The editorial board of Bloomberg News put up a recent piece which perfectly summarized the answer to "Who's to blame" for our economy.
CEOs broadly point to overregulation as the biggest economic damper. But the raw numbers of new regulations don't support the uncertainty purveyors, either. The Office of Management and Budget says 931 major regulations -- those with enough economic significance to require OMB review -- were issued by the executive branch during the first three years of George W. Bush's first term, more than the 886 from Obama's first three years.
Right. So why wasn't this a problem during the Bush Administration? But let's get to the main answer.
Companies are also sitting on cash or refusing to hire because, paradoxically, unemployment is a drag on consumer demand, a problem they lay at the president's feet. It's important to note that historical data collected by economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff show that it takes almost five years for employment to recover from the wreckage of a deep financial crisis.
Hiring is down because consumer demand remains low as households continue to deleverage. Employers are also using technology and other productivity enhancements to make do with fewer workers.
If there are fewer workers in an economy that is 70 percent consumer driven, then demand is going to suffer because there are less consumers. If the government does not stimulate demand, what entity does it?
The article also has a couple of other things to say of note.
Much of the problem is self-inflicted by Congress. Lawmakers are putting off until after November's elections a crush of expiring Bush-era tax cuts, the payroll tax reduction and dozens of other tax breaks and spending programs. If they expire, and if an approved $100 billion in spending cuts occur at the same time, economic growth would slow to 0.5 percent next year, the Congressional Budget Office says.
This is the elephant in the room that no one wants to tackle. Letting all the tax cuts expire and cutting spending would be a disaster for our economy and we would likely dip into another recession.
Those invoking the uncertainty principle fail to mention that inflation and interest rates are historically low. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has repeatedly pledged not to raise rates at least through late 2014 -- a gold-plated certainty guarantee if we ever saw one.
Yeah, where's the uncertainty again? And how about all those folks that keep saying that inflation is going to happen? Any day now...
So, the issue of uncertainty is not coming from the White House. It's coming from the private sector and, to a certain extent, Congress, for failing to move before the election. Of course, we all know what the goal of the House is so I guess I don't blame them:)
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
Monday, June 04, 2012
Who Would Be Able to Fix Our Finances?
Over at the Washington Post, Fred Hiatt asks whether Obama or Romney would be more likely to fix the nation's budget problems. He spends an entire column without arriving at any conclusion, though he does define success as a budget resembling the Simpson-Bowles plan. That plan involves a combination of increased revenues and entitlement cuts.
In the piece Hiatt basically accuses both Obama and Romney of being morally weak. Then he says:
In a second term, Obama is freed from the pressures of reelection and having to cater to every special interest group in the Democratic Party. Like most moderate and Blue-Dog Democrats, Obama has already accepted the premise of the Simpson-Bowles plan. Which means that even if he can't get the most intransigent Democrats to work with him, with the help of a relatively small number of reasonable, truly patriotic Republicans could get some significant entitlement cuts enacted.
Romney, on the other hand, has already rejected the Simpson-Bowles plan out of hand because it includes tax increases. So, out of the gate, Romney simply cannot be successful by Hiatt's standard. Romney is campaigning with promises of even more tax cuts and increased military spending. These will vastly exceed the savings we could get from even the most draconian entitlement cuts. Romney can't flip-flop on these promises because he would have the cloud of a 2016 reelection run hanging over him. People like Grover Norquist would never allow Romney and the Republicans in Congress to consider anything remotely resembling a tax increase.
But let's say Romney does the unthinkable and proposes something like Simpson-Bowles. The vast majority of his party would revile him. Thus, just like Obama, Romney would have very little Republican support and would have to count on Democrats to provide most of the votes. The problem is, those Democrats would have no incentive to help Romney. For the last three years they've suffered from Republican filibuster, sabotage, obstructionism and intransigence. And because Romney's first actions in office would be to gut many of the programs Democrats favor (health care, etc.), they will be in no mood to compromise with him.
But that's all moot, because there's zero chance Romney would ever propose a plan like Simpson-Bowles in the first place. Which makes me wonder why Hiatt even bothered to ask the question.
In the end a lot will depend on what happens in Senate and House elections, and whether the Senate fixes the filibuster rule. But as long as Grover Norquist and the Tea Partisans control the party, any future under Republican control looks bleak.
In the piece Hiatt basically accuses both Obama and Romney of being morally weak. Then he says:
Both men surely understand what has to be done, and both would have an incentive to do it. You could argue that Obama, believing in a larger role for government, has a larger incentive; none of his “winning the future” agenda will be imaginable except on a foundation of stable long-term finances. But no more would Romney want to govern through four years of recurring debt-ceiling crises and rising interest costs.It's ridiculous to talk about Obama's and Romney's incentives: of course they want to fix the budget. But it's really about what's possible. The practical politics of the situation will decide what will happen, not what the president wants.
In a second term, Obama is freed from the pressures of reelection and having to cater to every special interest group in the Democratic Party. Like most moderate and Blue-Dog Democrats, Obama has already accepted the premise of the Simpson-Bowles plan. Which means that even if he can't get the most intransigent Democrats to work with him, with the help of a relatively small number of reasonable, truly patriotic Republicans could get some significant entitlement cuts enacted.
Romney, on the other hand, has already rejected the Simpson-Bowles plan out of hand because it includes tax increases. So, out of the gate, Romney simply cannot be successful by Hiatt's standard. Romney is campaigning with promises of even more tax cuts and increased military spending. These will vastly exceed the savings we could get from even the most draconian entitlement cuts. Romney can't flip-flop on these promises because he would have the cloud of a 2016 reelection run hanging over him. People like Grover Norquist would never allow Romney and the Republicans in Congress to consider anything remotely resembling a tax increase.
But let's say Romney does the unthinkable and proposes something like Simpson-Bowles. The vast majority of his party would revile him. Thus, just like Obama, Romney would have very little Republican support and would have to count on Democrats to provide most of the votes. The problem is, those Democrats would have no incentive to help Romney. For the last three years they've suffered from Republican filibuster, sabotage, obstructionism and intransigence. And because Romney's first actions in office would be to gut many of the programs Democrats favor (health care, etc.), they will be in no mood to compromise with him.
But that's all moot, because there's zero chance Romney would ever propose a plan like Simpson-Bowles in the first place. Which makes me wonder why Hiatt even bothered to ask the question.
In the end a lot will depend on what happens in Senate and House elections, and whether the Senate fixes the filibuster rule. But as long as Grover Norquist and the Tea Partisans control the party, any future under Republican control looks bleak.
Uh...Huh?
Chamber’s Donohue Grades Obama on Economy: C+
Not an F? Not Armageddon? I don't get it.
Considering the source of this rating, the president should consider this winning the jackpot!
:---)
Capitalism is too important to be left to ... capitalists.
It turns out that capitalism is a marvelous creation for efficiently producing and distributing goods and services. It is the genius that unleashes creativity through human energy and effort. It satisfies the human need to build something, for people to say "this is what I accomplished."Yep.
But there is also a dark side of capitalism. When its excesses have been left unchecked, as they have been at times in our history and were again preceding the Great Recession, government leadership has emerged to save capitalism from itself. It took the analyses of historians to appreciate what Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt accomplished. At the time of their courageous leadership, they were hated by business leaders. It is a classic case of the dogs of capitalism biting the hand that preserved their existence.
Hmm...that sounds familiar:)
Unfortunately, the previously mentioned dark side of capitalism is the outcome of a system without constraints, the necessary regulations that serve to check the negative consequences. The harm to society has been legendary. Examples are child labor, acid rain, rivers catching fire, destruction of our atmosphere's life-protecting ozone, lead poisoning, black lung disease, mountaintop removal, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, toxic waste dumps, selling lethal tainted meat and produce, the destruction of urban rail transit systems, and lung cancer induced by cigarettes. This last example calls to memory the tobacco CEOs arrogantly telling Congress that "no, we don't believe cigarettes are addictive or cancer causing."
Yep.
You see, capitalism is too important to be left to the whims of capitalists. When Barack Obama took the oath of president, his inbox came straight from hell. Over the objections of a GOP that wanted government to imitate the disastrous inaction of Herbert Hoover, Obama and the Federal Reserve unfroze the panicked financial system and averted a collapse into another economic depression. The lessons of the 1930s were not forgotten.
These lessons again teach that the temptation to put a businessman in the White House should be rejected. It would be courting disaster.
No shit. And it's nice to hear that what I have been saying all along comes from a retired engineer and business executive.
Sunday, June 03, 2012
Saturday, June 02, 2012
The Alternative?
Yesterday's tough economic news has sent the media into a tizzy. How can the president possibly win re-election now? After all, it's June...five months before the election...and this is when voters make up their minds, right? Hee hee hee....
I've always been amazed by the emotional maturity of the media (see: 13 year old girl) but I guess I'd like to look at this from a practical point of view. Let's assume that our economic woes are all President Obama's fault. His policies have brought us to this sluggish place and we need a change. So...what's the alternative?
First up, we have Mitt Romney. Here is his plan to fix our economic woes. After reading all of his various ideas, the first question that came into my head was...how is this different from President Obama's plans exactly? Oh, right. Less spending and less taxes.
But wait. That doesn't make any sense because we are still under the Bush Tax plan and look at the results. We also are spending less than in the past so where's the growth? Moreover, nowhere do I see a scoring by the CBO or any other neutral entity that gives us an idea as to what Mitt's plan will do for the economy.
The other main alternative we have is Paul Ryan's budget. This offers even less than Mitt's plan in the way of a real plan and reads more like a cross between Ayn Rand and Thomas Sowell. Again, where's the scoring of this plan by the CBO or a similar entity?
Further, neither of these plans cut defense spending-a key contributor to our nation's debt and deficit-so how can anyone take this stuff seriously?
Looking past Romney and Ryan, what do we have? Well, we have the anarcho-capitalist views of the right wing blogsphere. Does anyone really think that a return to the 1890s is a good idea? So, really, we don't have much in the way of a substantive alternative to the Democrat's policies.
To put it simply, no one on the right really knows what the fuck to do. Please correct me if I am wrong or offer a plan (of your own or someone else's) that I may have missed because I don't see it. All I see is the president's jobs bill stalled out in Congress because they are more concerned with beating him than enacting policies that would help the economy.
Meanwhile, Paul Krugman continues to call for increased government spending in the short term as the only real solution. Is he right? If not, why not?
I've always been amazed by the emotional maturity of the media (see: 13 year old girl) but I guess I'd like to look at this from a practical point of view. Let's assume that our economic woes are all President Obama's fault. His policies have brought us to this sluggish place and we need a change. So...what's the alternative?
First up, we have Mitt Romney. Here is his plan to fix our economic woes. After reading all of his various ideas, the first question that came into my head was...how is this different from President Obama's plans exactly? Oh, right. Less spending and less taxes.
But wait. That doesn't make any sense because we are still under the Bush Tax plan and look at the results. We also are spending less than in the past so where's the growth? Moreover, nowhere do I see a scoring by the CBO or any other neutral entity that gives us an idea as to what Mitt's plan will do for the economy.
The other main alternative we have is Paul Ryan's budget. This offers even less than Mitt's plan in the way of a real plan and reads more like a cross between Ayn Rand and Thomas Sowell. Again, where's the scoring of this plan by the CBO or a similar entity?
Further, neither of these plans cut defense spending-a key contributor to our nation's debt and deficit-so how can anyone take this stuff seriously?
Looking past Romney and Ryan, what do we have? Well, we have the anarcho-capitalist views of the right wing blogsphere. Does anyone really think that a return to the 1890s is a good idea? So, really, we don't have much in the way of a substantive alternative to the Democrat's policies.
To put it simply, no one on the right really knows what the fuck to do. Please correct me if I am wrong or offer a plan (of your own or someone else's) that I may have missed because I don't see it. All I see is the president's jobs bill stalled out in Congress because they are more concerned with beating him than enacting policies that would help the economy.
Meanwhile, Paul Krugman continues to call for increased government spending in the short term as the only real solution. Is he right? If not, why not?
Friday, June 01, 2012
Here Comes Their Hero
I'm still amazed when I hear the right whine about the liberal media. To begin with, isn't that playing the victim card?
Yes. Yes it is.
But the real stunner is that they think it even exists in the first place. Take a look at this recent piece about Scott Walker in The New York Times.
On a recent afternoon, Mr. Walker, who is only the third governor in the nation to face a recall election, dashed onto a makeshift stage on a loading dock here as supporters screamed, the song “Only in America” pounded from loudspeakers, a bank of television cameras rolled and Mr. Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, beamed behind him.
With the remnants of a sinus infection and round-the-clock campaign stops lingering in his voice, Mr. Walker urged the crowd not to let up, declaring that union bosses were pouring money into the state to remove him because, he said, “they don’t like the fact that we’ve got a governor here who stood up and took on the powerful special interests.”
That sounds to me more like a description of Bruce Springsteen's latest concert than a political event. I'll leave Walker's line about special interests and pouring money alone...for now:)
Of course, the Times isn't the only paper doing it. My local paper, the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, which has been called the Star and Sickle on more than one occasion, has this article in today's paper.
The whole piece is one giant love fest for Governor Walker.
Here's another piece from Politico which essentially makes Scott Walker look like a victim. And here's a list from RCP with the same general themes I have mentioned thus far. Hell, even the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has endorsed Walker!
So, I'm wondering...where's that liberal media again?
Yes. Yes it is.
But the real stunner is that they think it even exists in the first place. Take a look at this recent piece about Scott Walker in The New York Times.
On a recent afternoon, Mr. Walker, who is only the third governor in the nation to face a recall election, dashed onto a makeshift stage on a loading dock here as supporters screamed, the song “Only in America” pounded from loudspeakers, a bank of television cameras rolled and Mr. Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, beamed behind him.
With the remnants of a sinus infection and round-the-clock campaign stops lingering in his voice, Mr. Walker urged the crowd not to let up, declaring that union bosses were pouring money into the state to remove him because, he said, “they don’t like the fact that we’ve got a governor here who stood up and took on the powerful special interests.”
That sounds to me more like a description of Bruce Springsteen's latest concert than a political event. I'll leave Walker's line about special interests and pouring money alone...for now:)
Of course, the Times isn't the only paper doing it. My local paper, the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, which has been called the Star and Sickle on more than one occasion, has this article in today's paper.
The right finds its champion: Wisconsin Gov. Walker
"People recognize you've got to have bold and courageous people in politics to take on the status quo and say, 'This isn't working,'" said Kurt Bauer, president of the organization. "If we can't do it in Wisconsin -- if we recall Governor Walker for doing something that was difficult but necessary -- it's a bad omen for the rest of the nation."The whole piece is one giant love fest for Governor Walker.
Here's another piece from Politico which essentially makes Scott Walker look like a victim. And here's a list from RCP with the same general themes I have mentioned thus far. Hell, even the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has endorsed Walker!
So, I'm wondering...where's that liberal media again?
Need or Greed?
A central tenet of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and conservative orthodoxy in general is that taxes on wealthy "job creators" at the very top must be lowered, preferably to zero. It is their contention that given this extra money these "job creators" would immediately turn around and invest this money in extra productive capacity, which would require them to hire additional workers.
The logic is that high taxes discourage these guys from working, and low taxes lure them to work harder to get even richer. Since these folks already have all the money they could possibly need, so their primary motivator must be greed.
Other tenets of the conservative orthodoxy are that even the poorest people should be forced to pay taxes to make them feel "vested," that they don't need the payroll tax cut President Obama instituted, that the minimum wage should be eliminated and that unemployment and welfare benefits are inherently evil. Even Medicare and Social Security should be abolished in the long run.
The logic is that the more money these lazy poor people have, the less inclined they will be to work. That is, their primary motivator must be need.
This is a false dichotomy. People are people, and their motivations are the same no matter what their income level. The real difference is the means that they have at their disposal to act upon their motivations.
Corporate profits have been up in the last few years and many companies are just sitting on tons of cash. Tax rates are down significantly from what they were 15 years ago (halved on capital gains!). That was the last time our economy was doing really well, and people at all income levels were doing better.
The fact is, dozens of large corporations already pay no taxes at all and hundreds pay very little. Lowering their taxes will provide no additional motivation. But corporations are not creating lots of jobs in the United States, even though they could easily afford to. Why?
They don't need to. CEOs are swimming in corporate profits and getting bonuses out the wazoo. It's easier for them to sit on their duffs, make their current employees work more hours, offshore more jobs, and take no risks.
As a motivator, need trumps greed every time. By conservative logic, since greed is failing as a motivator we must enlist need. In other words, the laziness and overweening sense of entitlement that conservatives insist permeates the lower classes has become even more pervasive in the upper crust "job creators," and should be slapped down with equal force.
The obvious answer? Raise taxes on "job creators" unless they actually create jobs. In particular, companies that funnel jobs and profits overseas to escape US taxes should be hammered. That will make them work harder, the same way cutting off welfare and unemployment benefits forces the poor to work harder. To maintain profit margins the CEOs will have to expand their businesses and create more jobs. And if they're like Ayn Rand's ostensible heroes and just take their ball and go home? Corporate shareholders will just replace them, or ambitious newcomers will rise up to do the job they're too lazy to do.
There's plenty of evidence that higher taxes (within reason) don't hurt the economy. The US economy performed much better from the 1950s through the 1990s when taxes were higher (much higher in the 50s) than after the Bush tax cuts. As Paul Krugman points out, high-tax Sweden and Austria are doing better today than the United States and the rest of Europe.
With more people earning more money, there will be more customers for those companies, which will mean more profits.
Thus, satisfying need and greed at the same time.
The logic is that high taxes discourage these guys from working, and low taxes lure them to work harder to get even richer. Since these folks already have all the money they could possibly need, so their primary motivator must be greed.
Other tenets of the conservative orthodoxy are that even the poorest people should be forced to pay taxes to make them feel "vested," that they don't need the payroll tax cut President Obama instituted, that the minimum wage should be eliminated and that unemployment and welfare benefits are inherently evil. Even Medicare and Social Security should be abolished in the long run.
The logic is that the more money these lazy poor people have, the less inclined they will be to work. That is, their primary motivator must be need.
Corporate profits have been up in the last few years and many companies are just sitting on tons of cash. Tax rates are down significantly from what they were 15 years ago (halved on capital gains!). That was the last time our economy was doing really well, and people at all income levels were doing better.
The fact is, dozens of large corporations already pay no taxes at all and hundreds pay very little. Lowering their taxes will provide no additional motivation. But corporations are not creating lots of jobs in the United States, even though they could easily afford to. Why?
They don't need to. CEOs are swimming in corporate profits and getting bonuses out the wazoo. It's easier for them to sit on their duffs, make their current employees work more hours, offshore more jobs, and take no risks.
As a motivator, need trumps greed every time. By conservative logic, since greed is failing as a motivator we must enlist need. In other words, the laziness and overweening sense of entitlement that conservatives insist permeates the lower classes has become even more pervasive in the upper crust "job creators," and should be slapped down with equal force.
The obvious answer? Raise taxes on "job creators" unless they actually create jobs. In particular, companies that funnel jobs and profits overseas to escape US taxes should be hammered. That will make them work harder, the same way cutting off welfare and unemployment benefits forces the poor to work harder. To maintain profit margins the CEOs will have to expand their businesses and create more jobs. And if they're like Ayn Rand's ostensible heroes and just take their ball and go home? Corporate shareholders will just replace them, or ambitious newcomers will rise up to do the job they're too lazy to do.
There's plenty of evidence that higher taxes (within reason) don't hurt the economy. The US economy performed much better from the 1950s through the 1990s when taxes were higher (much higher in the 50s) than after the Bush tax cuts. As Paul Krugman points out, high-tax Sweden and Austria are doing better today than the United States and the rest of Europe.
With more people earning more money, there will be more customers for those companies, which will mean more profits.
Thus, satisfying need and greed at the same time.
What amazes the most about these figures is not the disparity but the willful ignorance of the right and the cries of "class warfare" and "wealth envy." With an economy that is 70 percent consumer spending, it's no wonder ours is stagnant with so much wealth at the top.
In addition, I fear that if this trend continues we may indeed have a socialist revolution and it will be the real ones, not the make believe ones that exist only in the minds of guys like Bill Whittle and Kevin Baker.
And it will all be because we had to manage their fantasies...
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Oh Really?
Senate Republicans Signal Big Shift On ‘Obamacare’
With a Supreme Court decision looming next month, House Republicans are privately weighing a plan to reinstate three popular elements of the law if it’s struck down — guaranteeing coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions, allowing young adults up to 26 years old to remain on a parent’s insurance policy, and closing the Medicare prescription drug coverage gap known as the “doughnut hole.”Sen. Roy Blunt (MO), vice chair of the Senate GOP Conference, offered a ringing defense of the “Obamacare” under-26 provision, and said he wouldn’t oppose ideas he previously supported simply because President Obama adopted them. “I believe that’s one of the things that the Congress would surely reinstate,” Blunt told the St. Louis radio station KTRS in an interview last Thursday, pointing out that he has offered similar legislation in the past. “It’s a way to get a significant number of the uninsured into an insurance group without much cost. … It’s one of the things I think should continue.”
“I’ve been in a couple meetings lately and there’s some general understanding that that’s one of the things … and there are other things like that as well,” the senator added.
Yet they are against a mandate. So how are they going to pay for this again?
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Get the Donald on the Case
Here's a trivia question: which presidential candidate this year has a father who was born in a foreign country, goes by an alias, may have an ominous middle name linked to the devil, and refuses to release his long-form birth certificate?
If you guessed Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney you win the prize!
The foreign-born father? According to Fox News:
The middle name? Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney was named after J. Willard Marriott and George Romney's cousin, Milton (nicknamed "Mitt"), who played for the Chicago Bears.
The link to the devil? John Milton wrote Paradise Lost, considered one of the greatest works in the English language, which is about Satan's fall from grace.
The birth certificate? Romney says his middle name really is Mitt, but he refuses to produce his long-form birth certificate to prove it.
Donald Trump should get on this case and dispatch some private investigators to Michigan to dig up Mitt Romney's purported birth certificate. But instead Trump is still blathering about Obama being born in Kenya. The simple truth is, Obama's mother was an American. Ergo, he's an American. End of discussion.
Now, thousands of people are after Romney to make him prove he's not a unicorn. Of course that's just a joke, just like the whole birther conspiracy. But with all these Republicans around the country demanding that states pass laws that require presidential candidates produce their birth certificates, why haven't we seen Romney's?
It may be that he really does have something to hide...
If you guessed Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney you win the prize!
The foreign-born father? According to Fox News:
Romney's father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, where Mormons fled in the 1800s to escape religious persecution and U.S. laws forbidding polygamy. He and his family did not return to the United States until 1912, more than two decades after the church issued "The Manifesto" banning polygamy.The alias? Romney's real first name is Willard, which is seered into the conscious of a generation as the name of a horror flick from 1971, when Romney was 24. In the movie Willard learns to control rats and uses them to attack this enemies. In the end the rats turn on Willard and eat him alive. Now, any parallels between Willard's rats and Romney's political minions are purely incidental...
The middle name? Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney was named after J. Willard Marriott and George Romney's cousin, Milton (nicknamed "Mitt"), who played for the Chicago Bears.
The link to the devil? John Milton wrote Paradise Lost, considered one of the greatest works in the English language, which is about Satan's fall from grace.
The birth certificate? Romney says his middle name really is Mitt, but he refuses to produce his long-form birth certificate to prove it.
Donald Trump should get on this case and dispatch some private investigators to Michigan to dig up Mitt Romney's purported birth certificate. But instead Trump is still blathering about Obama being born in Kenya. The simple truth is, Obama's mother was an American. Ergo, he's an American. End of discussion.
Now, thousands of people are after Romney to make him prove he's not a unicorn. Of course that's just a joke, just like the whole birther conspiracy. But with all these Republicans around the country demanding that states pass laws that require presidential candidates produce their birth certificates, why haven't we seen Romney's?
It may be that he really does have something to hide...
Mitt Romney, Horse Trader
Remember a while back when some Democratic talking head said Ann Romney had never worked a day in her life, and the Fox News exploded, trying to get stay-at-home moms riled up about it? As if Ann Romney was one of them?
Let's for a moment ignore the fact that the life of a stay-at-home wife of a multimillionaire is nothing like the life of a real stay-at-home mom who stays home and bakes cookies and can't afford maids and gardeners and private schools and a couple of Cadillacs and the peace of mind that near-infinite amounts of money can buy.
It turns out that Ann Romney did have a job, of sorts, as a member of that notoriously dishonest profession of horse trader.
An article in the New York Times describes Ann's involvement in the sport of dressage, the buying and selling of horses, and her relationship with a German dressage trainer, Jan Ebeling.
Ann Romney took up dressage again at age 50, after learning she had multiple sclerosis. This sort of activity helped her deal with the disease. She became quite good at it and her physical condition improved. She took several trips to Europe with Ebeling to buy top-drawer dressage horses for herself and her trainer. These horses cost upwards of $100,000 apiece, and she bought several.
Now, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with a high-falutin' sport like dressage or Ann Romney spending her free time doing it, or buying expensive horses, or footing the bill for her trainer's horses, or lending him half a million bucks to buy a horse farm where she can vacation. But it doesn't end there.
According to the article:
In 2003 the Romneys bought a horse named Super Hit in Germany for $100,000. They bought the horse even though X-rays showed he had a bad coffin joint. Horses with this flaw often go lame, cannot be ridden and must be turned out to pasture.
And indeed, Ann learned she couldn't ride the horse for this reason:
The buyer paid $125,000 for the horse but quickly discovered that he was lame, something Ann Romney obviously knew because that was why she sold him. The problem was apparently masked during the evaluation by injecting the horse with four tranquilizers. The buyer sued the Romneys, Ebeling and the vet. The suits were eventually settled out of court.
Now some people will say that this is just a case of caveat emptor. The buyer should have known what a bad coffin joint meant, shouldn't have trusted Romney's vet, and should have demanded to see the tox screen.
So, yeah, the buyer screwed up. She trusted the wife of a guy who'd already been running for president for years at the time. A guy who claims we can trust him. Yet this man who would be president let his wife screw someone out of $125,000.
And then there's this:
In the final analysis Ann Romney bought a horse with a bum leg for way too much money, lied about the true condition of the animal, doped him up for the test, got a vet to lie about the animal's condition, dumped him on someone else for a 25% profit, then refused to fess up when she got caught.
But it's no surprise. Mitt made his money pretty much the same way. Romney was essentially a horse trader, buying up companies with bum bottom lines and selling them again to unsuspecting investors, only to have some of them go lame — err, bankrupt — after Mitt had cashed out. I guess Ann learned from her husband well.
If this is how Romney treats people in his private life, and how he treats people in the business world, why would he treat the American people any differently?
Let's for a moment ignore the fact that the life of a stay-at-home wife of a multimillionaire is nothing like the life of a real stay-at-home mom who stays home and bakes cookies and can't afford maids and gardeners and private schools and a couple of Cadillacs and the peace of mind that near-infinite amounts of money can buy.
It turns out that Ann Romney did have a job, of sorts, as a member of that notoriously dishonest profession of horse trader.
An article in the New York Times describes Ann's involvement in the sport of dressage, the buying and selling of horses, and her relationship with a German dressage trainer, Jan Ebeling.
Ann Romney took up dressage again at age 50, after learning she had multiple sclerosis. This sort of activity helped her deal with the disease. She became quite good at it and her physical condition improved. She took several trips to Europe with Ebeling to buy top-drawer dressage horses for herself and her trainer. These horses cost upwards of $100,000 apiece, and she bought several.
Now, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with a high-falutin' sport like dressage or Ann Romney spending her free time doing it, or buying expensive horses, or footing the bill for her trainer's horses, or lending him half a million bucks to buy a horse farm where she can vacation. But it doesn't end there.
According to the article:
On the Romneys’ 2010 tax returns, they reported a loss of $77,000 for their share of the partnership that owns Mr. Ebeling’s top mount, Rafalca. Mrs. Romney owns the horse with Ms. Ebeling and a Romney friend, Beth Meyers. Sponsorship arrangements are not unusual in dressage, where riders who want to climb to the top look to wealthy backers.Yes, the Romneys lowered their tax liability by claiming a loss for the expenses of Ann's very expensive hobby. I bet you wish you could use your hobbies to reduce your taxes.
In 2003 the Romneys bought a horse named Super Hit in Germany for $100,000. They bought the horse even though X-rays showed he had a bad coffin joint. Horses with this flaw often go lame, cannot be ridden and must be turned out to pasture.
And indeed, Ann learned she couldn't ride the horse for this reason:
Though Mrs. Romney loved the horse, calling him “Soupy,” she decided to sell him in late 2007. Riding him, though meant to soothe her multiple sclerosis, had in fact become painful. “I frequently was getting back spasms when I rode Soupy,” she said.The Romneys sold Soupy because he'd gone lame. Knowing this they still found a buyer, Catherine Norris. Ebeling told the buyer that Super Hit was the soundest horse on the farm. The buyer did what she was supposed to do: she had X-rays taken and had a vet look at the horse. She found out about the coffin joint, but the vet told her it was fine, no problem there. But the vet had a conflict of interest--he was Romney's vet. He even sent out emails telling people to vote for Romney on Super Tuesday in 2008.
The buyer paid $125,000 for the horse but quickly discovered that he was lame, something Ann Romney obviously knew because that was why she sold him. The problem was apparently masked during the evaluation by injecting the horse with four tranquilizers. The buyer sued the Romneys, Ebeling and the vet. The suits were eventually settled out of court.
Now some people will say that this is just a case of caveat emptor. The buyer should have known what a bad coffin joint meant, shouldn't have trusted Romney's vet, and should have demanded to see the tox screen.
So, yeah, the buyer screwed up. She trusted the wife of a guy who'd already been running for president for years at the time. A guy who claims we can trust him. Yet this man who would be president let his wife screw someone out of $125,000.
And then there's this:
Asked if she was ever unhappy with Mr. Ebeling’s instruction, Mrs. Romney said in a deposition in the lawsuit, “I think that is not a fair question because we all get upset at certain times with anybody that is — you know, especially a German.”The casual, matter-of-fact racism is so heart-warming. It's good to know what kind of people Mitt Romney shares his most intimate moments with.
In the final analysis Ann Romney bought a horse with a bum leg for way too much money, lied about the true condition of the animal, doped him up for the test, got a vet to lie about the animal's condition, dumped him on someone else for a 25% profit, then refused to fess up when she got caught.
But it's no surprise. Mitt made his money pretty much the same way. Romney was essentially a horse trader, buying up companies with bum bottom lines and selling them again to unsuspecting investors, only to have some of them go lame — err, bankrupt — after Mitt had cashed out. I guess Ann learned from her husband well.
If this is how Romney treats people in his private life, and how he treats people in the business world, why would he treat the American people any differently?
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
A Kinder, Gentler Cult
Take a look at this video below.
This is the first volley against Obama by American Crossroads, a Super PAC run by Karl Rove and some other like minded individuals. The ad is running in swing states like Florida and Ohio. It struck me as interesting for several reasons.
First of all, where's all the Barack X stuff? Well, apparently it's gone because it doesn't play very well.
Middle-of-the-road voters who said they thought the country was on the wrong track were unmoved when they heard arguments that the president lacks integrity. And they did not buy assertions that he is a rabid partisan with a radical liberal agenda that is wrecking America.
Well, that's because it's not true and doesn't exist in reality. The fact is that even though many people don't agree with the president's policies and/or feel disappointed, they still like him personally. If he is attacked in a manner that was recently floated by some high level conservatives, you can say buh bye to the independents and swing voters. This would be why Mitt Romney always inserts that line "The president is a nice guy but..." into most of his stock answers to questions. He, like McCain before him, knows about the dark side to American populism.
Another thing that struck me was where was the husband? The ad obviously intimates that this is a single woman as she complains about her life and struggles in the job market. VERY interesting considering this is from a conservative group. Have they seen the writing on the wall and know they can't win without the women's vote? This, along with the leaving behind of the Barack X garbage, is a sign of progress. Even though I realize that there are millions of Americans who need to have Barack X to get out of bed and identify themselves every day, themes like this give me hope. Sorry, fuckos, I guess you can't win by calling the president a Kenyan socialist who constantly apologizes for America, spent more than anyone ever in the history of forever, raised taxes, is destroying free enterprise, and is making us weaker.
Yet neither of these points can hold a candle to the two more subtle messages contained therein....two messages that hilariously expose the metaphorical slip, if you will, of the right's dress. Remember all that talk about how if people are having financial problems, it's THEIR fault and blaming others for their own shortcomings is sacrilege? Well, I guess that's gone now because none of this woman's problems are her fault. The fact that she is low on cash and has adult children living at home is the fault of the government.
Wow.
Truly, one of the most titanic examples of hypocrisy I have seen in awhile. And, uncharacteristically, a complete capitulation.
Diving deeper, we can clearly see the Michael Jordan Generation on full display. The reason she has two adult kids living at home is because she has done a poor job in raising her children. Like many in her generation, she has babied her kids to the point where the can't function outside of her home. And without a two parent home it was likely made worse. But that's all the fault of the liberals and their social agenda, right?
No, it's not. This is how our culture is right now and it's truly awful. It's not because of the government or the education system (whose job it is most certainly not to parent or nanny) or the unions made up of people who make 50K a year or less. It's the fault of all of us because we have allowed our culture to be mostly socialized by the corporate owned media who tell us that the definition of success is a guy like Michael Jordan.
And not the winner of the science fair. Or the mathlete. Or the Model UN winners. Or the...well, I think you get the idea.
This is the first volley against Obama by American Crossroads, a Super PAC run by Karl Rove and some other like minded individuals. The ad is running in swing states like Florida and Ohio. It struck me as interesting for several reasons.
First of all, where's all the Barack X stuff? Well, apparently it's gone because it doesn't play very well.
Middle-of-the-road voters who said they thought the country was on the wrong track were unmoved when they heard arguments that the president lacks integrity. And they did not buy assertions that he is a rabid partisan with a radical liberal agenda that is wrecking America.
Well, that's because it's not true and doesn't exist in reality. The fact is that even though many people don't agree with the president's policies and/or feel disappointed, they still like him personally. If he is attacked in a manner that was recently floated by some high level conservatives, you can say buh bye to the independents and swing voters. This would be why Mitt Romney always inserts that line "The president is a nice guy but..." into most of his stock answers to questions. He, like McCain before him, knows about the dark side to American populism.
Another thing that struck me was where was the husband? The ad obviously intimates that this is a single woman as she complains about her life and struggles in the job market. VERY interesting considering this is from a conservative group. Have they seen the writing on the wall and know they can't win without the women's vote? This, along with the leaving behind of the Barack X garbage, is a sign of progress. Even though I realize that there are millions of Americans who need to have Barack X to get out of bed and identify themselves every day, themes like this give me hope. Sorry, fuckos, I guess you can't win by calling the president a Kenyan socialist who constantly apologizes for America, spent more than anyone ever in the history of forever, raised taxes, is destroying free enterprise, and is making us weaker.
Yet neither of these points can hold a candle to the two more subtle messages contained therein....two messages that hilariously expose the metaphorical slip, if you will, of the right's dress. Remember all that talk about how if people are having financial problems, it's THEIR fault and blaming others for their own shortcomings is sacrilege? Well, I guess that's gone now because none of this woman's problems are her fault. The fact that she is low on cash and has adult children living at home is the fault of the government.
Wow.
Truly, one of the most titanic examples of hypocrisy I have seen in awhile. And, uncharacteristically, a complete capitulation.
Diving deeper, we can clearly see the Michael Jordan Generation on full display. The reason she has two adult kids living at home is because she has done a poor job in raising her children. Like many in her generation, she has babied her kids to the point where the can't function outside of her home. And without a two parent home it was likely made worse. But that's all the fault of the liberals and their social agenda, right?
No, it's not. This is how our culture is right now and it's truly awful. It's not because of the government or the education system (whose job it is most certainly not to parent or nanny) or the unions made up of people who make 50K a year or less. It's the fault of all of us because we have allowed our culture to be mostly socialized by the corporate owned media who tell us that the definition of success is a guy like Michael Jordan.
And not the winner of the science fair. Or the mathlete. Or the Model UN winners. Or the...well, I think you get the idea.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Still Not So Much
Remember how the whole one percent-ninety nine percent narrative was dying? Or dead? Yeah, still not so much. Take a look at this photo that I snapped near my house.
Safe? Safe from what exactly? Financial sector guys running an anti-Wall Street ad to get people to invest...I love it!
And their company name isn't bad either:)
Safe? Safe from what exactly? Financial sector guys running an anti-Wall Street ad to get people to invest...I love it!
And their company name isn't bad either:)
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Challenge Accepted
Put this column in a drawer and take it out on the date below. Let me know how many of these predictions I got right.
You got it, Bill!!
I wonder what is going to happen when this particular Cult member is proved wrong. I predict he will....MAKE A BUNCH OF SHIT UP AND SAY IT HAPPENED JUST LIKE HE SAID.
You got it, Bill!!
I wonder what is going to happen when this particular Cult member is proved wrong. I predict he will....MAKE A BUNCH OF SHIT UP AND SAY IT HAPPENED JUST LIKE HE SAID.
Friday, May 25, 2012
The Future is Now!
Sometimes it seems like the future will never get here. We don't have flying cars, or personal jetpacks, or vacations on the moon. Well, today the future is now!
This morning the first commercial spacecraft docked with the International Space Station. SpaceX's Dragon capsule was captured by the station's robotic arm after performing several maneuvers to demonstrate the safety and maneuverability of the spacecraft.
SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, one of the cofounders of PayPal, the online payment service. Musk was originally from South Africa. In 2008 SpaceX got a NASA contract to delivery supplies to the space station.
Musk also founded two other companies: Tesla Motors, which makes electric cars, and SolarCity, which builds solar power systems. He recently joined the Giving Pledge, founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
How are other high-tech millionaires moving us into this brave new world?
After leaving Microsoft Bill Gates has worked full-time at the Gates Foundation. The organization is focused on improving global health, agriculture, and financial services for the poor, and libraries and education in the United States.
Peter Thiel is another of PayPal's cofounders. Originally from Germany, Thiel was recently in the news for his support of Super PAC supporting Ron Paul. Thiel is now a hedge fund manager and venture capitalist. He has also donated half a million bucks to the Seasteading Institute, which envisions building platforms out in the middle of the ocean to form independent micronations and abandon their home countries to avoid taxes and regulations.
Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin got very rich when Facebook went public. He recently came under fire for giving up his American citizenship (he was originally from Brazil) and moving to Singapore to avoid paying capital gains taxes on the Facebook IPO. Note that capital gains are taxed at the measly rate of 15%.
Saverin came under fire by many, including New York Senator Charles Schumer, for dodging $67 million in taxes. Schumer has proposed legislation to hold ex-patriots accountable for skipping out on taxes. This prompted Grover Norquist to defend Saverin and compare Schumer's proposed legislation to Nazi-era German law.
One issue in the 2012 election is the huge disparity of wealth in his country. Conservatives seem to now believe that the wealthy don't owe anyone anything. Republicans who once prided themselves as the party that stood for patriotism and loyalty now think it's just fine to desert their country for a few bucks.
Being rich in and of itself doesn't make you good or bad. It's what you do with the money that matters. Gates and Musk are helping their country and the world by improving education, energy efficiency, creating new technologies and opening a new frontier in space.
Conservatives like Thiel and Saverin's defenders seem to feel no responsibility toward the country that made their vast wealth possible. They see no problem jetting off to Singapore or setting up their own island fiefdoms to avoid the taxes that pay for the defense, education and infrastructure of the country that made their great wealth possible.
To make this concrete, Saverin's flight to Singapore means the Defense Department will be out about $13 million. That would buy a lot of body armor for our troops in Afghanistan.
Musk and Gates are working to make this country and the world a better place, while Thiel and Norquist seem to be all about the Benjamins. Who are the real patriots?
This morning the first commercial spacecraft docked with the International Space Station. SpaceX's Dragon capsule was captured by the station's robotic arm after performing several maneuvers to demonstrate the safety and maneuverability of the spacecraft.
SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, one of the cofounders of PayPal, the online payment service. Musk was originally from South Africa. In 2008 SpaceX got a NASA contract to delivery supplies to the space station.
Musk also founded two other companies: Tesla Motors, which makes electric cars, and SolarCity, which builds solar power systems. He recently joined the Giving Pledge, founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
How are other high-tech millionaires moving us into this brave new world?
After leaving Microsoft Bill Gates has worked full-time at the Gates Foundation. The organization is focused on improving global health, agriculture, and financial services for the poor, and libraries and education in the United States.
Peter Thiel is another of PayPal's cofounders. Originally from Germany, Thiel was recently in the news for his support of Super PAC supporting Ron Paul. Thiel is now a hedge fund manager and venture capitalist. He has also donated half a million bucks to the Seasteading Institute, which envisions building platforms out in the middle of the ocean to form independent micronations and abandon their home countries to avoid taxes and regulations.
Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin got very rich when Facebook went public. He recently came under fire for giving up his American citizenship (he was originally from Brazil) and moving to Singapore to avoid paying capital gains taxes on the Facebook IPO. Note that capital gains are taxed at the measly rate of 15%.
Saverin came under fire by many, including New York Senator Charles Schumer, for dodging $67 million in taxes. Schumer has proposed legislation to hold ex-patriots accountable for skipping out on taxes. This prompted Grover Norquist to defend Saverin and compare Schumer's proposed legislation to Nazi-era German law.
One issue in the 2012 election is the huge disparity of wealth in his country. Conservatives seem to now believe that the wealthy don't owe anyone anything. Republicans who once prided themselves as the party that stood for patriotism and loyalty now think it's just fine to desert their country for a few bucks.
Being rich in and of itself doesn't make you good or bad. It's what you do with the money that matters. Gates and Musk are helping their country and the world by improving education, energy efficiency, creating new technologies and opening a new frontier in space.
Conservatives like Thiel and Saverin's defenders seem to feel no responsibility toward the country that made their vast wealth possible. They see no problem jetting off to Singapore or setting up their own island fiefdoms to avoid the taxes that pay for the defense, education and infrastructure of the country that made their great wealth possible.
To make this concrete, Saverin's flight to Singapore means the Defense Department will be out about $13 million. That would buy a lot of body armor for our troops in Afghanistan.
Musk and Gates are working to make this country and the world a better place, while Thiel and Norquist seem to be all about the Benjamins. Who are the real patriots?
A Really Big Lie
These days, when someone from the right will make a statement, the first thing that pops into my head is a question.
"Do I really want to waste my time researching this when I know it's likely completely bullshit?"
Take, for example, the assertion by Mitt Romney and virtually everyone on the right that President Obama has been spending like crazy. An "inferno" is what Mr. Romney called it.
Well, a new piece by Marketwatch has this to say.
Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.
But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.
There damn well better be some numbers to back that up!
• In the 2009 fiscal year — the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Check the official numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.
• In fiscal 2010 — the first budget under Obama — spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.
• In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.
• In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.
• Finally in fiscal 2013 — the final budget of Obama’s term — spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO’s latest budget outlook.
Over Obama’s four budget years, federal spending is on track to rise from $3.52 trillion to $3.58 trillion, an annualized increase of just 0.4%.
Huh. I guess we can put the lie away now along with the raising taxes and apologizing to everyone nonsense.
This would be why I don't like to waste my very valuable time. It always turns out to be another bullshit lie.
"Do I really want to waste my time researching this when I know it's likely completely bullshit?"
Take, for example, the assertion by Mitt Romney and virtually everyone on the right that President Obama has been spending like crazy. An "inferno" is what Mr. Romney called it.
Well, a new piece by Marketwatch has this to say.
Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.
But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.
There damn well better be some numbers to back that up!
• In the 2009 fiscal year — the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Check the official numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.
• In fiscal 2010 — the first budget under Obama — spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.
• In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.
• In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.
• Finally in fiscal 2013 — the final budget of Obama’s term — spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO’s latest budget outlook.
Over Obama’s four budget years, federal spending is on track to rise from $3.52 trillion to $3.58 trillion, an annualized increase of just 0.4%.
Huh. I guess we can put the lie away now along with the raising taxes and apologizing to everyone nonsense.
This would be why I don't like to waste my very valuable time. It always turns out to be another bullshit lie.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Still Waiting
I'm still waiting (and so is Guard Duck, apparently) for retractions from Kevin Baker on the out and out lies in the image he put up last Sunday. Since he can't be bothered to check the veracity of those statements, I will offer another link which demonstrates that the list contained in the image likely originated in this very much false Columbo email which made the rounds TWO YEARS AGO.
Foreign student aid' as a college student? Nope. April Fool's Day Hoax.
Foreign Passport in Pakistan? Nope. Complete BS.
The Birth Certificates? Proved time and again to be real.
Michelle can't practice law? Not true. The Illinois bar lists her as being voluntarily inactive. (The president is listed as voluntarily retired)
Michelle has 22 assistants? No.Actually, she has 24 and Laura Bush had 18.
College Records? Well, as FactCheck notes, this would be illegal under federal law ((the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974). This, along with the medical records, is odd coming from the far right as they are supposed to be champions of right to privacy.
Oh, and he never did a thesis at Columbia so it's not sealed.
Illinois State Senate Records and Schedule? All available here.
As to the remaining claims not listed on FACTCHECK...
Selective service registration? Yep. Right here courtesy of (wait for it) Volokh and Pajamas Media!
Law practice client list? Uh...anyone every heard of attorney-client privilege? Again, the right to privacy thing apparently only applies to libertarians, not statists like Barack Obama.
All that leaves is the baptism record which I'd put under the birth certificate category.
So, there you have it. One giant list of complete lies and Kevin has yet to retract a single one.
For more insane Obama conspiracies, check out this site (my third link with supporting evidence).
Foreign student aid' as a college student? Nope. April Fool's Day Hoax.
Foreign Passport in Pakistan? Nope. Complete BS.
The Birth Certificates? Proved time and again to be real.
Michelle can't practice law? Not true. The Illinois bar lists her as being voluntarily inactive. (The president is listed as voluntarily retired)
Michelle has 22 assistants? No.Actually, she has 24 and Laura Bush had 18.
College Records? Well, as FactCheck notes, this would be illegal under federal law ((the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974). This, along with the medical records, is odd coming from the far right as they are supposed to be champions of right to privacy.
Oh, and he never did a thesis at Columbia so it's not sealed.
Illinois State Senate Records and Schedule? All available here.
As to the remaining claims not listed on FACTCHECK...
Selective service registration? Yep. Right here courtesy of (wait for it) Volokh and Pajamas Media!
Law practice client list? Uh...anyone every heard of attorney-client privilege? Again, the right to privacy thing apparently only applies to libertarians, not statists like Barack Obama.
All that leaves is the baptism record which I'd put under the birth certificate category.
So, there you have it. One giant list of complete lies and Kevin has yet to retract a single one.
For more insane Obama conspiracies, check out this site (my third link with supporting evidence).
An Anarcho-Capitalist Pleasure Palace
With the Wisconsin recall election less than two week away, it looks as though Scott Walker will hold off the recall efforts. I predict he will win. Of course, he may not be able to govern in the way he would like because I also predict that one of the four senate recall elections will flip back to the Democrats and tie him up at the State House. Honestly, though, I don't think this matters to him as he now has his sights set on the national stage.
Politico has a great piece on how the recall elections have turned Walker into a conservative hero. Indeed, the right wing media industrial complex with its all too willing audience will welcome him with open arms and shower him with money on how he stood up to the evil teachers and civil servants who are ruining our economy on a daily basis.
So why did the recall effort fail? Again, Politico lays it all out here. In my view, there were several factors that inhibited the Democrats. Tom Barrett is a great guy and would be a magnificent governor but he already lost that election once. The alternative (Kathleen Falk) was far too liberal. Had the Democrats put up a great candidate...someone like Russ Feingold, for example....Walker would have been toast. There was also the issue of recall fatigue. People these days just can't pay attention that long and give a shit. Believe me, I know, I'm a teacher:)
I guess what frustrates me the most about all of this is the ignorance of the facts. When it comes to jobs, neither side in the recall election can claim victory. The latest jobs numbers show no real significant movement either way. Certainly Walker is well short of the 250,000 jobs that he promised to create but no one really thinks is was serious (he is a politician, after all) and it won't matter if he ends up with a net loss. His supporters will still be there because they don't want to admit they were wrong (shocking, I know).
Lost in all of this is Walker's promise to create 10,000 new businesses in his first term with his private sector friendly policies. How's that going? Well, not so good.
The scorecard: After one year of the Walker era, there were 9,485 fewer businesses than at the end of 2010, Gov. Jim Doyle's final year in office. It's improved somewhat in recent months, but the total of existing entities was still down 4,338 as of April 30, 2012, compared with December 2010. The picture is worse if you look only at Wisconsin business entities doing business here, and exclude out-of-state businesses that must register here to transact business. Those "domestic” business entities were down 10,189 after Walker"s first year, and down a total of 5,741 after 16 months. So the numbers have gone backward.
Hmm....sort of reminds me of all the numbers I have been putting up about how the economy does worse when there is a Republican in the White House. Of course, this doesn't matter, though. Again, to admit fault....
The one thing that I do feel pretty good about (aside from one of the state senators likely getting the boot) is that guys like Walker always end up with the same fate. Indeed, the FBI probe that is currently going on in Wisconsin may come back to haunt him if not something else. But for now, though, it's a pretty bitter pill considering the nearly one million people in Wisconsin who are currently cheering to be ruled by the Koch Brothers.
Hey, maybe Wisconsin could be part of RandLand as well. I'd have to get my mom and John Waxey out of there first, though, before it turns into an anarcho-capitalist pleasure palace!!
Politico has a great piece on how the recall elections have turned Walker into a conservative hero. Indeed, the right wing media industrial complex with its all too willing audience will welcome him with open arms and shower him with money on how he stood up to the evil teachers and civil servants who are ruining our economy on a daily basis.
So why did the recall effort fail? Again, Politico lays it all out here. In my view, there were several factors that inhibited the Democrats. Tom Barrett is a great guy and would be a magnificent governor but he already lost that election once. The alternative (Kathleen Falk) was far too liberal. Had the Democrats put up a great candidate...someone like Russ Feingold, for example....Walker would have been toast. There was also the issue of recall fatigue. People these days just can't pay attention that long and give a shit. Believe me, I know, I'm a teacher:)
I guess what frustrates me the most about all of this is the ignorance of the facts. When it comes to jobs, neither side in the recall election can claim victory. The latest jobs numbers show no real significant movement either way. Certainly Walker is well short of the 250,000 jobs that he promised to create but no one really thinks is was serious (he is a politician, after all) and it won't matter if he ends up with a net loss. His supporters will still be there because they don't want to admit they were wrong (shocking, I know).
Lost in all of this is Walker's promise to create 10,000 new businesses in his first term with his private sector friendly policies. How's that going? Well, not so good.
The scorecard: After one year of the Walker era, there were 9,485 fewer businesses than at the end of 2010, Gov. Jim Doyle's final year in office. It's improved somewhat in recent months, but the total of existing entities was still down 4,338 as of April 30, 2012, compared with December 2010. The picture is worse if you look only at Wisconsin business entities doing business here, and exclude out-of-state businesses that must register here to transact business. Those "domestic” business entities were down 10,189 after Walker"s first year, and down a total of 5,741 after 16 months. So the numbers have gone backward.
Hmm....sort of reminds me of all the numbers I have been putting up about how the economy does worse when there is a Republican in the White House. Of course, this doesn't matter, though. Again, to admit fault....
The one thing that I do feel pretty good about (aside from one of the state senators likely getting the boot) is that guys like Walker always end up with the same fate. Indeed, the FBI probe that is currently going on in Wisconsin may come back to haunt him if not something else. But for now, though, it's a pretty bitter pill considering the nearly one million people in Wisconsin who are currently cheering to be ruled by the Koch Brothers.
Hey, maybe Wisconsin could be part of RandLand as well. I'd have to get my mom and John Waxey out of there first, though, before it turns into an anarcho-capitalist pleasure palace!!
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
The Obama Vetting Obsession
I had been working on a post about the vetting obsession that seems to be going on these days with President Obama but then I read this. Paul Waldman seems to have stolen my thunder. Oh well. It's everything I wanted to say and more.
So on the right, the desperate search for the appropriate "vetting" material continues. For instance, the late Andrew Breitbart's constellation of web properties continues in its founder's spirit, breathlessly promoting one "revelation" about Obama's pre-political life after another. Obama was friendly with a Harvard Law School professor with strong views on race! In 1991, Obama's literary agency mistakenly said in a promotional brochure that he was born in Kenya! There is so much to be learned that breitbart.com has created a whole series entitled "The Vetting."
Sadly, this is all true. I don't get it.The president has been pretty forthcoming about his past both in his books and interviews. There have been thousands of stories about folks like Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and the president's college years and birth certificate. Why?
The mistake that so many conservatives make is in believing that in some (or all) of these details of his life lies the key to Obama's undoing. If only we can find the radical mentor, the girlfriend holding on to a decades-old secret, or the revealing document, then Obama will be unmasked, his true horrifying self revealed at last for all to see. Then the scales will fall from the voters' eyes and they'll boot him from the office he never deserved to occupy in the first place.
This is so incredibly odd. The latest polls show the race is pretty tight in the swing states and the election is 5 months off. People are unhappy about unemployment and uncertain about the economy. Certainly, they can win on that, right? Are they that insecure about Mitt Romney?
In my view, they don't want to beat him that way. They have to personally destroy him because that is what the right has become today. They did the same thing with Bill Clinton (now, of course, they love him in typical juvenile emotional fashion and will likely be the same way with President Obama someday) and many other Democrats. Funny, the same thing is done to me in comments on a regular basis:)
I guess they don't know any other way.
So on the right, the desperate search for the appropriate "vetting" material continues. For instance, the late Andrew Breitbart's constellation of web properties continues in its founder's spirit, breathlessly promoting one "revelation" about Obama's pre-political life after another. Obama was friendly with a Harvard Law School professor with strong views on race! In 1991, Obama's literary agency mistakenly said in a promotional brochure that he was born in Kenya! There is so much to be learned that breitbart.com has created a whole series entitled "The Vetting."
Sadly, this is all true. I don't get it.The president has been pretty forthcoming about his past both in his books and interviews. There have been thousands of stories about folks like Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and the president's college years and birth certificate. Why?
The mistake that so many conservatives make is in believing that in some (or all) of these details of his life lies the key to Obama's undoing. If only we can find the radical mentor, the girlfriend holding on to a decades-old secret, or the revealing document, then Obama will be unmasked, his true horrifying self revealed at last for all to see. Then the scales will fall from the voters' eyes and they'll boot him from the office he never deserved to occupy in the first place.
This is so incredibly odd. The latest polls show the race is pretty tight in the swing states and the election is 5 months off. People are unhappy about unemployment and uncertain about the economy. Certainly, they can win on that, right? Are they that insecure about Mitt Romney?
In my view, they don't want to beat him that way. They have to personally destroy him because that is what the right has become today. They did the same thing with Bill Clinton (now, of course, they love him in typical juvenile emotional fashion and will likely be the same way with President Obama someday) and many other Democrats. Funny, the same thing is done to me in comments on a regular basis:)
I guess they don't know any other way.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Keystone XL Pipeline Will Make Gas Prices Go Up
For some time now I've been contending that the Keystone XL pipeline would cause the price of gas to go up because the fuel refined from it would be shipped off to China at world market prices instead of being "stuck" in the American Midwest where it winds up being sold as gasoline, often at lower prices than those paid on all three coasts.
Now we have confirmation. According to an analysis from the NRDC:
Now we have confirmation. According to an analysis from the NRDC:
The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would divert oil from the Midwest to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Midwestern refineries produce more gasoline per barrel than refineries in any other region in the United States. That gasoline is then sold to U.S. consumers. In contrast, refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas produce as much diesel as possible, much of which is exported internationally. By taking oil from midwestern gasoline refineries to Gulf Coast diesel refineries, Keystone XL will decrease the amount of gasoline available to American consumers.
Meanwhile the Keystone XL pipeline will increase the price that gasoline producing refineries in the Midwest pay for crude oil. TransCanada, the company sponsoring the pipeline, pitched the pipeline to Canadian regulators as a way of increasing the price of crude in the United States (emphasis mine).
Right now, Midwestern refineries are buying crude oil at a discount—a deep discount. This allows them to produce products more cheaply than they would otherwise be able to. Building Keystone XL would change that. If TransCanada’s analysis is accurate, under current market conditions, Keystone XL would add $20 to $40 to the cost of a barrel of Canadian crude—increasing the cost of oil in the United States by tens of billions of dollars
I was unaware of the propensity for diesel refining of the Gulf Coast, but that only increases the likelihood that Canadian oil will be sold to China. Most interesting is TransCanada's selling point to Canadian regulators was that it would increase gas prices for Americans.
The lesson: don't believe anything the oil industry says about oil prices. Their goal is to maximize profits, which means they want to maximize prices.
The Definition of the Election
I've never understood the Republican obsession with thinking that a successful CEO would make a good president. The two jobs are completely different. Yesterday, the president eloquently illustrated this in Chicago.
If your main argument for how to grow the economy is 'I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,' then you're missing what this job is about. It doesn't mean you weren't good at private equity, but that's not what my job is as president. My job is to take into account everybody, not just some. My job is to make sure that the country is growing not just now, but 10 years from now and 20 years from now.
This is what the election is going to be about.
If your main argument for how to grow the economy is 'I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,' then you're missing what this job is about. It doesn't mean you weren't good at private equity, but that's not what my job is as president. My job is to take into account everybody, not just some. My job is to make sure that the country is growing not just now, but 10 years from now and 20 years from now.
This is what the election is going to be about.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Planet of the Valley Girls?
Last week Facebook went public. Its IPO netted the company $38 a share, making it worth more than $100 billion (and earning $176 million for the banks that handled the underwriting). That's more than companies that sell real products to real people, like McDonald's, VISA, Volkswagen and Disney. Even after Disney made hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide with a single smash hit movie a couple of weeks ago.
But at this writing Facebook's stock is worth $33 a share. Many people expected its share price to jump tremendously in value, like LinkedIn's did. That hasn't happened yet, and the banks who issued the IPO may be betting against people who bought the stock. Facebook has yet to come up with a way to make the kind of money off its users that such a high value could justify. It doesn't yet push ads to mobile devices, and more than half of Facebook users access the social network through their phones. Yet doing that could alienate users and discourage them from using the service.
Facebook likes to brag that it's got almost a billion users. That number is deceptive. You can make any number of Facebook accounts, so that number could be almost anything. This is an important point because advertisers pay for their ads to be seen by real people.
Companies generate buzz on Facebook with "likes." They often have promotions to get people to like them, giving them something in an on-line game or entering them in an iPad drawing.
There are also companies that for a fee will generate likes for companies that want to increase their apparent Facebook popularity. The question is, how real are those likes? Are they simply thousands of phony Facebook accounts, or thousands of real Facebook users who are liking someone because they're paid to? It seems that if you're paying for likes, they're all fake, no matter how they're generated. Facebook is trying to root out fake likes, but it's a non-trivial problem.
So what's the point of Facebook for companies? Does it have any real value, or is it just another MySpace or AOL?
Then there's the question of what people actually use Facebook for. Every time I look at my feed I see that several friends checked in through FourSquare. I see pictures of pets and kids and what people ate for dinner. I get harangued by friends to try out some on-line game. I see articles that other people read. I see political rants. I see cryptic numbers from a neighbor that might be geo-tagging or bible study or a terrorist plot.
This is what thirteen-year-old girls do: obsess about what all their friends are doing and wearing and saying. Now full-grown adults are fretting about how many friends they have. Just recently a friend wondered why a mutual friend had defriended him. Is Facebook devolving the entire planet into, like, Valley Girls? Don't we have more important, or at least interesting, things to do?
Facebook is extending their grasp beyond their site into every nook and cranny of the Internet. Your Facebook login can be used on thousands of websites, allowing Facebook to track your every move. And this grasp is extending into the real world, because millions of people are using their mobile phones to tell Facebook where they are at every waking moment.
My Facebook feed also tells me what videos one friend watched, that another friended someone I've never heard of and another liked some company. And yesterday I saw an ad for Zoosk that said one of my acquaintances was looking for single women. I wonder if he has a girlfriend who saw the same ad?
It's these things that may ultimately be Facebook's downfall. Facebook plans to make its money by pimping out your personal data. Do you really want to be Mark Zuckerberg's whore?
But at this writing Facebook's stock is worth $33 a share. Many people expected its share price to jump tremendously in value, like LinkedIn's did. That hasn't happened yet, and the banks who issued the IPO may be betting against people who bought the stock. Facebook has yet to come up with a way to make the kind of money off its users that such a high value could justify. It doesn't yet push ads to mobile devices, and more than half of Facebook users access the social network through their phones. Yet doing that could alienate users and discourage them from using the service.
Facebook likes to brag that it's got almost a billion users. That number is deceptive. You can make any number of Facebook accounts, so that number could be almost anything. This is an important point because advertisers pay for their ads to be seen by real people.
Companies generate buzz on Facebook with "likes." They often have promotions to get people to like them, giving them something in an on-line game or entering them in an iPad drawing.
There are also companies that for a fee will generate likes for companies that want to increase their apparent Facebook popularity. The question is, how real are those likes? Are they simply thousands of phony Facebook accounts, or thousands of real Facebook users who are liking someone because they're paid to? It seems that if you're paying for likes, they're all fake, no matter how they're generated. Facebook is trying to root out fake likes, but it's a non-trivial problem.
So what's the point of Facebook for companies? Does it have any real value, or is it just another MySpace or AOL?
Then there's the question of what people actually use Facebook for. Every time I look at my feed I see that several friends checked in through FourSquare. I see pictures of pets and kids and what people ate for dinner. I get harangued by friends to try out some on-line game. I see articles that other people read. I see political rants. I see cryptic numbers from a neighbor that might be geo-tagging or bible study or a terrorist plot.
This is what thirteen-year-old girls do: obsess about what all their friends are doing and wearing and saying. Now full-grown adults are fretting about how many friends they have. Just recently a friend wondered why a mutual friend had defriended him. Is Facebook devolving the entire planet into, like, Valley Girls? Don't we have more important, or at least interesting, things to do?
Facebook is extending their grasp beyond their site into every nook and cranny of the Internet. Your Facebook login can be used on thousands of websites, allowing Facebook to track your every move. And this grasp is extending into the real world, because millions of people are using their mobile phones to tell Facebook where they are at every waking moment.
My Facebook feed also tells me what videos one friend watched, that another friended someone I've never heard of and another liked some company. And yesterday I saw an ad for Zoosk that said one of my acquaintances was looking for single women. I wonder if he has a girlfriend who saw the same ad?
It's these things that may ultimately be Facebook's downfall. Facebook plans to make its money by pimping out your personal data. Do you really want to be Mark Zuckerberg's whore?
Well, I Guess It Had To Happen
Kevin Baker has gone Birther.
(sigh)
I suppose it was inevitable. Here is a list from Snopes that shows that many of these claims are completely false. I expect retractions, Kevin.
(sigh)
I suppose it was inevitable. Here is a list from Snopes that shows that many of these claims are completely false. I expect retractions, Kevin.
Too Political?
My oh my, what an interesting turn of events.
The sticking point appears to be Hanauer assertion that "rich businesspeople like me don't create jobs," but rather it's the middle class consumers who fuel business growth and subsequent job creation by spending their hard earned money on stuff.
How exactly is the illustration of a simple fact considered political?
(sniff sniff)
Smells to me like the Cult of Both Sides is up to its usual tricks again.
The sticking point appears to be Hanauer assertion that "rich businesspeople like me don't create jobs," but rather it's the middle class consumers who fuel business growth and subsequent job creation by spending their hard earned money on stuff.
How exactly is the illustration of a simple fact considered political?
(sniff sniff)
Smells to me like the Cult of Both Sides is up to its usual tricks again.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
A Trifecta of Tactics
In the past few months, the tactics the right uses on a regular basis have been laid plain for all to see. First we had the 14 points, nearly all of which I saw on The Smallest Minority during my time there. Then we had the purest definition of The Rove, as explained by Richard Clarke. That one we can see nearly every day, squirting forth from the right wing media industrial complex and all the way into my comments section.
But there has always been something missing...a tactic that I've experienced many times. It's kind of like "Projection/Flipping" but not quite. Sort of like The Rove but not nearly there. Some recent comments have lead me to an epiphany. Here's how it works for you first time users.
Step 1: Whether knowingly or unknowlingly, use ad hominem attacks, genetic fallacies, straw man arguments, hand waving, and any other sort of nonsense that pops into your head.
Step 2: While the liberal is reflecting (silly liberals), accuse HE or SHE of using any or all of those tactics.
Step 3: As the silly liberal sputters out a comment which will likely be along the lines of "But wait, that's what you are doing" laugh, point at them and reply, "BWAAHAHAHA! That's your response? 'No, YOU are!' Hahahahahaha! What a child!"
Congratulations! You have just completed The ARWB Three Step (that's arrogant right wing blog or blogger, depending upon on your situation).
Add this to the 14 points and The Rove and you have pure magic, my friends.
Pure Magic
But there has always been something missing...a tactic that I've experienced many times. It's kind of like "Projection/Flipping" but not quite. Sort of like The Rove but not nearly there. Some recent comments have lead me to an epiphany. Here's how it works for you first time users.
Step 1: Whether knowingly or unknowlingly, use ad hominem attacks, genetic fallacies, straw man arguments, hand waving, and any other sort of nonsense that pops into your head.
Step 2: While the liberal is reflecting (silly liberals), accuse HE or SHE of using any or all of those tactics.
Step 3: As the silly liberal sputters out a comment which will likely be along the lines of "But wait, that's what you are doing" laugh, point at them and reply, "BWAAHAHAHA! That's your response? 'No, YOU are!' Hahahahahaha! What a child!"
Congratulations! You have just completed The ARWB Three Step (that's arrogant right wing blog or blogger, depending upon on your situation).
Add this to the 14 points and The Rove and you have pure magic, my friends.
Pure Magic
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Actual Handwaving
A few months ago, one of my regular commenters that migrated over from Kevin's site brought out that ol' chestnut about small business. Haplo9 (a small business owner) informed me that not only do I not know what I'm talking about when it comes to small business but that people like me and other Democrats/liberals/etc are actively seeking to destroy small business and, indeed, the free market.
Let's look past all the facts and evidence to the contrary that I have been putting up of late and focus on some small business owners themselves. First, I worked for a small business before I became a teacher. We were a small, four person multimedia company that handled medium sized businesses first forays into online commerce back in the mid to late 1990s. I had left an ad firm where I worked to help out two friends of mine who were the owners of the business.
Not once did I hear any discussion about the government inhibiting them from making money. The onus was on all of us to grow the business and we certainly never played the victim card and blamed the government. Our concern was getting more clients and in order to do that, we wanted to see state and federal policies that supported consumer spending which would lead to more revenue for our clients and, in turn, more money to spend with us. It wasn't taxes or fear of possible future regulation that altered our decisions. It was customers coming through the door.
This is also true for our very own John Waxey, an owner of a manufacturing concern in Wisconsin that makes a product that helps with shipping and commerce. His company does about 20 million a year in business. I had the occasion to chat with him recently when I visited his cottage.
"How's the company doing?" I asked.
"Never better," he replied. "In fact, we are moving in to a new facility to accommodate all our new business."
"So, Barack Obama and the Democrats aren't destroying your company?"
"No," he chuckled. "We do well when our clients have more customers. Then they come and spend money with us."
John's family has owned this business for his entire life, thirty three years of which he has been my best friend. So, to say that I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to small business (or any size business for that matter) is wrong. That being said, no one should take our lives and anecdotes as gospel. Perhaps we are outliers? Biased?
No, not so much...because of this little thing called How The Free Market Actually Fucking Works. Yesterday, I was perusing the MPR site for some post-mortem on the recently ended state government session and I came across this. House Republican Majority Leader Matt Dean was a guest on the program and they took a call from a small business owner named Andy.
Here is the audio below. Start it at the 13 minute mark.
Giving tax breaks to small business owners leading to more hiring is NOT how the free market works? Representative Dean (a REPUBLICAN...GASP!!) doesn't know how the free market works? That it's actually more consumer spending leads to more hiring? Oh, Andy. Don't you dare question one of the central creeds of their rigid dogma! Only THEY are Sacred Keepers of the Free Market. Don't you know you're just going to get glassy-eyed nonsense for an answer?
And that's just what happened. Rep. Dean (sounding as if he was both under hypnosis and attempting to hypnotize Andy) gave a response which (ahem) can best be described as hand waving. Shocking, I know, that someone from the right is actually doing the very thing that I am wrongfully and continually accused of doing. And doing it to someone who actually owns a small business! Well, he owns a hair salon so he's probably gay anyway so he doesn't really know what he's talking about, right?
What all of this perfectly illustrates is how the right really doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about when it comes to this stuff. If small businesses are given tax breaks without new customers coming through the door, why would they hire anyone? They're just going to sit around just as Andy described.
But no. Oh no. It's taxes. It's supply side. Never aggregate demand. They are only interested in making sure that their ideology is pure and, in behaving in this manner, they completely ignore the core of what drives growth in this country.
Watch as consumer spending magically disappears in my hat!
Let's look past all the facts and evidence to the contrary that I have been putting up of late and focus on some small business owners themselves. First, I worked for a small business before I became a teacher. We were a small, four person multimedia company that handled medium sized businesses first forays into online commerce back in the mid to late 1990s. I had left an ad firm where I worked to help out two friends of mine who were the owners of the business.
Not once did I hear any discussion about the government inhibiting them from making money. The onus was on all of us to grow the business and we certainly never played the victim card and blamed the government. Our concern was getting more clients and in order to do that, we wanted to see state and federal policies that supported consumer spending which would lead to more revenue for our clients and, in turn, more money to spend with us. It wasn't taxes or fear of possible future regulation that altered our decisions. It was customers coming through the door.
This is also true for our very own John Waxey, an owner of a manufacturing concern in Wisconsin that makes a product that helps with shipping and commerce. His company does about 20 million a year in business. I had the occasion to chat with him recently when I visited his cottage.
"How's the company doing?" I asked.
"Never better," he replied. "In fact, we are moving in to a new facility to accommodate all our new business."
"So, Barack Obama and the Democrats aren't destroying your company?"
"No," he chuckled. "We do well when our clients have more customers. Then they come and spend money with us."
John's family has owned this business for his entire life, thirty three years of which he has been my best friend. So, to say that I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to small business (or any size business for that matter) is wrong. That being said, no one should take our lives and anecdotes as gospel. Perhaps we are outliers? Biased?
No, not so much...because of this little thing called How The Free Market Actually Fucking Works. Yesterday, I was perusing the MPR site for some post-mortem on the recently ended state government session and I came across this. House Republican Majority Leader Matt Dean was a guest on the program and they took a call from a small business owner named Andy.
Here is the audio below. Start it at the 13 minute mark.
Giving tax breaks to small business owners leading to more hiring is NOT how the free market works? Representative Dean (a REPUBLICAN...GASP!!) doesn't know how the free market works? That it's actually more consumer spending leads to more hiring? Oh, Andy. Don't you dare question one of the central creeds of their rigid dogma! Only THEY are Sacred Keepers of the Free Market. Don't you know you're just going to get glassy-eyed nonsense for an answer?
And that's just what happened. Rep. Dean (sounding as if he was both under hypnosis and attempting to hypnotize Andy) gave a response which (ahem) can best be described as hand waving. Shocking, I know, that someone from the right is actually doing the very thing that I am wrongfully and continually accused of doing. And doing it to someone who actually owns a small business! Well, he owns a hair salon so he's probably gay anyway so he doesn't really know what he's talking about, right?
What all of this perfectly illustrates is how the right really doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about when it comes to this stuff. If small businesses are given tax breaks without new customers coming through the door, why would they hire anyone? They're just going to sit around just as Andy described.
But no. Oh no. It's taxes. It's supply side. Never aggregate demand. They are only interested in making sure that their ideology is pure and, in behaving in this manner, they completely ignore the core of what drives growth in this country.
Watch as consumer spending magically disappears in my hat!
Friday, May 18, 2012
Abuse of the Franking Privilege
This guy used my tax dollars to print a blatant campaign ad and then used the franking privilege congressmen enjoy to have the US Postal Service deliver it to my house for free.
Isn't the Post Office in enough trouble without guys like this adding to its burden?
The irony is that he's talking about a "tidal wave of spending." He should know, he's contributing to it.
He then goes on to talk about getting America's financial house in order, which is also ironic considering how the Republican Party in Minnesota is millions in debt and had to work out a special deal with its landlord because they couldn't pay the rent on the party headquarters.
The back side of the flyer has more yapping about "wasteful Washington spending," high gas prices and bullet points taken from the Republican Party platform.
This guy has had no credible opposition for the three years he's been in office, and has amassed a huge campaign warchest of millions of dollars. Why does he have to spend my money to send his campaign literature to me?
I've got one Republican congressmen and two Democratic senators. I get crap like this from this guy all the time, but I've never gotten anything like it from the Democrats: the only time I get franked mail from them is when they respond to my letters.
I was going to speculate on how much this cost the taxpayers, but instead of just guessing I'll contact him and find out exactly how much of my taxpayer money he spent on this. We'll see how well his "constituent service" works.
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and Bristol Palin Is from What Planet?
The other day I was at a park
with some friends. One guy got into a big argument with his girlfriend.
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and he left to take her
home. The reaction of the guys was incomprehension: they couldn't understand what
her deal was. But it was totally obvious: she
had been dragged to the park, her boyfriend was ignoring her, she was bored and felt
taken for granted. Throw in whatever other baggage they had and it was perfect kindling for a blowout.
Situations like this have made the idea that men and women cannot understand each other a central tenet of popular culture. This notion is especially popular in conservative circles, and the essential truth of it borne out again and again (and again and again) with guys like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh.
In this worldview marriage and intimate relationships are cast as a competition rather than a collaboration. Husbands refer to "the wife" or the "ball and chain" and constantly contrive to escape from them like James Bond escaping from a Goldfinger death trap. Wives have keep an eagle eye on their weaselly husbands to keep them from screwing up and running out.
Reading various reactions to President Obama's support for gay marriage, I happened upon Bristol Palin's. She wrote:
This is where the thousands of years of thinking about marriage has gotten her? Fathers bestow upon their sons the worldview that women are psychotic whiny bitching boat anchors only good for one thing. Mothers portray husbands as cheating drunken liars who are only after one thing.
I don't begrudge Bristol Palin for what happened to her. She's got a tough row to hoe. But I can begrudge her sanctimonious sermonizing on the topic of marriage, of which she has utterly no understanding.
Marital discord and divorce can scar kids for life. If, as so many people seem to believe, men and women cannot understand each other, what business do they have getting married? Wouldn't it better for children to be raised by parents who grok each other at the most basic level, regardless of gender? If so many man really can't understand women, they have no business marrying them.
The irony is that if Bristol Palin had been a lesbian, she wouldn't have gotten pregnant in the first place. She wouldn't have embarrassed her mother and made a mockery of everything she and the Republican Party claim is most holy: the revered institution of heterosexual marriage as the only acceptable situation for child rearing.
Conservatives have long blamed women's rights, divorce laws and the ever-more important role of women in the economy for the problems marriage is facing. And now they insist that the threat of gay marriage is somehow ruining the institution for heterosexuals. It's like me saying that eating has been ruined for me because Adolf Hitler also ate. Perhaps what conservatives fear most is the prospect that men will no longer be lord and master of the castle, or that women won't need men at all.
In the end, the real problem has nothing to do with gays, or women in the workplace, or Mars/Venus incompatibility. It is selfish people who put their own happiness and needs ahead of their spouse's or their family's. People who perceive their partner in marriage as an opponent instead of a team mate. People who are rigid and unwilling to compromise, to give an inch, or to meet another person halfway to achieve a common goal.
Remind you of anyone?
Situations like this have made the idea that men and women cannot understand each other a central tenet of popular culture. This notion is especially popular in conservative circles, and the essential truth of it borne out again and again (and again and again) with guys like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh.
In this worldview marriage and intimate relationships are cast as a competition rather than a collaboration. Husbands refer to "the wife" or the "ball and chain" and constantly contrive to escape from them like James Bond escaping from a Goldfinger death trap. Wives have keep an eagle eye on their weaselly husbands to keep them from screwing up and running out.
Reading various reactions to President Obama's support for gay marriage, I happened upon Bristol Palin's. She wrote:
In this case, it would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage. Or that – as great as her friends may be – we know that in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview.Bristol Palin got knocked up by a dolt named Levi that she has since accused of date rape. They planned to get married, until McCain lost the election, then they split, then they got back together, then they split again. Then she sued him to gain sole custody of their child.
This is where the thousands of years of thinking about marriage has gotten her? Fathers bestow upon their sons the worldview that women are psychotic whiny bitching boat anchors only good for one thing. Mothers portray husbands as cheating drunken liars who are only after one thing.
I don't begrudge Bristol Palin for what happened to her. She's got a tough row to hoe. But I can begrudge her sanctimonious sermonizing on the topic of marriage, of which she has utterly no understanding.
Marital discord and divorce can scar kids for life. If, as so many people seem to believe, men and women cannot understand each other, what business do they have getting married? Wouldn't it better for children to be raised by parents who grok each other at the most basic level, regardless of gender? If so many man really can't understand women, they have no business marrying them.
The irony is that if Bristol Palin had been a lesbian, she wouldn't have gotten pregnant in the first place. She wouldn't have embarrassed her mother and made a mockery of everything she and the Republican Party claim is most holy: the revered institution of heterosexual marriage as the only acceptable situation for child rearing.
Conservatives have long blamed women's rights, divorce laws and the ever-more important role of women in the economy for the problems marriage is facing. And now they insist that the threat of gay marriage is somehow ruining the institution for heterosexuals. It's like me saying that eating has been ruined for me because Adolf Hitler also ate. Perhaps what conservatives fear most is the prospect that men will no longer be lord and master of the castle, or that women won't need men at all.
In the end, the real problem has nothing to do with gays, or women in the workplace, or Mars/Venus incompatibility. It is selfish people who put their own happiness and needs ahead of their spouse's or their family's. People who perceive their partner in marriage as an opponent instead of a team mate. People who are rigid and unwilling to compromise, to give an inch, or to meet another person halfway to achieve a common goal.
Remind you of anyone?
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Fun Math Facts
From 1960 to 2005 the gross domestic product measured in year-2000 dollars rose an average of $165 billion a year under Republican presidents and $212 billon a year under Democrats. That's a 12.6% under Democrats versus a GOP increase of 10.7%.
And that's a Fun Math Fact!!
And that's a Fun Math Fact!!
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
What's To Be Done?
The recent shenanigans at JP Morgan Chase have revived calls to break up the banks and bring back Glass Steagal. Considering that the former is coming from the National Review should give everyone some pause. Yet Kling begins down a path here that I think is worth exploring. Actually, it reminds me of another debate which ultimately proved that having two such diametrically opposed viewpoints locked in a narrow minded ideological struggle is fruitless.
Like the seemingly endless debate between Keynesian and laissez faire economics, realism and liberalism (in terms of foreign policy) were locked in opposition as to how to deal with the Soviet Union. Realism explained the world as being in a constant state of anarchy and only through military power and constant distrust of other states will order and peace prevail. Liberalism called for international cooperation amongst the states of the world through peaceful, non-militaristic means.
Both of these ideologies completely failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. One day, the Soviets simply gave up. It was not due to military pressure nor was it due to an international cooperative entity like the UN. It happened because of new thinking and out of the box ideas beginning with the simple fact the world's structure isn't set in stone and is, in fact, constantly in flux.
It is this sort of constructivist thinking that should be applied when considering the relationship between government and the financial sector...indeed, government and the free market in general. Neither Keynesian nor laissez faire economic theories (nor the various offshoots) can adequately explain the global marketplace today. Returning to the type of regulation called for Paul Krugman may not be effective for a wide variety of reasons. And clearly allowing banks like JP Morgan to continue to take the risks that they do isn't an option either. So, let's take a look at ideas from each of the pieces I've linked and see if there is a solution.
First Kling.
I believe that our best hope lies somewhere other than making our largest financial institutions impossible to break. Instead, I think we need to make our financial system easy to fix.
This would eliminate the need for more and more regulation. Kling's idea is to restrict the size of banks but I'm not sure that's the best way for it to be implemented. Wouldn't that be detrimental in the increased competition of the global marketplace?
Next we have the editorial staff at the Trib Review calling for a return to Glass Steagal. Why?
As The Small Business Authority puts it, "We ... need to get back to a capital asset pricing model where high-risk ventures are financed with a higher cost of capital and not government-guaranteed deposits ... ."
If the cost of capital were higher, wouldn't that make the system easier to fix? I honestly don't know. That's why I'm asking.
That brings us to Krugman.
It’s clear, then, that we need to restore the sorts of safeguards that gave us a couple of generations without major banking panics.
Exactly. But again, not the way he is suggesting with more government backed guarantees. Safeguards need to be in place but what sort of form should they take?
The reason why I am asking here is that I want to try to see if we can chuck the old schools of Keynes and laissez faire and adopt some new thinking and new ideas based on the identities that have been defined by the global marketplace.
Falling back into old ideological traps simply won't serve us.
Like the seemingly endless debate between Keynesian and laissez faire economics, realism and liberalism (in terms of foreign policy) were locked in opposition as to how to deal with the Soviet Union. Realism explained the world as being in a constant state of anarchy and only through military power and constant distrust of other states will order and peace prevail. Liberalism called for international cooperation amongst the states of the world through peaceful, non-militaristic means.
Both of these ideologies completely failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. One day, the Soviets simply gave up. It was not due to military pressure nor was it due to an international cooperative entity like the UN. It happened because of new thinking and out of the box ideas beginning with the simple fact the world's structure isn't set in stone and is, in fact, constantly in flux.
It is this sort of constructivist thinking that should be applied when considering the relationship between government and the financial sector...indeed, government and the free market in general. Neither Keynesian nor laissez faire economic theories (nor the various offshoots) can adequately explain the global marketplace today. Returning to the type of regulation called for Paul Krugman may not be effective for a wide variety of reasons. And clearly allowing banks like JP Morgan to continue to take the risks that they do isn't an option either. So, let's take a look at ideas from each of the pieces I've linked and see if there is a solution.
First Kling.
I believe that our best hope lies somewhere other than making our largest financial institutions impossible to break. Instead, I think we need to make our financial system easy to fix.
This would eliminate the need for more and more regulation. Kling's idea is to restrict the size of banks but I'm not sure that's the best way for it to be implemented. Wouldn't that be detrimental in the increased competition of the global marketplace?
Next we have the editorial staff at the Trib Review calling for a return to Glass Steagal. Why?
As The Small Business Authority puts it, "We ... need to get back to a capital asset pricing model where high-risk ventures are financed with a higher cost of capital and not government-guaranteed deposits ... ."
If the cost of capital were higher, wouldn't that make the system easier to fix? I honestly don't know. That's why I'm asking.
That brings us to Krugman.
It’s clear, then, that we need to restore the sorts of safeguards that gave us a couple of generations without major banking panics.
Exactly. But again, not the way he is suggesting with more government backed guarantees. Safeguards need to be in place but what sort of form should they take?
The reason why I am asking here is that I want to try to see if we can chuck the old schools of Keynes and laissez faire and adopt some new thinking and new ideas based on the identities that have been defined by the global marketplace.
Falling back into old ideological traps simply won't serve us.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
A Survey about Surveys
I usually take the results of polls and surveys with grain of salt, and now there's good reason that you should too.
A study published by the Pew Research Center indicates that only 9% of households sampled respond to surveys. This is down from 36% in 1997. However, the study concludes that even with this abysmal response rate surveys still adequately represent the population at large.
I am doubtful. The population that responds to surveys is completely self-selected, and certainly has behavioral and preferential differences from the overwhelming majority of the population that doesn't respond to surveys.
The question is, does it matter? The study found that people who respond to surveys are more engaged in civic activity. Which probably means that people who actually go out and vote are more likely to respond to polls, which could mean that polls may still be somewhat accurate gauges of electoral outcomes, even if they don't represent the general sentiment of the population.
But that isn't a given, and it's basically impossible to determine the accuracy of that hypothesis because the tool you need to measure it with doesn't work.
So, exactly why are more people refusing to respond to surveys?
I've declined to respond to surveys for most of these reasons at one time or another, but I'm particularly bothered by "push polls," which have become de rigueur. The the integrity of many polling firms has come into question because of the obvious political slant of their questions and outcomes that tilt consistently in one direction year in and year out.
It's interesting that in the age of Facebook, where everyone is constantly baring their innermost secrets for all the world to see, the number of people who are willing to respond to questions from someone who actually wants their opinion has shrunk dramatically.
I'd ask everyone to respond to the question above, but I know only 9% of you would do it, and the results would be worthless.
A study published by the Pew Research Center indicates that only 9% of households sampled respond to surveys. This is down from 36% in 1997. However, the study concludes that even with this abysmal response rate surveys still adequately represent the population at large.
I am doubtful. The population that responds to surveys is completely self-selected, and certainly has behavioral and preferential differences from the overwhelming majority of the population that doesn't respond to surveys.
The question is, does it matter? The study found that people who respond to surveys are more engaged in civic activity. Which probably means that people who actually go out and vote are more likely to respond to polls, which could mean that polls may still be somewhat accurate gauges of electoral outcomes, even if they don't represent the general sentiment of the population.
But that isn't a given, and it's basically impossible to determine the accuracy of that hypothesis because the tool you need to measure it with doesn't work.
So, exactly why are more people refusing to respond to surveys?
- They don't want to waste the time.
- They figure it's a gimmick or someone is just trying to collect demographic data in order to sell them something.
- They don't think their opinion is anyone's business.
- They really don't have an opinion or don't vote or buy a product so they would just be wasting everyone's time.
- They don't want to burn cellphone minutes (polling now tries to balance cellphone and land-line respondents).
- They are tired of being constantly interrupted.
- They believe that poll and survey questions are intentionally slanted to achieve a desired result and are therefore not accurate gauges of their opinion in the first place.
I've declined to respond to surveys for most of these reasons at one time or another, but I'm particularly bothered by "push polls," which have become de rigueur. The the integrity of many polling firms has come into question because of the obvious political slant of their questions and outcomes that tilt consistently in one direction year in and year out.
It's interesting that in the age of Facebook, where everyone is constantly baring their innermost secrets for all the world to see, the number of people who are willing to respond to questions from someone who actually wants their opinion has shrunk dramatically.
I'd ask everyone to respond to the question above, but I know only 9% of you would do it, and the results would be worthless.
A Reset of the Table?
Interesting news on the health care front.
VERY interesting. But why?
Much of the slowdown is because of the recession, and thus not unexpected, health experts say. But some of it seems to be attributable to changing behavior by consumers and providers of health care — meaning that the lower rates of growth might persist even as the economy picks up.
I'd say that's pretty good news. Even more interesting...
If this continues to be the case, all of the arguments we have heard about health care may be going out the window. Wow.
In 2009 and 2010, total nationwide health care spending grew less than 4 percent per year, the slowest annual pace in more than five decades, according to the latest numbers from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services.
VERY interesting. But why?
Because Medicare and Medicaid are two of the largest contributors to the country’s long-term debts, slower growth in health costs could reduce the pressure for enormous spending cuts or tax increases.
I'd say that's pretty good news. Even more interesting...
Still, the slowdown was sharper than health economists expected, and a broad, bipartisan range of academics, hospital administrators and policy experts has started to wonder if what had seemed impossible might be happening — if doctors and patients have begun to change their behavior in ways that bend the so-called cost curve.
If the growth in Medicare were to come down to a rate of only 1 percentage point a year faster than the economy’s growth, the projected long-term deficit would fall by more than one-third.
If this continues to be the case, all of the arguments we have heard about health care may be going out the window. Wow.
Monday, May 14, 2012
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