The 47% Moocher Nation?

After the Republican Primary, I wrote on 9/1 that the Republicans see the country as divided between those who want the country to be an Opportunity Society (Republicans) vs those who want the country to be an Entitlement Society (Democrats).

After the Democratic Primary, I wrote on 9/5 that the Democrats see the country as divided between those who think You Are On Your Own (Republicans) vs those who think We Are All In It Together (Democrats).

Mitt Romney has just made that distinction between the parties amazingly explicit.  He was quoted verbatim at a fund-raiser as saying:

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax....Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

This is a precise, even if overly candid, expression of the libertarian, Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand view of America - the takers vs the producers.

Liberals will say a lot about how the 47% who "don't pay taxes" actually pay a lot of taxes - not income tax, but rather pay social security taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, capital gains taxes, there are probably more...

Conservatives are probably in two camps:  those who are glad to get their main issue on the table, and those who are appalled that a candidate would actually say something that they all believe.  

So, to me, this is a really positive development in the campaign.  We finally are no longer dealing with symbolic campaigns on both sides.  We now have the basic philosophical differences of the two parties clearly expressed, at least by Romney.  

The country really has a clear choice of two competing philosophies, clearly stated.  

Will the voters agree with Romney and the Republicans that this is a choice between an Opportunity Society vs an Entitlement Society, or will they agree with Obama and the Democrats that this is a choice between a country where You are On Your Own vs a country where We Are All In It Together?

Let's stay out of the internal Islamic wars

The current wave of violence spreading across the Middle East is disturbing, of course, especially since in includes the murder of our Ambassador in Libya.  But what is going on?

I am always grateful to be able to read the thoughts of David Ignatius on these issues.  He seems to me to be someone with real connections to our intelligence community and the forces in the region as well. His approach is always filled with understanding and insight.

It looks to me like this is about the violent fights for power amongst the various factions in the Middle Eastern countries, i.e. their internal wars for power.  As usual, demonstrations in the streets are very anti-American, but underneath it are struggles for power over the countries themselves.  

In other words, this is between them, and the U.S. is just being caught in the crossfire.  

In Egypt and in Libya, the less violent and less Islamist extremist parties won political power through the political processes.  The more violent Islamist extremists are not happy and seem to be looking to seize power in the more traditional Middle Eastern ways - by revolution and force.

Ignatius says that in Egypt it is 

"...a challenge by the Salafists to their rivals in the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohamed Morsi."  

And in Libya it is a 

"...challenge to Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib and the secularist parties that are the backbone of the new Libyan government."

How extreme are some of the elements?  According to Ignatius:

"Also worrisome is the link between Salafists (whose posters disturbingly appear in Cairo neighborhoods near Heliopolis populated by members of the military) and the more violently "takfiri" wing, which believes it's permissible to kill apostate Muslims, and has links with al-Qaeda. The takfiris hate the ruling Muslim Brotherhoood, if that's any consolation."

That being said, it seems to me that Romney's inserting himself into a very difficult diplomatic situation upon the death of our ambassador seems remarkably foolish to me.  For a man whose reputation is to be one who gathers all the facts and makes thoughtful choices, his remarks seem impulsive and inflammatory.  I guess the facts that he gathered are about his losing the campaign, and his choice is to inflame his party's base.  Unfortunately it also inflames the Islamist extremists.

It seems to me that a person who will say anything in order to get elected is demonstrating his untrustworthiness.  If he will say anything, who knows what he will do?

This election is supposed to be about the economy according to the Republicans, and about the cultural issues according to the Democrats.  But how the two men, and two parties, react to the world may end up being the most revealing of all, and could decide the election.  

To me, Romney, the Republicans, and especially the hard right wing have lost this one.

A good summary is given by Ignatius in his article:

"Let's return to the main trigger for these events: It's the success of the tolerably non-extremist (I won't say "moderate") governments in Egypt and Libya in consolidating power, and the anger of the more radical Salafists at this success. "

Let's stay out of the civil wars in the Middle East.  No more American blood should be spilled in those lands, as far as I am concerned.

The introvert in chief

One of the most fascinating things about President Obama is that he is an introvert rather than an extrovert.  The main criticisms of Obama, especially from Democrats, is that he is not like Clinton or LBJ, i.e. he is not a people person.  He is not good at reaching out, persuading, twisting arms, making alliances, gathering people and resources around him, giving and getting favors that he can use to promote policy agendas.  In short, he is not a normal politician.  

I can understand that, because I am much the same way.  I am a salesman who is not a normal salesman.  I am not really a people person.  I am not an extrovert.  But I am a good salesman even though I am not the way many salesmen are.  So, I am happy enough with the job that Obama is doing, even though he is an introvert rather than an extrovert.  Who says you have to be an extrovert to be a president?  I think there are many leaders who are basically introverted.  I think introverted people are more likely to be more thoughtful, cautious, calculating, strategic, evaluating people.  And I think they can be very effective indeed.

Gay conservative, Andrew Sullivan, makes the same observation.  Indeed, he says one of the reasons he likes Obama is because he is also an introvert who  has good communication skills and can identify with him because of that.  Me too.

What was it that Obama said? Or Romney?

I guess it is no surprise that President Obama’s speech last night wasn’t as good as  Bill Clinton’s the night before, but I think I was surprised by how far it fell short.

After Clinton spoke, I thought that the election might be over.  He laid out the case for Obama and the Democratic Party in remarkably clear, immediate, and visceral language.  He handed the election to Obama on a platter. 

And the president said… what did he say again?  I really don’t much remember.  I think the faithful were excited because they are excited anyhow and love the president and are afraid of the Republicans.  But…

The president’s speech seemed to be mostly platitudes, generalities, a kind of collection of presidential ad-moments jammed into one speech.  There was a mention of citizenship, and his job is really tough, and it’s going to take a long time, and we can all make a better future, but…

What is his plan?  What is he going to do?  Where is he going?  Other than he really likes government, and loves his family, and cares about our future.  I was not moved.  I was not persuaded.  As opposed to being both moved and persuaded by Clinton the night before.

So, now it’s on to the debates.  But after watching the meaningless focus-grouped, poll tested platitudes that each candidate spewed out in their acceptance speeches, I am not very hopeful that I’ll see much in the way of substance in the debates either.  It’s like both candidates seem to think that all they have to say is “I’m not that guy.”

Where’s the beef?  

We're all in it together vs You're on your own

It is no surprise that Bill Clinton gave a great speech at the Democratic convention, but I think he surpassed my expectation.

Probably a lot to think about what he said, but the two things that stand out to me is his basic definition of the differences in the two parties from the liberal point of view - We're all in it together according to the Democrats vs You're on your own according to the Republicans. This is certainly the world view of the Dems.

The other thing that's staying with me was his summary of the Republican argument - Republicans say that we gave Obama a Huge mess, he didn't fix it fast enough, so give it back to us. Pretty good argument against giving it back to them. 

Watching Clinton give that speech made me wonder if he ever would have lost an election if he had not been term limited out. Hard to tell which of the two were more talented politically, Clinton or Reagan. Each could really sell his case. 

The opportunity society vs the entitlement society

Because of circumstances, I never had a chance to watch the Republican convention while it was happening. But I saw some of the speeches last night and this morning. I think it was a a fairly successful convention for Romney and the Republicans.  I think it accomplished a couple of important goals for them.  

They did a lot to show that Romney is not the caricature of a rapacious, ruthless plutocrat that Obama and the Democrats had been portraying him over the last few moths with their attack ads and editorials.  They gave a fairly convincing story that he is a hard working, committed, successful businessman, family man, and religious man. 

Plus, I think that the Republicans were able to lay claim to the stance that they are the party that is focussed on personal and business success, and that they are interested is a creating opportunity for people to succeed, and they see the essence of America as successful people looking for opportunities. I believe they see themselves as the keepers of the flame of the opportunity society, and feel that their opponents are the keepers of the flame of the entitlement society.

Romney promises change, but I appreciated his closing pledge, not to offer the grandiose promises of Obama to halt the rise if the oceans, but rather to help people and their families. His message is one of a pragmatic hard working problem solver focused on the economy, rather than an historically transformational figure.

His is the message of competency rather than the message of inspiration. 

I think the Republicans got their messages across competently. 

Checking on Realclearpolitics.com, Romney's pre-convention standing was 1.0 percent behind, and this morning, Romney's post-convention standing is 0.3 percent behind.  So, looking at the Real Clear Politics average poll numbers, he gained only 0.7 percent.  The post convention numbers could be a little out of date, however, as some of the polls may not have post-convention data yet. But, Romney needed about a four percent bounce, I thought, since that is about the average bounce from a convention.

It could just be that not that many people watched, or at least not that many who weren't already on the Republican bandwagon.  This election may be one where just about everyone has made up their mind, and there aren't that many folks left to compete over.

So, a job pretty well done, but perhaps not good enough. We'll see what Obama and the Democrats come up with.

Different focuses by Obama and Romney

In the broadest terms, Romney and the Republicans want this election to be about the economy, whereas Obama and the Democrats want this election to be about the Culture Wars.  Both attempts make sense.

It is hard for Obama to run on the economy, but he is appealing to women, minorities, and the liberal sense of decency by appealing to the issues of the Culture Wars, e.g.women's right to choose and control their reproductive health and lives, human rights for gays, opportunities for women, etc.  Their basic message is that if you feel oppressed by a rigid authoritarian and unfeeling white male society, Obama and the Democrats understand and will fight for you.  I think it has been a pretty effective campaign, and one that is made easier when things happen all the time during the campaign to demonstrate evangelical or libertarian rigidity.  

The most recent example of the rigidity of the evangelical wing of the Republican Party is the Missouri Senatorial candidate, Aiken, who actually thinks that if a woman is "forcibly raped" her body will shut down and prevent a pregnancy.  This of course is preposterous.  But, why does he think that?  Apparently, there is a theory created by those who avidly oppose abortion and see it as a hideous genocide of the most innocent and helpless human, fetuses. They oppose abortion in all cases, and to justify being against abortion in cases of rape they have developed a silly theory that a woman's body prevents impregnation if she is being assaulted.  Stupid, of course, but it shows the power of ideology: we all believe those things that support our deeper beliefs and passions.

The most telling example of the rigidity of the libertarian wing of the Republican Party is the Vice Presidential nominee apparent, Paul Ryan, himself.  He was part of the Simpson-Bowles commission that studied ways to reduce the deficit. Simpson Bowles got 11 of 18 votes but needed a super-majority of 14 of 18.  Four liberals and three conservatives voted no, including Ryan, but Simpson Bowles was published and passed by a majority. Unfortunately it was never pushed by the president and it died.

Romney would like to avoid the Culture Wars and focus on the economy, but his party has been taken over by avid Culture Warriors.  I think the economy and the budget are critically important this election cycle.  Something like forty cents of every dollar that our country spends is borrowed.  That is totally unsustainable and is leading us toward disaster.  

To best see what happens when Democrats are allowed to rule a government one needs go no further than my home state California.  Democrats run California, even when we had a Republican governor, Schwarzenegger, the Democrats ruled.  California is in serious financial trouble.  Democratic Governor, Jerry Brown has put an initiative on the ballot to raise taxes to be able to offset the deficit, and his reasons are persuasive:  parks are being closed, libraries are cutting back, the tuition for colleges is skyrocketing, K-12 education is on the brink of cutting back their school-years, the bond ratings of the state are falling, etc.  

But, what do the Democrats do?  they fund a liberal money gobbling fantasy - high speed rail, just about a month ago, for six billion dollars, the same six billion dollars that the schools need to stay open for the full school term.  Then, they approve a 14 billion dollar project to build two tunnels under the Sacramento-San Juaquin delta to ship water from northern California to Southern California.  

Democrats just can't seem to help themselves, if they see an idea that sounds good to them they just spend the money.  They are like shopaholics with a handful of credit cards, and they are spending us into bankruptcy.  Speaking of bankruptcy there are a number of California cities who are bankrupt with more to follow, I am sure.  

So, it is obvious why Romney wants to focus on the economy and the budget, and Obama wants to focus on the Culture Wars.  Each speaks to the other party's weaknesses.

By the way, I sure would like it if the Republicans actually were trying to reduce the deficit, but when they refuse to raise taxes they show that they are not serious about it.  Oh well.

Scaring the base to get voter turnout

The voter ID laws that have been passed in Republican states - and the Democratic opposition to them - are revealing a lot more than either the Democrats or Republicans think they are revealing, in my mind.

Pennsylvania is the cause of the day for the Democratic Party.  They are trying to overturn the Pennsylvania voter ID law.  Their main argument is that there have been only 10 prosecuted voter ID fraud cases in the last decade, so that proves that the purpose of the voter ID laws is to suppress the turnout of the black, young, and elderly.  They claim that about 750,000 Democrats in these categories would be disenfranchised votes in Pennsylvania.  Wow, that’s a lot of votes!  … er, potential votes.

But there are some interesting facts that undermine the Democratic Party voter-suppression narrative.  One is that voter ID laws were passed in Indiana and Georgia prior to the 2008 election.  Was Democratic turnout suppressed?  No. Liberal Lou Cannon writes:

“Democratic turnout surged in both states. Democrats say this reflected enthusiasm for Barack Obama, which is true but beside the point. The argument against strict photo-ID laws is that significant numbers of people who want to vote can’t obtain the required identification. If that were so, the Democratic vote should have increased less in Indiana and Georgia than in states without such laws. In fact, it was comparable.”

Republicans cry foul.  The issue to them is not who has been caught, but how many scores of thousands of votes get cast with no way of catching them, especially in the Democrat controlled cities. 

They claim that systemic fraud by the big city Democratic machines has inflated Democratic Party turnout and vote count for decades.  And they cite “walking around money” to pay people on Election Day who otherwise wouldn’t vote if they hadn’t been accosted by party machine get-out-the-vote operatives and taken to the polls.  They point to voter registration records that are bloated with deceased and otherwise non-eligible names.  Republicans claim they are righting a wrong that has been going on as long as one party controlled the voting mechanisms of the big cities, all of which today are very heavily registered and voted as Democrats.  Decades ago, the city machines were Republican, now they are Democrat, and both parties did the same things when they were in control.

OK, but what about the notion that the elderly, blacks, and the young can’t afford to pay the money to get the free voter ID cards.  (The cards are free, but Dems say that you may have to have to pay to get a birth certificate to get the free card).  Well, that really doesn't seem to hold up all that well either.  Pennsylvania seems to me to be very accommodating in making it easy for voters without voter IDs to have their votes counted.  Conservative John Fund writes:

“As Judge Simpson noted, anyone who cannot obtain a photo ID is allowed to cast a provisional ballot. Provisional ballots will be counted if the voter can provide officials with a copy of acceptable ID within six days by mail, fax, or e-mail. If a voter is indigent and cannot afford the fee for a copy of his birth certificate, he simply needs to affirm this and his provisional ballot will be counted. “I am not convinced any qualified elector need be disfranchised” by the voter-ID law, Judge Simpson concluded. He also found no problem with the law’s provision that absentee voters must provide the last four digits of their Social Security number or driver’s license, a useful protection against fraud”. 

But, Democrats say that the real proof of Republican voter suppression is Jim Greer, former Republican Party Chair who confessed that Republicans were suppressing votes:

“Greer mentioned a December 2009 meeting with party officials. “I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting,” he said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. He also said party officials discussed how “minority outreach programs were not fit for the Republican Party,”

Looks pretty bad. 

What do Republicans have to say?  Well, they point out that a Democratic Party operative claimed that Democrats were inflating votes:

“Artur Davis, the former Democratic congressman from Alabama who nominated Barack Obama for president at the 2008 Democratic convention, agrees. “A big thing that drove me to leave the Democratic party and support photo ID was the realization that the real victims of voter fraud are minority and poor people who live in places where machines block reform efforts by stealing votes,” he told me. He wrote in an op-ed in the Montgomery Advertiser last year that “voting in the names of the dead, and the nonexistent, and the too-mentally impaired to function cancels out the votes of citizens who are exercising their rights — that’s suppression by any light. If you doubt it exists, I don’t; I’ve heard the peddlers of those ballots brag about it, I’ve been asked to provide the funds for it, and I am confident it has changed at least a few close local election results.”

So, one way to interpret this is that neither party is really interested in democracy, especially not interested in fair elections.  They are really only interested in winning, and cheating is all part of the corrupt, disgusting game. 

Another way of interpreting this is that none of this really amounts to a hill of beans.  The huge voter inflation by Democrats suspected by Republicans is refuted by finding only 10 cases of fraud, and the fear of voter suppression by voter ID laws is refuted by the lack of evidence of lower Democrat voter turnout in the only two states that actually have voter ID laws – Georgia and Indiana.

I go for answer number two.  I think this is a tempest in a teapot.  I think that party activists get paid a lot of money to tilt the playing field for their party, and they take a lot of credit for doing so, and don’t really accomplish much at all. 

I think the real reason for the brouhaha is to get the party faithful riled up and out to the polls.  The people that MSNBC and Moveon.org are trying to get to the polls are the dedicated party faithful in their audience, not the indigent blacks or elderly that don’t really know what is going on.  And the people that the National Review and Fox News want to get to the polls are the dedicated party faithful as well.  Inflame, demonize, scream with indignation, appeal to your tribe to go out and destroy the other tribe, who are presented as inhuman monsters out to Destroy America As We Know It.

In other words, my hope is that we all calm down, and don't let the ideologues play us like a drum just to make sure we go out and vote out of fear.  Vote our convictions, you bet, be partisan, you bet, but resist the demonization and fear mongering of the ideologues.

Romney's pick of Ryan for VP reveals that he knows he is losing

Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his Vice Presidential choice.  This means, to me, that Obama has already scored a major victory in this presidential contest.

Looking at the race from the widest strategic view, I have always thought that if the race were to be a referendum on Obama's first term, whoever the Republican candidate was would likely win, because Obama's performance on the economy has not been successful, at least it is not something that he can campaign on other than say it wasn't his fault and that he has made it less terrible than it could have been. All the Republican candidate would have to do would be to pound home how terrible the economy was and how Obama was incapable of improving it.

Obama has always needed to change the subject from having the race be about Obama to having the race be about a choice between Obama and the Republican candidate.  Had Gingrich or Rand Paul or Santorum been the Republican candidate that would have automatically happened.  Those men are lightning rods in and of themselves, and who they were and what they represented would have been center stage as much as the first term Obama performance.  It would have been a choice rather than a referendum.

Romney was always running as the "Other Guy", the "Not-Obama Guy", the "Generic Republican."  Romney was always trying to keep the focus on the Obama economy.  He failed.  Obama won.  Obama shifted the focus to Romney - the "Plutocrat", the "Heartless Hedge-fund Profiteer", the "Cold Moneymaking Automaton."

If Romney had known that he was in the lead, he would have gone with one of the boring white guy Generic Republicans - Portman or Pawlenty.  If his own polling showed that he was losing, he was going to make a Bold Choice, i.e. forget about appealing to the middle and go for exciting the base with a Tea Party conservative, or a Social Conservative, or a Libertarian Deficit Hawk conservative.  He chose the Libertarian Deficit Hawk - Ryan.  It is a Hail Mary pass.  

The good thing about this, in my mind, is that it puts the Paul Ryan budget - cut, cut, cut the deficit - at center stage.  Obama and the Democrats were always going to run against the Ryan budget anyhow, and at least this puts the most articulate defender and visionary of the deficit cutting approach in center stage, Ryan himself.

Now, we could well have a real campaign, one centered on the heart of the differences between the governing philosophies of the Democrats and the Republicans - is government a hindrance to the growth of business and innovation and therefore an obstacle to the welfare of the people? or is government a necessary support and civilizing energy needed to harness and allow the growth of business and innovation and therefore a needed fundamental for the welfare of the people?

This election could well end up becoming the turning point election that I have been awaiting since Reagan's victory in 1980 - one where the country understands and chooses between two competing governing philosophies.  Up to now it has been an incredibly boring series of poll tested attack ads and insulting labels designed to destroy the opponent.  

Enough, enough, enough already.  It is time for ideas to take center stage rather than poll-tested and focus grouped subterranean appeals to the warring tribes in America.

Romney has a big problem

Mitt Romney has a very big problem ahead of him, it seems to me.  That problem is the Republican Convention. 

He campaigned as neither fish nor fowl.  That is, he spoke like a hard core right winger during the primaries, but no one believed that he actually was one.  He gathered more votes than the real hard core candidates, and I believe that the basis of his victory was probably the fact that the primary voters wanted a more moderate candidate than the other more extremists on the primaries tickets.

But almost all of his words pandered to the hard right wing.  And the convention will likely be filled with true believers who will exert a strong pull to the right.  So, how does Romney do what he needs to do to become president?  That is, how does he use the big stage of the Republican convention to address the nation, most especially the undecided voters and moderates, while standing in a giant hall filled with Tea Party and Evangelical and Libertarian faithfuls?

This Republican convention could have the same problem that the Democratic convention of 1984 in San Francisco did.  The convention delegates themselves could overwhelm the candidate’s message. 

After the ’84 convention, the Republicans mocked Mondale and the “San Francisco Democrats” because of the presentation of the San Francisco convention itself showed intensely dedicated hard left wing activists exuberantly pushing for hard core left wing policies.  Who Mondale actually was got swallowed up by the message of the convention itself.  Romney could well get swallowed up by the same dynamic in Tampa this year as the delegates on the floor become the message rather than the backdrop for the candidate.

If Romney just speaks to the delegates and tells them all the Tea Party and Social Conservative and Libertarian things that get them excited and aroused, it is possible that he will alienate those he needs in the center to win in November.  If he speaks more to the center, the reaction on the floor and among the Limbaugh/Beck/extremist commentariat could kill him amongst the base. 

I don’t know that this man has the political skills to speak to both the extremes and the center at the same time, and if he chooses one over the other, it could be the end for him.  He hasn’t shown much in the way of political dexterity so far, and I can’t say I expect it at the end of the month in Tampa.

Let’s not get too excited

Well, here we are in the dog days of summer of an election year, and the political world seems to be in the throws of desperate appeals to save the country from utter and total ruin if the wrong people get elected.  I’m getting pretty tired of it all.

That is, those on the left are screaming that the those on the right are out to steal the election, destroy the society, dismantle the government, and round up all the non-white and weak population and put them in concentration camps (well, maybe they are really saying those things, but those on the left know what those on the right really mean).

And, those on the right are screaming that those on the left are out to steal the election, destroy society, cripple the free market, and round up all the business and productive people and put them into government re-education camps (well, maybe they aren’t really saying those things, but those on the right know what those on the left really mean).

But, you know, look at what happened four years ago.  Barak Obama ran on Hope and Change.  He was seen to be, by his voters and by himself, a transformative historical figure.  He was going to change the county and change the world.  What happened?  The world changed, you bet, and he helped.  But it certainly hasn’t changed the way he predicted he would make it change, has it?  The world changes with or without our presidents or congresses. 

It is always so nice to pretend to believe during the big elections that our politicians have the power to rule the world.  But, the country, and the world, are so much more powerful than our politicians.  I think that what happens, mostly, is that those in power end up doing what they can’t avoid doing, which is reacting to reality rather than being able to keep campaign promises that make sense ideologically but don’t really make much sense in the real world.

For example, Candidate Obama was going to dramatically change the foreign policy of the United States – be nicer, more accommodating, lift negotiation and compromise back to the top of the agenda, have the world love us once again.  And I think he did a good job of changing the tone of Washington, but President Obama did what he discovered he had to do - he pretty much has maintained President G.W. Bush’s foreign policies in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, kept Guantanamo in operation, is tightening the sanction screws on the refuse-to-negotiate Iran, demonstrating U.S. power in the China seas, etc.  Much the same as Bush had done, or probably would have done.

Domestically, despite some of the most contentious and libelous battles I have ever seen in Congress, the debt ceiling actually was raised, the Keynesian stimulus package was actually passed, a nationalized health care package actually squeaked through congress and the president, the financial system was saved from collapse, a world wide depression was averted even though we are still in a pretty deep recession still, etc.  The world goes on despite the howls of the ideologues on both sides about how it is all coming to an end any minute now.

The pundits are aflame, the impassioned bases on the left and right are livid with fear and righteousness, the engaged middle is trying to calm the issues just a bit, the disengaged middle are trying their best to ignore the partisan hysterics, and in the end, we will elect a new government. 

And it will be a fine government after all, and the country will not be ruined. 

Let’s just not get too excited by the process, and realize that the process is very carefully designed to get us really, really afraid that it is all going to go to hell if we don’t vote for the right candidates. 

They are just trying to get your money, your time, and your vote. 

We should each pick a side, and be engaged, and care, and vote; let’s just pull away from the demonization of each other a bit, if we can.  We’re all in this together, and the day after the election we’re all going to be here still.  We need to live together, and it is so much better when we are not at each other’s throats.

Obesity - a government-industry policy

There is no doubting the obvious fact that the country is in the midst of an obesity crisis.  Why? 

The main reason is that people are eating a diet of what I call drug-foods rather than a diet of actual foods.  A drug food is something that has been invented by the food industry.  They are carefully engineered to produce cravings for more.  Unfortunately, they act like drugs and create addiction.  They are loaded with fat, sugars, and salt.  They are quick and convenient.  They are produced by today’s huge agribusinesses, industrial farms, fast food outlets, and highly processed foods found in most of the supermarket (almost everything in the middle of supermarkets are highly processed drug-foods, whereas you can find real foods on the perimeters – produce and meats especially) 

A couple of good sources of info about this are a wonderful book “The End of Overeating” by Dr David Kessler, and the movie “Food, Inc.”  The good thing is that neither of these is an angry polemic, but they do a good job of explaining why the average weight of Americans has gone up by over 30 pounds in the last few decades.

So, how did this happen to our country? 

First, I want to congratulate the food industry for feeding billions.  The Reverend Malthus in the early 1800s predicted that human population would grow exponentially, but tillable land would only grow linearly, and as a result the human race would face endless cycles of famine and war as ways to keep the population down to the number that could be fed.  But, the agriculture adopted the approaches of industry to grow food production exponentially, and thus has been able to feed an exponentially growing U.S. population.  The same can be said around the industrialized world.  Good for them.  Famine is not a good thing.

Next, it is necessary to recognize that there is a major adjustment that the food industry needs to make now that the quantity problem has been solved in the industrialized world.  Now it is time to focus on quality.  That is, it is time for the agriculture to find ways to produce enough food which is actual food rather than drug-food.

Or, more to the point, it is time for us, the eaters, to turn away from the drug-foods and turn to real food.  Where there is demand, there will be supply.  It’s the nature of free markets.

Which brings me to the point of this long post – the distortions of the free markets by the food industry and government.  Charles Lane of the Washington Post writes and interesting article labeled “The Government wants you to eat cheese”.  He points to one item, cheese, that our country has more than doubled the consumption of because of U.S. Agricultural policy.  The policy is not one designed to nurture the health of Americans, it is a policy designed to help “farmers’, or more to the point, to help the huge industrialized agri-businesses that have replaced farmers.  One portion of our government agricultural policy is to support dairy "farmers" by distorting the market to produce too much milk, which ends up being used to make much more cheese, which increases cheese consumption because of artificially low cost and government assisted promotion of cheese (think pizzas). 

Those on the left of the political spectrum will naturally blame agri-businesses for their capture and control of government policies so as to benefit these giant corporate farming and distribution industries.  And they would be correct.

Those on the right of the political spectrum would naturally blame an ever expanding and ever too powerful government doing the only thing it knows how to do, which is to try to direct and control through centralized government power every aspect of the lives of Americans, which inevitably results in consequences that are unforeseen, damaging to the people, and benefitting only the special interests who have their ear, and contribute to their re-elections.  And they would also be correct.

It is an unholy, and at least partially harmful, alliance of government and the corporate agribusinesses of America.  The “small” example of how these two teamed up to dramatically increase the consumption of a highly saturated fat food, cheese, is but one instance.  I am sure you can find the same story over and over again when looking at the overproduction of corn, grain feed beef, pork, chicken, and fish, etc. 

The American diet is abundant, but it is becoming more and more unhealthy.  It is the cause of the dramatic, unhealthy, costly, and tragic rise in obesity in America, and it is the result of government policy … no, it is the result of agribusinesses business model … actually it is the cause of government-industry joint policy.  And, just as I don’t expect the Mexican drug cartels to stop trying to sell Meth into America, I don’t expect the agribusinesses or the government to stop promoting their own self interests for the benefit of the health of the nation.

But, of course, there is a cure for this disease.  It is to recognize our addiction to food-drugs and to wean ourselves off of them and return to eating food.  The industry and government will follow.

Or, as I am told, a hand written sign said at a local farmers’ market – “Organic food, or as your grandparents used to call it – food”.

High speed rail or schools?

I usually try very hard to avoid paying attention to California politics because I find it too discouraging to know about.  But, Sacramento has managed to penetrate my zone of ignorance with an amazing bit of nonsense.

Apparently, the California legislature has approved roughly $6 billion funding of a high-speed rail project being started in central California, the “bullet train.”  The total price for this train is estimated to be about $69 billion, but that will increase dramatically I am sure before it is all over. 

This is some kind of ideological dream of some on the left.  Why it is important to them has always eluded me since it is obvious to me that it will just be a faster version of Amtrak.  That is to say, it will be a huge expense to build, will go to places few will want to go to, will likely be mismanaged and inefficient when in operation, and will attract not nearly enough riders to allow it to be profitable.  But, it gets funds from the Dems in Sacramento, who are apparently in bed with the unions pushing the project.

At the same time, California is deeply in the red.  Indeed, if the voters don’t vote for a proposed tax increase proposed by Governor Brown there will be an automatic trigger to cut…here’s the fun part… roughly $6 billion dollars from the budget. 

And, of course, the train won’t be cut, something much less (?) important will be cut… education.   Apparently, most of the cuts will come from public education by reducing the school year from 175 days to 160 days.  Maybe the politicians are just admitting that the California public school system is pathetic anyway (teachers’ unions protecting bad teachers and bad schools?), so why bother to prolong the charade?

And, oh yes, apparently the California legislature rejected Governor Gerry Brown’s pension overhaul plan, and substituted some toothless thing that they can pretend to be a reform. 

Good grief, if even a long time Democrat and liberal Gerry Brown can’t convince the unions and his own party to be fiscally responsible, who can? 

I had been ready to bite the bullet and vote for a tax increase because it has been apparent to me that the state of California really is out of money:  they are defunding parks, laying off police, firemen, and teachers, cutting back on libraries, releasing prisoners, dramatically raising college tuitions, cutting funds to cities (resulting in some city bankruptcies), and other things that I don’t even know about (except the roads seem to be in pretty bad shape too). 

But when these politicians decide to spend approximately $6 billion on an ideologically driven waste of money (the bullet train), and then threaten to cut school funding by about that same $6 billion, I despair for the future of the most beautiful state in the country. 

I have been trying very hard over the last few years to see both sides of an argument, and to see people I disagree with as having good intentions.  OK, so unions want jobs and Democrats need union support to get elected.  So, the Dems are hoping that the Reps will allow them to raise taxes rather than cut funding to the schools.  Fine, until you put the $6 billion into the train.  There, you have totally lost me.  A pox on Sacramento is what I say.


I will now go back to hiding my head in the sand regarding California politics.  It's bad for my emotional health to pay too close attention to it.

Time for jail for some bankers?

When conservative business commentator, Charles Gasparino, of the New York Post says that Wall Street and London bankers are in danger of being sent to jail, I take that as a serious observation rather than just wishful thinking by more liberal commentators.  


The issue is criminal fraud and collusion to lie about the rates that banks were using for interbank loans during the financial crisis, which kept the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) falsely low.  This allowed the super-banks to make money (greed again, of course).  And it altered the borrowing rates of the entire world.  The tip of the iceberg is Barclays.  More to follow.


It always seemed to me that the unethical things that these behemoths were doing - like deliberately selling toxic assets to unsuspecting investors, placing enormous bets in the derivatives markets that could make themselves fortunes but stick the taxpayers with the losses, etc. - should have been illegal rather than just morally appalling.  Somehow, these financial giants all escaped jail, continue to make private fortunes, managed to make their giant financial institutions even bigger, and increased their power and influence over government by gutting the government's efforts to regulate them and reduce their size and influence.


That run of arrogant domination may be coming to an end.  We may finally have come up with something that they did that was more than just disgusting.  They may have done something that actually is illegal.


And their campaign contributions may not be able to save them from losing their job, and even their freedoms.


More important than the satisfaction of seeing the greedy be punished, however, is the chance that this might finally create the culture change needed in London and on Wall Street.  The country, and the world, may get the financial system back into balance, where the people running these institutions actually are there to be a service to the economy rather than little more than super-casinos designed to create uber-wealth for themselves at the expense of the economy and the tax payer.


One can certainly hope.

Judge Robert's brilliance

I just read an explanation of Robert's move, and I am even more impressed.  My first thought is that it is very good news that he did not legislate from the bench.  But, even better is how he did it.


Those arguing for the constitutionality of Obamacare argued that it was allowed under the Commerce Clause.  But, if Congress can force people to buy something, that is not a good thing.  That is too much power for Congress to have.  So, the argument against Obamacare, when looking at it from the point of view of the commerce clause, was very persuasive. As argued by Randy Barnett, a strong voice against the law:


"The Framers knew the difference between doing something and doing nothing. They gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it. Ignoring that distinction would undermine the principle that the Federal Government is a government of limited and enumerated powers"


But Roberts changed the argument.  He allowed the constitutionality of Obamacare and, at the same time, limited the reach of the commerce clause. He said, in effect: "Mandate? What mandate to buy insurance? There's no mandate, anyone can refuse to buy insurance, they will just have to pay a fine, which is nothing more than a tax.  Same as a tax on cigarettes to discourage smoking, this is a tax to fund Obamacare, not a mandate to purchase insurance."  


So, the law stands -which makes liberals happy, but the commerce clause is restricted and cannot include a mandate from Congress to buy something - which should make conservatives happy, if they pause long enough to think about it. In other words, Congress is not allowed to force us to buy broccoli.


The best lawyer in the room changed the basis of the argument and achieved two results: he limited the power of Congress in their use of the Commerce Clause to force people to engage in economic activity, and he restrained the power of the Supreme Court keeping it from legislating from the bench.  


Bravo.

Chief Justice Roberts decides not to legislate from the bench

On March 27 of this year I had written on this blogsite that I hoped that the Supreme Court would not legislate from the bench and overturn one of the biggest and most consequential laws passed by the legislature in decades.  My hope was realized today as the Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Roberts, sided with the four "liberal justices" and upheld Obamacare (Affordable Care Act).  


As I understand it, Chief Roberts' main argument is that the charge that it was unconstitutional to have the "individual mandate" force people to buy health insurance is a false one because there actually is no mandate, only a penalty for those who refuse to buy insurance, which is nothing more than a tax, which Congress has the constitutional right to impose.


If the country doesn't like Obamacare, the proper remedy is at the ballot box. If the Republicans want to base their November campaigns on overturning the health care law, that is up to them.  But to my mind, there are much more important issues confronting the country:  the economy, the deficit, the still too reckless financial system, the Eurozone crisis, and the Arab Awakening and the changes it is causing in the middle east, for example.  


I thought that Obama wasted a precious year and a half at the start of his presidency focusing on health care rather than concentrating on the terrible Great Recession.  I hope that the Republicans don't make the same mistake now.  There are more important issues to deal with than this ideological obsessions of the right wing.  

Can Morsi govern over a legitimate democracy in Egypt?

By all accounts, Egypt is the leader of the Arab world.  So, when the Arab awakening happened in Egypt, there was much reason for celebration.  They had overthrown a brutal dictator, Mubarak.  Other Arab nations were likely to follow.  Certainly Libya did follow, and Syria is trying, but it is more complicated there.


Next, Egypt held elections and have elected a new president.  The West had certainly hoped that the results would be a secular, pluralistic government.  But, the Arab world is very much Islamic.  So, I suppose it is not all that big a surprise that the Muslim Brotherhood won the election.  And it can be no surprise that Egypt and the Arab world will become more Islamic in the future.  


The question that Thomas Friedman wonders about is whether the new president, Morsi, will rule as a leader of the half of the country which is Islamic, or will he create safety and outreach to the other half of the country - secular, liberal, Salafist, and Christian.  


There was a reason to hope for the latter today, because Morsi appointed a woman and a Christian as his Vice Presidents, and these are apparently positions of actual power rather than just ceremonial.  He has declared that women have the same rights as men, even though he had earlier declared that women should be banned from the presidency, and had also said during the campaign that the Quran would be the Egyptian constitution.


So, if Egypt is creating a mold, perhaps this is the direction the Arab world is going, more Islamic (but not Islamist) and also sincere in its efforts to create a society that is inclusive of the large minorities that are not Muslim.


One can certainly hope.

Moody's cuts the ratings of big banks

After the financial crisis of 2008, it became apparent that pretty much everyone involved in the financial industry had seriously screwed up - from the  financial institutions themselves, to the regulators, to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to almost everyone in Congress, to a series of presidents, and to the ratings agencies. 


Today, Moody's is trying to do its job in a more responsible way, and they have downgraded 15 large financial institutions. According to the New York Times:


"Two United States banks that were hit hard in the financial crisis emerged with the lowest ratings. Citigroup and Bank of America are now rated only two notches above junk. While Morgan Stanley avoided a worst-case scenario of a three-notch downgrade, its rating slipped by two levels."

I am encouraged that Moody's seems to be more on the job.  Their reasoning seems pretty straightforward to me:  

"All of the banks affected by today's actions have significant exposure to the volatility and risk of outsized losses inherent to capital markets activities," Moody's global banking managing director Greg Bauer, said in a statement."

It has seemed to me that the financial giants have done everything they could to keep their basic business model of taking huge risks on the assumption that if they win they make personal fortunes, and if they lose, tax dollars would be used to bail them out and keep them from failing.  This downgrade could be a wake-up call for the financial industry to actually make some real, substantive changes to the way they do business.  

I would like to see banks become boring places to work once again, where their business is to lend money to actual businesses creating actual jobs and building the economy.  I would like to see M.I.T. and Harvard graduates go on to get jobs in their fields of study rather than go to Wall Street to strike it rich - by taking risks with taxpayer's money by placing gambling bets in zero sum game markets that don't do anything to grow the economy.

The Greek elections settled nothing

As best as I can make out, the elections in Greece settled nothing.  The Greek electorate are divided, but at least voted against leaving the Eurozone, however the divided results could likely result in the "winning" New Democratic Party not being able to form a coalition government.  


The voters are divided: some agree that austerity is needed, some think less austerity and more government stimulus is needed.  Either way, they want the Germans to pay, and how long the German voters will go along with that notion is anybody's guess.


The primary symbol of the division, I think, is the division between Germany and France's new socialist president, Hollande.  Germany wants austerity and accountability as a condition of loans, whereas Hollande wants Keynesian government stimulus, but, of course, the source of the stimulus funds will ultimately be Germany.


The financial industry seems to hold to the belief that clever tinkering will keep it all afloat.  It gets so tangled, but I don't see how one of the two endpoints doesn't eventually happen: the Eurozone breaks up so that sovereign nations can have their own currency as well as their own fiscal policies and keep their sovereignty, or they all cede their sovereignty to an appointed aristocratic entity that dictates the fiscal policies of them all.  Both seem impossible, but the forces of ever continuing financial crises may eventually push them into one of those end games.  


I think there may be a deep, centuries old acceptance within the European mind that looks to and accepts rule by aristocracy.  A faceless, unelected bureaucracy in Brussels setting fiscal policy for all of the Eurozone may be how it ends up.

Republicans don't have an illness, they have a viewpoint

My favorite editorialist is the center-right David Brooks of the New York Times.  He writes an illuminating editorial in Friday's paper.  Many Democrats explain the Republicans' positions as being extremist and the result of some kind of mental illness.  David Brooks tries to explain Republicans to Democrats by saying:


"I guess I'd say that Republicans don't have an illness; they have a viewpoint...many Republicans have now come to the conclusion that the welfare-state model is in its death throes".


Democrats see Republicans trying to dismantle the gigantic entitlement state that liberals have spent many decades building and can see it only as insensitive and cruel lack of caring about and for people.  They explain it as insensitivity for people, as dancing to the tunes of the super-wealthy (who are  seen as essentially greedy and uncaring), as greedily keeping money for themselves and disregarding the needs of the people, or as psychological imbalances resulting from bad parenting or fear of change.


But, Republicans see it quite differently. To them it is obvious that the money has run out.  To them, Margaret Thatcher summed up the fatal flaw of the welfare-state:


"The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."

It may not be totally fair to call Democrats socialists, but the Republican view of the vast welfare state in Europe (and to a slightly lesser degree in America) is that it has run out of money and cannot be saved, and it's best to abandon it before it sinks and takes the entire country down in its whirlpool of destruction.

Greece is the first massive collapse of that governing philosophy, and it looks like Spain, Italy, Portugal, and maybe others are all teetering on the brink.  

And to Republicans, how far behind is the U.S.?  When 40% of every government dollar spent is borrowed, how viable is the U.S. welfare-state?  And the Obama and Democrat claim that this can be solved by taxing the "rich" is silly, it seems to them, as the revenue raised by that would be nice, but wouldn't come close to ending the deficit.

I can certainly understand that Republican view.  And I share it, as far as it goes.  

But, I would add that it is not only the entitlement welfare-state that is unsustainable, but the military-industrial state that is unsustainable as well.  It was all nice and good that America emerged from WWII as the dominant economic and military power.  But, to be reminded of Eisenhower, we need to curb the growing military industrial complex, which drains huge amounts of tax dollars to support it.  It was developed to fight a potential WWIII with the Russian and Chinese communists.  And, indeed, those totalitarian regimes were intent on world domination and needed to be stopped.  

But, we won.  And even though a revival of fundamentalist Islamism resulted in the terrible attack against us on 9/11, I think that much of our military and defense budgets can be reduced.  We have just run out of money.  We no longer have the money to be the military hegemon that we once did.

We can't afford the welfare-state, nor the military-state of the past.  There is a new America being born, as well as a new Europe and a new Middle East.  And I think living within our means as a nation is just as necessary as it is necessary to live within our means as individuals.

Reduce government spending (with reasonable entitlement reforms as well as cutting the military), reform the tax system (that includes raising taxes overall while lowering marginal rates so as to encourage innovation) and a new world can be born.

It is going to happen anyway, because, you know, we're runnning out of money.

Europe, United they fall?

I am not sure that the Euro will survive, nor the Eurozone itself. 


Economists Simon Johnson and Peter Boone write that it is nearly inevitable that the Eurozone is over, and it is just a matter of time for people to admit to it.  Greece, of course, will be the first to go.  Their point seems to be that the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Commission keep finding ways to loan money to Greece and the other weak periphery European countries, but all that is happening is that the eventual need for the breakup gets pushed down the road with the consequences of that breakup becoming bigger as time passes.  They foresee capital flight from the sovereign banks and governments of the periphery Euro countries.  


I'm not a financial guy, and I think people in the financial industries continue to believe that the European Project can be rescued by more and more clever ways to get loans to the failing financial institutions and the failing sovereign nations.  


But I wonder.


It looks to me like the eventual outcome is going to have to be one of two things:  either the Eurozone breaks up and an idealistic notion - that was unrealistic - reluctantly fails, or the Eurozone unites into some form of a European United States.  Both outcomes seem impossible now, but I think the forces pushing Europe into one of those outcomes are too strong to be changed with clever ways to transfer more and more money from Germany to the failing nations and banks.


One currency without one fiscal policy is proving to be disastrous.


If the Eurozone is to unite fiscally, it might be able to do so by having a central fiscal authority govern all of the Eurozone nations without needing to have all of Europe unite under one government, but how nations with centuries of sovereignty with their own cultures, histories, and languages voluntarily turn over their sovereignty to a central power is very hard to imagine.  Necessity, however, may force the issue in the end.  


If you look at the United States, we faced many of the same issues after the Revolutionary War.  The cultures of each sovereign state was very different from the rest, but we managed to make it work.  Indeed, the cultures across the various parts of the U.S. are still radically different - compare Texas and South Carolina to Massachusetts and New York.  But we manage to make it work.  


Or at least we have up until now.  Time for some prayers for harmony, hope, understanding, negotiation, and compromise, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Walker wins and FDR is vindicated

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker won handily in the recall election on Tuesday.  The unions tried to have him thrown out of office because he dared defy their powers.  


As I understand it, he cut government workers benefits, and when the unions tried to demonize him for it they discovered that the public wasn't too enamored with the extraordinary benefits of the union workers, and had at least some sympathy for Walker's claim that the benefits were bankrupting the state.  As a matter of fact, since the new rules on the government unions went into effect the state went from a massive deficit to a surplus.  


So, the unions decided to change the issue to Walker's denying the unions the right to collective bargaining, which Walker was hindering.  But, at the heart of the unions' complaint was that Walker was changing the rules on the unions' ability to collect union dues.  That is, the dues would no longer be automatically collected, and union membership would become voluntary.  As I understand it, once these new rules were enacted, union membership dropped by about half.  The result?  Loss of union power, which is what the recall effort was all about, union power.


The unions tried to wield their power, but lost power instead.  That is what happens in power plays - either you win or you lose, and the governmental unions lost.


The most interesting thing, to my mind, is to revisit the grandfather of modern liberalism's views on the role of collective bargaining of governmental unions - that of Franklin D Roosevelt himself.  In a letter to the National Federation of Federal Employees, written August 16, 1937, FDR made it very clear that collective bargaining had no place in public service of governmental employees. 


A couple of excerpts from this short letter:


"All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.... Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the function of any organization of Government employees... a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied.  Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable an intolerable."


Pretty clear - "unthinkable and intolerable."  


I'm not sure that the public employee unions have done much in the way of threatening strikes in Wisconsin or elsewhere, but they have been negotiating with politicians, Democrats especially, who have an incentive to give them what they want.  This is because the Government unions are the biggest supporters of pro-union politicians, i.e. Democrat politicians.  They give them both money and lots and lots of free labor to man phones and help them campaign in many ways.  


So, it is no wonder that the unions got so much of their demands on pensions.  Had they demanded large wage increases, those kinds of numbers could be publicized and used effectively as a tool to deny the government unions' demands.  But, pension improvements were just too arcane to be able to be turned into headlines or bumper stickers, so the unions got what they wanted. 


The problem is that the big pensions, granted to younger and younger retirees, are eating up the other government services in a time of recession like today.  Voters are seeing that libraries, parks, education, and public safety are suffering while the pensions sail along keeping middle class, middle aged people on the public dole for decades to come, at nearly the same wages as when they worked.


So, Wisconsin said no to the recall.  How did government unions stray so far away from FDR's vision? I don't see this so much as a victory for Republicans against Democrats or Republicans against unions.  I see this more as a needed balancing of something that was out of balance.