News To Me

Eat the Rich! -- Bill Whittle, Genius

I have long been a fan of Mr. Whittle (see my blogroll on the right). As we come down the homestretch of this election, I am sharing a video he made which clearly illustrates the fallacy that making the rich pay more taxes will solve our current governmental financial problems. This is absolutely worth the ten minutes he spends...

 

Taking ALL the money from ALL the rich people, EVERY rich corporation, and ENTIRE industries gets us enough money to last ONE YEAR! And then there would be no one left to tax!

Daily Five MInutes: President of All the People?

I didn't write this, but I thought it was funny. I took it from the comments on the blog, Just One Minute. The context was Mitt Romney's "secret message" to donors; the commenter signed his name "bgates" [if only!]:

"So I feel that I've been President for all Americans - the stupid Cambridge Police, the members of my security detail who wouldn't think twice about shooting a black guy, doctors who perform unnecessary amputations out of greed; bankers and pitchfork-wielding mobs; Hispanics and their enemies, who I encouraged them to attack; the people who were entitled to money when GM went bankrupt, and the people who got money when GM went bankrupt; filmmakers critical of Islam who give me lots of money, and filmmakers critical of Islam who are invited to come downtown for routine questioning."

"It's on behalf of all of those people that I have worked as hard as I can. That's what you've seen the past few years. Me, working as hard as I can. Barring only occasional moments of rest - a couple of rounds of golf each month, watching less than half of the college basketball that ESPN and ESPN2 televises, a bit of daily exercise, and the odd date night flight to New York or Chicago or Los Angeles or Paris or Rio or Casablanca or Majorca or Fiji or Maui or only a couple of dozen other places - I'm at work every waking moment."

"I don't think most Americans realize how much is involved in this job, probably because I make it look so easy, but I have to give a lot of speeches in front of a lot of admirers, and I feel like I owe it to them to make it the greatest experience of their lives. It's not just speeches, either. There are a lot of dinners where I have to listen to other speeches, and campaign material to film, interviews to sit through, donation reports to review, photo shoots of me working to arrange, state dinners to host, just many different things. Tonight alone, Dave, I'm not just here talking to you, I have to go have dinner next to Beyonce later. Again."

"And then there's the foreign affairs component - of course my opponents are new to diplomacy - but it's a very important component of my job to meet with foreign leaders, smooth over damage that has been done to our relationship due to missteps by previous administrations, and explain to them what I have noticed about how they can fix various problems in their countries."

"The truth is, I don't think Mitt Romney is capable of doing what I've done over the past three and a half years, and frankly I think deep down he knows it."

 

Federal Spending Growth: Enough Blame to Go Around

One of the constant themes of this Republican presidential campaign has been the need to reign in spending. They claim that they "are the party of smaller government! We will cut taxes and cut spending and reduce the size of the Federal government!" or something like that.

Does that ring true?

On the surface, the Republicans seem sincere in their desires to reduce both the size and the cost of the Federal government. But our debt situation is hardly a game in which Republicans are the innocent small-government crusaders agains the evil Democratic spenders. Consider the following chart 

Under Carter, Clinton and Bush I, our Federal spending kept pace with our population growth. Under Reagan and Bush II, our growth in spending signficantly outpaced our population. Under Obama that spending reached a new height, and has remained at that height for his entire administration.

So...Did Obama increase our Federal spending dramatically? Yes, the largest one year jump in the past 35 years (and, in reality, in all of US history)--a huge almost 20% jump in Federal spending per capita in his first year in office. But Reagan had about a 20% increase over his eight years in office, and Bush II had ~25% growth in his eight years. Republicans can spin this all they want--Reagan was fighting to end the cold war, Bush II was fighting wars on two fronts and everyone knows that wars are expensive, both inherited economies in a free fall, etc. But that is just rationalization for the truth that tax-and-spend liberals have nothing on cut-taxes-and-spend-more Republicans.

For some time now I have said that listening to George W. Bush give his last State of the Union address was like listening to Democrats from the 70's, and he certainly spent money like crazy--more than even Jimmy Carter. Saying Obama is "worse" on the spending issue is certainly damning with faint praise. 

If Romney and Ryan are intent on reducing our deficit and debt--and they certainly say that they are--then they will be bucking not just the historic levels achieved under the Obama administration, but the very spending that their GOP predecessors excelled at. 

Here's hopting that Romney and Ryan are up to the challenge.

Lessons from 9/11

I cannot express these lessons any better myself, so here is a repost from Glenn Reynolds on 9/11/01. His wisdom in the aftermath of great tragedy is inspiring:

[Posted at 1:49 PM EDT, 9/11/01]

Here, for your consideration, are a few points to be taken from past experience:

The Fog of War: Nobody knows much right now. Many things that we think we know are likely to be wrong. 

Overreaction is the Terrorist's Friend: Even in major cases like this, the terrorist's real weapon is fear and hysteria. Overreacting will play into their hands.

It's Not Just Terrorists Who Take Advantage: Someone will propose new "Antiterrorism" legislation. It will be full of things off of bureaucrats' wish lists. They will be things that wouldn't have prevented these attacks even if they had been in place yesterday. Many of them will be civil-liberties disasters. Some of them will actually promote the kind of ill-feeling that breeds terrorism. That's what happened in 1996. Let's not let it happen again.

Only One Antiterrorism Method Works: That's punishing those behind it. The actual terrorists are hard to reach. But terrorism of this scale is always backed by governments. If they're punished severely -- and that means severely, not a bombed aspirin-factory but something that puts those behind it in the crosshairs -- this kind of thing won't happen again. That was the lesson of the Libyan bombing.

"Increased Security" Won't Work. When you try to defend everything, you defend nothing. Airport security is a joke because it's spread so thin that it can't possibly stop people who are really serious. You can't prevent terrorism by defensive measures; at most you can stop a few amateurs who can barely function. Note that the increased measures after TWA 800 (which wasn't terrorism anyway, we're told) didn't prevent what appear to be coordinated hijackings. (Archie Bunker's plan, in which each passenger is issued a gun on embarking, would have worked better). Deterrence works here, just as everywhere else. But you have to be serious about it.

For now, the terrorists have won. They've shut down the U.S. government, more or less. They've shut down air travel. They're all over TV. But whether they really win depends on how we deal with this; hysterically, or like angry -- but measured -- adults.

In the days following 9/11 we were all Americans first, various factions (religions, races, political parties, etc.) second. May be become a united people--a truly United States of America--in the future and forever.

Paul Krugman Then and Now

Paul Krugman is an economic professor at Princeton, columnist for the NY Times, a Nobel Prize winner, and a sometimes advisor to presidents and corporations. He once worked for a commission which advised then President Reagan, but he felt out of place because, in his words:

I was then and still am an unabashed defender of the welfare state, which I regard as the most decent social arrangement yet devised. 

He also was embarrassed to have spent even a little bit of time advising Enron, helping them to build a "veneer of credibility" around their scandals.

With that background, please compare and contrast Mr. Krugman's response to the reelection efforts of two Presidents: George W. Bush in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2012:

I know, I know, the usual suspects will roll out the usual explanations. It is, of course, Bill Clinton's fault. (Just for the record, the average rate of job creation during the whole of the Clinton administration was about 225,000 jobs a month. Mr. Clinton presided over the creation of 11 million jobs during each of his two terms.) Or maybe Osama bin Laden did it. But surely there must be a statute of limitations on these excuses. By the time of the election, Mr. Bush will have had almost four years to deal with the legacy of the technology bubble, and more than three years to deal with the economic fallout from 9/11.

What about the argument, which I hear all the time, that Mr. Obama should have fixed the economy long ago? The claim goes like this: during his first two years in office Mr. Obama had a majority in Congress that would have let him do anything he wanted, so he's had his chance. The short answer is, you've got to be kidding. As anyone who was paying attention knows, the period during which Democrats controlled both houses of Congress was marked by unprecedented obstructionism in the Senate.

So which is it, Paul? Should we have been more lenient with Bush, who, rather than battling a Democratic congress had to, you know, actually battle after 9/11? Or should we hold Obama to the "statute of limitations" argument--that it has been more than three years, and Obama should have made some progress by now.

The Question of This Election--Part III: It's About the Jobs

For previous Questions of the Election, see Part I and Part II.

We have no choice, really, but to take the candidates at face value in their propositions for the American people. To do anything but that would be to descend into conspiracy theory and conjecture--the depths of which I am not willing to explore just yet. So with that face value caveat, where do the candidates place their emphasis? From their campaign websites, I draw the following headlines. first from today's Romney campaign (no links, because they change almost daily):

Americans deserve more jobs and more take home pay. Read Mitt's 5-point plan...

and now from today's Obama campaign: 

We don't turn back. We pull each other up. We leave no one behind. 

What does that mean, exactly? It is the campaign of personality, of compassionate soundbites, or the Oprah-fying of America.  To be fair, the Obama website has a series of rotating policy initiatives below that headline, the first of which is "President Obama's Plan for the Economy" (see footnote)*. If you click on "The Presidents Vision" you get this interesting list:

1. Strengthening our education system.
2. More, cleaner energy.
3. Leading through innovation.
4. Job-creating infrastructure.
5. Fair, simple tax reform.

Not jobs? Not "the economy, stupid" as James Carville put it to Bill Clinton in 1992? Not our relationship to the world/protection from terrorism at home? 

With that in mind, the third question of this presidential election is:

What is the one overriding issue on which this election should turn?

For me the most critical graph of the campaign, and the one which should dominate the debate, is this one:

 

*  The others are: "Lead the World in College Graduates by 2020," "Invest in Clean Energy Made in America," "Spur Innovation," "Rebuild American Infrastructure," and "Reform the Tax Code to Tackle the Deficit." This is an interesting choice of things to highlight as your key policy initiatives. 

Obama and Spinal Tap

The Obama campaign has been seeing ever smaller crowds come out to its rallies. For example, at the convention, ostensibly due to predicted rain which didn't materialze, the final night was moved indoors to a venue that was 1/4 the size. According to the campaign, this is intentional:

“We have plenty of time for big rallies,” a campaign spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said between the rallies on Thursday. “Our focus right now is on exciting our supporters and winning over undecided voters and the smaller and medium-size events are the best venue to accomplish that because the president can closely engage with the crowd."

Big rallies are expensive, especially given the logistical and security challenges for a president as opposed to a mere United States senator. And Obama campaign operatives, both at the Chicago headquarters and in swing states where Mr. Obama recently has stumped, say the campaign intentionally limits crowds by restricting tickets. The reason is to allow the president to better connect with supporters, aides say.[emphasis added]

One of the cardinal rules of political events is to keep the venue smaller than the crowd you expect to draw. In other words, if your candidate can only draw six people to an event, hold it in a broom closet--that way the press coverage will show people pushing and shoving, desperate to get into the event! Under no circumstances do you want to show empty seats. 

For many pundits, this calls to mind the quintessential mockumentary, "This is Spinal Tap." If you aren't familiar with "Spinal Tap" it follows the trajectory of an aging heavy metal rock band trying to recapture its past and continually fading glory. As they embark on a new world tour, they find the reception to their music to be lukewarm--essentially holdovers from their glory years. Here is the exchange in the movie about the ever-shrinking crowds:

Marty: The last time Tap toured America, they were booked into 10,000 seat arenas, and 15,000 seat venues, and it seems that now, on their current tour they’re being booked into 1,200 seat arenas, 1,500 seat arenas, and uh I was just wondering, does this mean uh…the popularity of the group is waning?

Ian: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no…no, no, not at all. I, I, I just think that the.. uh.. their appeal is becoming more selective.

Heh. "Their appeal has become more selective." You mean, like, down in the polls?

The Clinton Effect

Bill Clinton spoke to the Democratic Convention tonight.  Most Republican reactions to Clinton's speech miss the point, as Republicans have always missed the point when it comes to Bill Clinton. He is clearly the most talented politician alive today, and the heir-apparent to Reagan as the Great Communicator. If he were running again this year he would win in a landslide, even given his sketchy history.

Tonight he was spellbinding. His political oratory skill varied from "aw shucks--isn't it obvious that the Republicans are wrong?" to wonky, I've-been-there-and-I-know-better "data" (quotation marks intentional) about just how big are the Republican "lies" (also intentional). It doesn't matter whether or not he was telling the truth--he seemed genuine, and he seemed knowledgable. If someone so genuine and knowledgable and gosh-darn-it likable thinks that Republicans are wrong and Obama is the right man, then by golly Obama must be the right man.

The fact-checkers will tell you that he got his facts wrong. The Republicans spin doctors will tell you that he misrepresented their positions, oversimplified their proposals, and falsely accused them of starving little children. And that won't matter; the damage is done--the Republicans will be running against Clinton for several days, if not weeks. We should call Obama's inevitable convention bump "The Clinton Effect."

The only recovery is Obama himself. He may just be too narcissistic to allow Clinton's speech to be the highlight of the convention. In attempting to out-do Clinton he may remind us--painfully--the he is most definitely not Clinton.  

As for Romney? He should marginalize Clinton as much as possible. Something like, "President Clinton's speech was tremendous. It is clear why people elected him, twice. He was so convincing he almost made me want to vote for him. But he is not running, and he gave the exact same type of endorsement to John Kerry in 2004. He is going to support the Democratic party, and he is going to demonize the Repubican party because that's what he does. We wish him well in his retirement and his humanitarian efforts. Now, about Obama..."

Prior to Clinton's remarks the convention was a mess. It started with the kerfuffle over removing the word God from the party platform, and followed that problem with a series of soulless speakers whose very prominence on the stage made them seem that much smaller. That is another reason why the Clinton speech will stand out; he made Elizabeth Warren and Sandra Fluke irrelevant.

The Question of This Election--Part II

There are several key questions facing voters in this election. I posited the first one, a referendum on Obama's record, here.

The first night of Democratic National Convention included the usual suspects: several stirring speeches, some partisan barbs, and an emotional and personal presentation from President Obama's wife. In addition to the speeches the Democratic party produced and debuted a video presentation which included a brief, but powerful statement:

"The government is the thing we all belong to..."

This provoked a response from the Romney campaign, which said:

"We do not belong to government; the government belongs to us."

This is a continued discussion from the Obama campaign's "Life of Julia" presentation, which demonstrates government interaction in the life of a fictional woman, from age 3 to 67. The Republican response to "Life of Julia" was a recitation of the problems of governmental intervention in Julia's life. 

Perhaps the most stark differentiation between the two parties' views on the role of government was President Obama's statement to the National Governors Association, that if you own a business, you didn't build that on your own, the government helped you built that. This engendered myriad Republican responses, not the least of which was the theme of the Republican National Convention, "Built by US," with the intentional play on words of "us vs. U.S."

On the Republican side the rise of the Tea Party movement traces its roots back to a protest over the expanding role of the Federal government, and specifically the stimulus package.

All of these examples point to significant differences in the way that the two parties, and by extension the two candidates, approach how they would govern. For some time now the two parties have been converging in their approach to Federal governing, while remaining apart in social issues. This election, then, is a return to the debate of Adams vs. Jefferson, which is this:

What should be the size and scope of the role of the Federal government?

The Question of This Election--Part I

During the 1980 election Ronald Reagan famously asked, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" That was--and is--a powerful question to ask of each Presidential election. In 2008 the question was clearly "no", and both parties essentially ran against the George Bush years. In 2004 the question wasn't about the economy; the "better off" meant "safer", and there was no question that the country felt safer under a Bush presidency than it was going to feel under Kerry. In 2000 the answer was "Yes," and by all rights Al Gore should have won the 2000 election if he hadn't bungled his campaign so badly. And on and on it goes back, through history--the honest answer to that question reveals who will win the presidency (Al Gore's idiocy notwithstanding)

There are many who are asking this question again today, and the answer is a resounding, "No"--as a nation, we are clearly not better off than we were four years ago. If there is any doubt in your mind, visit this amazing painting, and scroll around a bit at the wreckage of the last four years. Median household income is down 5% since he took office, the world's economy--based in large part of the performance of the US economy--is teetering on the brink of disaster. Our allies are confused about US support and our enemies are emboldened due to lack of US action. And on and on and on.

So why isn't Romney winning in the polls? The answer to that second question may be found in this exchange from Sunday's "Face the Nation" program:

Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer: “Can you honestly say that people are better off today than they were four years ago?”

Martin O’Malley, Democratic governor of Maryland: “No, but that's not the question of this election. The question, without a doubt, we are not as well off as we were before George Bush brought us the Bush job losses, the Bush recession, the Bush deficits, the series of desert wars -- charged for the first time to credit cards, the national credit card.”

Schieffer: “George Bush is not on the ballots.”

The Obama campaign wants us to continue to run the 2008 election. They want the focus to be on George Bush's record and the state of the country that he gave to Obama. To be fair, much of the problem that we are facing Obama did not cause, but neither did he fix. 

Recently the Wall Street journal reported that Obama intended to remain in "campaign mode" even after the election: [link for subscribers only] 

The president views a second term in some ways as a second chance, an opportunity to approach the office differently... He would like to tackle issues such as climate change, immigration, education and filibuster reform. He has told some aides that a sizable mistake at the start of his administration was his naiveté in thinking he could work with Republicans on weighty issues.

I think that there is something very telling in this answer:

1. Obama admits his inbility to work with Republicans. Reagan worked with a Democrat-controlled Congress (both houses). Clinton worked with the Republicans after the overturning of Congress in 1994. Obama's admission is tantamount to saying, "I wasn't ready to do the job."
2. Obama admits that climate change, immigration, education and filibuster reform are not important issues. They are peripheral issues--valuable in their spheres, but much less critical than the economy or the global war on terror. 

So what should the question of this election be? Very simply it should be this:

What one problem can you point to that the Obama administration has unequivocally solved?

* * * * * * * * * *

Welcome visitors! I don't write very often, but couldn't stay away during this momentous election season. Hope you enjoy your visit, and choose to stay around for a while. If you are interested, here is the post that started me writing, even sporadically, and my favorite entry.