Steve Jobs, a mixed bag visionary

I am a Boomer, and for a large portion of my life I realized that my grandfather's life had been changed more by technology than mine had.  Even though I was living in a remarkable, technological era with TV, fast cars and planes, rockets to the moon, etc. his personal experience was transformed in a way for him that it hadn't been for me. He and his generation had been personally empowered by the technological changes in a way that had been unprecedented in history.


He went from an era of horse and buggy to cars and planes.  The radio connected him to the world in a way that his parents hadn't known.  Electricity and transportation transformed his world dramatically.  My world had better versions of the things that his world had introduced:  the TV was an upgrade of the radio, the cars were faster and the roads were better, electricity modernized the home, the kitchen, and the workplace.  But his world changed from a rural world to an industrial world.


The symbols of that industrial transformation were Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.  They changed the world.


But, my world was changed in just as dramatic a way when Steve Jobs led a new pack of transformers onto the scene.  Edison and Ford brought the industrial age to everyday people.  Jobs and Gates brought the information age to everyday people.  With the advent of the personal computer, followed by many outgrowths of it, people are connected to each other and the the world and to infinite sources of information in ways that were unthinkable to my grandfather, and unthinkable to my younger self.


Like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs is a mixed bag.  He is being rightly praised as his illness forces him to step aside at his company, Apple, for his remarkable vision and the force of his charismatic personality to carry that vision into the world.  It seems to me, however, that along with the amazing positives of Steve Jobs and the unquestionable benefit that he has been, and perhaps will continue to be for a while at least, he also carries a very dark and destructive impact as well.


It seems to me that part of his legend, and thus part of his influence, is his obsessive, demanding, domineering, abusive personality and management style.  The biggest problem with that is that it looks to me like people have conflated the two - the visionary and the abusive tyrant.  They seem to think that the way to be like Steve Jobs is to be an abusive tyrant, as if visionary genius will spring forth from abusing people in their organization and in their competition.


It's pretty easy to be as abusive and demanding as Jobs, but that has nothing to do with being an intuitive, visionary genius.  So, Apple will plod along under the reign of another workaholic, perfectionistic, perhaps abusive manager. And Apple may even still benefit from visionaries within it.  But I fear that Steve Jobs wannabees in the high tech area and beyond will drive themselves and the poor souls under their reigns of terror to ever more imbalanced, workaholic lives.  But none of that will replicate that part of Steve Jobs that transformed the modern world - being a visionary genius.


So, I am hoping and expecting new visionaries to step forward and, being themselves rather than trying to be Jobs imitators, will become even greater visionaries and take the world into even more remarkable and fascinating places.  


Thank you, Steve Jobs, for your transformational visions.  I know that your were worshiped and followed nearly slavishly by employees and customers both.  I just wish you had treated people better along the way.


It's up the the rest now to create their own, unique visions, along with more transformational and positive ways of bringing those visions to fruition.

Qaddafi finally gone?

It ain't over until the crazy man is dead, and his sons as well, but I am hopeful that the end game is coming.  


I am guessing that the rebels have pretty good control of Tripoli and the country, but I am also guessing that Qaddafi loyalists aren't done fighting, and might carry on for years against whatever new regime takes over.  I worry about Qaddafi sons and old regime power players having either substantial roles in a new power structure or playing significant destabilizing roles against a new power structure.  And, I still wish Obama and the West had responded in opposition to Qaddafi within a very few days rather than the weeks it took to do so.  There was at least a chance, in my mind, that Qaddafi military and power cronies would have turned on him, the way the Egyptian powerful turned on Mubarak.


All those qualifiers aside, a world without the madman Qaddafi is a better world, and I am extremely grateful that his fall did not cost any American soldiers' lives.  Obama's stepping aside and having NATO take the lead in this affair was a real watershed moment.  It may be the first time that the U.S. didn't take the overt military lead in conflicts overseas, but played a support and encouragement role.  


I like that role.  I am tired of American military action as a first response to difficult world problems.  This revolution was and is a Libyan revolution and came out of the Libyan people.  There is no question that they were someone else's puppets or proxies.  Obama's real leadership in creating a new post-cold war world may be in his foreign policy.  It seems vacillating and indecisive at times, but I think he is trying to create a new role for America in the world, a role that does not lead with its military power as an automatic response. 


What government will emerge after Qaddafi is finally gone is quite unknown.  I think that America and the West may be uncomfortable with the new powers that emerge in Libya, and I expect them to be pretty harsh Islamists, but I don't expect them to be focused on bloody jihad against the U.S., and to me, that is the chief concern for the national interest of America.  


For the sake of the Libyan people I really do hope that the new government is reasonably democratic and creates room for the many disparate factions within its country, and that the Libyan people become more empowered to create meaningful lives out of a new-found freedom.  But, that may take a little time to develop the art and science of democracy.  

I'm already sick of the campaign

It's only August of 2011, the election isn't until the end of next year, and I'm already sick of the presidential campaign.  It all seems so pointless.


Obama seems to be listless and ineffective.  What is he going to run on, battling the evil Republicans if he wins in 2012?  Finding ways to bring the parties together if he wins in 2012?  He has tried both and hasn't been able to even come close on either count.  If he weren't the nation's first black president he would be challenged from the left in the primaries, and he would probably lose.  But no progressive can possibly challenge the nation's first black president without destroying their own political career and engendering the everlasting hatred from the black voters.


The Republican field is pathetic.  Romney's only virtue is that no one believes that he believes what he is saying in order to pander to the right wing Tea Party ideologues.  Bachman is frightening, but not likely to win the nomination.  Huntsman is probably a pretty good, reasonable candidate but doesn't seem to be gaining any traction.  Rick Perry seems to be a caricature of W, and if the Republicans think that the nation is eager for a harsher, meaner, more intolerant version of W they are even crazier than they sound.


If Chris Christie got into the race, I could get interested pretty quickly.  What little I have seen of him has been interesting.  He speaks from the heart and with courage, and he seems to have some level of maturity and intelligence.  Of course, all candidates look attractive until they enter the race, and then who they are gets scrutinized and the bloom goes off the rose.


The amazing thing is that every president has been a truly remarkable person in many respects.  They didn't get there without an enormous amount of talent.  Within a year of their presidency the whole world knows exactly what their weakness are.  Nixon was a power abusive paranoid, Carter was indecisive and naive, Reagan was ... pretty good, really on a personal level unless you hated his ideology, H W Bush was remote and out of touch with middle America, Clinton was devious and lacking in moral character, W Bush was bull headed and incurious, Obama is remote, passionless, too accommodating.  Why anyone wants to become the president so that what the whole world knows about you is what no one wants anyone to know is quite a mystery.  Ego is a strange director of one's life, but I have to give most of them credit, they seem to really want to make changes in the country that they believe in.


I just can't see what Obama can credibly run on.  Vote for me, but I can't do anything about Washington, so you have to vote out all the Republicans too?  Vote for Obama, he can't change anything... now there's a stirring campaign theme.  Republicans are evil and Democrats are powerless, vote for the powerless rather than the evil buffoons... ah the campaign slogans that await!

Rick Perry - the Republican McGovern

Rick Perry, Texas governor, is running for president.  As best I can tell, he is the Republican version of George McGovern - an ideological purist who will likely lose in a landslide.

McGovern lost in '72 as the ideologically pure liberal to run for president for the Democratic Party.  He lost every state except one: Massachusetts.  Somehow, the Democrats had decided in '72 that the country was an anti-war, nearly socialist country, and sent McGovern off to slay the Nixon dragon.  Nixon won by about a two to one ratio.

Now, some conservatives seem to think that the country is a Tea Party, Evangelical nation, and they want the hardest core right winger that they can find.  I think he is unelectable, fortunately.  

The last two presidents ran as centrists (and each ended up being amazingly polarizing).  Bush was "a uniter, not a divider", and Obama was "post-partisan."  I believe the country is even more hungry for a pragmatic, non-ideological leadership than before, and now is hardly the time for a "divider, not a uniter" like Perry to be elected.

I was pretty sure, in 2008, when Obama won the presidency, that the Republicans would do what out of power parties always do - over-react to their loss and decide that the reason they lost was that they weren't being ideologically pure enough, so they would nominate a true blue extremist from their party.  Perry certainly seems to fit that bill.

He has one positive, however, he seems to speak from the heart.  I have long observed that when presidents are replaced, the people vote for someone who is strong where the incumbent is seen to be weak.  The low character of Nixon was replaced by the perceived high moral character of Carter; the weak willed Carter was replaced by the confident Reagan; the out of touch H.W. Bush was replaced by the "feel your pain" Clinton; the vacillating Clinton/Gore was replaced by the decisive W. Bush; the close minded W/McCain was replaced by the open minded Obama.  Now, Obama's perceived weakness is his lack of engagement and emotional distance from the problems of the country. When he speaks, he speaks like a professor discussing political theory.  What little I've heard of Perry, he speaks very viscerally, from the heart and from the gut.  

But, this is not a Tea Party nation, and he will go down pretty hard, I believe.  It will be interesting to see if the Republicans fall for the ideological purity trap.

Harry Reid sabotages the Joint Special Committee of twelve, more to follow

Alan Simpson gave us all a way to tell whether the U.S. Congress has any intention of addressing our deficit crisis.  He said: 


"If you see the leadership not appointing members of the Gang of Six to the new commission of 12, you know they don't want to get anything done."


Well, the suspense is over, Harry Reid, Democrat leader of the Senate appointed Patricia Murray, who is the chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, as the co-chair of the committee for the Democrats.  That very clearly states to all of us that the Democrats' main concern in this committee is political advantage for the 2012 elections rather than finding ways to come up with a workable fiscal approach.  He also appointed Max Baucus, and John Kerry.  


The main point is that none of the Democrats who were on the Gang of Six will be on the committee of 12.  They were Mark Warner, Kent Conrad, and Dick Durbin of the Democrats.  These three have already done the hard work of hashing out a negotiated compromise for deficit reduction along the lines of the Simpson-Bowles Commission.  They are being ignored, and it is clear that compromise will be ignored as well.


Once Harry Reid laid down the gauntlet of uncompromising liberals in the committee of 12, the rest will have to follow suit.  Of course, McConnell already had announced that he wouldn't appoint anyone willing to consider tax increases, so I suppose my hope for a Gang of Six or Simpson-Bowles type of plan that cut spending and raised revenues was a cruel one destined for disappointment.  


Too bad.  Our government is being given opportunity after opportunity to get our fiscal house in order, and moves relentlessly toward deeper and deeper polarization and ideological war.  


The American people deserve better than this, much better.

AA rating sounds like an honest assessment to me

Many people are upset at S&P for downgrading the U.S. to AA from AAA ratings.  I think that is just a case of shooting the messenger.  The U.S. is borrowing over 40 cents on each dollar it spends.  This is not the actions of a country that should be considered a AAA rated country, as far as I can tell.  


Those opposed to the downgrade, mostly on the political left of the isle, cite S&P's bad record during the housing bubble meltdown of the financial industry as reason to discount this new rating of the U.S.  But, it seems to me that the criticism of S&P in the past was that they did not downgrade financial institutions when they should have.  Now, they are downgrading a rating when they should.  Looks like an honest appraisal to me.


This should be a wake up call to the ideologues in Washington, on both sides of the isle, that they must reduce the deficit.  That means tax reform that raises revenues (in a way that also stimulates the economy by lowering tax rates) and cuts spending (cut the real spending of entitlements).  Entitlements are the third rail for Democrats, and raising taxes is the third rail for Republicans.  But they must do their actual job, governing the nation, rather than just do their political job, which is to get re-elected.  What value are they to anyone if they don't do their job?

What they didn't do

So, we all take a deep sigh of relief that Washington didn't destroy the economy and finally passed a deal to raise the debt ceiling.  That's nice.  But, what didn't they do?


They didn't do tax reform. And they must.


They also didn't touch entitlements.  And they must. 


(However, they did threaten defense spending, so that is a hopeful sign)


Tax reform - Obama has a trigger that can force tax reform on the Republicans, so it should happen, right?  The Bush tax cuts expire next year and Obama can use it as leverage, correct?  Probably not.


Obama didn't take the Simpson-Bowles report last December and push it through Congress because, well, he just doesn't do that kind of thing.


Then, the Rivlin-Domenici commission also came up with a spending cut and tax reform plan to reduce the deficit.  I don't think Obama has mentioned it.  


Then, there is the bipartisan Gang of Six that has come out with their version of cutting and tax reform to raise revenues and reduce the deficit.  Obama has given it some lip service, but can he draw a line and insist on it?


Unfortunately, Obama will likely use the deadline on the expiration of the Bush tax cuts to talk idealistically about taxing the rich, and trot out focus-grouped phrases like "billionaires" and "corporate jets" and promise that there will be no tax increases on the middle class if he is elected.  So, he will likely squander his leverage to create real tax reform for this country that would both raise revenue and stimulate the economy (lower rates, close loopholes and eliminate tax earmarks).  Actually, in order to get it done by then he needs to start now.  But, oh yeah, there is that much more important thing - his re-election, or making sure that nobody gets too upset at him, or something, I'm not sure what it is that he is really concerned about.  


We know what the Tea Party believes and will fight to the death for, even though I think they are moronically wrong, but I still don't know what Obama believes enough to fight for, to be in the lead and advocate for, to push for, to fight to the political death for.  It is time for him to show himself and get in front rather than "lead from behind."

Calm, back off, relent, soothe, soften, cooperate, relaxxxxxxx.........

My dear friend Lazaris read the tea leaves in 1997 and said that there were many things being worried about at the time that weren't real threats to the world.  However, there were three things that would need our attention:  world wide financial meltdown, worldwide terrorist wars, and Civil War in the U.S. Furthermore, any one of the three could trigger all three, and the world could be plunged into a catastrophic chaos. 


He went on to say, by the way, that these futures were not going to happen, but these are the areas of concern for us to focus our energies of visualization, energy healing, and prayer.  Clearly, all three of these energies have emerged for our attention.


I expect that D.C. will find a way to raise the debt ceiling and allow the U.S. to pay its bills.  I expect that D.C. will find a way to lower the deficit.  I think that the way forward was laid out be the Simpson Bowles report that cuts spending and raises revenues at a ratio of three to one on the cutting side.  I send my energies to our leaders to rise to the occasion and do what they know is needed to keep our country from reneging on over 40% of its bills.


So, I think it is time for all of us to back off, to unclench our jaws and fists, to soften our eyes, to loosen our necks, to walk away from the cliff that has worldwide financial ruin and American civil war in the abyss.  It is time to relaxxxxxxxxx........

Does WWI show us where the debt crisis is taking us?

There is a fascinating and disturbing parallel between the politics happening in July of 2011 the U.S. today over the debt crisis and the politics in July of 1914 over the European crisis caused by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo.  That crisis, ninety seven years ago, led to WWI which changed Europe and the world forever.  It ended the rule by aristocracy in Europe and elevated the United States to become a significant world power.


WWI was probably a war that could have been avoided, and everyone thought at the time that they would be able to find compromises and be able to negotiate their way out of the crisis.  When that failed, they thought it would only be a brief skirmish and be over quickly.  How wrong they were.


As I understand it, the problem in 1914 was there were webs of alliances and promises between the European powers that the various countries pledged unfailing allegiance to.  These promises kept pushing the parties into greater and greater commitments to each other and, much to everyone's surprise, they ended up going over the cliff into an unimaginable horror of a war that killed or wounded almost 40 million men, ended unsatisfactorily by overly punishing the Germans, and sowed the seeds of WWII which killed over 50 million people, continued throughout the Cold War and didn't end until the Soviet Empire finally was defeated in 1991.


So, how is this like today?  Today, like in 1914, there are uncompromising commitments on the parts of those in power in the United States to alliances that the parties are totally unwilling to renege on.  


The Tea Party Republicans have sworn to lower taxes, so as to stimulate the economy per their undying belief, and to cut spending, so as to reduce the control of the government of the people and thus set the people free to create their own prosperity.  


The Pelosi Democrats have sworn to protect the entitlement programs that they have spent their whole lives creating against what they see as uncaring reactionary corporate forces who put profits and personal greed above the welfare of the people.  


The Far Right see themselves promoting prosperity and freedom; the Far Left see themselves protecting compassion and justice for the people.  They have no imagination within themselves that can see any value in the positions of the people that they consider to be their deadly enemies.  


So, are we arriving at an Assassination of the Archduke moment?  Are our leaders, blinded by their ideological commitments, pledges, and alliances, about to take us all over the cliff?  Let's pray not.


As psychologist Ira Rososfsky says:

"If Russia broke faith with Serbia, there may have been no war at all.

If the British broke faith with the French, then Germany may have won the war, and quickly, and if they had won World War I, there may have been no World War II, and its even greater devastation.

If some Republicans broke their promise of no new taxes, my neighbor's social security check will be in the mail.

Breaking a promise is a profile in courage."

It is time for our leaders to break their undying promises to their hard core constituency, or they they are going to take us all over the cliff.  And, by the way, the Republican Party will be take the blame for it and might well destroy itself, and in their attempt to save themselves they may even be able to take the Democratic Party down as well.  


We may end up with either or both political parties ended in this ideological war.

Why are they doing it?

Obama and Boehner both addressed the nation about the ongoing fight between the Republicans and the Democrats over raising the debt ceiling and how to cut the deficit.  Rather than get too involved in the content of their arguments, I think it is good to review what the Republicans are up to and why.

Refusing to raise the debt ceiling is a totally arbitrary act on the part of the Republicans.  Both parties have raised the debt ceiling as a matter of bureaucratic course numerous times.  So, why are the Republicans refusing to do so this time?  

I believe they have seized upon a strategy that can force real cuts to federal spending.  By refusing to authorize the raising of the debt ceiling unless there are real cuts, cuts beyond window dressing of "discretionary spending", cutting where the real spending is happening and growing far too rapidly, i.e. entitlement spending, they actually have a lever to force the Democrats to face up to the problem of out of control government growth of the entitlement state.  They see the U.S. as on the path of Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland, etc where the entitlement state took over the government and the country and killed the goose that laid the golden eggs of economic prosperity - the economy.

And I agree that the Democrats have been, and to some degree still are, in denial about the need to cut back on entitlement spending, and to do so pretty dramatically.  If we don't, the deficit, the amount we are spending beyond what we are taking in, the amount we have to borrow to pay for the government that we have chosen, will continue to explode and we will end up losing our credit rating, interest rates will skyrocket, costs of mortgages, business loans, and private loans will also skyrocket, and the economy will be crushed by the weight of entitlement spending.  Indeed, entitlement spending and debt payment will take over most of the government expenditures, and our country will decline into a shell of its former self, struggling to do the most basic functions of government with nothing left to help build for the future.  

The real problem, I believe, is that it is not only the Democratic Party, but also the voters are in deep denial about the limits of the government's ability to keep the gravy train going.  The Republicans are trying to make a splash large and dramatic enough to wake up the country to this very real problem.  

There is another, less ideological force at work here too, I believe - politics. The politics of the upcoming 2012 election.  

The Republicans want a temporary solution, with some cost cutting now, and the guarantee that this issue is revisited again during the 2012 election.  They think that they can ride this issue to victory in 2012 for victories in the House, the Senate, and the White House.

Obama and the Democrats, on the other hand, want very much to have a long term solution to resolve the issue now so that they can get it beyond the 2012 election and not have to look at it again until 2013.  I guess they agree with the Republicans that it is a losing issue for them, although I'm not sure why they think so.  I think the Republicans are deeply mistaken if they think that we are living in a Tea Party nation that is nearly Libertarian in attitude that wants government significantly out of people's lives.

The problem, the danger, it seems to me, is that the Republican tactic of being totally intransigent and thus proving to its right wing Tea Party base how serious they are could take them over the cliff by accident.  Or, should I say, it could take us over the cliff by accident, and they could end up having boxed themselves into their own rhetoric, unable to finally declare victory, get big cuts, and raise the debt ceiling, saving us from financial catastrophe.  

As I have said over and over again, it is obvious to me that the deficit is so massive that we need both cost cutting and revenue increases, and I think that will happen, ultimately, but meanwhile the Republicans are making as big a splash as possible in an effort to awaken the voting public to the need to change the contract between the government and the people, and provide less cradle to grave care for the people.  In the Republicans' minds, this is a moral cause, it reduces dependence on Big Brother and encourages more self sufficiency in the people.  In truth, we just can't afford it any more because we are out of money, regardless of the goodness or evil of the argument

I really am actually pretty hopeful that Boehner in the House and McConnell in the Senate will call the game at the last minute and raise the debt ceiling and consolidate whatever gains they have been able to attain.  And, I send some prayers in that direction.

The belief in Reaganomics doesn't make sense

Back in my Republican era, I believed that lower taxes unleashed the mighty economy and created jobs.  I thought the benefits of Reaganomics were obvious to all but the ideologically blind. 


Reagan cut taxes.  Here were the tremendous numbers that proved the economy boosting power of Reaganomics:


REAGAN'S economy from 1980 to 1988:

• After 4 years 
• 6.3 million new jobs
• 6.8% increase in jobs
• After 8 years
• 16.5 million new jobs
• 18% increase in jobs
• 12% rise in the median family income

What more proof was needed? Reagan lowered taxes and reduced regulation, and look at the tremendous economic growth and prosperity!

BUT:

Clinton raised taxes.  And the economic numbers were even better:

CLINTON'S economy from 1992 to 2000:

• After 4 years
• 11.8 million new jobs
• 11% increase in jobs
• After 8 years
• 20.6 million new jobs
• 18.6% increase in jobs
• 12% rise in the median family income

And, oh yes, George W Bush lowered taxes, just like his model Reagan did.  And reduced regulation.  What was the tremendous increase in new jobs? 

BUSH'S economy from 2000 to 2008:

• After 8 years
• 1.6 million fewer jobs
• 2.7% decline in median family income

So, what does all of this prove?  That tax levels don't have much to do with job creation or economic growth and prosperity.  

I'm sure that we could find the same kind of data that show the contradictory effects of Keynesian stimulus spending.  Obama's stimulus package, where he spent more on liberal pet projects than was spent on national defense, produced ... not much actually.

Other factors have tremendous influences on the economy. Tax cutting and stimulus spending probably have a little bit of an effect, but compared to other things (inflation rates, development or lack thereof of new industries, wars, attacks on cities, the growth of toxic bubbles like the .com and housing bubbles, rising competition of third world countries, globalization of labor markets, etc., etc.) these government actions aren't all that influential.

The theology of the right wing Reaganite tax cutters is simply a fantasy.  I think the same can be said of the theology of the left wing Keynesian stimulus spenders.  The economy is way too complex for government action to control. 

The government needs to do many things to make sure the economy is healthy and competitive, but the theologies of tax cutting and stimulus spending are false promises.  Or so it seems to me. 

Gerrymandering - the root cause?

The moderates of both parties seem to be captive of the extremists of both parties in the budget impasse.  The Tea Party right wing refuses to raise the debt limit if there are any revenue increases, and the Pelosi left wing refuses to allow any of the real spending problems to be cut - entitlements.  


One of the biggest problems facing the country today is gerrymandering of congressional districts.  It is no surprise that the Senate is more moderate than the House of Representatives in Washington.  You can't gerrymander a state.  The political boundaries are already drawn and can't be redrawn.  But within each state the political parties draw the districts to assure safe seats for both Republicans and Democrats.  As a result, the safer the seat, the more radical those who are elected.  You can't have a safer liberal seat than San Francisco, and you are hard pressed to find a more left wing ideologue than Nancy Pelosi.  The same on the right wing, for example Darryl Issa of Riverside County.




As a result, members of the House of Representatives are in safe districts, so the automatic tendency is for candidates to be more ideologically pure than their same party challengers.  If candidates had to run in districts that were politically moderate, the more centrist candidates would win and the extremists would not be able to attract the center, which would decide the victors in more balanced districts, similar to how the presidency is usually decided by the political center rather than the extremist true believers of either party.


The House of Representatives, these days, is always extreme.  It operated far left of center after the Obama victory of 2008, passed health care and gave massive giveaways to pet liberal projects under the guise of Stimulus spending.  And now the House is operating far right of center as it is being held hostage by the Tea Party tax cutting extremes threatening to cause the government to default rather than allow increased revenues to help reduce our enormous deficit.


As a side note, this is why I am totally opposed to the idea of trying to change the relative powers in the Senate.  Ideologues are upset that Wyoming has the same number of Senators as California, even though each state has vastly different populations.  But, their attempts to change this is just another way to try to gerrymander the states in the Senate the same as they have gerrymandered the states in the House of Representatives.  What a terrible, extremist producing idea that is.


Ideology makes smart people stupid.  Everything ideologues see proves to them the rightness of their black and white ideological view of the world.  Pelosi Democrats against Tea Party Republicans - and no chance that either side will ever drop their hatred of the other.


It is up to Obama and Boehner to lead the center to just say no to the drug of ideological extremist absolutism.  


I send my hopes and prayers.

How the International Criminal Court keeps despots in power

George Friedman, of Stratfor.com, points out the unintended consequence of setting up the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands.  By prosecuting despots for war crimes, they pretty much guarantee that despots will do anything to cling to power when their people rise up to overthrow them rather than negotiate a transfer of power for the guarantee of a safe and comfortable exile. 

For example, Qaddafi has already been indicted for war crimes against his people.  As a result, he cannot accept a political settlement with those trying to drive him from power.  They are powerless to guarantee his safety.  The ICC will try him and find him guilty of obvious crimes against humanity.  The same has to be said for those who surround Qaddafi.  They are also undoubtedly guilty of heinous crimes and would also be sent to the Hague for prosecution. 

So, the tyrants who we want to abdicate and turn over power of their countries to the democracy movements of the Arab Awakening … can’t.  Not without being tried and executed by the Righteous in Europe.

Yugoslavia’s Milosevic died during a five year trial in the Hague.  Karadzic was sent to the Hague despite negotiations between him and the U.S. that if he ceded power he would be granted safety.   South Africa was fortunate enough to make a political transfer of power from the white leadership to Mandela and were granted forgiveness and safety as a result, but that wouldn’t have been possible if the ICC had been in place at the time.

So, the war in Libya drags on and people continue to die.

Is revenge in the ICC sufficient reason to prolong wars against tyrants that kill thousands of people?  I think not.  The ICC was probably not a very good idea, and it may be time to close it down.

The arrogance of being in control

David Brooks writes an insightful column about the underlying problem of the economic crisis.  He points out that three groups decided that they could control the future.

First came the genius banker quants who thought that their mathematical models would take the risk out of investing and thus they would control the future and make fortunes.  Of course, many of them made huge fortunes but that was by selling toxic securities to suckers who were conned into thinking that the quants knew what they were doing, while these banker quants almost destroyed their banks, the financial industry, and the economy of the U.S. and the world - but that is a different discussion.

Second came the true believer Democrat Keynesian economists and politicians who thought that massive stimulus spending would employ people by providing government demand and thus stimulating an economic recovery.  It may have helped a bit, but certainly not as the Keynesians predicted, and I don’t think it helped very much at all, but it certainly did add to the deficit and the debt.

Third, now comes the tax cutting true believers who think that the way to reduce the deficit is to stimulate the economy by cutting taxes and government regulation and thus allowing the always powerful and ready to rumble economy to take off and generate millions of jobs and prosperity for all.  These folks are looking at Reaganomics and overvaluing the effect of untrammeled markets and undervaluing the necessity of government regulation of those markets - which is needed to keep them competitive rather than letting them become forms of theft, corruption, and plunder.

Brooks’ recommendation is a cautious, conservative one:  control both debt and entitlements and “keep tax levels reasonable and the tax code simple.”  Most of all, he cautions against the arrogance of thinking that we have figured out how to control the uncontrollable: the future.

I think that what is happening is that the world is in a state of chaos, and is now obviously uncontrollable.  It is always uncontrollable, of course, but maybe it takes chaos from time to time to remind us of that fact.  And the way people who are afraid of the chaos react to the chaos is to revert to some form of fundamentalism as an attempt to control it.  The right wing goes for tax cuts, the left wing goes for Keynesian government spending, the fundamentalist religious believers, whether Christian or Muslim, look to apocalyptic visions and calls for purity, etc. 

The idea is to try to find a simple formula to control the explosive complexity of chaos.  It never works.

The deficit is the size of national defense and social security combined

Just to point out the obvious, the reason that the debt ceiling must be raised is because the government is operating at a deficit.  The only way the debt ceiling doesn’t get raised is if the government brings in more revenue that it spends, then the government doesn’t have to borrow to pay its bills.  If the government can’t borrow, it can’t pay its bills.  The debt ceiling doesn’t govern expenditures, Congress writes the laws that mandate and authorize spending.  The debt ceiling allows the country to pay its bills. 

How much is $1.6 trillion?  That is the estimate of our deficit; that is about how much more we are spending than we are taking in.

The New York Times has a nice rectangular chart that shows how much money the government spends.

Interestingly enough, the federal government spends the same on National Defense as it does on Social Security:  $738 billion for each.  Add these together and you have a little under $1.6 trillion.  So, to balance the budget by cutting spending, the federal government would have to eliminate all spending on both national defense and social security - which, of course, can’t happen.

We can thank the unholy alliance between the government and the financial industry for creating the housing bubble and the resulting financial collapse that created this monstrous deficit and recession.  Maybe we can legitimately hope that government can get out of the grips of ideology long enough to cut spending and raise revenues to shrink the deficit, and bring government spending and government revenues back together. 

It needs very courageous leadership by the president and the leaders of congress to do this.  Now is the time for them to elevate beyond being mere re-election functionaries and lead the country out of looming financial collapse. 

I have hopes that this is starting to happen.

Have the grownups finally arrived?

President Obama has finally made a big move to do what is needed in the Great Budget Battle.  He is proposing entitlement cuts, including Medicare and Social Security, in exchange for tax reform that raises revenues. This has always what has been needed: a way to raise revenue by lowering tax rates and closing tax loopholes, and real spending cuts in the areas that actually need to be reduced - entitlements.  


Apparently, Speaker of the House John Boehner visited the White House on Sunday and said he was open to raising revenues if he was offered tax reform and spending cuts in return.  Good for him.  Good for Obama for responding with just that.


It has always been necessary to both raise revenue and cut spending since we are borrowing more than forty cents of every dollar the government spends.  The partisans can be expected to lay out unbending non-negotiable demands, but we may finally be on the course to the obvious solution whereby both sides find a way to compromise for the benefit of the health of the nation, rather than obsessively pandering to the extremist wings of their parties.


It will be interesting to see how Democrats will react to the proposed compromise (we know that the Tea Party Wing of the Republicans will thump their chests in outrage at any suggestion of compromise).  I expect a violent Democrat opposition to their president for abandoning their extremist and obsessive protections of their precious entitlement programs.  


Both extremist wings must lose these battles.  Compromise is necessary.   Cut spending and raise revenues.


Have the grownups finally arrived?

Political Party death wish?

The “negotiations” between the Democrats and Republicans on raising the debt limit continues, with appropriate declamations about the intransigency of the others at the table.  This is a predicted Kabuki dance wherein each party is in the process of proving to its respective bases that they are really, really tough and are going to get the best possible deal from the other.

The trouble is, if they aren’t careful, they will go over the cliff by accident, the cost of government borrowing will explode, and the interest on the debt will swallow the government.

If the Republicans think that they can push the country into default and blame the Democrats, they are even more idiotic than they pretend to be.  It is an obvious fact that the Democrats have offered substantial cuts in government spending, and the Republicans have offered zero revenue increases.  The ones who  are refusing to negotiate are the Republicans, and they will be blamed for the consequences of not allowing an automatic raising of the debt ceiling.

The Tea Party sent anti-tax extremists into the government to insist on reducing the size of government, and those true believers are doing what they believe in.  But, the country is not becoming a Tea Party nation, and if the Republican leaders allow actual default, they will be complicit with the death of the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, where are Obama and the Democrats on the necessary proposal for tax reform that will create revenue increases while lowering tax rates and thus bringing in both needed government income and allowing the market and the lagging recovery to breathe?  Are they playing their own political high-risk stratagem of allowing the Republican Party to destroy itself while they pretend to be innocent bystanders? 

Playing politics can be dangerous - to the health of the nation, and to the survival of political parties.

Where is our leader? part 2

The president gave a press conference today and was critical of the Republicans for refusing to raise taxes as part of a congressional agreement to raise the debt ceiling and thus allow the government to continue to pay its bills come August 2. But, unfortunately, he gave no indication of where he stands in the negotiations other than his old, tried and tired urge to tax the super-rich, which will not even come close to balancing the budget.  It looked to me like a campaign speech rather than the leader of our country taking the bull by the horns and leading the country and the Congress into an agreement on reducing the deficit.


When the president spends his bully pulpit time blaming and attacking the other political party as the two parties are in the process of trying to negotiate an agreement, it tells me that the negotiations cannot come to an agreement.  I suppose Democrats were encouraged that Obama finally sounded tough and said nasty things about the Republicans that Democrats want him to say, but I don't see how today's performance created any space for Boehner and the Republicans to find a way to agree to raising taxes as part of what they will agree to.  It looked to me like a pandering to his base and another campaign speech for 2012.


I agree, completely, that the Republicans need to raise revenues.  It is not any news to anyone that this needs to be done.  But for the president to just criticize the Republicans does nothing to move them forward.


The only thing that makes any sense to me on the revenue side is a major tax reform that lowers tax rates, broadens the tax base, and eliminates the tax earmarks that give away special exemptions to taxation.  This was proposed by Simpson-Bowles in December of last year.  The only person in the country that could have taken that report, and the momentum created by that report, was the President of the United States, regardless of who the president was at that time, and regardless of which party the president belonged to.  But, this president ducked.  He pretended to be influenced by Simpson Bowles, and he proposed ... raising taxes on the super-rich ... what a surprise.  


I hope that the two sides agree to sign off on the increase in the debt ceiling by doing two things:  cut spending and make a binding pledge to create tax reform starting August 3, with the President taking the lead with a deadline of proposing an overhaul of the tax system by the end of September.  I see no other way of increasing tax revenues other than massive tax reform.  He doesn't even need to take any time to study the tax reform, all he needs to do is present the Simpson Bowles tax plan and lead the country from his bully pulpit, and lead Congress with good old fashioned LBJ congressional maneuvering and get it done.  


We need leadership, and only the president is in a position to provide it.  It takes more than a jaunty walk and snide attacks on his opponents to get it done.  It takes genius, and genius is what we need.  Maybe this crisis will finally awaken the man in the White House to become the leader that I had voted for two and a half very long years ago.

Where is our leader?

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has just issued a declaration that the country is headed toward a massive deficit explosion if we don’t cut spending and raise revenues.  Not a surprise, of course, but this official governmental declaration puts teeth in the obvious.

The main culprits of runaway spending, says the CBO, are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare.  The quickest way to raise taxes, they note, is to repeal the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy AND the middle class.  Both parties are dealing with this, the biggest crisis of my time, as complete idiots.  There is a kind of stupidity that only smart people are capable of, the stupidity of entrenched ideology.  And both parties are deeply entrenched in ideologies that are obsolete and toxic.

The Republicans have taken an idiotic blood oath to never raise taxes.  The Democrats have taken an idiotic blood oath to never cut entitlements.  This puts the country on the Greek path to financial and economic doom.

A dear friend has pointed out that we are dealing with a failure of imagination.  I believe that what people cannot imagine is the sincerity and decentness of  their political opponents' positions and values. 

Democrats can only see the Republicans’ desire to cut spending as the caricature of Republicans that they carry in their ideologically twisted minds – as greedy and uncaring pawns of the super rich.  That way, Democrats don’t have to confront the terrors of a government that is too big to succeed.

Republicans can only see the Democrat’s desire to maintain and expand entitlement spending as a caricature of Democrats that they carry in their ideologically twisted minds - as catering to the special interests that have kept them in power since FDR and attacking the golden goose of capitalism that lays the golden egg of prosperity.  That way they don’t have to confront the terrors of an aging, middle class and poor populations trapped in poverty, mediocrity, and hopelessness.

None of this is going to change without remarkable leadership, and the only position in the country that has the ability to lead the country into the deep and painful direction that it needs to go (cut spending and raise revenues for goodness sake, it's not that hard to figure out) is the presidency.  But, Obama is missing in action.  He seems remarkably passive in this drama being fought out in the House and the Senate.  His VP, Biden, is trying to bring the sides together, but it is all inside baseball.  And inside baseball is not going to get it done.

The terrible truth is that politicians on both sides of the isle are probably correct in thinking that if they raise taxes as Republicans or cut entitlements as Democrats they will be voted out of office.  So, they do what the most cynical observers of politics say they will do: anything they need to do to stay in office.  And, if they do what is needed to rescue the country from financial Armageddon they will be voted out.

So, who needs to demand that they come together and do the painful things that are needed to save the economy and the government is us.  The people need to wake up and realize that we are all Greeks now.  And we shouldn’t shame ourselves by metaphorically doing what the Greeks are doing, which is taking to the streets to demand that nothing change and the gravy train continues for them.

Only when the country decides that we need less government and more government taxes will the deficit explosion be successfully dealt with. If we don't, the debt and deficit explode and the interest on the debt wipes out all of the rest of government anyhow, and all that is left is paying off our debt.  


I think this is possible. I think most people have made that very change in their own lives by realizing that they were spending more than they were taking in and have made personal changes to live within their means.  I think a very large percentage of the voting populace will accept the same formula for our government to take those same steps.

What they need is a credible leader to make the case of the government doing what is needed to live within its means.  The first step has already been taken by the Simpson-Bowles Commission laying out the spending cuts and revenue increases needed.  The next crucial step is now needed – a leader to forcefully and persistently and persuasively to make the case to the voting public. 

Obama could have been that leader, but he has ducked.  I don’t see him or any Republican contender taking that message to the people for the 2012 election, both sides are singing to their own choirs, neither is leading to make the case to do BOTH cut spending and raise revenues. 

Where is our leader?

Futility in Afghanistan

David Brooks in the New York Times outlines the fundamental flaw of our attempts to build the nation of Afghanistan.  Somehow, Westerners are convinced that bad behavior is a function of poverty.  It's not.  Bad behavior is a function of choices.  In Afghanistan Brooks points to tribal feuds, old and new grudges, and religious fanaticism are much more the source of ongoing strife than lack of opportunity for young men.  I would add the culture where honor is the root value, various ways that the Americans and rival tribes and factions manage to dishonor various Afghanistani sectors is an escalating factor.


More money into Afghanistan sounds good to American ears, sounds compassionate, sounds smart, but it looks like all it is doing is overwhelming an old culture with more western wealth than it can deal with, and ends up so distorting the society that we are working at cross-purposes with our nation building efforts.  


Our need in foreign countries is to work within the frameworks of the countries themselves, but that is pretty much impossible when we have scores of thousands of troops there as part of our own self protection.  


The old saying is that once you are up to your ass in alligators, it is hard to remember that you came to drain the swamp.


Maybe the swamp in Afghanistan has been drained sufficiently of al Qaeda, and it is time to leave the alligators behind and come home.


Obama, as usual, looks like he is trying to find a way to kind of leave without leaving too fast and offending too many Americans as he does it.  He has apparently laid out a draw down schedule that is faster than wanted by the military, but slower than is wanted by American doves.  It's a tough call as to how to get out of Afghanistan, and there is probably no way to do it without some sort of disastrous consequence, but a lot of people are tired of fighting, and paying for fighting, the alligators.

Rory to the rescue

I had the pleasure of watching Rory McIlroy win the U.S. Open by eight strokes.  One thing is obvious: he is so different from Tiger. 

Rory is very human: as I was rooting for him I was actually anxious that he might come apart and start to make mistakes and lose the tournament, whereas Tiger has always been cast as a kind of super-human.  With Tiger it was as if he had been dropped into the golf world from the planet Krypton.  His feats were astounding.  Rory is different.  He is just a very human, and quite excellent, young man.  I can feel a connection to Rory that I never felt with Tiger. 

I am very glad to have been able to watch Tiger play what was perhaps the greatest golf of all time. Watching Tiger play golf was, in a strange way, to inhabit a kind of adolescent fantasy of skills and powers beyond human dimensions.  You couldn't identify with Tiger, you could only fantasize about having his golf superpowers.  

His era is likely over now, and a new era of young kids in their twenties has been arriving for the last couple of years, and is now firmly in place with Rory’s masterpiece at Congressional this weekend. 

I think that Tiger sabotaged himself with his sub-human behavior which eventually became public and destroyed his marriage, his career, and his golf game.  I think that his father shamed him by putting super-human expectations on him, which he could not live up to, especially in the world of golf, the most unpredictable and uncontrollable sport of them all.  I believe that Tiger had a sub-conscious urge to be less than super-human and eventually to be found out to be less than super-human.  Unfortunately, he seems to have been able to see only two polarities: super-human or sub-human.  Maybe someday he will be able to become just human, with nice qualities of desiring to be excellent at golf and be a good man.

I wish Tiger well.  And I hope that he is taking this time in his life, where he is no longer viewed as super-human, to become human, and a good human.  It would be so good if he softened himself up and let go of his domineering, hard, unapproachable shell.  That may be too much to ask, but we golf fans are being given a different gift in the name of Rory McIlroy.  I don’t think Rory will be able to overwhelm the sport the way Tiger did, but I do expect to see him in contention for decades to come, and what a pleasure it will be to see a nice person, a very human person be in that lovely position. 

With any luck, Rory will not become the Next Tiger, he will just continue to be a nice human being who continually grows as a golfer and a man.

The election issues

Presidential elections are often a response to the perceived weaknesses and strengths of the existing president.  


To the right wing, Obama is a leftist and their design for their run at the presidency will be to run as free market right wingers against Obama the leftist/socialist.  


But, to the moderate wing of the Republican Party, say Romney or Huntsman, Obama is an ivy league professor trapped in the wrong job who doesn't have the skill set needed to be a competent, decisive leader.  


I think that if the Republicans have any chance at replacing Obama, they must run on the issues of competent leadership, especially in the arenas of the economy and foreign policy.  If they can dodge the true believers demanding ideological purity, they may even have a chance to win.

Depressing presidential election campaign coming up

David Brooks wrote an article that expresses my sense of disappointment, maybe even despair, regarding the upcoming presidential contest.  The problems of the country are almost overwhelmingly important and challenging, and our candidates in both parties seem to be remarkably unable to deal with them.

I wish I could be happier with President Obama, but I’m not.  The structural problems of the economy, deficit spending and joblessness, just don’t seem to have captured his attention, or at least they haven't inspired his creativity and leadership.  His deficit solution seems to be to “tax the rich”.  This is a theme for Democrats since FDR, and it is woefully inadequate now.  Taxing the rich makes only a small dent in the deficit.  He seems to think his health care overhaul is going to bring down medical costs, but that won’t even come close to closing the deficit enough without serious entitlement cutting.

The Republicans are even more hopeless.  Their solution seems to be to “lower taxes".  This is a theme for Republicans since Reagan, and it is woefully inadequate now.  Lower taxes are supposed to stimulate the economy and thus raise government revenues and lower deficit spending, but those increases, if they work at all, will be far too small to handle the looming deficit and potential loss of U.S. credit ratings without revenue increases.

As the problems get bigger, the politicians get more entrenched in obsolete ideologies that might have been reasonable approaches to the problems of decades ago, but don’t look to me to address today’s problems, shoot, they don’t even seem to notice today’s problems.

Brooks’ solution is to address four areas:  entitlement reform, working class empowerment, political corruption, and pro-business environment. 

He proposes what he calls a “Hamiltonian agenda” which would be pro-market where appropriate and pro-government where appropriate.  But the parties are stuck in either pro-government (Democrats) or pro-market (Republicans).  Neither is sufficient. 

I think that the party that produces a leader that is both/and rather than either/or will lead his party into the future, and the other party may well die.  I had hoped Obama was that man three years ago, but I’m not seeing it now when it is needed so desperately.  It’s going to take some magic for that to happen.  He talks both/and, but leads either/or.

Maybe Romney or Huntsman can con their base into voting for them, and then become a pragmatic both/and leader in the end.  It’s going to take some magic for that to happen too.  

Gingrich and the pitfalls of entitlement

From just the personal unlike-ability and poor-character level, Newt Gingrich never had a chance to become President of the United States.  But his nearly immediate self immolation is still a surprise.  After all, isn’t he actually smart and politically experienced? 

What his failed campaign shows me is the pitfall of the excess egotism of entitlement.  That is, he seemed to think that he could get the nomination and the presidency by taking short cuts – just be smart, interesting, provocative, creative, etc.  Sarah Palin has the same entitlement/shortcut mentality – just be a captivating media personality and the country will give you the nomination and presidency. 

The truth is obvious that running for president is a full time occupation which includes a lot of tedium and patience and persistence.  I’m sure that endless fundraising and answering the same questions over and over are no fun.  But, there are no shortcuts.  It is an exhausting process that tests and reveals the character of the participants.

So, Gingrich is out.  Ironically, one of his political mistakes was stating an obvious truth when he criticized the Paul Ryan budget plan as “right wing social engineering” which he opposed the same as he opposes left wing social engineering. 

But, that is another matter that deals more with the delusions of the right wing faithful about the infallibility of their ideology.

The Republicans aren’t offering much in the way of opposition to Obama, which is a shame because I’m not real happy with the job the president is doing.  One thing I am very confident about is that the country is not going to elect a right wing extremist.  How a reasonable person gets nominated in the Republican party is a mystery to me.