up any momentum from his caucus/nonbinding primary hat trick from a few weeks back. The fact is that Santorum has always been critical of open primaries for exactly what he tried to do here. (He lamely tried to excuse his actions, saying that he was merely trying to resurrect the "Reagan Democrats" coalition. It's one thing to make a pitch to more conservative Democrats (if any of them still exist any more) during the GENERAL election, not the GOP primary--and in any event, Santorum and Gingrich do very poorly among moderates and independents in almost any poll I've seen this year. He's done better in more recent polls, but that probably has more to do with a relatively unpopular Obama with a 45% approval rating. In fact, I bet I could run against Obama without a single voter knowing whom I am or what my positions are and get at least 40-45% of the vote; all I need to do is change my given name to "Nobama".
The attempts to manipulate the Michigan primary almost worked, and if I was running the Romney campaign, I would make it a campaign issue (notice that the Democrats voted for Santorum 19 points higher than the 34% of independents):
Nearly 1-in-10 voters in the Michigan Republican primary identified with the Democratic Party. These Democratic voters overwhelmingly supported Santorum, casting 53 percent of their ballots for him while awarding only 17 percent to Romney. By comparison, Romney defeated Santorum among the 59 percent of Republicans casting ballots by a margin of 48 percent to 37 percent and independents by a margin of 35 percent to 34 percent. If the Democrats had not crossed over and voted in the Republican contest, Romney would have won the Michigan Republican primary by 8 percentage points, in the process changing the characterization of the result from a close race to a comfortable victory.
With 90% of the Arizona precincts in, Romney beat Santorum by a better-than-projected 20 points: 47%-27%. The biggest factors making for Romney's sweep of the doubleheader: electability and business experience.
In other political news, one of the liberal Senators from Maine, Olympia Snowe (recall, she was one of 3 Republicans to vote for the massive spending-in-stimulus'-clothing binge) announced that she would retire. This could create a problem for the GOP to hold, because the two Congressmen from Maine are both Democrats. The GOP in Maine has a thin bench (will Maine's new GOP governor run?), although I'm intrigued by Tea Party activist Andrew Ian Dodge; from what I can tell, he is a libertarian conservative just like Ron or Rand Paul and myself. I am more of a pragmatist, i.e., I abide by the Serenity Prayer (see below). Dodge has to avoid being predictably defined by progressive Democrat opponents as an extremist. I think Rand Paul, after a shaky start, has done very well so far.
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| Reinhold Niebuhr's classic prayer courtesy of this source |
In terms of the GOP Presidential race, Romney has stretched his lead to 5 over Santorum in the Gallup daily tracking poll (I expect tonight's victories to stretch that out more).and consistently runs better than his competition state by state and nationally. For example, although Georgia favorite son Newt Gingrich is polling well ahead of virtually tied Santorum and Romney, Romney has a bigger lead than Gingrich against Obama. Before tonight's double-win, Romney was trailing Santorum in the single-digit range in Ohio, and I saw one Tennessee poll where Santorum had a comfortable lead. Here's the point: Romney had 41% of the cumulative vote to date going into tonight, he's won 4 of 6 primaries and finished second in the two others. He is less than 10 points of an absolute majority in a field of 4 candidates. I do not know how the party can deny Romney the nomination. It should be interesting to see if Romney starts picking up some key endorsements and momentum this week heading into Super Tuesday.
Interesting: two potential recall election Democrat opponents against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker only have leads within statistical significance (i.e., a tie). Of course, you can expect union members to go all out during the recall, like they came out to get Harry Reid reelected, so if I was Walker, I would press the battle unless I have a 15-point lead. House Democrats seem to think they have a good shot to bounce back in 2012. I haven't looked at the races yet, but at least two Blue Dog Congressmen have announced their retirements, which I don't think they would do if they thought the Dems were going to win. I think in both cases the GOP should pick those seats up, plus there are at least 2 or 3 GOP seats in NY that the Dems are currently occupying and other seats were left on the table. Barring a meltdown in the Presidential contest, I think a successful Romney win has coattails. I'll probably start looking at the House races over the next month or two, but the Senate races are starting to look good for a takeover this fall, with Virginia's George Allen with his biggest lead to date against Kaine. If the Senate goes GOP, which I think is more likely than not, I expect the House GOP to hold serve.
Guest Talking Point of the Day:
Russ Roberts/Cafe Hayek,
"The Insanity of Health Insurance"
Reading Cafe Hayek economists Roberts and Boudreaux is like grabbing an exquisite chocolate from a Whitman's sampler box.
It is insane that we get our health care from our employers. Our employers are just a conduit for government mandates, rent-seeking and inefficiency related to health care. The real outrage is that the government mandates the mix of my compensation package, biasing it toward a luxury health-care package that is the result of special interest clamoring.I'm not an economist by training, but let me try to explain in laymen's terms: rent-seeking in practice refers to a practice of spreading the wealth around instead of creating new wealth, typically as a result of some government intervention or other legal constraints. There are lots of examples of this in the real world. For example, there is a union contract that only allows the use of union labor and time-and-a-half for overtime. If all your available union workers have put in their 40 hours, your marginal labor costs have just jumped 50%, but you are getting the same number of widgets per man/hour and the price of your widgets is still the same.
From real life, I recently worked on a subcontract where the client with budget problems had to let me go. It turned out my agency was taking half of the bill rate, although it had done little more than make the introduction and some minor payroll overhead. If we had arranged it directly, they would have gotten twice the service for the same amount of money.
These sorts of things happen with health care, too. For example, the tax-free basis of job-related health care premiums is effectively a government subsidy for health insurance. In turn, this provides the employer and/or employees with an incentive to buy more health care for the same amount of money or to shift taxable wages into higher-cost benefits. These tax subsidies must be offset by tax revenues elsewhere in the economy, and they reduce the natural incentive for insurance companies to achieve cost savings in order to protect margins and market share. Employers, with government mandates to require a particular type of compensation or benefit, find themselves losing control over their own cost structure to the government and/or crony special interest groups interested in socializing expensive health care, e.g., in vitro fertilization. Employers are still operating under the law of supply and demand. (Maybe the only way they can offset increased compensation costs is to lay off workers...) It would be better off if we simply rolled back the government mandates or subsidies and vested people in health care transactions. (I think the best role for any government involvement deals with catastrophic care.)
Drones in America?
Spying on American Citizens?
No Due Process?
Oh, the elites, the government bureaucrats will rationalize all of this high tech stealth surveillance. Let's give an example: a child abduction. If we monitor all movements outside one's house, we may have some leads to pursue--say, an auto arrives or leaves the area. If there is no surveillance, we'll not have that lead at all. Who has any legal rights of privacy beyond one's house?
There are various things to say about the courts seeming to have given broad deference to other authorities. Now, personally, I've worked on government computers, and I have had zero problems with their monitoring any and everything I do, and I'm used to companies being able to monitor emails on their systems. I simply think that people have a right to be left alone. For example, a lot of people reading newspapers hate someone reading their newspaper over their shoulder--go buy your own paper! Attractive women don't care for being leered at, and people don't like being stalked by strangers. Our privacy exists more than just within the confines of our homes.
The whole reason for the Bill of Rights was to flesh only a minimal, not an exclusive list of negative rights. But clearly the burden of proof of having to justify an invasion of another person's space, to stalk them--especially by the government, should be on the party in pursuit.
I remember when I had to conduct empirical research--even something as innocuous like administering a questionnaire--I had to go up before a committee for the protection of human subjects. I had to put into writing things like, say, if I administered a questionnaire at a place of business, employees had a right to refuse to participate. In the case of the government, they often need little,if any real justification. It isn't a question of whether we have anything to hide: it's about an arrogant government subjugating individual liberty without any real need to show probable cause. We don't need drones overhead--we do not live in a police state. Let the state go before a judge, but the burden is on the state.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Paul McCartney & Wings, "Junior's Farm"
Monday, February 27, 2012
Miscellany: 2/27/10
Quote of the Day
The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught.
Marquis de Vauvenargues
Blog Question of the Day
"How can there be interstate highways … in Hawaii?" - Greg R., Greenbelt, MD (Straight Dope)
Okay, I know what you're thinking: if Alaska can have a Bridge to Nowhere, why can't Hawaii have a Highway to Nowhere?
Hmmm. There is a word on the tip of every liberal's tongue, but he just can't seem to bring himself to say it: figures, tabs, worths, quotations, tolls, duties, premiums, rates, charges, outlays, tariffs, amounts, prices, expenses, values, damages, levies, costs, imposts, user fees... Interstate, intrastate: who cares? "Don't tell me words don't matter..." [Actually, H1-H3 (not IH-1...) are not the only single-state IH-compatible roadways.]
I wonder whether the next time Obama visits his home state, he'll take the scenic route back....
Election Eve Potpourri
It should be a good day for Romney tomorrow; two Arizona polls has him up by over 15% over Santorum, and Governor Brewer endorsed him over the weekend. Santorum's better shot to win is Michigan where one poll had him up by 2 points (but that one (Mitchell/Rosetta Stone) seems to have more undecideds and fewer points for both Romney and Paul versus the other recent polls). The others do show a slight tightening of Romney's lead to 2 to 4 points, probably within the level of statistical significance, and Intrade showed a collapse of Romney's odds to about 52%. After the Colorado collapse in the polls to the caucus, Romney can't afford to give Santorum a hugely symbolic victory in his home state. I would think that Romney wouldn't have taken time from his schedule to visit Daytona (site for a major auto race) if his internal polls didn't look so well.
I saw on Drudge late today a link of Gingrich starting to take on Santorum, painting him as a Big Labor Republican. For a politician with enough street smarts to rise to Speaker of the House, Gingrich should have known better to take on Romney at this stage, in essence making the case for Santorum. The same case against Romney had been made again by non-Romney conservatives for a year: they had stymied his ability to rise in the polls but he had always retained a consistent base. If Gingrich wanted to go one-on-one with Romney, he had to take out his closest non-Romney competition--which was Santorum. If I was Romney's campaign manager, I couldn't have plotted a better strategy than for Gingrich to overreact against Romney and show that he lacked the temperament to be President. If Gingirch had analyzed the problem correctly, he would have seen that he lost his support, not to Romney but to Santorum. He had to convince his former non-Romney supporters that Santorum was no Newt Gingrich. If he took out Santorum, the non-Romney supporters would come back to him. Gingrich regained momentum in South Carolina, in part because Romney played prevent defense in the South Carolina debates, a major tactical error, and Santorum had failed to leverage his Iowa win.
Gallup tracking shows Santorum, on a national basis, has now fallen 4 points under Romney, a 14-point relative drop over the last week or so. Politico still has Santorum up by 2, but I don't trust the Politico poll: it's too inconsistent with the preponderance of other polls. For example, Rasmussen has Romney up by 2 over Obama, Gallup rates it a toss-up, but Politico has Obama ahead 53-43 and also has Obama's approval rating at 53%--the margin of his election victory in 2008. However, both Rasmussen and Gallup have POTUS approvals at 45% on the nose. We also see consistently polls showing only about a third of voters thinking the country is headed in the wrong direction: who are they going to blame for a country heading in the wrong direction: their own Congressman? The President, of course.
I'm not saying Romney is a shoo-in, assuming he gets the nomination. Romney's campaign has been inconsistent. The Romney campaign is running in a reactive (vs. proactive) whack-a-mole: Romney's campaign was unprepared for the recently resurrected Gingrich and then Santorum campaigns. I mean, South Carolina is near Gingrich's home base, and Missouri and Minnesota have a number of social conservatives that propped up Santorum's last minute rise in Iowa. (I'm not saying Romney is going to win every state, but if I was campaign manager, I would not be lapsing into prevent defense: I would be engaging in shock-and-awe politics.) I have not listened to the ads they've run against Santorum, but in my very popular February 14 post (I suspect it is due my rant against Ingraham where I go into some depth of what conservatism means--and personally, I think it's one of the best rants I've ever written), I absolutely demolish Santorum in a single paragraph, and I think I make Mitt Romney's case 5 times better than anything he's ever said on his own. If Mitt Romney ever read what I wrote, he would win the general election in a walk; I've written all he needs to do.)
Go back and read my post, but let me outline a few hints, if I was to play Romney's campaign manager. (Okay, I agree that I should learn to follow my own advice...My dissertation chairman used to say something to the effect it takes me 20 minutes just to introduce myself...):
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein
If I ran the Romney campaign, I would fashion the following bumper sticker: "HAD ENOUGH? IT'S TIME TO GET YOUR PRESIDENT CHANGED. Your Appointment Is Set For Nov. 6, 2012"
Who Are Your Favorite Presidents?
I was on some political website recently which asked me to choose my choices for my top 3 Presidents. I will probably write a series of commentaries with my choices, reviews of certain Presidents in my lifetimes, etc.
I will tell you who is NOT on my top 3 list: Abraham Lincoln. I've always had a queasy feeling about the commonly selected #1 President, Abraham Lincoln. (And, no, it's not because Bill O'Reilly has written a recent biography about him...) I suspect if you asked most people three things they liked about Lincoln, they would say: "1) he freed the slaves; 2) he freed the slaves; 3) he freed the slaves". As a libertarian conservative, I get that: I realize that the intrinsic inconsistency of a government based on the unalienable right of liberty that tolerated the institution of slavery.
But what if I told you this Presidential icon presided over the deaths of an estimated 618,000-700,000 (of somewhere between 3 to 4 million American men): MORE THAN ALL OTHER AMERICAN WAR DEAD COMBINED--that at least 1 of every 100 men were injured. Not by the hand of the imperial British, Germans, Communists or terrorists, but one's own countrymen. What if I told you that many people in the South had nothing to do with the institution of slavery, that Lincoln supported protectionist tariffs, which, if anything, made it more difficult for Southerners to sell their goods? What if I said that the Bill of Rights (e.g., habeas corpus) was violated by a President whom had sworn to uphold the Constitution? More on this in a future post...
In my next post, I'll talk about perhaps the greatest President whom never was, because tragically the GOP failed to nominate him. If he had become President, there never would have been a Vietnam War, and our history would have been changed forever. (Imagine, for instance, if there had never been a Vice President Richard Nixon.) He was part of an American political dynasty, like the Adams', the Kennedy's, and the Bush's. If you haven't guessed by now, 4 more hints: (1) are you lucky enough to live in a "right to work" state? (2) He is widely considered one of the 5 greatest US senators of all time, (3) his dad become a member of SCOTUS after serving as President, and (4) he was featured in John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage" for taking a controversial position after WWII (and I've also agreed with), which probably resulted in his not getting the nomination.
Political Humor
"President Obama talked about rising gas prices today. He focused on the positive things his administration has done when it comes to energy prices. So, in other words, it was the shortest speech he's ever given." - Jay Leno
[Well, of course, there're business taxes, which can fund the payroll tax cut, which funds the gas tank, which funds business profits, which funds the Treasury. In other words, Obama finally found a recycling program that works..]
"President Obama is starting to get a little overconfident. In an interview with Univision radio, he said, 'My presidency isn't over yet, and I've still got five more years.' Even his predictions are over budget." - Jay Leno
[I want to check out Obama's second-grade math grades...I knew that we should have checked after he counted 57 states.]
"British parliament says it is very likely a terrorist could explode a nuclear pulse bomb in outer space, and it could take out our entire electronic grid. No emails. No texts. No cell phones. How relaxing would that be?" - Jay Leno
[Abdul was so pleased that he went online to boast of his accomplishment. Say, what's wrong with this stupid thing? Uh-oh.]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Paul McCartney & Wings, "Venus and Mars/Rockshow"
The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught.
Marquis de Vauvenargues
Blog Question of the Day
"How can there be interstate highways … in Hawaii?" - Greg R., Greenbelt, MD (Straight Dope)
Okay, I know what you're thinking: if Alaska can have a Bridge to Nowhere, why can't Hawaii have a Highway to Nowhere?
Hmmm. There is a word on the tip of every liberal's tongue, but he just can't seem to bring himself to say it: figures, tabs, worths, quotations, tolls, duties, premiums, rates, charges, outlays, tariffs, amounts, prices, expenses, values, damages, levies, costs, imposts, user fees... Interstate, intrastate: who cares? "Don't tell me words don't matter..." [Actually, H1-H3 (not IH-1...) are not the only single-state IH-compatible roadways.]
I wonder whether the next time Obama visits his home state, he'll take the scenic route back....
Election Eve Potpourri
It should be a good day for Romney tomorrow; two Arizona polls has him up by over 15% over Santorum, and Governor Brewer endorsed him over the weekend. Santorum's better shot to win is Michigan where one poll had him up by 2 points (but that one (Mitchell/Rosetta Stone) seems to have more undecideds and fewer points for both Romney and Paul versus the other recent polls). The others do show a slight tightening of Romney's lead to 2 to 4 points, probably within the level of statistical significance, and Intrade showed a collapse of Romney's odds to about 52%. After the Colorado collapse in the polls to the caucus, Romney can't afford to give Santorum a hugely symbolic victory in his home state. I would think that Romney wouldn't have taken time from his schedule to visit Daytona (site for a major auto race) if his internal polls didn't look so well.
I saw on Drudge late today a link of Gingrich starting to take on Santorum, painting him as a Big Labor Republican. For a politician with enough street smarts to rise to Speaker of the House, Gingrich should have known better to take on Romney at this stage, in essence making the case for Santorum. The same case against Romney had been made again by non-Romney conservatives for a year: they had stymied his ability to rise in the polls but he had always retained a consistent base. If Gingrich wanted to go one-on-one with Romney, he had to take out his closest non-Romney competition--which was Santorum. If I was Romney's campaign manager, I couldn't have plotted a better strategy than for Gingrich to overreact against Romney and show that he lacked the temperament to be President. If Gingirch had analyzed the problem correctly, he would have seen that he lost his support, not to Romney but to Santorum. He had to convince his former non-Romney supporters that Santorum was no Newt Gingrich. If he took out Santorum, the non-Romney supporters would come back to him. Gingrich regained momentum in South Carolina, in part because Romney played prevent defense in the South Carolina debates, a major tactical error, and Santorum had failed to leverage his Iowa win.
Gallup tracking shows Santorum, on a national basis, has now fallen 4 points under Romney, a 14-point relative drop over the last week or so. Politico still has Santorum up by 2, but I don't trust the Politico poll: it's too inconsistent with the preponderance of other polls. For example, Rasmussen has Romney up by 2 over Obama, Gallup rates it a toss-up, but Politico has Obama ahead 53-43 and also has Obama's approval rating at 53%--the margin of his election victory in 2008. However, both Rasmussen and Gallup have POTUS approvals at 45% on the nose. We also see consistently polls showing only about a third of voters thinking the country is headed in the wrong direction: who are they going to blame for a country heading in the wrong direction: their own Congressman? The President, of course.
I'm not saying Romney is a shoo-in, assuming he gets the nomination. Romney's campaign has been inconsistent. The Romney campaign is running in a reactive (vs. proactive) whack-a-mole: Romney's campaign was unprepared for the recently resurrected Gingrich and then Santorum campaigns. I mean, South Carolina is near Gingrich's home base, and Missouri and Minnesota have a number of social conservatives that propped up Santorum's last minute rise in Iowa. (I'm not saying Romney is going to win every state, but if I was campaign manager, I would not be lapsing into prevent defense: I would be engaging in shock-and-awe politics.) I have not listened to the ads they've run against Santorum, but in my very popular February 14 post (I suspect it is due my rant against Ingraham where I go into some depth of what conservatism means--and personally, I think it's one of the best rants I've ever written), I absolutely demolish Santorum in a single paragraph, and I think I make Mitt Romney's case 5 times better than anything he's ever said on his own. If Mitt Romney ever read what I wrote, he would win the general election in a walk; I've written all he needs to do.)
Go back and read my post, but let me outline a few hints, if I was to play Romney's campaign manager. (Okay, I agree that I should learn to follow my own advice...My dissertation chairman used to say something to the effect it takes me 20 minutes just to introduce myself...):
- co-opt/mirror Obama's unflappable, charming personality.
- show a sense of humor about yourself. I'll give a very simple example: say that you thought while in Iowa you beat Obama's 2008 bowling score of 38. Then two weeks later, you got word two of Obama's remaining pins finally fell down. Or, say, over the fact his dad was born in Mexico: "You know, President Ford was from Michigan, too. I tried to tell the President how to eat a tamale..." There are a million of them.
- don't go into unnecessary detail, summarize your themes and couch them in pragmatic terms.
- run against Washington and smoke-and-mirrors budgets
- the buck will stop in the Oval Office: you will fix entitlements and an out-of-control budget, and you promise not to constantly whine over the $15T hole that Obama left the car in
- if asked why you want to be President, say that you want to restore old-fashioned American values of hard work, self-reliance, and integrity, that you want your children and grandchildren to have the same or even better opportunities you had, that you don't want to leave future generations with a massive debt hanging over their heads
- promise there will be genuine, not phony Obama-style bipartisanship: bipartisanship means more than gimmicks like an occasional Super Bowl party at the White House, an appearance at a Democrat retreat, or a beer in the Rose Garden. He wants a more respectful, civil tone in Washington, and he wants to hear solutions and compromise, not whining, finger pointing and the same old same old talking points. And he's going to start with his fellow Republicans.
- "ask not what your country can do for you: assume responsibility for yourself and your family, and take the opportunity to do what you can for your fellow countrymen in need with your time, effort, or resources"
- stress that you are looking to make a fresh start in Washington, one where you've learned from the mistakes of your predecessors with unsustainable spending binges (from now on, we learn to live within our federal income budget and don't spend money on things we can no longer afford) and we can't afford to spend American blood and treasure in foreign entanglements and resolving other nations' problems
- RUN A MOSTLY UPBEAT CAMPAIGN. Listen, if people don't know by now Obama's lack of leadership and administrative skills, do you honestly think you're going to be able to "educate" them? TREAT OBAMA WITH TACT. If and when he turns negative, ACT PRESIDENTIAL, smile, and STAY ON MESSAGE. Don't let him jerk your chain. I mean, I would run things like, "Times are tough. I've seen it; I've heard you. But we know America has always met its challenges, and I know we will overcome this time as well. I have dealt with companies in tough situations. I know it takes more than a nice speech at the White House to get us back on the right path: it take executive experience and hard work. I've seen and learned from the mistakes this President has made; I won't repeat them. I know I've got what it takes to get the job done, and when you invest your vote in me, together we will make a difference for our children's future. We will deliver them from the bondage of oppressive debt, unrealistic, broken political promises, and failed government."
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein
If I ran the Romney campaign, I would fashion the following bumper sticker: "HAD ENOUGH? IT'S TIME TO GET YOUR PRESIDENT CHANGED. Your Appointment Is Set For Nov. 6, 2012"
Who Are Your Favorite Presidents?
I was on some political website recently which asked me to choose my choices for my top 3 Presidents. I will probably write a series of commentaries with my choices, reviews of certain Presidents in my lifetimes, etc.
I will tell you who is NOT on my top 3 list: Abraham Lincoln. I've always had a queasy feeling about the commonly selected #1 President, Abraham Lincoln. (And, no, it's not because Bill O'Reilly has written a recent biography about him...) I suspect if you asked most people three things they liked about Lincoln, they would say: "1) he freed the slaves; 2) he freed the slaves; 3) he freed the slaves". As a libertarian conservative, I get that: I realize that the intrinsic inconsistency of a government based on the unalienable right of liberty that tolerated the institution of slavery.
But what if I told you this Presidential icon presided over the deaths of an estimated 618,000-700,000 (of somewhere between 3 to 4 million American men): MORE THAN ALL OTHER AMERICAN WAR DEAD COMBINED--that at least 1 of every 100 men were injured. Not by the hand of the imperial British, Germans, Communists or terrorists, but one's own countrymen. What if I told you that many people in the South had nothing to do with the institution of slavery, that Lincoln supported protectionist tariffs, which, if anything, made it more difficult for Southerners to sell their goods? What if I said that the Bill of Rights (e.g., habeas corpus) was violated by a President whom had sworn to uphold the Constitution? More on this in a future post...
In my next post, I'll talk about perhaps the greatest President whom never was, because tragically the GOP failed to nominate him. If he had become President, there never would have been a Vietnam War, and our history would have been changed forever. (Imagine, for instance, if there had never been a Vice President Richard Nixon.) He was part of an American political dynasty, like the Adams', the Kennedy's, and the Bush's. If you haven't guessed by now, 4 more hints: (1) are you lucky enough to live in a "right to work" state? (2) He is widely considered one of the 5 greatest US senators of all time, (3) his dad become a member of SCOTUS after serving as President, and (4) he was featured in John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage" for taking a controversial position after WWII (and I've also agreed with), which probably resulted in his not getting the nomination.
Political Humor
"President Obama talked about rising gas prices today. He focused on the positive things his administration has done when it comes to energy prices. So, in other words, it was the shortest speech he's ever given." - Jay Leno
[Well, of course, there're business taxes, which can fund the payroll tax cut, which funds the gas tank, which funds business profits, which funds the Treasury. In other words, Obama finally found a recycling program that works..]
"President Obama is starting to get a little overconfident. In an interview with Univision radio, he said, 'My presidency isn't over yet, and I've still got five more years.' Even his predictions are over budget." - Jay Leno
[I want to check out Obama's second-grade math grades...I knew that we should have checked after he counted 57 states.]
"British parliament says it is very likely a terrorist could explode a nuclear pulse bomb in outer space, and it could take out our entire electronic grid. No emails. No texts. No cell phones. How relaxing would that be?" - Jay Leno
[Abdul was so pleased that he went online to boast of his accomplishment. Say, what's wrong with this stupid thing? Uh-oh.]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Paul McCartney & Wings, "Venus and Mars/Rockshow"
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Miscellany: 2/26/12
Quote of the Day
The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
Seneca
Belated Revision of My Hayek-Related Commentary
Great writing is an art difficult to explain. One of my best friends, Bruce, a PhD office mate back at UH, once asked me about the process; he's an accountant, and accountants are very detailed-oriented: how do you come up with a storyline? He can't do it. But it's just comes natural to me.
I'll give a short, quick example. I was on a semester Catholic Newman retreat back at UH. All the retreat participants were split into groups. My PhD accounting friend Tim's roommate Matt was in my group. (Matt, a chem-e major, later earned his doctorate in math and took a teaching job at a Missouri state branch school.) We were tasked with coming up with a skit, and there was only short time to come up with something. If you've ever been in a group assigned a creative task, you know how difficult that can be. I think professional comedians do it all the time, In real life, you often encounter analysis paralysis. So I just "flashed" on an idea in a split second: I decided to initially frame a scene set in a schoolyard where this guy was getting into trouble--again. So I'm the teacher, and I respond to the misbehavior in a very judgmental way (yeah, I know what you readers are thinking--that's not such a stretch...): "Oh, Kevin is just a bad seed; he'll never amount to anything in life." Scene shifts to the future. I have an audience with the new archbishop. I genuflect, kiss the bishop's ring and, looking up, beg for Archbishop O'Keefe's forgiveness, having given up on him as a boy. (The Irish surname got the comic relief I was hoping for, because the guy playing the archbishop was Latino.) The other retreat attendees LOVED our skit, and I had my own Sally Field moment ("You like me...you really like me")
As a writer you often don't that kind of feedback. There are some days I've published a brilliant commentary and get hardly any reaction. (I still think it's brilliant; you can go mad if you start obsessing about how that video of a dog barking in rhythm to a rap song got 15M pageviews, and your analysis got 20.) For some reason, my Valentine's Day post has quickly become my most popular post ever (to the best of my knowledge--I've only had the statistics for 2 to 3 months). I'm glad people seem to like (or hate) it. If you're a new reader, check it out.
Mathematicians (remember, I have two math degrees) are famous for having Eureka moments (e.g., Archimedes' sudden realization about how to measure the volume of irregularly-sized objects when he was laying in a bath one day); maybe you're trying to prove a theorem, and you aren't even consciously thinking about it and all of a sudden you figure it out. Songwriters during their sleep will sometimes come up with a key melody or verse, wake up and write it down. (I know because I've done it, too.)
It's difficult to explain how inspiration grips the writer's imagination. I haven't worked on my novel in a while, which started out as a short story. But it's almost as if the story writes itself and you're watching a movie of it in your mind.
Let me briefly explained how the commentary in question came about. When I looked for the Bill O'Reilly video to embed from a FoxNews webpage, I saw a video clip in passing on Ron Paul's quote about fascism and some viewer had posted a comment like "no wonder the Occupy Wall Street people like this guy". Mark Perry of Carpe Diem had referenced Boudreaux's response to O'Reilly's rant. I then wanted to explain the name of Boudreaux's blog, which led me to think of the Ron Paul video, and then the inevitable misunderstanding of what Paul is referring to as fascism.
This discussion had been nagging at me for some time--if you go back over the last few posts, I made reference to Obama being a snake oil salesman, a used car salesman, etc. I made mention of how Obama's meticulously controls his reactions and mentioned it was manipulative behavior. He is using his likability to sell his policies. These aren't meant to be "judgmental"--they are my honest takes, and what bewilders me is why other people don't seem to pick up on it. I've seen Obama's game too many times; remember in the 2008 campaign? Earlier that year he had supported a DC gun ban; then the Supreme Court affirms the Second Amendment, and Obama says that he had really been in favor of gun rights all the time (because pro-gun forces are a politically potent voter block). And then he took the Bush tax cuts and basically put a class warfare spin on it. So Romney has a corporate tax plan in play--and, surprise, surprise, Obama after 3 years in the White House and in an election year, suddenly gets corporate tax cut fever. Only he brings up we can't afford oil company take breaks (just like we can't afford to continue 35% tax brackets for the upper 1% but have to go 39.6%)
It's all very predictable. It looks like he wants to co-opt Romney's agenda (and also try to use RomneyCare to nullify Romney's arguments against ObamaCare.) Obama then wants to argue to voters that he's the incumbent, he's the known quantity.
DiLorenzo's argument in part reflects how progressives (or dare we say "fascists") try to disguise their real intent (look at how much trouble Obama got into in 2008 by telling Joe the Plumber it's good to spread some wealth around, drives this discussion). Obama also has this recurring bit where he tries to preempt criticism by explicitly denying exactly what he then goes on to say. Or take, for instance, the Democrats' argument for ObamaCare focusing on the uninsured. Why? The real issue is with household bankruptcies, not the uninsured, say, being denied life-saving healthcare. They knew the GOP would settle for catastrophic health care; they needed a pretext for controlling all of healthcare.
You remember the Big Lie: they tacitly assert that the reason people don't carry health care insurance on their own is because they can't afford it (it's not that the people are self-insuring, don't want to pay the middleman and will pick up expenses as they incur. After all, that would be the logical conclusion.) Democrats are like clueless convenience store owners whom don't understand why some customers pay their bill with green paper: what's that? Everybody uses credit cards; I've never seen this green paper before. After all, paying your hospital bill without an insurance card? What's with that? Everyone knows you need a middleman... Nobody carries around that heavy green paper anymore... (But Ben Bernanke promises to make more available next Tuesday...)
The government, which can't balance its own checkbook, does happen to know how to make the health care system run more efficiently. We Democrats know that we have the answer: pay fixed prices for services. Doesn't the rest of the economy run on fixed prices? We know how to cut costs: we'll simply lower our prices we'll pay for services every year--it's not like doctors are like federal workers whom deserve annual and step increases each year without productivity gains. Wait a minute... Providers as federal workers... Hmmmm. Besides, everyone knows the government has the right to regulate business. You can't practice without a license and notice that smallprint in your license application?
Everyone knows we have to control existing insured in order to fund the remaining uninsured deadbeats. What do you mean, healthy young people are dropping insurance because they're tired of subsidizing people paying a premium not covering their own costs? Get away from me, you, you, you REPUBLICAN!
Meryl Streep Wins Best Actress for 'The Iron Lady':
Thumbs UP!
Okay, I know English Conservatives are going to think I'm crazy for giving this my approval. True, I haven't seen the movie and I know that reportedly Thatcher acquaintances are not happy with the portrayal. But Ms. Streep, whose own politics are pedestrian progressive, is probably the most gifted actress I've ever seen, and I don't hold an actress responsible for the quality of a script. In the US, we have a saying that any publicity is good publicity; it's not very often that a political leader has a major Hollywood film behind her.
(Of course, Karzai is shopping his own script around. Besides, he knows these Hollywood types: he'll bring lots of nose candy with him...)
Margaret Thatcher inherited an inflation-bound system and had the political courage to engage in monetarist policies which broke the back of inflation, by originally accepting very high interest rates; the United States did the same thing under Fed Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, in the late stages of the Carter Administration and early stages of the Reagan Administration. She privatized nationalized companies/industries, cut taxes and balanced budgets. All of these things required a great deal of political courage and backbone, with her popularity at times dipping to the 20-odd approval ratings. I am very impressed with what she did, from the basis of my own principles.
I'm not sure I've seen an American President in my lifetime whom faced and dealt with a comparable set of challenges: I do think they certainly had moments: e.g., LBJ taking over after the assassination of President Kennedy; the attempted assassination of President Reagan; George W. Bush in the immediate aftermath of 9/11; Reagan's decision to accept payroll tax hikes in the last serious attempt to shore up social security; Gerald Ford's ascent into office after Nixon's resignation. I do have admiration for Speaker Boehner's very difficult challenge trying to negotiate with a spendthrift Senate and President, unwilling to make any budget cuts while dealing with members of his own party with unrealistic expectations under the circumstances.
I know from personal experience the kind of courage and integrity it takes to do the right thing, even at tremendous personal cost: I have lost friends, jobs, even careers. If someone asked me right now who is the one most influential, accomplished woman during my lifetime, it's not even close: Margaret Thatcher. (Perhaps the late Mother Teresa in a different context.) Maybe one day we'll have an American version of a Margaret Thatcher. I'm not holding my breath.
Afghanistan, Obama and the Koran Burning Kerfuffle:
Santorum is WRONG
It's no accident that I haven't been commenting that much about foreign affairs. Let me just briefly say: Muslim sensitivities about the physical handling of the Koran are well-known (you would think every American GI knows about this, after experiences in Gitmo and elsewhere). Second, and this goes to Mr. Santorum, whom says Obama was wrong for apologizing for an accident, President Obama was RIGHT. (It's not often I say that.) It happened on his watch; you have to take responsibility for your men as Commander in Chief. If I step on a young lady's foot while dancing, it's not as if I intended to do it. I would apologize unconditionally. It's the right thing to do.
Hearing that GI's mock Afghans as a guest in their country? I'm sorry--professional soldiers should know better. The GI's represented the United States of America, and their behavior should reflect the best of our country. If you do need to vent, you do it when you're alone or with just your buddies, not in the presence of Afghans.
Does that mean I think the murders of GI's are justified? Of course not. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims' families.
Isn't it time we leave Afghanistan? I don't want to prop up the corrupt Karzai regime; our presence constitutes moral hazard: it's time for the Afghans to stand on their own; we've been there over a decade already.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Paul McCartney & Wings, "Hi, Hi, Hi"
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Miscellany: 2/25/12
Quote of the Day
I know God will not give me anything I can't handle.
I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.
Mother Teresa
Frederick Hayek, Ron Paul, Economic Fascism,
and A Follow-Up to My Bill O'Reilly Gas Price Rant
In recent posts, I've discussed certain writings (and/or audio/video clips) from two George Mason University economists: Don Boudreaux (recall his critique of the NY Times editorial regarding the "disproved" GOP claim that raising the minimum wage has an adverse effect on low-skilled employment and a video on neo-Keynesian Robert Reich's arbitrary use of the CPI to discuss income disparity?) and Russ Roberts (I commented on the 2006 interview he had with the great Milton Friedman where they discussed Friedman's classic text on monetary history and Friedman said that he was less worried about a second Depression and more about an out-of-control federal spending spree resulting in inflation.). They are operating a blog called "Cafe Hayek", which I'll be adding to my blogroll over the weekend.
Frederick Hayek, as faithful readers know, was a Nobel Prize-winning economist whom represents the Austrian School of Economics, best known for his phenomenally successful and influential WWII-era book called "The Road to Serfdom".
At the risk of oversimplification, Hayek was responding to Western intellectuals (around the time of WWII and the fascist movements in central Europe) whom regarded fascism as a perverse response of capitalism to socialism. Hayek argued that the fascism and socialism shared common characteristics, like a belief in the efficiency of centralized planning and authority and subjugation of the individual, i.e., serfdom. Hayek believed that whatever the nature of the collective ideal (the proletariat, the fatherland, etc.) that the recognized authority claimed to represent, the path to subjugation wasn't necessarily transparent to the individual but a stealth movement to that effect, where inch by inch the individual is ceding his rights to that authority. Hayek maintained that only a robust reassertion and unyielding defense of the primacy of individual rights and responsibilities can avoid the inevitable march towards enslavement to that central authority, whatever its ideological foundation.
It is no accident that Ron Paul, for instance, has raised controversy recently by saying, "We've slipped away from a true Republic - Now we're slipping into a fascist system where it's a combination of government and big business and authoritarian rule and the suppression of the individual rights of each and every American citizen." [I cite examples of what I believe Ron Paul is referencing later in this commentary.]
Some people may dismiss this out of hand, misunderstanding what Ron Paul means here, confusing incidental statist abuses of human rights (say, under WWII-era Germany and Italy) with its economic philosophy. The horrific Holocaust is morally unjustifiable, but human rights abuses can occur under any context where individual rights are subsumed under some collective ideal that the state authority claims to represent. In effect, Locke's idea, that government derives its legitimacy from individuals from unalienable rights, is flipped on its head: individual rights are conditionally granted at the discretion of the state.
Thomas DiLorenzo, an Austrian School economist and senior faculty member of the excellent libertarian Mises Institute, wrote an impressive paper on economic fascism (available here). I won't repeat it here, but here is my edit of some salient insights:
Before going further, let me comment briefly on the fiction that the cause of the economic tsunami was the greedy banks that had been unleashed to engage in morally hazardous, risky lending gambling with federally-guaranteed deposits because of the repeal of Glass Steagall; the refrain is "privatized gains; socialized losses". The fact of the matter is that the companies that went down during the economic tsunami were not the super-integrated banks, including commercial banks and investment banks. As a libertarian conservative, I'm not favorably inclined towards Big Business of any kind. In fact, we argue that the correct policy is to ROLLBACK government guarantees, subsidies, etc. We think that government guarantees and subsidies vest the government in target business success. We are making a larger point about free trade and the law of comparative advantage. Mercantilist/protectionist policy basically means that the government is propping up companies with failing business models; this is readily seen not so much in (unwanted and unnecessary) government bailouts of Big Banks, as in Obama's failed government loan guarantees to crony alternative energy interests. Government intervention actually artificially inflates prices and creates deadweight losses for consumers (not to mention creates a drain on the Treasury).
What I keep coming back to in terms of Obama's politics is the 2001 WBEZ interview which I covered during the campaign which one of the few times he was candid about his politics. He's griping that there's only so far you can get from the courts beyond the same basic legal rights as everybody else. If you feel that resources are unfairly distributed, you have to work through the government to access and distribute relevant assets through Constitution-provided taxes or regulations (my edits):
Don Boudreaux recently replied in an open letter to O'Reilly's rising gas price rant by emphasizing the economy of scale and the law of comparative advantage, among other things:
As I predicted a couple of days ago, Rick Santorum's lead over Mitt Romney in the Gallup tracking poll has essentially collapsed to the bare minimum, and the most recent polls from Michigan and Arizona show Romney in the lead. Intrade has Romney up to almost 80% in Michigan and better than 50% in Ohio. Obama's approval ratings have eased off towards the mid-40's, and Romney is beginning to edge back closer to Obama in head-to-head battles in battleground states. It looks like Romney has had a good week, and Intrade has his odds of capturing the GOP nomination at about 80%.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Paul McCartney & Wings, "Letting Go". Sometimes I don't understand the British fans. They hated this song, but they loved songs like "Mull of Kintyre" and "Let 'Em In". For the record, my Wings Top Five: (1) "Maybe I'm Amazed" (live)--every glorious note, and one of the greatest rock vocal performances of all time; (2) "Get Closer" (I consider the song the most Beatlesque, Paul's rock vocals are perfect, the harmonies are spot on, and the arrangement, especially the frenetic ending. is AWESOME); (3); "Another Day" [technically, a solo hit, but on 'The Wings' Greatest']; (4) "Live and Let Die"; (5) "My Love". "Letting Go" is among my next 5; in fact, I put the track from "Wings Over America" on my Walkman cassette tape for my daily jog.
I know God will not give me anything I can't handle.
I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.
Mother Teresa
Frederick Hayek, Ron Paul, Economic Fascism,
and A Follow-Up to My Bill O'Reilly Gas Price Rant
In recent posts, I've discussed certain writings (and/or audio/video clips) from two George Mason University economists: Don Boudreaux (recall his critique of the NY Times editorial regarding the "disproved" GOP claim that raising the minimum wage has an adverse effect on low-skilled employment and a video on neo-Keynesian Robert Reich's arbitrary use of the CPI to discuss income disparity?) and Russ Roberts (I commented on the 2006 interview he had with the great Milton Friedman where they discussed Friedman's classic text on monetary history and Friedman said that he was less worried about a second Depression and more about an out-of-control federal spending spree resulting in inflation.). They are operating a blog called "Cafe Hayek", which I'll be adding to my blogroll over the weekend.
Frederick Hayek, as faithful readers know, was a Nobel Prize-winning economist whom represents the Austrian School of Economics, best known for his phenomenally successful and influential WWII-era book called "The Road to Serfdom".
At the risk of oversimplification, Hayek was responding to Western intellectuals (around the time of WWII and the fascist movements in central Europe) whom regarded fascism as a perverse response of capitalism to socialism. Hayek argued that the fascism and socialism shared common characteristics, like a belief in the efficiency of centralized planning and authority and subjugation of the individual, i.e., serfdom. Hayek believed that whatever the nature of the collective ideal (the proletariat, the fatherland, etc.) that the recognized authority claimed to represent, the path to subjugation wasn't necessarily transparent to the individual but a stealth movement to that effect, where inch by inch the individual is ceding his rights to that authority. Hayek maintained that only a robust reassertion and unyielding defense of the primacy of individual rights and responsibilities can avoid the inevitable march towards enslavement to that central authority, whatever its ideological foundation.
It is no accident that Ron Paul, for instance, has raised controversy recently by saying, "We've slipped away from a true Republic - Now we're slipping into a fascist system where it's a combination of government and big business and authoritarian rule and the suppression of the individual rights of each and every American citizen." [I cite examples of what I believe Ron Paul is referencing later in this commentary.]
Some people may dismiss this out of hand, misunderstanding what Ron Paul means here, confusing incidental statist abuses of human rights (say, under WWII-era Germany and Italy) with its economic philosophy. The horrific Holocaust is morally unjustifiable, but human rights abuses can occur under any context where individual rights are subsumed under some collective ideal that the state authority claims to represent. In effect, Locke's idea, that government derives its legitimacy from individuals from unalienable rights, is flipped on its head: individual rights are conditionally granted at the discretion of the state.
Thomas DiLorenzo, an Austrian School economist and senior faculty member of the excellent libertarian Mises Institute, wrote an impressive paper on economic fascism (available here). I won't repeat it here, but here is my edit of some salient insights:
A version of economic fascism was in fact adopted in the United States in the 1930s and survives to this day [under the names of] "planned capitalism" [or] "industrial policy". [American fascist] economist Lawrence Dennis [ in 1936 argued that ] the adoption of economic fascism would intensify "national spirit" and put it behind "the enterprises of public welfare and social control"; the big stumbling block "liberal norms of law or constitutional guarantees of private rights." [Whereas the violations of human rights under political fascism were subsequently condemned] the practice of economic fascism never was: to this day, Mussolini [is admired for making sure that] "the trains run on time," insinuating that his interventionist industrial policies were a success.
From an economic perspective, fascism meant (and means) an interventionist industrial policy, mercantilism, protectionism, and an ideology that makes the individual subservient to the state. "Ask not what the State can do for you, but what you can do for the State". [Elements of economic fascism include]: (1) the primacy of the government; (2) planned industrial "harmony"/interventions; (3) government [senior] /business [junior] partnerships--"the principle of private initiative" could only be useful "in the service of the national interest" as defined by government bureaucrats; (4) mercantilism and protectionism. Corporatism was a massive system of corporate welfare (where losses are socialized).
Many American politicians who have advocated more or less total government control over economic activity [do not directly] attack private property, free enterprise, self-government, and individual freedom [but have adopted a deceptive soft-sell approach]: they have enacted a great many tax, regulatory, and income-transfer policies that achieve the ends of economic fascism, but which are sugar-coated with deceptive rhetoric about their alleged desire only to "save" capitalism: government restrictions henceforth must be accepted "not to hamper individualism but to protect it". Americans are mostly unaware of the dire threat [progressive politicians like Obama] pose for the future of freedom. The road to serfdom is littered with road signs pointing toward "the information superhighway, health security, national service, managed trade," and "industrial policy."
Before going further, let me comment briefly on the fiction that the cause of the economic tsunami was the greedy banks that had been unleashed to engage in morally hazardous, risky lending gambling with federally-guaranteed deposits because of the repeal of Glass Steagall; the refrain is "privatized gains; socialized losses". The fact of the matter is that the companies that went down during the economic tsunami were not the super-integrated banks, including commercial banks and investment banks. As a libertarian conservative, I'm not favorably inclined towards Big Business of any kind. In fact, we argue that the correct policy is to ROLLBACK government guarantees, subsidies, etc. We think that government guarantees and subsidies vest the government in target business success. We are making a larger point about free trade and the law of comparative advantage. Mercantilist/protectionist policy basically means that the government is propping up companies with failing business models; this is readily seen not so much in (unwanted and unnecessary) government bailouts of Big Banks, as in Obama's failed government loan guarantees to crony alternative energy interests. Government intervention actually artificially inflates prices and creates deadweight losses for consumers (not to mention creates a drain on the Treasury).
What I keep coming back to in terms of Obama's politics is the 2001 WBEZ interview which I covered during the campaign which one of the few times he was candid about his politics. He's griping that there's only so far you can get from the courts beyond the same basic legal rights as everybody else. If you feel that resources are unfairly distributed, you have to work through the government to access and distribute relevant assets through Constitution-provided taxes or regulations (my edits):
But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society, didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: says what the states can’t do to you, says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted. The actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change requires political and community organizing and activities on the ground.Obama is quite clear here: change does not mean win-win: it's zero-sum. But we see progressive Democrats (and, to a more limited extent, Republicans) basically encouraging increasing broad-based dependence on government support. This is by no means a comprehensive list:
- we have seen the ratio of government spending in the health care sector increase to half (or more)
- seniors are increasingly dependent on (underfunded) government entitlements (pension and health care)
- the GSE's and FHA have increased their share of the mortgage industry from a negligible fraction to industry dominance and a significant percentage of the guaranteed loans before the tsunami were to high-risk applicants with little to no money down
- the Treasury Department forced banks over their objections after the economic tsunami to accept government "investments"
- we have consistently seen Democrats push up income eligibility for government-subsidized insurance programs (SCHIP, Medicaid) well into the middle class
- the Federal Reserve is only weakly supervised and was rewarded after the economic tsunami with even more responsibilities and it has been actively involved in European crisis talks
- we have seen an increasing footprint of the federal government in areas traditionally administered at the local/state level, including subsidies for teachers, police and firemen, and regulation of healthcare
- we have seen a radical expansion of government-guaranteed loans (from college students and mortgages to nuclear power plants)
- there were opaque multi-thousand page, pushing-on-a-string, bait-and-switch health care and financial "reforms" spawning dozens if not hundreds of federal bureaucracies empowered to write laws, even trumping religious liberty (in the recent birth control mandate over Catholic institutions
- entirely new bureaucracies have been created (e.g., the TSA) all under the deceptive guise of "protecting American travelers" violating their modesty
- there have been bailouts of various businesses or industries, government protections of union interests and government takeovers of businesses or industries (e.g., student loans)
- there have been "America only" provisions in stimulus bills, ethanol, sugar and other subsidies, import quotas (e.g., steel)
- there has been an erosion of basic civil liberties by American citizens alleged to be linked to terrorists
- there have been attempts, e.g., by DHS, to single out potential political opponents (e.g., right-wing groups, returning vets, etc.) as potential "terrorists"
Even SCOTUS has occasionally betrayed negative liberties, e.g., its wrongly-decided Kelo decision, which radically expanded abusive uses of eminent domain.
Selling in the global market encourages firms to build larger factories and refineries that, in turn, enable outputs to be produced at lower costs per unit. So while in the short-run rising exports of oil products can cause fuel prices here to spike, the long-run effect might well be lower prices because of larger, more-efficient scales of operation. Also, more exports of fuel products means more imports of other goods and services. The result is lower prices in America for consumer goods such as clothing and furniture, as well as lower prices of inputs such as steel and industrial machinery used by American factories.Political Potpourri
As I predicted a couple of days ago, Rick Santorum's lead over Mitt Romney in the Gallup tracking poll has essentially collapsed to the bare minimum, and the most recent polls from Michigan and Arizona show Romney in the lead. Intrade has Romney up to almost 80% in Michigan and better than 50% in Ohio. Obama's approval ratings have eased off towards the mid-40's, and Romney is beginning to edge back closer to Obama in head-to-head battles in battleground states. It looks like Romney has had a good week, and Intrade has his odds of capturing the GOP nomination at about 80%.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Paul McCartney & Wings, "Letting Go". Sometimes I don't understand the British fans. They hated this song, but they loved songs like "Mull of Kintyre" and "Let 'Em In". For the record, my Wings Top Five: (1) "Maybe I'm Amazed" (live)--every glorious note, and one of the greatest rock vocal performances of all time; (2) "Get Closer" (I consider the song the most Beatlesque, Paul's rock vocals are perfect, the harmonies are spot on, and the arrangement, especially the frenetic ending. is AWESOME); (3); "Another Day" [technically, a solo hit, but on 'The Wings' Greatest']; (4) "Live and Let Die"; (5) "My Love". "Letting Go" is among my next 5; in fact, I put the track from "Wings Over America" on my Walkman cassette tape for my daily jog.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Miscellany: 2/24/12
Quote of the Day
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
the last life,
for which the first was made;
our times are in his hand who saith,
'A whole I planned,
youth shows but half;
trust God:
See all,
nor be afraid!'
Robert Browning
Physician, Heal Thyself
Government Official, Police Thyself
[On the news that President Obama has proposed a "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights"...] I was amused to find this comment posted on The Freeman website:
Don’t invade people’s privacy. The government hates competition.
Ah, yes: the same government that knew about Martin Luther King's extramarital affairs, can see what you look like naked before boarding the aircraft and recently extended the Patriot Act with multiple anti-privacy measures wants to let you know that you can trust them to crack down on Internet companies tracking your every move. Obama wants to let you know the Social Security Administration won't send you an AARP insert with your annual statement when you turn 50. (But, you know, the USPS is going broke, and .... Scratch that idea: I don't want to give Obama any ideas...)
Let's have a brief reminder:
Libertarians are not convinced that Obama has made reform of the oversight boards a high priority with belated appointments, there has been little accountability of past abuses, and the status quo seems to build on the same opaque characteristics as the past...
Yes, Obama understands the nefarious invasive nature of private businesses gathering information on customer behavior; of course, he wants to let you know behind that new bill of privacy rights will be a new wing of an expanded federal bureaucracyaggressively meddling in the affairs of Internet businesses protecting our privacy.
I think Obama has far bigger issues on his plate: (1) a federal government that knows its boundaries and does not harass, stalk or spy on the private lives of its citizens without their knowledge and consent or due process that goes beyond lip service; and (2) the need for a strong, independent, proactive federal internal affairs unit protecting citizen privacy from government abuse.
Bill O'Reilly On Rising Gas Prices: Grade F
I want to reassure my readers that I didn't start off the day intending to write a rant about a Bill O'Reilly commentary. I'm sure that there are dozens of things that are said everyday that I would disagree with on all the major cable news outlets. The fact of the matter is Bill O'Reilly's opinion reflects a populist standpoint that could have been written from the left or right; probably the main difference would be that liberals or progressives wouldn't have felt the need to bring Obama into the conversation.
I have edited the following commentary excerpt, which I present in the event the accompanying embedded video, available at the time of this post, becomes unavailable at a later date. The excerpt is printed for reader convenience and context for relevant discussion; I found the video and transcript available here (I always encourage readers to visit Fox News and/or Bill O'Reilly's website for the original material):
But I have to question O'Reilly's understanding of basic economics. You always have the law of supply and demand at stake. There are reasons that Saudi Arabia, for instance, doesn't want the price of oil to get too high, too fast: it can trigger a global recession, and recessionary economies cut back on energy, and it also makes alternative energy supplies more cost-competitive. For example, Canadian oil sands are more expensive to process versus, say, pumping oil out of a traditional well. Not to mention the high prices encourage more oil exploration.
We don't need to engage, like Bill O'Reilly does here, on unwarranted speculation of oil companies trying to "manipulate" the market. O'Reilly needs a healthy dose here of Ockham's razor. For example, it's not really clear how speculators got into a position of manipulating the market or why they would ever let it go once they had it. We see these things happen all the time in other contexts: Brazil has a poor coffee harvest, and prices everywhere jump; soaring corn prices, in part due to the competitive use of corn in the US production of ethanol for transportation, have led Mexican officials to institute price caps (thumbs DOWN!), hedge against rising prices, etc., because corn is a staple of everyday life (e.g, tortillas). In sugar, for instance, futures prices have averaged just over $11--but in Nov. 1974, they rose to $65. (I remember a sitcom episode at the time that focused on the high price of table sugar.)
The fact is, the free market WORKS. A bad harvest is followed by a good harvest, new oil supplies become available (e.g., the Williston, ND oil boom, with North Dakota looking to surge past both Alaska and California over the near future). As Obama noted (although it is not because of his efforts but despite them with meager offerings of offshore acreage, endless environmental lawsuits against the development of vast oil shale properties, the BP spill-related moratorium on permits, etc.), we are now beginning to import less oil than just a few years ago.
I also want to point out to Mr. Bill's attention, that US consumers pay much less than most consumers worldwide for a gallon of gas, and part of the reason that costs have gone up is because of a declining dollar in purchasing power thanks to the Fed Reserve's easy money policies.
O'Reilly also seems to ignore some inconvenient facts. For instance, America is far from self-sufficient in oil: what does he think the Keystone Pipeline project is all about? Canadian tar sand oil. Another major point is that he's missing a critical distinction that Dobbs is making: the US isn't exporting CRUDE--it's exporting REFINED PRODUCTS. Different thing; perhaps he doesn't remember but I seem to recall that Iran for years has had to IMPORT gasoline because the oil-producing state doesn't have enough of its own refineries: in fact, the US has attempted to use Iranian dependence on refined oil products as part of its economic sanctions. We also have millions of new Chinese, Indian and other drivers all needing refined products (no doubt there's a ramp up to get refineries up and running, especially, say, if available refineries are running at full capacity)--and there's a separate supply and demand issue in play.
When O'Reilly starts griping about the government doing absolutely nothing, I'm not really sure what he has in mind: banning exports of refined oil products? Price caps? Grandstanding Congressional investigations? Justice Department crackdowns on oil company "market manipulators"?
And/or is he talking about the government opening up new exploration areas, approving things like new pipeline projects from Canada, cutting through environmentalist red tape, etc.? Note that even in the case of the latter, it can take months to years before we drill productive wells and even longer to get to market, so short-term relief is questionable. (And note that Canadian reserves are already factored into the price equation: it doesn't really matter whether Americans or Chinese buy the oil in the same we are talking about a global market: we are paying market prices for oil wherever we find it.) What helps prices is when large new finds come to the attention of the global market--and as O'Reilly notes, Obama has little interest in seeing that happen on his watch.
O'Reilly seems to place most of the blame on the shoulders of Big Oil--he goes out of his way to say even if the Keystone Pipeline was already done, greedy Big Oil would export the relevant refined products anyway... (Ah, yes, let's build on this: Big Oil has been the secret party really responsible for seeding the market and raising the standard of living in India, China and other developing nations so their citizens can afford gas-guzzling cars. Maybe Obama should shunt aside his environmentalist cronies and put those wily economic geniuses running the oil companies on his board of economic advisers!)
Note that Dobbs is not, at least in the quoted excerpt, blaming the oil companies of manipulating the market; he's simply explaining there is strong global demand for refined oil products. Bill O'Reilly somehow thinks it is wrong for US companies to sell their products at the better price, domestic or international. Profiting from a robust market for your goods or services is hardly "manipulative": it's participatory. If I was a shareholder or employee, I want the company getting the highest price it can, which is to my own benefit. Selling for below-market prices is irrational sentimental behavior. If I had a $150K house, a young family offered me $175K, but a Saudi prince was willing to give me $350K in cash, I'm sorry but I'm taking the prince's offer. It's not personal but business. Yeah, the wife may be pregnant and tell you she can't afford to match the offer. But just imagine how I would feel if I gave in, only to see her turn around and flip the property to the prince, making a 100% profit at my expense?
Bill O'Reilly says that he writes his own material and he claims to be a television journalist. However, all I see here is muddled thinking and unsupported, reckless allegations. As for O'Reilly's discussion of Obama, I do realize that high petroleum product prices encourages the production of alternative green energy, but I guarantee the last thing Obama wants is high gas prices with an election just about 8 months way. High energy prices can trigger an economic downturn, the last thing Obama wants, just as we finally seem to be emerging from the economic malaise.
Another thing, Bill: a plurality or even majority of poor households can't afford to buy or operate a car (including insurance and repairs); this is one of the lessons Bill O'Reilly seems to have forgotten from the public sector failure to evacuate New Orleans before the Katrina tragedy (see here, for instance). This issue does squeeze disposable income, particularly for lower middle class household, young drivers, senior citizens on fixed or limited income, etc., but O'Reilly's use of poverty in this context seems gratuitous and opportunistic in making the point.
A couple of final observations about O'Reilly's shoddy commentary:
And just a final comment about O'Reilly's bringing up the payroll tax cut. I have repeatedly argued against any payroll tax cut unless we get a fundamental reform of the social security system to deal with massive unfunded liabilities: cutting present contributions only makes since if we agree to take lower payouts in the future. Obama, of course, is hypocritical here: he can talk about the cost-saving benefits for government-paid or mandated health care funding, but what about preventive funding decisions underlying our currently unsustainable senior entitlement programs? Are you kidding me?
The last thing I heard is that the Congress did not agree on a tax increase/spending cut package to pay for the package, so it will be funded out of the deficit. We have an unfunded liability problem with social security even before Obama started raiding the lockbox last year and this year: I've also mentioned that, consistent with Milton Friedman's permanent income hypothesis, I oppose temporary tax cuts because consumers make decisions based on sustainable income.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Paul McCartney & Wings, "Band on the Run"
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
the last life,
for which the first was made;
our times are in his hand who saith,
'A whole I planned,
youth shows but half;
trust God:
See all,
nor be afraid!'
Robert Browning
Government Official, Police Thyself
[On the news that President Obama has proposed a "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights"...] I was amused to find this comment posted on The Freeman website:
Don’t invade people’s privacy. The government hates competition.
Ah, yes: the same government that knew about Martin Luther King's extramarital affairs, can see what you look like naked before boarding the aircraft and recently extended the Patriot Act with multiple anti-privacy measures wants to let you know that you can trust them to crack down on Internet companies tracking your every move. Obama wants to let you know the Social Security Administration won't send you an AARP insert with your annual statement when you turn 50. (But, you know, the USPS is going broke, and .... Scratch that idea: I don't want to give Obama any ideas...)
Let's have a brief reminder:
The original Patriot Act made it far easier for the FBI to use National Security Letters (NSLs) to compel private citizens, businesses, nonprofits, and other entities to surrender information on demand. NSLs empower the FBI to seize records that reveal “where a person makes and spends money, with whom he lives and lived before, how much he gambles, what he buys online, what he pawns and borrows, where he travels, how he invests, what he searches for and reads on the Web, and who telephones or e-mails him at home and at work,” the Washington Post noted. The FBI was issuing more than 50,000 NSLs per year.
The prior year, when he was running for reelection, Bush assured Americans that no wiretaps were occurring without federal court authorization. But the Times revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) had conducted warrantless wiretaps on thousands of Americans based on flimsy pretexts. The Times’ James Risen reported that Bush’s “secret presidential order has given the NSA the freedom to peruse . . . the email of millions of Americans.”Google can only dream what it could do if it only had access to government data on citizens...
Libertarians are not convinced that Obama has made reform of the oversight boards a high priority with belated appointments, there has been little accountability of past abuses, and the status quo seems to build on the same opaque characteristics as the past...
Yes, Obama understands the nefarious invasive nature of private businesses gathering information on customer behavior; of course, he wants to let you know behind that new bill of privacy rights will be a new wing of an expanded federal bureaucracy
I think Obama has far bigger issues on his plate: (1) a federal government that knows its boundaries and does not harass, stalk or spy on the private lives of its citizens without their knowledge and consent or due process that goes beyond lip service; and (2) the need for a strong, independent, proactive federal internal affairs unit protecting citizen privacy from government abuse.
Bill O'Reilly On Rising Gas Prices: Grade F
I want to reassure my readers that I didn't start off the day intending to write a rant about a Bill O'Reilly commentary. I'm sure that there are dozens of things that are said everyday that I would disagree with on all the major cable news outlets. The fact of the matter is Bill O'Reilly's opinion reflects a populist standpoint that could have been written from the left or right; probably the main difference would be that liberals or progressives wouldn't have felt the need to bring Obama into the conversation.
I have edited the following commentary excerpt, which I present in the event the accompanying embedded video, available at the time of this post, becomes unavailable at a later date. The excerpt is printed for reader convenience and context for relevant discussion; I found the video and transcript available here (I always encourage readers to visit Fox News and/or Bill O'Reilly's website for the original material):
O'REILLY: Yesterday at LAX I saw gas signs that said $4.50 a gallon. Working Americans and the poor are getting hosed at the pump. The President gives working Americans a payroll cut tax,but the extra income goes into the gas tank. Why is this happening? Well, Lou Dobbs says there is plenty of gas and oil in America. The record warm winter means reserves are way up.I hardly know where to start here. First of all, this is not the first time Bill O'Reilly has voiced his conspiracy theory about oil companies and speculators; let me also point out I hold no direct positions in oil companies or the industry itself (e.g., in a sector fund or ETF).
DOBBS: Primarily jet fuels, diesel and gasoline which normally would be in abundance right now is being shipped overseas. The fact of the matter is we are competing with demand in China, in Europe, and primarily in Latin America.
O'REILLY: There is plenty of oil in the USA. Prices should not be at record levels. But they are because the oil companies are sending their products overseas to make more money. And what is the federal government doing about that? Zero. It's my job to tell you the truth. Right now we are all being taken advantage of by an administration that has an anti-fossil fuel agenda and an oil industry that manipulates the U.S. market.
But I have to question O'Reilly's understanding of basic economics. You always have the law of supply and demand at stake. There are reasons that Saudi Arabia, for instance, doesn't want the price of oil to get too high, too fast: it can trigger a global recession, and recessionary economies cut back on energy, and it also makes alternative energy supplies more cost-competitive. For example, Canadian oil sands are more expensive to process versus, say, pumping oil out of a traditional well. Not to mention the high prices encourage more oil exploration.
We don't need to engage, like Bill O'Reilly does here, on unwarranted speculation of oil companies trying to "manipulate" the market. O'Reilly needs a healthy dose here of Ockham's razor. For example, it's not really clear how speculators got into a position of manipulating the market or why they would ever let it go once they had it. We see these things happen all the time in other contexts: Brazil has a poor coffee harvest, and prices everywhere jump; soaring corn prices, in part due to the competitive use of corn in the US production of ethanol for transportation, have led Mexican officials to institute price caps (thumbs DOWN!), hedge against rising prices, etc., because corn is a staple of everyday life (e.g, tortillas). In sugar, for instance, futures prices have averaged just over $11--but in Nov. 1974, they rose to $65. (I remember a sitcom episode at the time that focused on the high price of table sugar.)
The fact is, the free market WORKS. A bad harvest is followed by a good harvest, new oil supplies become available (e.g., the Williston, ND oil boom, with North Dakota looking to surge past both Alaska and California over the near future). As Obama noted (although it is not because of his efforts but despite them with meager offerings of offshore acreage, endless environmental lawsuits against the development of vast oil shale properties, the BP spill-related moratorium on permits, etc.), we are now beginning to import less oil than just a few years ago.
I also want to point out to Mr. Bill's attention, that US consumers pay much less than most consumers worldwide for a gallon of gas, and part of the reason that costs have gone up is because of a declining dollar in purchasing power thanks to the Fed Reserve's easy money policies.
O'Reilly also seems to ignore some inconvenient facts. For instance, America is far from self-sufficient in oil: what does he think the Keystone Pipeline project is all about? Canadian tar sand oil. Another major point is that he's missing a critical distinction that Dobbs is making: the US isn't exporting CRUDE--it's exporting REFINED PRODUCTS. Different thing; perhaps he doesn't remember but I seem to recall that Iran for years has had to IMPORT gasoline because the oil-producing state doesn't have enough of its own refineries: in fact, the US has attempted to use Iranian dependence on refined oil products as part of its economic sanctions. We also have millions of new Chinese, Indian and other drivers all needing refined products (no doubt there's a ramp up to get refineries up and running, especially, say, if available refineries are running at full capacity)--and there's a separate supply and demand issue in play.
When O'Reilly starts griping about the government doing absolutely nothing, I'm not really sure what he has in mind: banning exports of refined oil products? Price caps? Grandstanding Congressional investigations? Justice Department crackdowns on oil company "market manipulators"?
And/or is he talking about the government opening up new exploration areas, approving things like new pipeline projects from Canada, cutting through environmentalist red tape, etc.? Note that even in the case of the latter, it can take months to years before we drill productive wells and even longer to get to market, so short-term relief is questionable. (And note that Canadian reserves are already factored into the price equation: it doesn't really matter whether Americans or Chinese buy the oil in the same we are talking about a global market: we are paying market prices for oil wherever we find it.) What helps prices is when large new finds come to the attention of the global market--and as O'Reilly notes, Obama has little interest in seeing that happen on his watch.
O'Reilly seems to place most of the blame on the shoulders of Big Oil--he goes out of his way to say even if the Keystone Pipeline was already done, greedy Big Oil would export the relevant refined products anyway... (Ah, yes, let's build on this: Big Oil has been the secret party really responsible for seeding the market and raising the standard of living in India, China and other developing nations so their citizens can afford gas-guzzling cars. Maybe Obama should shunt aside his environmentalist cronies and put those wily economic geniuses running the oil companies on his board of economic advisers!)
Note that Dobbs is not, at least in the quoted excerpt, blaming the oil companies of manipulating the market; he's simply explaining there is strong global demand for refined oil products. Bill O'Reilly somehow thinks it is wrong for US companies to sell their products at the better price, domestic or international. Profiting from a robust market for your goods or services is hardly "manipulative": it's participatory. If I was a shareholder or employee, I want the company getting the highest price it can, which is to my own benefit. Selling for below-market prices is irrational sentimental behavior. If I had a $150K house, a young family offered me $175K, but a Saudi prince was willing to give me $350K in cash, I'm sorry but I'm taking the prince's offer. It's not personal but business. Yeah, the wife may be pregnant and tell you she can't afford to match the offer. But just imagine how I would feel if I gave in, only to see her turn around and flip the property to the prince, making a 100% profit at my expense?
Bill O'Reilly says that he writes his own material and he claims to be a television journalist. However, all I see here is muddled thinking and unsupported, reckless allegations. As for O'Reilly's discussion of Obama, I do realize that high petroleum product prices encourages the production of alternative green energy, but I guarantee the last thing Obama wants is high gas prices with an election just about 8 months way. High energy prices can trigger an economic downturn, the last thing Obama wants, just as we finally seem to be emerging from the economic malaise.
Another thing, Bill: a plurality or even majority of poor households can't afford to buy or operate a car (including insurance and repairs); this is one of the lessons Bill O'Reilly seems to have forgotten from the public sector failure to evacuate New Orleans before the Katrina tragedy (see here, for instance). This issue does squeeze disposable income, particularly for lower middle class household, young drivers, senior citizens on fixed or limited income, etc., but O'Reilly's use of poverty in this context seems gratuitous and opportunistic in making the point.
A couple of final observations about O'Reilly's shoddy commentary:
- What was the point here? All he seems to be doing is whining: he doesn't seem to have any constructive solutions. Is this the kind of analysis Roger Ailes has come to expect for reportedly paying him somewhere in the range of $20M a year?
- O'Reilly's commentary seems to be an imitation of Barack Obama's pathetic "gotta be doing something: we can't afford to do nothing" rhetoric in arguing Big Government needs a blank check to impose its will on any matter crossing its radar screen; unlike business, the government doesn't have to worry about raising capital: government can tax at will or print money, undermining the currency and the people's savings. Why does Mr. Bill seem to think that government is solution and not part of the problem? True, he doesn't particularly care for Obama's "solutions", but he doesn't seem to have that much faith in Adam Smith's "invisible hand" either. "Looking out for the folks" obviously doesn't include those of us whom believe in economic liberty, personal virtue and limited government.
Watching Obama's lust for Big Government reminds me of this one occasion back in 1995 when I was eating in a São Paulo, Brazil churrascaria (steakhouse). (For those who don't know, it's often a single-price, all-you-care-to-eat steakhouse concept where you typically start off with a self-serve salad bar, but waiters come around with plates or skewers of meat, chicken hearts, etc, or certain side dishes and carve portions or serve you at your table.) What I hadn't noticed at this one particular restaurant was that there was a green/red button near the plate. So my plate is full, and this waiter comes by and politely offers to serve me a portion. I explain, in my limited Portuguese, that I have no room on my plate. He smiles and says, "No problem!", pulls out a second plate and serves a portion. Soon, that second plate is full, and the waiters are still stopping by. I'm sure I have enough to satiate my appetite and try to explain to the waiter when he points out my green button (which I promptly turn over). The point is that if we were talking about a government banquet table, Obama wouldn't be satisfied with a second helping--he wants a second table. And a third...
Bill O'Reilly is a pseudo-conservative; he's not a real Tea Party/limited government type of guy. Oh, he might grumble about that Solyndra plate served up and tell the restaurant owners that he's not going to pay good money for THAT. And, unlike Obama, O'Reilly does seem to be a little worried what the final bill is going to look like.
But you know, sometimes we experienced bike riders take a spill. We don't whine to other people or ask Mommy to kiss our boo-boo; we don't go around looking for other people to blame. A spill is what it is, a fact of life. We deal with it: we get up off the ground, dust ourselves off, fix the bike and start pedaling again: we don't need a government recall on the bike model and Obama-regulation training wheels, more public safety officials riding along our bike path "just in case", or new restrictions about where we're allowed to ride our bike.
And just a final comment about O'Reilly's bringing up the payroll tax cut. I have repeatedly argued against any payroll tax cut unless we get a fundamental reform of the social security system to deal with massive unfunded liabilities: cutting present contributions only makes since if we agree to take lower payouts in the future. Obama, of course, is hypocritical here: he can talk about the cost-saving benefits for government-paid or mandated health care funding, but what about preventive funding decisions underlying our currently unsustainable senior entitlement programs? Are you kidding me?
The last thing I heard is that the Congress did not agree on a tax increase/spending cut package to pay for the package, so it will be funded out of the deficit. We have an unfunded liability problem with social security even before Obama started raiding the lockbox last year and this year: I've also mentioned that, consistent with Milton Friedman's permanent income hypothesis, I oppose temporary tax cuts because consumers make decisions based on sustainable income.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Paul McCartney & Wings, "Band on the Run"
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Miscellany: 2/23/12
Quote of the Day
Always say less than necessary.
Robert Greene
I'm Beginning to Lose My Patience:
YES, Sen. Marco Rubio is a US Citizen By Birth
Political Potpourri
I haven't watched Fox News in weeks; I have a subscription to one of the prime-time podcasts, which explains how I ended up blasting Laura Ingraham in a recent post. My patience has been wearing thin. No wonder a clearly delusional, overconfident Obama was recently quoted telling Univision that he has another 5 years to resolve immigration. If the Tea Party puts together a million-man march on Washington to personally hand Obama an eviction notice after he loses this November, I'm in. There is no possible way Obama can win this fall unless Republican voters nominate an old school career politician like Santorum or Gingrich--it's baked in. I don't care if we get to 5% unemployment (which we aren't) by this November: Obama is done. The American people are not about to return the Democrats to power this fall, which means Obama's only argument for reelection is trying to block long overdue fiscal reform (with the nation's debt already at the credit limit) and protect unsustainable ObamaCare from the Republicans.
If Latinos want immigration reform, their best hope is to elect a GOP Senate and President: Obama couldn't even get the Dream Act passed with a supermajority--and he will never have a supermajority again. I am intrigued with Marco Rubio as a potential VP pick, not simply because he's a Latino, but because he is articulate and a Tea Party favorite whom would fire up Romney's base. And don't underestimate the fact that mostly Catholic Latinos are not happy with the Obama Administration playing hardball politics against the Catholic Church on the birth control kerfuffle.
[Let me also point out that Romney could do worse than select Ron Paul, whom does very well with young voters and has significant crossover appeal. It would absolutely drive the neocons crazy (it would be worth it just to see their reaction)--but Romney-Paul would actually allow an attack on Obama as a higher-spending, higher-regulating Bush third and fourth term. I don't care if Obama has a billion dollar war chest: he's not prepared for this type of a challenge. Romney and Paul could wage a change election/outsider campaign unlike anything we've ever seen. Romney, by making that one decision, would instantly show that this is no longer your grandfather's GOP. Oh, I know: Paul's age and unconventional stances on drug prohibition and against Big Defense contrast with Romney's own positions, but Paul is no Sarah Palin: he can wipe the floor with Biden. We know that the neocons will fall behind Romney, but Paul consistently draws 10-25% of voters no one else is reaching--and that can make all the difference. The unusual thing is not only is Ron Paul seen as the most legitimate conservative in the race by nearly everybody--he also draws some liberal and moderate supporters If Romney selects Paul, he instantly shuts up all the activists complaining that Romney is not a "true" conservative. A "severe" conservative just might select Ron Paul.]
I"m concerned that the birthers could sidetrack our best opportunity of knocking off the incompetent incumbent. Regardless of the VP pick I don't see any way possible Obama retains the 53% of the vote he got in 2008: that hope-change thing is gone forever: moderates and independents have seen Barack Obama constantly bang his head against the wall with tax-and-spend class warfare rhetoric going on 4 years: they know that he's stubborn and has shown absolutely no trace of legitimate compromise: it took an historic mid-term landslide and a Senate GOP filibuster to get Obama to back off a class warfare extension of the Bush tax cuts less than a month before their expiration: the only reason he did it was that he knew that it was political suicide for him not to get at least the middle class tax cuts that he needed more than the progressives' obsession with punishing the upper 1%.
Moderates and independents were fooled the last time Obama posed as a centrist during the last general election campaign: they aren't likely to be fooled again by election season Obama's gimmicky populist attempts to co-opt the GOP agenda: they know that a reelected lame duck Obama, who had promised to cut the deficit in half, will have nothing to restrain his bureaucratic ambitions to expand government micromanagement of their lives, short of impeachment. All Romney needs to do is convince 3 to 4 jaded Obama voters out of each hundred voters. A lame duck Obama, no longer needing to worry about pandering to the middle class or disguising his far-left agenda, doesn't even need to convince a GOP Congress to enact new legislation. He can create hundreds of birth control kerfuffles on his own initiative across the wide expanse of the federal government, using his veto power to stave off Congressional attempts to rein him in: he can run a GOP Congress ragged simply by jerking their chains at will. It's a lot easier to vote Obama out of office than to impeach him.
Yes, the polls aren't looking good right now in a number of battleground states, but Gallup/USA Today just came out with a national poll today showing Romney with 50% of the vote, beating Obama by more than the margin of error. This is after all the pundits arguing that Romney has turned off moderates and independents with his recent campaign attacks against partisan opponents, fueled by a relentless anti-Romney campaign over the past year where one candidate after another has assumed the mantle of the chosen non-Romney one. (Take my word for it: if and when the Obama campaign turns negative against Romney, it will be a double-edged sword. The biggest thing Obama has going for him is that the American people like him, even though they despise his policies: if and when a desperate Obama goes negative, his unfavorables will skyrocket.)
I will say that right now Obama has some positive momentum in several battleground states, probably a combination of better economic news and GOP infighting. There are some weird polls out there--I see Georgia polls all over the map with Romney showing from a close to a distant third. I'm not forecasting a Romney victory in Georgia but I think Gingrich with a favorite son status competes with Santorum for the same type of voters. I've been seeing recent Michigan polls alternating between Romney and Santorum with Romney trying to stave off a late charge from Santorum in Arizona. I did not watch this week's debate, but it appeared that Santorum was on the defensive; over the past week he steadily marched up to about a 10% lead in the Gallup daily tracking poll and I saw that dip today to a 7-point lead. If my read of the situation is correct, we should see an erosion of that lead over the weekend. Right now Intrade has Romney at a 73% favorite to win Michigan and a 92% favorite to win Arizona.
You have to say that the non-Romney folks certainly engage in wishful thinking, ominously arguing it's make or break for Romney in Michigan, Romney's home state. Um, earth to media conservatives: right now, according to Wikipedia, Romney has an aggregate of 41% of the overall vote to date, a third more than runner up Gingrich, not to mention nearly 3 times the delegates, and Santorum has only about 16%. Santorum has won only one primary--a beauty contest with no delegates at stake and without Gingrich on the ballot, and two of his caucus wins were narrow over Romney, one of them a photo finish in a state that Romney did not expect to win. I will say I've seen polls in Super Tuesday/later states where Romney presently is in a difficult position--he was polling close to Santorum in Pennsylvania before Santorum's recent hat trick. I think if Romney pulls out Michigan and Arizona next Tuesday, he'll be in good position heading into Super Tuesday. On Super Tuesday, Romney is all but certain to take Virginia, Vermont, and Massachusetts and Socialmatica also predicts Romney will take 4 of the other 7 races (Oklahoma, Alaska, Tennessee, and Ohio) with Ron Paul possibly topping Romney in caucus states of Idaho and North Dakota. Santorum has a lead in recent Ohio and Washington state polls, but if Santorum's support starts breaking down, which I believe we may now be seeing, it's very difficult to see how he goes on if he loses both primaries next Tuesday and then gets shut out on Super Tuesday. On the other hand, Gingrich has only one victory to date, and his late surge South Carolina victory is not enough--even if he pulls out Georgia, it's difficult to see a path for victory. He is on the record as saying he sees Texas as a decider in his campaign, and it's possible that all 3 opponents may pull what I call a "Huckabee", meaning to stay on the ballot until Romney mathematically clinches the nomination.
Okay, let's now briefly talk about the Senate races: Jeff Flake, who I endorsed several weeks back, looks to be in a strong position to retain Jon Kyl's Senate seat in Arizona, Texas looks in great shape to retain the open GOP seat and I've seen Sen. Scott Brown with a recent strong poll defending against progressive icon Elizabeth Warren. Former Senator Allen is even or just ahead from a takeaway win in Virginia, Mack is battling Florida's Senator Nelson in a virtual tie, the GOP contenders are battling Missouri's Senator McCaskill again in a tie, Nebraska and North Dakota look good for takeaways, Tester is in trouble in Montana, Wilson is virtually tied to take over an open Dem seat in New Mexico, and former Governor Thompson has a great shot at taking over an open seat in Wisconsin. There are now another 2 or 3 seats which could be in play (Washington, New Jersey, and Ohio).
Moreover, I've seen a couple of generic ballots putting the GOP over the Dems in Congress. This is Obama's worst nightmare. What I can tell you is that Santorum or Gingrich as the nominee probably kills each and every tossup race I've mentioned here (Missouri, New Mexico, Virginia, and Florida, just to mention a few). So a Santorum or Gingrich probably not only throws the Presidency to Obama, but may be enough to keep Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader--Reid had blocked nearly every reform voted on by the House. It is just as important to defeat Reid as it is to defeat Obama.
Now about the birther stuff: it seems every time I write a piece on immigration, I take a hit on readership. I support immigration reform, but I differ from the Democrats' approach on a number of aspects: I want to overhaul and expand the quota system (particularly beyond the Western Hemisphere), making it more merit-based and ending chained immigration, I want to see a functional temporary worker program reinstated (currently opposed vehemently by the unions), and I'm willing to consider permanent residency (versus citizenship) options for unauthorized residents in good standing (especially if one or more children are American born) after certain penalty fees are assessed. I would be willing to allow these residents to get in line to qualify for citizenship here (from their home country).
Now on the birther kerfuffle: this is just so politically toxic and offensive to immigrants across the board (especially legal ones), it's a guarantee that very large numbers of immigrant voters will vote for Obama just to spite the birthers, whom the immigrants think the GOP condones. This is a completely phony issue: Obama never planted his birth announcement in old Hawaiian newspapers with the idea he would be elected as the first African American President! The varying qualification time periods have shifted arbitrarily over time by the Congress. As far as I'm concerned, whoever wins a clear majority of electoral votes deserves to be President, even if he is a little green dwarf from Mars; to try to deny the mandate of the American people over some obscure, arbitrary legal nuance is fundamentally anti-democratic. I am strongly opposed to Obama's policies, but I recognize the legitimacy of his election.
I don't know why most of the "Reagan conservatives" don't get why Reagan got elected; it wasn't just because of his policies. A lot of it had to do with his characteristic good nature and his willingness to negotiate with the opposition. Barry Goldwater was just as ideologically pure as Ronald Reagan, but he got crushed in the 1964 election. Both Santorum and Gingrich come across more like Goldwater than Reagan. They come across as thin-skinned and strident. I have strong points of view, but I think I have a good sense of humor, and I don't take myself too seriously. That's what I think Romney needs to work on. When Ford was President, he came across like your next door neighbor, a refreshing change from the rather aloof, paranoid Nixon. Chevy Chase made a career over imitating his falls, and as a born Texan, I'll never forget that wonderfully endearing, goofy occasion that he tried to eat a tamale for the first time--with the husk still on.
The indisputable fact is that Marco Rubio was born in the United States (Miami). That made him a US citizen by the Constitution; the status of his parents, which the birthers focus on (Rubio's parents weren't naturalized citizens at the time of his birth), is not relevant. The birthers take a position that Rubio cannot be selected as a potential VP, given a Constitutional requirement of a natural-born citizen and their take on the wording of the fourteenth amendment which basically references the US-born children of foreign diplomats (and doesn't apply in this context). I've written past posts on this and pointed out that SCOTUS has made its position clear.
And Now For Obama's Next Budget Trick:
Over $2T In the Hat: A Few Crony Promises,
Then Poof! Spending Cuts Have Disappeared
All That Remains is Smoke and an IOU
I'm not sure that the Obama Administration can tell you where the money is being spent. After all, the last time INS saw Carmen, she was somewhere in San Diego... What do we know?
Chris Edwards/CATO, Thumbs UP!
"Obama Budget Raises Tax Rates, Expands Loopholes"
Political Humor
"Today [Ash Wednesday] Mitt Romney had some ashes on his head. He's not Catholic. It was soot from his campaign blowing up in his face." - Jay Leno
[The evangelicals backing Santorum agreed that it was proof that not only was Satan out to get America, but he would start with the Mormons...]
A new study found that 16 percent of Americans under the age of 24 don’t have a job. There’s even a name for that group: Art History majors." - Jimmy Fallon
[They are former White House interns whom used to work for Obama's economic advisers.]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Paul McCartney & Wings, "Jet"
Always say less than necessary.
Robert Greene
I'm Beginning to Lose My Patience:
YES, Sen. Marco Rubio is a US Citizen By Birth
Political Potpourri
I haven't watched Fox News in weeks; I have a subscription to one of the prime-time podcasts, which explains how I ended up blasting Laura Ingraham in a recent post. My patience has been wearing thin. No wonder a clearly delusional, overconfident Obama was recently quoted telling Univision that he has another 5 years to resolve immigration. If the Tea Party puts together a million-man march on Washington to personally hand Obama an eviction notice after he loses this November, I'm in. There is no possible way Obama can win this fall unless Republican voters nominate an old school career politician like Santorum or Gingrich--it's baked in. I don't care if we get to 5% unemployment (which we aren't) by this November: Obama is done. The American people are not about to return the Democrats to power this fall, which means Obama's only argument for reelection is trying to block long overdue fiscal reform (with the nation's debt already at the credit limit) and protect unsustainable ObamaCare from the Republicans.
If Latinos want immigration reform, their best hope is to elect a GOP Senate and President: Obama couldn't even get the Dream Act passed with a supermajority--and he will never have a supermajority again. I am intrigued with Marco Rubio as a potential VP pick, not simply because he's a Latino, but because he is articulate and a Tea Party favorite whom would fire up Romney's base. And don't underestimate the fact that mostly Catholic Latinos are not happy with the Obama Administration playing hardball politics against the Catholic Church on the birth control kerfuffle.
[Let me also point out that Romney could do worse than select Ron Paul, whom does very well with young voters and has significant crossover appeal. It would absolutely drive the neocons crazy (it would be worth it just to see their reaction)--but Romney-Paul would actually allow an attack on Obama as a higher-spending, higher-regulating Bush third and fourth term. I don't care if Obama has a billion dollar war chest: he's not prepared for this type of a challenge. Romney and Paul could wage a change election/outsider campaign unlike anything we've ever seen. Romney, by making that one decision, would instantly show that this is no longer your grandfather's GOP. Oh, I know: Paul's age and unconventional stances on drug prohibition and against Big Defense contrast with Romney's own positions, but Paul is no Sarah Palin: he can wipe the floor with Biden. We know that the neocons will fall behind Romney, but Paul consistently draws 10-25% of voters no one else is reaching--and that can make all the difference. The unusual thing is not only is Ron Paul seen as the most legitimate conservative in the race by nearly everybody--he also draws some liberal and moderate supporters If Romney selects Paul, he instantly shuts up all the activists complaining that Romney is not a "true" conservative. A "severe" conservative just might select Ron Paul.]
I"m concerned that the birthers could sidetrack our best opportunity of knocking off the incompetent incumbent. Regardless of the VP pick I don't see any way possible Obama retains the 53% of the vote he got in 2008: that hope-change thing is gone forever: moderates and independents have seen Barack Obama constantly bang his head against the wall with tax-and-spend class warfare rhetoric going on 4 years: they know that he's stubborn and has shown absolutely no trace of legitimate compromise: it took an historic mid-term landslide and a Senate GOP filibuster to get Obama to back off a class warfare extension of the Bush tax cuts less than a month before their expiration: the only reason he did it was that he knew that it was political suicide for him not to get at least the middle class tax cuts that he needed more than the progressives' obsession with punishing the upper 1%.
Moderates and independents were fooled the last time Obama posed as a centrist during the last general election campaign: they aren't likely to be fooled again by election season Obama's gimmicky populist attempts to co-opt the GOP agenda: they know that a reelected lame duck Obama, who had promised to cut the deficit in half, will have nothing to restrain his bureaucratic ambitions to expand government micromanagement of their lives, short of impeachment. All Romney needs to do is convince 3 to 4 jaded Obama voters out of each hundred voters. A lame duck Obama, no longer needing to worry about pandering to the middle class or disguising his far-left agenda, doesn't even need to convince a GOP Congress to enact new legislation. He can create hundreds of birth control kerfuffles on his own initiative across the wide expanse of the federal government, using his veto power to stave off Congressional attempts to rein him in: he can run a GOP Congress ragged simply by jerking their chains at will. It's a lot easier to vote Obama out of office than to impeach him.
Yes, the polls aren't looking good right now in a number of battleground states, but Gallup/USA Today just came out with a national poll today showing Romney with 50% of the vote, beating Obama by more than the margin of error. This is after all the pundits arguing that Romney has turned off moderates and independents with his recent campaign attacks against partisan opponents, fueled by a relentless anti-Romney campaign over the past year where one candidate after another has assumed the mantle of the chosen non-Romney one. (Take my word for it: if and when the Obama campaign turns negative against Romney, it will be a double-edged sword. The biggest thing Obama has going for him is that the American people like him, even though they despise his policies: if and when a desperate Obama goes negative, his unfavorables will skyrocket.)
I will say that right now Obama has some positive momentum in several battleground states, probably a combination of better economic news and GOP infighting. There are some weird polls out there--I see Georgia polls all over the map with Romney showing from a close to a distant third. I'm not forecasting a Romney victory in Georgia but I think Gingrich with a favorite son status competes with Santorum for the same type of voters. I've been seeing recent Michigan polls alternating between Romney and Santorum with Romney trying to stave off a late charge from Santorum in Arizona. I did not watch this week's debate, but it appeared that Santorum was on the defensive; over the past week he steadily marched up to about a 10% lead in the Gallup daily tracking poll and I saw that dip today to a 7-point lead. If my read of the situation is correct, we should see an erosion of that lead over the weekend. Right now Intrade has Romney at a 73% favorite to win Michigan and a 92% favorite to win Arizona.
You have to say that the non-Romney folks certainly engage in wishful thinking, ominously arguing it's make or break for Romney in Michigan, Romney's home state. Um, earth to media conservatives: right now, according to Wikipedia, Romney has an aggregate of 41% of the overall vote to date, a third more than runner up Gingrich, not to mention nearly 3 times the delegates, and Santorum has only about 16%. Santorum has won only one primary--a beauty contest with no delegates at stake and without Gingrich on the ballot, and two of his caucus wins were narrow over Romney, one of them a photo finish in a state that Romney did not expect to win. I will say I've seen polls in Super Tuesday/later states where Romney presently is in a difficult position--he was polling close to Santorum in Pennsylvania before Santorum's recent hat trick. I think if Romney pulls out Michigan and Arizona next Tuesday, he'll be in good position heading into Super Tuesday. On Super Tuesday, Romney is all but certain to take Virginia, Vermont, and Massachusetts and Socialmatica also predicts Romney will take 4 of the other 7 races (Oklahoma, Alaska, Tennessee, and Ohio) with Ron Paul possibly topping Romney in caucus states of Idaho and North Dakota. Santorum has a lead in recent Ohio and Washington state polls, but if Santorum's support starts breaking down, which I believe we may now be seeing, it's very difficult to see how he goes on if he loses both primaries next Tuesday and then gets shut out on Super Tuesday. On the other hand, Gingrich has only one victory to date, and his late surge South Carolina victory is not enough--even if he pulls out Georgia, it's difficult to see a path for victory. He is on the record as saying he sees Texas as a decider in his campaign, and it's possible that all 3 opponents may pull what I call a "Huckabee", meaning to stay on the ballot until Romney mathematically clinches the nomination.
Okay, let's now briefly talk about the Senate races: Jeff Flake, who I endorsed several weeks back, looks to be in a strong position to retain Jon Kyl's Senate seat in Arizona, Texas looks in great shape to retain the open GOP seat and I've seen Sen. Scott Brown with a recent strong poll defending against progressive icon Elizabeth Warren. Former Senator Allen is even or just ahead from a takeaway win in Virginia, Mack is battling Florida's Senator Nelson in a virtual tie, the GOP contenders are battling Missouri's Senator McCaskill again in a tie, Nebraska and North Dakota look good for takeaways, Tester is in trouble in Montana, Wilson is virtually tied to take over an open Dem seat in New Mexico, and former Governor Thompson has a great shot at taking over an open seat in Wisconsin. There are now another 2 or 3 seats which could be in play (Washington, New Jersey, and Ohio).
Moreover, I've seen a couple of generic ballots putting the GOP over the Dems in Congress. This is Obama's worst nightmare. What I can tell you is that Santorum or Gingrich as the nominee probably kills each and every tossup race I've mentioned here (Missouri, New Mexico, Virginia, and Florida, just to mention a few). So a Santorum or Gingrich probably not only throws the Presidency to Obama, but may be enough to keep Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader--Reid had blocked nearly every reform voted on by the House. It is just as important to defeat Reid as it is to defeat Obama.
Now about the birther stuff: it seems every time I write a piece on immigration, I take a hit on readership. I support immigration reform, but I differ from the Democrats' approach on a number of aspects: I want to overhaul and expand the quota system (particularly beyond the Western Hemisphere), making it more merit-based and ending chained immigration, I want to see a functional temporary worker program reinstated (currently opposed vehemently by the unions), and I'm willing to consider permanent residency (versus citizenship) options for unauthorized residents in good standing (especially if one or more children are American born) after certain penalty fees are assessed. I would be willing to allow these residents to get in line to qualify for citizenship here (from their home country).
Now on the birther kerfuffle: this is just so politically toxic and offensive to immigrants across the board (especially legal ones), it's a guarantee that very large numbers of immigrant voters will vote for Obama just to spite the birthers, whom the immigrants think the GOP condones. This is a completely phony issue: Obama never planted his birth announcement in old Hawaiian newspapers with the idea he would be elected as the first African American President! The varying qualification time periods have shifted arbitrarily over time by the Congress. As far as I'm concerned, whoever wins a clear majority of electoral votes deserves to be President, even if he is a little green dwarf from Mars; to try to deny the mandate of the American people over some obscure, arbitrary legal nuance is fundamentally anti-democratic. I am strongly opposed to Obama's policies, but I recognize the legitimacy of his election.
I don't know why most of the "Reagan conservatives" don't get why Reagan got elected; it wasn't just because of his policies. A lot of it had to do with his characteristic good nature and his willingness to negotiate with the opposition. Barry Goldwater was just as ideologically pure as Ronald Reagan, but he got crushed in the 1964 election. Both Santorum and Gingrich come across more like Goldwater than Reagan. They come across as thin-skinned and strident. I have strong points of view, but I think I have a good sense of humor, and I don't take myself too seriously. That's what I think Romney needs to work on. When Ford was President, he came across like your next door neighbor, a refreshing change from the rather aloof, paranoid Nixon. Chevy Chase made a career over imitating his falls, and as a born Texan, I'll never forget that wonderfully endearing, goofy occasion that he tried to eat a tamale for the first time--with the husk still on.
The indisputable fact is that Marco Rubio was born in the United States (Miami). That made him a US citizen by the Constitution; the status of his parents, which the birthers focus on (Rubio's parents weren't naturalized citizens at the time of his birth), is not relevant. The birthers take a position that Rubio cannot be selected as a potential VP, given a Constitutional requirement of a natural-born citizen and their take on the wording of the fourteenth amendment which basically references the US-born children of foreign diplomats (and doesn't apply in this context). I've written past posts on this and pointed out that SCOTUS has made its position clear.
And Now For Obama's Next Budget Trick:
Over $2T In the Hat: A Few Crony Promises,
Then Poof! Spending Cuts Have Disappeared
All That Remains is Smoke and an IOU
I'm not sure that the Obama Administration can tell you where the money is being spent. After all, the last time INS saw Carmen, she was somewhere in San Diego... What do we know?
- Obama raises spending by nearly $200B--this is over and beyond naturally lower expenditures for our winding down activities in Iraq and Afghanistan and lower recession spending (unemployment insurance)
- Obama is disingenuously dressing up naturally lowered expenditures as a sustainable source of spending cuts and taking credit for spending constraints initially opposed by the Administration
- Obama is radically increasing dividend taxes (up to 3-fold in rate depending on tax bracket): note that dividends are a source of income for many senior citizens; older Americans account for a large percentage of dividend recipients. (For those who don't understand investments, part of what goes into the price of certain blue-chip stocks is the prospect for sustained or increased dividend payouts. For all practical purposes, the market, if it thinks the dividend tax increases will happen, will likely treat a tax increase like the dividend has been cut--not good for people holding the stock. This is stunningly bad, anti-growth tax policy; keep in mind that taxing dividends is a double dip by a greedy federal government, because business income has already been taxed.)
Once again, after preaching a simpler tax system, Obama is proposing a number of new tax breaks which adds more floors to the status quo house of cards: no serious attempt whatsoever to rein in domestic expenditures or entitlements. It exposes the reality and hypocrisy behind Obama's empty rhetoric in streamlining business tax policy while lowering the corporate tax rate. (Of course, Obama's tax loopholes are "more equal".)
This budget is basically a joke and as far as I'm concerned--dead on arrival.
This budget is basically a joke and as far as I'm concerned--dead on arrival.
Chris Edwards/CATO, Thumbs UP!
"Obama Budget Raises Tax Rates, Expands Loopholes"
Political Humor
"Today [Ash Wednesday] Mitt Romney had some ashes on his head. He's not Catholic. It was soot from his campaign blowing up in his face." - Jay Leno
[The evangelicals backing Santorum agreed that it was proof that not only was Satan out to get America, but he would start with the Mormons...]
A new study found that 16 percent of Americans under the age of 24 don’t have a job. There’s even a name for that group: Art History majors." - Jimmy Fallon
[They are former White House interns whom used to work for Obama's economic advisers.]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Paul McCartney & Wings, "Jet"
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