19. March 2012 by admin.

When Barack Obama was running for President, he had the entirely reasonable idea of letting the Bush tax cuts expire for those making over $200k/year.  In December 2010, he caved and signed on to an extension of the tax cuts for two more years, even though the government was (and still is) running huge deficits.

What happened?

Allow me a somewhat fanciful explanation:

Sometime after he was elected but before he was inaugurated, President-elect Obama was briefed on the realities of our world and the Presidency.  He was told the truth about terrorists and UFOs, the proper way to order an ICBM launch, and the location of the secret White House Coke machine.

I’ll speculate further that he was also given a briefing rather like the ‘primal forces of nature’ speech from the movie Network about how the US was doomed, and how he couldn’t raise taxes on the rich, or tweak entitlements, or do any of the practical things that one might think of to actually address the problems we face.  He was also informed in grisly detail of the consequences for proposing such heresies, or telling the American public the truth about what we are facing.

And so Barack Obama, apostle of Hope and Change, became yet another politician.

But we didn’t get that briefing.  We’re outside the corridors of power, watching our country crumble around us, wondering, if not about our next meal, where our meals will come from two years from now.

If we set aside, for a moment, our notions of what is politically correct or feasible, how could we restore productivity and prosperity?  Or is it really a lost cause?

Posted in Politics, Dysfunctional Government, Money, Barack Obama | 1 Comment »

22. August 2011 by admin.

The Republicans, who consider the entire concept of taxation to be evil, have found a tax increase that they actually like.

Last December, in an effort to stimulate the economy, Congress passed a one-year reduction in the payroll tax.  The actual rules are a bit complicated, but basically, the roughly 8% Social Security/Medicare tax that every working American pays (including the nearly half that don’t earn enough to pay Federal income tax) was reduced to about 6%, a little more than a 25% reduction.

Now we’re looking for ways to cut spending, and the Republicans are proposing not to extend this tax break for another year.  If this were a package deal, together with ditching the Bush tax cuts, I’d be OK with it.

To be fair, the Republicans have a point: putting a few hundred extra dollars into the pockets of ordinary Americans (who don’t create jobs) won’t do much to pull the economy out of its slump.  On the other hand, putting thousands of extra dollars into the pockets of the richest Americans hasn’t helped much, either.

For my part, I’m not sure that tax cuts do that much to stimulate the economy, and I get annoyed with politicians of either stripe who push for tax cuts just to score votes.  But the underlying argument of the Republicans is mean-spirited: rich people’s money is valuable to the economy and not to be taxed, while poor people’s money ‘doesn’t create jobs,’ and therefore fair game.

Posted in Politics, Money, Barack Obama | No Comments »

20. August 2011 by admin.

A conservative friend of mine send me an essay railing at President Obama for being, among other things, a liar.  While I’m sure it was satisfying for the author of the essay to write it, and for many conservatives to read it, I wondered.  My mother taught me to be very careful when calling someone a liar, and while I can think of oodles of things that our President said that turned out to be not quite true on further inspection, I was hard-pressed to identify a real lie.  So I turned to the Web, where I found lots of help.  There was an article in Human Events listing the ‘top 10 Obama lies.’  So let’s have a look:

1.  Americans want higher taxes:  During the debate over raising the debt ceiling, President Obama said that 80% of Americans support including higher taxes as part of the deal.  But a Rasmussen poll taken the same week showed that only 34% believe a tax hike should be included in a debt-ceiling agreement.

I remember news reports that indicated that a majority did favor higher taxes.  And in fact, there was a Quinnipiac poll that reported 55% in favor of higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations to help address the debt.  Not quite the 80% reported by our President, but close enough by politician standards.

2.  Mother denied health insurance:  During his presidential campaign, Obama said that his mother died of cancer after being denied coverage for a preexisting condition…. But [she] had health insurance through her employer and was only denied disability insurance.

His mother was denied some form of insurance.  Again, close enough for political work.

3.  Tax restraint for middle and lower class:  Obama pledged during his campaign and throughout his presidency not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000.  But ObamaCare’s individual mandate… a higher federal cigarette tax and countless other “fees” in the health care law… hit the middle and lower class.

The usual context of this statement is the Federal income tax, and in that context, Obama has been true to his word.  ObamaCare is a special case, about which I have more later, and if you don’t want to pay excise taxes on cigarettes, then don’t smoke.

4.  Shovel-ready jobs:  When Obama was selling his $787 billion stimulus package, he consistently bragged about how shovel-ready construction jobs would be funded across the nation.  Even the President later admitted…:  “There’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects.”

In my professional life, I’m involved with public works projects, and I know that there is no such thing as a ’shovel-ready’ job.  At best, there is a nearly-complete design on the shelf that is waiting for funding, and it would take a bare minimum of three months (and more practically 6-9 months) to finish the design, bid and award a contract, and start work.

But Obama is a politician, not an engineer, and if he hears from state and local politicians about all these projects they’d like to execute, but just need funding, he’s inclined to believe them. Alas, even allowing for a few months’ latency, there was no bump in employment as these ‘not-quite-shovel-ready’ jobs took hold.  So I’ll score this as one that he had to learn the hard way.

5.  Keep your doctor:  President Obama repeatedly pledged that under his health care measure, Americans would be able to keep their doctors.  However, with rising costs, many employers will dump their health care plans….

ObamaCare is an abomination for a variety of reasons.  But Obama is correct in noting that there is nothing in the health care legislation that will prevent you from seeing your current doctor or maintaining your current insurance.   (Whether you will be able to in real life is another matter, as many have pointed out.)

6.  No lobbyists:  During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama said:  “We have the chance to tell all those corporate lobbyists that the days of them setting the agenda in Washington are over….”  At least a dozen former lobbyists got top jobs in his administration at the beginning of his presidency….

Every politician rails at lobbyists, and ultimately does nothing.  So what else is new?

7.  Foreign money in campaigns:  During his 2010 State of the Union address, and again during the 2010 midterm elections, Obama railed against foreign money influencing U.S. elections.  The only problem was that there was no evidence to support the charge….

Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address came a few days after the Citizens United Supreme Court decision ruling that allowed corporations and others to present ‘issue’ advertising during the political campaign cycle.  While such advertising cannot identify candidates by name, it can be readily associated with candidates.  And a foreign corporation could indeed present such advertising, if they really wanted to wade into the cesspool that is American politics.

8.  Arizona immigration law:  During the battle over Arizona’s immigration law, President Obama said:  “Now suddenly if you don’t have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you can be harassed, that’s something that could potentially happen.”

Well, if you were speeding on the way to the ice cream parlor, you might get stopped, and then you could get in trouble for not having your papers.  I don’t know if Arizona has a law (as in New York) enabling the police to stop and ticket you if you aren’t wearing your seat belt, but if it does, that would be another ’show me your papers’ moment.  The threshold is any infraction where the police would stop you and ask questions, not necessarily a crime.

9.  Transparency:  Obama pledged that transparency would be a top priority, but his administration refused to grant one-third of the Freedom of Information Act requests, according to an Associated Press analysis.  He also was dishonest about transparency when he said that health-care negotiations would be televised on C-SPAN and that he would wait five days to sign a bill so people would have a chance to read it online.

Stupid naive campaign promises, nothing more.

10.  Constitutional oath:  During his January 2009 inauguration, Barack Obama pledged to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” yet he has consistently ignored the 10th Amendment giving powers not enumerated in the Constitution to the states.  Exhibit No. 1: ObamaCare.

ObamaCare relies on a twisted interpretation of the Commerce Clause (’Congress shall have power to… regulate Commerce… among the several States;’) to require people to purchase insurance.  As far as the Tenth Amendment, I’m sure it isn’t the first time that the Federal government has imposed uniform standards on something across the states.

To take another Tenth Amendment example, consider Arizona’s immigration law.  The President can rail against it; he can have the Justice Department sue the state of Arizona in pursuit of what he believes to be right; but he can’t force Arizona to abandon its law.

Our President may question whether the Constitution allows him to do this or that, but I can’t identify any time where the President has simply disregarded or violated the Constitution.

*          *          *

My point in all of this is not to defend President Obama’s performance: he has been one of our most inept Presidents in a long time.  Yes, he’s more inept than President Carter, who had decent policies but couldn’t present them well.

But he’s no more a liar than the average politician.  Every politician overlooks inconvenient facts, makes pointless promises he has no intent in keeping, pontificates from ignorance (’shovel-ready jobs’), or engages in creative over- or understatement to advance his agenda.  Moreover, every President lives in a bubble, surrounded by advisors who tell him what he wants to hear.

I’m bitterly disappointed in President Obama.  I disagree with his policies, and I’m horrified by his non-leadership leadership style.  But if I call him a liar, I would also have to call almost all of his modern predecessors liars too.  The last President who wasn’t a liar was Jimmy Carter: it was perhaps the root of many of his problems.

Posted in Barack Obama | No Comments »

11. May 2011 by admin.

President Obama was speaking in Texas the other day about immigration reform.  His proposals are dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled House and tepid Senate, but he was at it anyway:  “Maybe they’ll need a moat,” he said of the Republicans. “Maybe they’ll want alligators in the moat.”

He’s probably right.  But that isn’t the real problem.

One of the basic attributes of a nation is that it has the right to decide whether to allow people and things in and out.  We’ve failed at that for quite some time, and while there has been progress in building a fence (which, in itself, is not a bad idea), there are still wide open spaces that the Border Patrol cannot practically supervise, as well as criminal elements with a vested interest in moving across the border on their own terms.

But let’s imagine, for a wild moment, that today we installed a hermetically sealed border: nothing could get in or out unless the designated authorities allowed it.  Drug smugglers and terrorists are kept out; business travelers can pass through freely; other people can get in if they have the resources and patience.  Fine and dandy.

OK: what do we do about the roughly 12 million that are already here illegally?   Right now, the government doesn’t generally go looking around for illegal aliens.  If they cross paths with one, he might get deported, but maybe not.  But that satisfies nobody.

One approach is that favored by Obama, and Democrats in general: provide a path to legal residence, and ultimately citizenship, for those who are worthy of it (as demonstrated by living here peacefully, paying one’s taxes, otherwise not breaking the law, etc.).

It’s a practical solution.  It was so practical that it was actually done in the 1980s, under Ronald Reagan.  But we were supposed to couple that with reinforcing the border and making it harder for illegal immigrants to get jobs, and we didn’t really do that part.  So here we are again.

Some on the right have suggested mass deportations as a solution.  But that is a nonstarter for many practical reasons, most obviously because we would have to overtly turn our country into a police state in order to make sure we got everyone.  And as soon as an American citizen got deported inadvertently, all of the politicians who were responsible for the plan would be on their way out, routed by a groundswell of popular anger.

So the Republicans simply say ‘no amnesty,’ and nothing changes.  (Never mind, by the way, that providing a path to residence through paying a fine and filling out piles of paperwork does not constitute ‘amnesty.’)  And we have an underclass of scared people who are willing to work for very little, which drives down wages for the rest of us.  Is that what America stands for?

Perhaps not, but eerily, it’s what the Republicans stand for.  The modern Republican stands for lower taxes, less regulation, and less of everything that can get between a businessman and his profits.  If government policy can be used to lower wages, then that’s good, too.

But if what you really want (although won’t admit) is to keep a scared underclass on hand to lower wages, then a secure border isn’t really very helpful.  As for the criminals who might sneak across, the answer is simple: live somewhere else.

So while the Republicans profess to be defenders of the realm, they’re really defenders of the status quo, because that’s what best serves their real interests.

And if that weren’t enough, there’s also the other reason for ‘no amnesty’ that is more acceptable in polite company: if the currently illegal immigrants ultimately became citizens, they’d probably be Democrats.

Posted in Immigration, Dysfunctional Government, Barack Obama | 1 Comment »

4. May 2011 by admin.

Last Sunday, so the news reports tell us, a team of Navy Seals visited Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and killed him.  He was then buried at sea.

Yeah, right.

That, indeed, was my reaction.  My trust in government has eroded to the point where I’m reluctant to take such news seriously.  Osama bin Laden was the bogeyman of the last decade: Obama must be pretty desperate in the polls to tell us that he was gone.

But as more detailed reports came out yesterday, I’m willing to believe… just barely.  And I’m encouraged that our President has learned that being nice doesn’t always work: sometimes you have to use force.

Now, can we repeal the Patriot Act, disband the TSA, and peel those stupid flag decals off our subway trains?

Yeah, right….

Posted in Terrorism, Barack Obama | No Comments »

30. April 2011 by admin.

The other day, President Barack Obama released his long-form birth certificate, supposedly ending the controversy over whether or not he was actually born in Hawaii.  While I find myself opposed to his policies (even after I voted for him!), the whole ‘birther’ exercise seems pointless and stupid.  (And it isn’t over: some are asserting that the long-form birth certificate is itself a forgery, and 70% of the respondents in a poll in the Daily News assert that the release of the certificate does not close the issue.)

For my part, if competent authority saw fit to issue Obama a US passport–that indicates his place of birth as Hawaii–well before he became President, then he’s a US citizen, born in Hawaii.  He spent most of his youth and adolescence outside the US, and was therefore not steeped in American culture, but that doesn’t disqualify him to be President, and nevertheless, we voted for him.

In other news this week, both AlterNet.org and Glenn Beck (weird combination!) came forward with the a draft form proposed by the Department of State for new passport applicants.   The form asks for your immediate relatives (parents, siblings, children), every address you’ve lived at since birth, and every job you’ve held, including your supervisor’s name.

Once upon a time, I was a New York subway conductor.  Every day, I was assigned to a different route.  I guess my ’supervisor’ would have been the Crew Dispatcher, but I never met him and don’t remember his name.

If you weren’t born at a ‘medical facility,’ there is an additional series of questions, including your mother’s address one year before and after your birth, medical care she received, and other records of your birth.  (But if you were born at a medical facility, I guess you get the short-form birth certificate from your local Department of Vital records and you’re good to go.)

The reports don’t indicate the context in which the form will be used: whether it’s for all applicants, or just those who can’t otherwise document themselves.  The one context where the form would genuinely seem to be useful is for a child of illegal immigrants who is born in the US in someone’s house.  (As much as some may resent it, it’s still the law of the land, and even if the Constitution is changed, those already born here will still be citizens.)

But it will be genuinely be chilling if this form is required for all new passports, and freakish if it is required for renewals.

I guess I’ll find out when my passport runs out in two years.

If I have to fill out the form, I’ll have to find our who the Crew Dispatcher was.

Or can I just dig up a copy of my long-form birth certificate?

Posted in Politics, Dysfunctional Government, Barack Obama | No Comments »

12. February 2011 by admin.

Yesterday, Hosni Mubarak stepped down as President of Egypt, after three weeks of demonstrations.  Egyptians at home and all around the world rejoiced at the prospect of freedom, as the army took over.

No, that last part was not meant as a joke.  The people were happy because the army took over.  That part seems a little strange to me as an American, who considers the military as an agency of the government, but I understand that other parts of the world do things differently.

For our part, the American leadership was all over the place in responding to the events in Egypt, because, in brief, we’re not sure what to do about it.  On the one hand, we’re pleased that the Egyptian people are striving for political freedom.  On the other hand, President Mubarak was a strategic ally, and Egypt is the one Arab nation that is undeniably at peace with Israel.  In a practical sense, we were sorry to see him go, but we couldn’t say that too loud.

But what happens next?

The immediate cause of the demonstrations in Egypt was increased food prices and poor economic opportunity.  But I don’t see how replacing the President as leader with a general, or even the transition to greater political freedom, is going to change that.

From our perspective as Americans, we worry that some Islamic group will take power, ditch the peace with Israel, and generally give us trouble.  But not knowing the facts on the ground, there is not much we can practically do.

Except pray and hope for the best….

Posted in Egypt, Politics, Barack Obama | No Comments »

29. January 2011 by admin.

Last Tuesday, I had wanted to watch the President’s State of the Union address, but my wife wanted to watch a Korean soap opera.  I deferred to my wife: I find the Korean soaps entertaining, or at least the ones with English subtitles.  And I could watch the address later, or at least read a transcript.

This morning, I finally got around to watching the speech.  I’m genuinely disappointed:

• President Obama told us that ‘innovation’ was the way out of our troubles.  OK, but the problem with innovation is that it ends up getting manufactured in China.
• He gave us chapter and verse about how education needs to be improved in the US, and got a standing ovation for stating the obvious about respecting teachers.  But there was nothing about how, specifically, we might enhance school performance.
• He also agreed that it was necessary to do something about government spending.  However, entitlements were completely off the table, although they represent most of our problem.
• He noted that the Federal government would reorganize itself to become more efficient.  That’s certainly a good idea, but hardly a source of jobs.
• He indicated that he was willing to consider changes to last year’s health reform law, most specifically the onerous requirement for businesses to report virtually all of their spending to the government.  Funny, but if everyone hates the idea, why didn’t it get changed in the ‘wonderfully productive’ lame-duck session of Congress before Christmas?

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Things Falling Apart, Barack Obama | No Comments »

18. December 2010 by admin.

Yesterday, President Obama signed into law an extension of the Bush tax cuts for two years, after insisting in his campaign that he wanted to let the cuts expire for those earning over $250,000/year.  The liberals who supported him are disappointed that he turned his back on his principles; more moderate commentators commend him for pivoting to the center like Bill Clinton.

For my part, I’m disgusted.

The bonanza for the rich (relief from what would have been a maximum 13% tax increase) was accompanied by a one-third cut in the employees’ portion of the Social Security tax for next year.  So we’ve all got a share of the goodies.
In this battle between Republicans and Democrats, the only thing that both sides can agree on is spending money they don’t have.

Meanwhile, the toxic borrowing goes on, and nobody seems to want to do anything about it.

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Money, Barack Obama | No Comments »

7. November 2010 by admin.

From today’s Daily News:

—

President Obama Saturday announced $10 billion in trade deals with India that will create 50,000 U.S. jobs.

“The United States sees Asia, especially India, as the market of the future,” Obama said at a gathering of business leaders in Mumbai. “We don’t simply welcome your rise … we ardently support it.”

…Still, he acknowledged many of his fellow countrymen don’t see India as a job creator.

“There still exists a caricature of India as a land of call centers and back offices that cost American jobs. That’s a real perception,” he said.

…”For America, this is a jobs strategy,” he said. “The goods we sell in this country currently support tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs across the United States.”

The deals, for instance, include Boeing building aircraft for the country and General Electric selling it jet engines.

***

Obama wants to assert that trade with India creates jobs for Americans.  OK, it’s nice that we can still build aircraft for export.  But the fact remains that call centers and back-office functions, as well as activities requiring actual thought, like legal and medical reviews, are outsourced to Indian firms on a far larger scale.

And the 50,000 jobs (or even 100,000, as some sources suggest) associated with the specific trade deals with India are far less than we need every month just to stay ahead of population growth.

And one day, probably sooner rather than later, the economics will come together to enable India to build aircraft and engines for themselves, rather than importing them.

Does Obama simply not understand what’s happening?

Or are we so desperate that any export deal is to be hailed as a major achievement?

Posted in India, Money, Barack Obama | No Comments »

24. March 2010 by admin.

Alas, the President signed health care reform into law yesterday in an elaborate ceremony with 22 pens.  It isn’t the end of the world; it isn’t even the end of the US republic.

But it will drive preposterously high insurance premiums still higher, and ultimately affect the care and insurance arrangements we currently have in effect (Our Fearless Leader’s assertions to the contrary notwithstanding).

I’m still on the Barack Obama mailing list, and I received a missive Monday that asserted:

…every American will finally be guaranteed high quality, affordable health care coverage.

No, what we’re guaranteed is access to health insurance, because we’ll be required to buy it.  What the insurance will ultimately be good for–and even what the insurance we currently carry will be good for–is another question.

Arbitrary premium hikes, insurance cancellations, and discrimination against pre-existing conditions will now be gone forever.

In fairness, some of these represent genuine problems.  It clearly isn’t right for an insurance company to initially provide coverage and then, when you get seriously ill, refer to your adolescent acne, or something similarly irrelevant, as a ‘pre-existing condition’ and rescind your coverage.   And nobody likes arbitrary premium increases.

But premiums rise to reflect increases in the cost of providing care, which has gone up far faster than the general rate of inflation.  Unless you do something to actually reduce health care costs, what about the non-arbitrary premium hikes?

And if insurance companies can’t discriminate against pre-existing conditions at all, and insurance will still be expensive, what will prevent people from waiting to purchase insurance until they’re seriously ill?  This will result in substantial, non-arbitrary premium increases.

And we’ll finally start reducing the cost of care — creating millions of jobs, preventing families and businesses from plunging into bankruptcy, and removing over a trillion dollars of debt from the backs of our children.

Just one question: how?  We’re going to mobilize trillions of dollars of private and taxpayer funds to pay for health care.  How does that make costs go down?

Posted in Health Care, Barack Obama | No Comments »

12. March 2010 by admin.

It looks like Our Fearless Leader will get his way and ‘health care reform’ will soon be the law of the land.  Heaven help us.

Health care reform–the campaign promise–was intended to address a practical problem: it costs too much.  It costs the government; it costs private insurers (who pass the cost along); and woe unto that poor soul who gets seriously ill without insurance.  He’ll end up broke: lacking the clout to negotiate a better deal, he will have to pay full price.

Imagine a community beset by monsters, who come out at night, wreck buildings, eat the cows and chickens, and the occasional small child.

To deal with this obvious danger, the government mandates that everyone carry monster insurance.  It works like this: when monsters attack your home, you call for help, and within three minutes, the Monster Insurance crew arrives at your home in a truck with a tank of strawberry-flavored Ensure.  The monster is hosed down with Ensure; he licks it off his belly; and contented, he slinks back into the night.

What will this do the population of monsters?   They’ll find it easier to feed, and grow stronger, and reproduce in greater numbers.  The Monster Insurance crews will need bigger trucks, and premiums will go up.  Moreover, when the monsters get tired of strawberry-flavored Ensure, the crew will have to bring other flavors.

‘But wait!’ I hear you scream.  ‘We’re not talking about monsters, we’re talking about medical treatments that save people’s lives!’  That’s true.  But what kind of life is it if all you’re going is earning money to pay for health care?  And what happens when all your taxes–if you’re healthy enough to earn a living–go to pay for other people’s health care… and the government still can’t balance its books?  (We’re closer to that in New York State than most people care to admit.)

Right now, health care is about one-sixth of the economy, considerably more than in other industrialized countries.   I’ll predict that if health care reform passes, within ten years, health care will be at least one-quarter of the economy, and the cost will still be bankrupting all of us.

Now is the time to face the monsters, rather than figure out better ways of feeding them.

Posted in Health Care, Dysfunctional Government, Barack Obama | No Comments »

27. January 2010 by admin.

The Obama administration indicated yesterday that the President would call for a three-year freeze on discretionary spending as part of the State of the Union address tonight.  It’s official: he’s now just another politician, and not even a very good one.

Every President in modern memory, except one, has jumped up and down and insisted that the deficit be reduced.  (The only exception was Clinton: we were flush with the Peace Dividend and actually ran surpluses.)  And every President who jumped up and down about deficit reduction never actually accomplished it.

The freeze in discretionary spending affects less than $500 billion of a $3.5 trillion budget.  (Can’t anyone divide?  The press is reporting that the freeze affects 17% of the budget, but when I went to school, 500/3500 = 1/7 = about 14%!)  Of course, the sacred cows of defense and entitlements are off the table.  Projected savings from this measure in the first year are estimated to be $10 to $15 billion, or less than 0.5 %.  It’s like saying that I’ll balance my family budget by giving up magazines, books, and movies.

On the other hand, deficit spending (whether actual spending increases or tax cuts) is the government’s most useful tool for dealing with a bad economy.  The spending has to be chosen wisely, which didn’t happen with last year’s stimulus package (in which the Democratic Congress ran around like kids in a candy store).  Bad deficit spending is worse than flushing the money down the toilet, because the recipients of the money will have reason to expect more in the future. But good deficit spending (say, investments in infrastructure) can be genuinely useful.

More than I’m disappointed by the substance of the move, I’m disappointed that our President seems to be displaying no leadership at all.  He’s getting the buzz that people are worried about the deficits, so he’s serving up some old blather to suggest that people shouldn’t worry.

I wish President Obama would:

• Pick a direction.  For all that I railed against President Bush, he at least did this part right.  If Obama wants to temper his decisions to make them more acceptable to the opposition, it should be done before taking the plans to the public.  Setting forth a big plan, and then conceding later, looks wishy-washy.
• Articulate a clear vision of what he’s trying to do, going beyond the sound bites and addressing reasonable concerns from the other side.
• Do NOT then throw the issue over the fence and let Congress hash out the details.  Architects don’t draw up plans and then say, “OK, my work is finished, it’s now the contractor’s job.”  They generally have a role in managing the construction project, keeping things on track, and fixing glitches that pop up.

Obama also disappointed me with his remark that he’d ‘rather be a really good one-term President, than a mediocre two-term President.’  The only way you can get to be a mediocre two-term President is to get re-elected, and for that you have to be a good one-term President.

Looking back, when was the last mediocre two-term President?  Not Clinton: he presided over peace and prosperity, as well as bringing us the ongoing drama of the impeachment that wasn’t.  Not Reagan: he helped end the Cold War.  Not Nixon: he didn’t serve two full terms, and he resigned in disgrace: definitely not mediocre.  Not Johnson: he brought us civil rights and Big Government: the latter was perhaps not a good thing, but still not mediocre.  (Johnson also didn’t serve two full terms.)  Maybe Eisenhower, but that was before I was born, so I can’t really say.

But I’ll grant the possibility that someone might get re-elected to the Presidency, then go to sleep, and end up a mediocre two-term President.  Unfortunately, the only sure methods of being a great one-term President without running the risk of being a mediocre two-term President are to either (1) refuse to run for re-election or (2) die in office.

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Money, Barack Obama | No Comments »

29. December 2009 by admin.

Last Friday, a young man from Nigeria attempted to set off a bomb on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam shortly before it was due to arrive in Detroit.  The effort failed because the explosive didn’t go off as intended: it just lit on fire, and the man was tackled at that point by another passenger.

It wasn’t as if this guy was a total surprise: he was on a terrorist watch list, and his father, a wealthy banker in Nigeria, contacted the American embassy to warn us about him.  But somehow we didn’t recognize the problem in time, didn’t yank his visa, and didn’t stop him from boarding the flight.

The bomb itself was 50 grams of explosive powder packed into a condom and sewn into his underwear (this last resulting in a slew of really silly headlines: ‘Fruit of the Loon;’ ‘Pants on Fire’).  There was nothing to show on a metal detector, and one would have to do a very thorough pat-down to find the package (insert appropriate off-color remark here).

The response from our leadership has been singularly inept: Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, first asserted that ‘the system worked’ until confronted by overwhelming evidence that it hadn’t.  And Our Fearless Leader took a few minutes out of his Hawaii vacation on Monday to tell us what we already knew, because, after all, the President should say something about such an event.

There is talk about using full-body scanners to detect packages that one might carry on one’s person.  They’re effective, but they enable the viewer to look at the scanned person… naked.   I guess that’s OK, just as long as I can’t hear them snicker.

I’ll take someone in a remote location looking at me naked and snickering over some of the rules that came out after the incident.  For the last hour of a flight, passengers are to sit in their seats and do nothing.  No laptops, or blankets, or pillows, or even a paperback novel.  And no hints as to where the plane might be: the video with the map is out, as well as announcements from the pilot.  (Meanwhile, the terrorist can still look out the window!)

I understand that some of these rules may have been rescinded, so perhaps things are a little saner now.  And I’ll admit that I don’t know what the proper response to this event should be.  But adding yet another layer of aviation-security theater does not reassure me.

At least I don’t have any business trips for the next few months….

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Terrorism, Barack Obama | No Comments »

22. December 2009 by admin.

The health care reform bill passed the Senate on Monday morning, and is close to becoming law.  The Democrats, by their numbers, have simply silenced any effective debate on the measure.

The poorer among us will be covered by an expansion of Medicaid.  Funding for Medicaid is provided jointly by the Federal government and the states.  As a result, most states will be mandated to support the cost of a broader Medicaid program.   However, Senator Nelson of Nebraska got, as part of the price for his support of the measure, that the Feds would pay Nebraska’s increased Medicaid costs so the state wouldn’t have to.   Meanwhile, with New York State going broke even without new Medicaid mandates, our esteemed senators, loyal Democrats that they are, didn’t get us one thin dime.  (Senator Nelson also insisted that the Federal government not pay for abortions through insurance subsidies, but that’s within the realm of reasonable politics.)

The rest of us will have to purchase insurance for ourselves or get it through our employment.  Those who don’t will have to pay a penalty tax.  Given that insurers won’t be able to decline coverage for pre-existing conditions, or adjust rates to the age of the insured to properly reflect the actual risk, insurance will become very expensive. New York has similar rules as part of state law, so insurance is already expensive here, but premiums are expected to rise still further.

As a result, insurance will be so expensive that most ordinary people won’t be able to afford it without help.  So the Federal government will subsidize part or all of the cost.

Meanwhile, the government will also define what constitutes an ‘acceptable’ health insurance policy.  As a result, when the cost of medical care goes up (as it certainly will, because there are no direct measures to contain costs), Federal regulators will respond by identifying ‘appropriate’ treatments that will be covered by ‘acceptable’ insurance policies.  And expensive treatments will be limited or made unavailable as a result.  The government may also institute a rule, similar to current Medicare, that a doctor who takes insurance money may not contract independently with patients for treatments that insurance won’t cover.

Yes, insurance companies will remain, and they will ‘compete’ for your business.  But with the benefits to be provided set by government, and the actuarial performance set by government, they won’t be able to compete on the actual attributes of their insurance.

So what we end up with is government control of the health care system, just like socialized medicine.  But instead of the government paying directly for health care, the control is accomplished through regulation of insurance, which everyone is required to buy.

And there’s nothing I can do about it.  I could write my Senators and Congressman, but they’re true loyal Democrats, totally in favor of the plan.  They didn’t even try to wheedle some extra benefits for their home state like Senator Nelson.

I should save my breath to cool my porridge.

Posted in Health Care, Dysfunctional Government, Barack Obama | No Comments »

19. September 2009 by admin.

I have been wanting to write something about President Obama’s health care plan, but have been having trouble getting all my thoughts in order.  I know:

• Government spending on health care in this country (at all levels) per capita is slightly higher than in countries with ’socialized medicine.’
• Private spending on health care in the US is about the same per capita as public spending, so we collectively spend a little more than twice as much on health care.
• In countries with socialized medicine, there are often shortages of doctors, and waiting lists for specialized treatments.  And sometimes people die from not having receive treatments that would be more readily available in the US.
• On the other hand, on general measures of public health, such as life expectancy, infant mortality, and obesity, the US is behind other countries with socialized medicine.
• The US is the fount of medical innovation in the world, chiefly because someone who comes up with a good idea can turn a profit from it.
• People in the US go bankrupt every day from the cost of health care.  An extended illness or cancer can easily wipe out an individual’s savings.  Insurance can help, but often has its own limitations and horror stories.
• The cost of health care is going up rapidly, much faster than the general rate of inflation.  My health insurance premium went up 20% this year, and that’s consistent with past years.  Back when I was an employee, my company would moan every year about how the price if insurance had gone up, and that they would absorb most of the cost, but our co-pays would have to go up.
• Medicare, the government insurance program for the elderly, tries to limit its costs by setting rates at which it will reimburse for services, but does not try to limit the services themselves.  This is called ‘not getting between the doctor and the patient.’

Some first thoughts:

• If the cost of health care continues to go up, it will upend not only the government’s budget, but everyone else’s as well.
• It would be tempting to believe that we could somehow ‘cut the waste’ and magically reduce the cost of health care without actually reducing the care that is delivered.  Perhaps we can trim a few percent, but not enough to solve the problem.
• It’s one matter for the government to take measures to control its own costs.  That’s entirely reasonable.  It’s quite another for the government to try to solve everyone’s cost problem.
• It would be spectacularly bad for the government to do something that would kill the innovative, capitalist component of health care.

More to follow….

Posted in Health Care, Dysfunctional Government, Barack Obama | No Comments »

23. July 2009 by admin.

I could give chapter and verse on how rotten I believe health care is in this country.  I had the devil’s own time getting health insurance when I went into business for myself, and the premiums went up about 20% when the policy renewed this spring.  Hospitals are most unpleasant places; most of them seem to run on the ragged edge of malpractice.

And the price of all this rottenness?  Governments (Federal, State, and local) in the US collectively spend more per capita than in countries with ’socialized medicine.’  Private payers spend again as much: in total, we spend more than twice as much per capita on health care than in other industrialized countries.

And the cost goes up and up, faster than the general rate of inflation.  My insurance company isn’t raising my premium by 20% to tick me off: they do it because their costs went up similarly.

This is the ‘unsustainable’ condition that President Obama is warning us about in his efforts for ‘health care reform.’  Unchecked, the costs will upend government budgets, and indeed the private economy as well.

Last night, Our Fearless Leader addressed the nation to address the issue.  He sounded all the right notes, but one thing troubles me:

The President noted that we pay more for health care than in other countries, and that lowering health care costs is a key goal.  He then asserted that two-thirds of the cost of health care reform is what is currently being paid in the existing system, and that one-third will have to come from cost savings or taxes or some other new funding.

So he’s contemplating a 50% increase in expenditures.

How, exactly, is this a savings?

Unfortunately, a real solution to this problem necessarily involves limiting the actual cost of health care, and nothing in the current plans seems to do more than nibble around the edges.

The problem is that the current system is an immense self-licking ice cream cone, and there are are politicial constituencies that earn their living from it.  Until an effort is made to actually contain costs, and not just find newer and cleverer ways to fund them, we’re still stuck.

Posted in Health Care, Dysfunctional Government, Barack Obama | No Comments »

21. June 2009 by admin.

When Barack Obama was running for President last year, much was made of his statement that he was willing to negotiate with our adversaries.  Some thought he was hopelessly naive, while others (including myself) thought it was preferable to the policies of then-President Bush to reach for the blunderbuss whenever the opportunity presented itself.

In all of the discussions, nobody brought out the corollary of Obama’s position: that in being willing to negotiate with one’s adversaries, one must accept their  policies and actions.  If you say, “I want to talk, but what you’ve done is unacceptable,” you’ve ended the conversation very quickly.

So now we have the Iranian elections, in which the incumbent Ahmadinejad officially won with over 65% of the vote, despite pre-election data suggesting a close race.  President Bush, or any other President in recent memory, would have criticized the Iranian government for trampling the will of the people.

But not Obama.  He has described the election issue as the problem for a sovereign state, which should properly be resolved by that state without our intervention.  He has remarked that he doesn’t want the Iranian government to have any cause to blame us for their situation.

It’s a charming thought, except the Iranians are blaming us anyway.  Truth never stood in the way of good propaganda.

On Friday, the religious leader of Iran called for a halt to demonstrations, or else severe consequences would follow.  A curtain of silence has fallen across the country, as the government has imposed increasing restrictions on the foreign press.  We know that the demonstrations are continuing, and that the authorities are responding.  Whether this is simply riot control, or something darker, is unknown.

But our President can’t say anything about it, lest the Iranians use it against us.

Posted in Iran, Barack Obama | No Comments »

8. March 2009 by admin.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to resolve the disconnect between Barack Obama’s speech on the economy a couple of weeks ago, in which he reassured us that we’d get through it together, stronger than we were before, and the facts on the ground.

Last Friday, the Labor Department announced the unemployment figures for February: a new loss of 651,000 jobs, and a current unemployment rate of 8.1%.  I remember the last time we had an unemployment rate of 8.1%, back in 1983.  Somehow we got through that in one piece; indeed, before that, in the 1970s, we had worse.

And everything in our society still seems to work: there’s gas at the pumps and power at the socket and food in the stores.  Yes, times are tough: my son, who is finishing college this year, is looking for work without success.  But the world does not seem to be coming to an end: in my work, I booked a new project this week, and the stream of business still appears to be flowing.

From those observations, I would expect continued unemployment, perhaps an increase in crime, and probably higher taxes, but the overall economy would start to improve in a couple of  years and we’d get out of this morass.

So why did Our Fearless Leader address us that night as if our cities were in ruins and the end of the world was at hand?  Have we really become a nation of crybabies?

Maybe, but I don’t think Obama is really the crybaby type.

My current explanation is rather more worrisome.

Our recent Presidents, Clinton and Bush, were masters of dissimulation.  They would happily tell us what they wanted us to hear, and disregard, gloss over, or simply lie about the inconvenient truths in conflict with their agendas.

Barack Obama is a politician, to be sure, but he does not have the talent of his predecessors.  Or perhaps he simply believes that it’s better to at least try to be aboveboard with the electorate.

In any case, I’m sure that he has been briefed on the dimensions of the economic situation rather more thoroughly than what we’ve been able to read in the newspapers.

He has said for the record that things will get worse before they get better, but he hasn’t said how much worse they will get.

He knows how close we are to a state of emergency.

And I suspect that it’s closer than we think.

Perhaps he believes that the stimulus package, and similar deficit spending, is our last, best effort to pull ourselves out of the whirlpool; perhaps he believes that the primal forces of our downfall have been set in motion, and can no longer be stopped.

In either case, he recognizes that to discuss this matter forthrightly would ignite a panic, and bring about precisely the emergency he is seeking to avoid, or at least postpone.

So he addressed us two weeks ago as if the havoc, chaos, and destruction had already been released, while things still seem relatively normal.

This does not look good….

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Money, Barack Obama | No Comments »

26. February 2009 by admin.

Last Tuesday, President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress, and the nation, about the state of the economy.  I was disappointed.

For a while now, I’ve been trying to compose some coherent thoughts about the $787B stimulus package signed into law last night.  In brief, I don’t like it.

But how can I fairly say that I don’t like it when I don’t know what’s in it?  I know that there’s something about tax cuts and money for states and localities and ’shovel-ready’ projects.  On that level, my problem is still the same: commentators will pull out some aspect of the package or another for discussion or criticism, but I still don’t have a coherent view of the whole thing.

There are, however, some things that I can point to:

• Our Fearless Leader, in fact, exercised no leadership in composing the package.  In the runup to his inauguration, he indicated that he wanted to see a stimulus bill on his desk, but kept his hands off while the Democratic party faithful went to work.
• The Democrats responded like kids in a candy store.  Since all government spending stimulates to some degree, they decided to try and remake the world in the moderate President Obama that we elected.  Some of the really stupid stuff got killed through the legislative process, but much of it is still there.
• One provision that particularly bothers me relates to welfare reform, one of the great successes of social legislation.  The package makes funds available to localities who abolish their requirements for welfare recipients to seek work or be placed in jobs.  (Mayor Bloomberg has wisely declined this aid.)  The thought is that in a tough job market, it’s pointless to press welfare recipients to try and find jobs that don’t exist.  But the real reason, I suspect, is to deter cash-strapped local governments from replacing union civil servants with welfare recipients.  You know what?  Times are tought all over!

Obama’s speech Tuesday night was somewhat of a disappointment.  He bagan and ended with an exhortation about how we would get through this crisis, and end up stronger than before.  President Bush said the same thing after 11 September, and it resonated: there was actual physical destruction that I could go and see if I really wanted to.  But while we’re told that there is a vast economic crisis, it’s a little hard to believe when there is still food (and everything else) in the stores and power at the socket.  Obama’s call, alas, rings hollow.

He discussed how credit is essential to the economy, and the measures to try and get banks to lend again. So far, so good.

And then he launched into a discussion that was a rehash of his campaign promises on education and health care.   Despite his efforts to tie these to addressing the current crisis, it all seemed a distraction.

At least he didn’t say ‘green jobs.’

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Money, Barack Obama | No Comments »

22. February 2009 by admin.

Last week, Our Fearless Leader signed the $787 billion stimulus package (a/k/a The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) into law.  I’m not sure how much good it will do: reports in the news about it seem to emphasize one detail or another, and I have yet to see a coherent description of the entire package.  Supposedly, I’ll get some more money in my pocket as withholding rates get tweaked, but I’m not sure if my taxes will actually change.

Together with that, there have been plans for further help to the bank, and Obama has forthrightly been telling us that our problems will take time to resolve.  While I dread what form of deficit spending will be inflicted on us next, I appreciate that our leadership recognizes the dimensions of the problem.

So I’m perplexed now when our leadership announced, yesterday, that the deficit will be cut in half by the end of Obama’s first term (i.e. 2013).   So is the economy a major, major problem, or something that will blow over in a couple of years?

For almost as long as I can remember, Presidents have promised to cut the deficit by such-and-such a date, and it’s never, ever happened.  Is our leadership being open with us, or are they reverting to one of the oldest tricks in the book, after barely a month?

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Barack Obama | No Comments »

11. January 2009 by admin.

• Yesterday’s Daily News included a full-page ad from Macy’s, indicating that their one-day sale on Saturday would be extended to a second day on Sunday because of the ‘inclement weather.’  It snowed about two inches in the city over yesterday afternoon and evening, with probably more in the suburbs: not really what qualifies as ‘inclement.’  Considering the lead time in setting up a full-page newspaper ad, I have to believe that Macy’s was going to extend their one-day sale (which was a two-day sale to begin with, as it started Friday) to Sunday from the beginning, and was just betting that since it’s January, it must be snowing somewhere.
• Our New Fearless Leader released a report claiming that his recovery plan would create between three and four million new jobs.  Unfortunately, there’s no clear description as to just what this plan would consist of.  The same report includes a graphic indicating that the unemployment rate would top out at about 8% with the recovery plan in place, but 9.5% without it.  I’ll agree that a 9.5% unemployment rate is not good, but it’s hardly the end of the world, as everyone seems to make it out to be.
• I was watching the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie The Running Man yesterday evening.  The movie is set in about 2020, in a US where, due to ‘the economic collapse of 2017,’ many Americans don’t have a pot to piss in.  Arnold is an honorable Army officer who disobeys an order, is jailed, and eventually can earn his freedom if he participates in The Running Man TV show.  Besides showing Arnold breaking things and killing people, the movie is a commentary on government and the media.  In 2020, the two have converged, and they’re both flaming liars. The really distressing part (sorry for the long setup) is that we’re now two-thirds of the way from 1987 to 2020, and television is very definitely two-thirds of the way from what it was in 1987 to the world of The Running Man.  The concept of gladiatorial combat on TV was radical in 1987; it’s a much smaller step from the state of TV today.  And there was an appetite for the details of politics back then, while today the public would rather do something–anything–than try to understand the real aspects and practical details of politics.

Posted in Life Goes On, Money, Barack Obama | No Comments »

9. January 2009 by admin.

No, I know that I can’t.

And I can’t say that it would make any difference if I could: New York is not a swing state, so even if I could change my vote, and get all my friends to change their vote, it wouldn’t make any difference.

And furthermore, even if McCain had won the election, I’m not sure he would be able to do anything different.

But I found President-elect Obama to be thoroughly distressing when he discussed the economy earlier this week and told us that we would be running trillion-dollar deficits for ‘years to come.’

Yes, the economy is in bad shape: the official unemployment rate in December went up to 7.2%.  I’ve written about various aspects of our bad economy in these pages before.

But Our New Fearless Leader looks like a kid in a candy store.  It’s not just an effort to stimulate the economy: he wants to remake the country in his own image.  We’ll have solar energy and computerized medical records and better education and broadband access for all and no rainy days on weekends.

Unfortunately, the government has tried to remake the country, or some facet of it, and failed miserably.  Alternate energy is an admirable goal, but after three decades (at least) of government meddling, we still import more than half of the petroleum that we use.  The Clinton administration tried to implement a national health care system.  It failed miserably.  For my part, I couldn’t understand how it was supposed to work: something about ‘alliances’ with ‘clout’ to get the lowest prices.

And a look back to our recent events is more troubling: in September, we allocated ~$700 billion to ‘unfreeze the credit markets’ by ‘buying troubled assets.’  Since then, about half of the money has been spent: none of it went to buy troubled assets, and the credit markets are still frozen.  (I’ve stopped getting pre-approved credit card notices, so I’m sure there’s something wrong.)

So I’m not convinced that the answer to our problem whose origins are in too much debt is to take out yet more debt, and to do it RIGHT NOW.  Let’s take the time to think things through: if we’re going to spend trillions, we need to make sure that we get it right, as we won’t get another chance.

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Barack Obama | No Comments »

9. November 2008 by admin.

Today’s Daily News, for at least the third time in the last seven days, includes a supplement with big pictures of Barack Obama.  Today we’re treated to the famply photo album, with pictures of our next President as a little kid, then growing up, and with his wife and family.  And even the New York Post, which supported McCain, is running photo spreads of Obama.

We get it: he’s the President-elect, and he’s good-looking.  We already know what he looks like.  He’s married, and his wife and family are good-looking too.

For my part, it’s another passel of waste paper that I’ll ultimately have to bind up and throw away.

It’s not that I’m against Obama.  I voted for him, and I wish him success as President.  We will all suffer if he fails.  (And thereby hangs another tale, perhaps for another day.)

But I can’t remember similar photo spreads for previous Prseidents-elect.  And somehow I can’t imagine the same treatment for McCain and his family if he had won the election.

During the campaign, the New York Post used to chirp about media bias in favor of Obama.  For my part, I found that the media (newspapers, TV news, etc.) was almost useless in helping to understand the positions of either candidate.  For me, the best source of information was the debates, where the candidates were able to explain their positions at length themselves.

Although I don’t have the data, I believe that many journalists are liberals: they see misery in the world around them, and perhaps believe that the government should do something about it.  But in this campaign, I didn’t see very much bias in reporting the substance: the details of both candidates’ plans were uniformly treated with disdain.

There is, however, a substantial bias in favor of the photogenic and the telegenic.   On the Republican side, Sarah Palin seemed to snag far more news coverage than McCain.  And on the Democratic side, Joe Biden, Obama’s running mate, was almost the steath candidate, appeaqring very infrequently in news reports.

I have to wonder what would have happened if the Democrats had nominated an elderly war hero, and the Republicans had nominated a charming, attractive young man….

Posted in Media, Barack Obama | No Comments »

3. November 2008 by admin.

About two weeks ago, one of my colleagues sent me this cartoon:

My immediate reaction was that, well, my colleague is a Republican.   But there’s a little bit more to it than that.

I know that giving to those who are ‘too lazy’ doesn’t work.  Despite the best intentions, it engenders laziness and corrodes personal honor.

But what happens when the world changes, and those who did not set out to be lazy find themselves in dire straits?  Unemployment is creeping up, and jobs are hard to find.  The eight-hour workday, for many, is a quaint relic of the past.  And almost every night on the news, there is a report of some large corporation or another firing a few thousand staffers.  For my part, I left my last job (and went into business for myself) because I was expected to give over my weekends for unpaid overtime, and was still in the doghouse with management for overrunning my budget.

Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for President, proposes to reduce taxes for most of us, while increasing taxes on those earning over $250k per year and closing corporate loopholes.  It doesn’t solve the real problem, but it helps.  One aspect of Obama’s plan is that more people in the lower income levels would actually receive a tax credit instead of paying Federal income taxes.

The New York Post calls that ‘welfare.’  Perhaps, but a refundable tax credit is not enough to live on; it’s just intended to make life a little easier.  As long as the tax credit is tied to some actual earned income, it’s not going to erode the value of work.

To take the contrary view, that of the Republicans, is to redefine ‘lazy.’  If you want to go out and work, even if it’s physically demanding, you’re still ‘lazy’ if you expect your employer, in return for your efforts, to take care of you through health insurance or other benefits, or you expect to be able to have a working life that allows you time for your own pursuits.

The major problem with this view is that most of us were not brought up to be entrepreneurs and be comfortable taking risks.  We may like the sensation of risk–such as one experiences when bungee jumping or skydiving–but those activities, with their redundant safety measures, are probably safer than crossing the street, and do not prepare us to manage risk in our lives.

While many of us may have set up lemonade stands when we were kids, I can’t remember taking a course in high school or college about the basic principles of business.  (There were courses in economics, which is not the same thing.)  And I wonder how our young people, who live in constant communication with each other with their cell phones and their computers, will adapt to the process of going into business for one’s self, which is intensly personal and involves, to a surprising extent, being able to keep secrets.

But that is what lies before us under the Republicans.   And in that direction, to take the zeroth-degree approximation, lies armed revolution: we will learn to be violent before we learn to be businessmen. Actually, we already know how to be violent, so it won’t be a big leap.

And that is why, despite my misgivings about Barack Obama, I will pull the lever for him tomorrow.

Posted in John McCain, Presidential election, Money, Barack Obama | No Comments »

14. September 2008 by admin.

Like everyone else with half a brain in this country, I’ve been looking at the Presidential candidates and trying to decide whom I should vote for in November.

I’ve started with the premise, among others, that Iraq is off the table as an issue.  There is an agreement in place with the Iraqi government on how we will withdraw our forces over time, and while the initial decision to go to Iraq was a spectacularly bad judgement, neither of the present candidates was specifically responsible for it.

The Democrats are running Barack Obama, a wonderful orator with big plans for how the government will help us.  He grants that these plans will cost money, and proposes to pay for them by eliminating tax loopholes for businesses, and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire.  His approach to foreign policy emphasizes the use of diplomacy over military force.

The Republicans are running John McCain, a former Navy pilot and prisoner of war who has the vibe of being a ‘maverick.’  On the other hand, his actual votes in the Senate track very closely the Bush administration’s desires.  He wants to keep the tax cuts and considers the world a dangerous place, where the use of force is a real consideration.

Part of me really wants to vote for McCain.  I believe that he has better judgement than Bush, I don’t like taxes (who does?), and I’m genuinely skeptical of big government plans to help people, because I’ve seen them backfire.

On the other hand, a government, like a household or a company, has to take in enough money to maintain itself and do the things it does.  And maintaining a strong military and being prepared to use it aren’t cheap.  Moreover, I don’t buy into the thought that lowering tax rates will stimulate economic activity to the point where the government will take in more money than if it had left taxes alone: if taxes were oppressively high, as they were a generation ago, it might be true, but not now.

In the second quarter of 2008, the US economy grew by 2.1%, so that we can officially say that we’re not in a recession, but shed over 500,000 jobs. Who wins and who loses when that happens?

And what good does it do to make ourselves safe from terrorists if most of us end up worse off in terms of our daily standard of living, in a country that is becoming no longer the land of opportunity?

McCain will do nothing to stop this.  Obama will at least try.

For this reason, despite my misgivings, I’ve decided to vote for Barack Obama in the next election.

But God help us, either way….

Posted in John McCain, Presidential election, Barack Obama | No Comments »

10. September 2008 by admin.

While on the campaign trail, Barack Obama remarked, with regard to the Republican effort to appear as reformers, “You can put lipstick on a pig, and it’s still a pig.”

The Republicans took the remark as a slur against their Vice-Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, who remarked that she was a ‘pit bull with lipstick’ in her speech last week.  Obama’s remarks made the front page in today’s papers.

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.  But wouldn’t it be nice if we could get past this silly stuff and actually discuss the issues?

Posted in Sarah Palin, Presidential election, Barack Obama | No Comments »

1. June 2008 by admin.

Yesterday evening, the Democratic rules committee  reached a decision about Florida and Michigan.  The delegations would be seated with half-votes instead of full votes, and for Michigan, some of the delegates (including a handful that would otherwise have gone to Hillary Clinton) were allocated to Barack Obama, who did not appear on the ballot.

As a result, Clinton nets a few dozen delegates, but not enough to make a meaningful dent in Obama’s lead.  When the last primaries end on Tuesday, Obama will be in striking distance to the nomination, but will probably not have bagged it.  But he’ll be the nominee, barring something really extraordinary.

*          *          *

I’m a registered Democrat, and I consider the Bush victory in 2000 the closest thing to a coup d’etat that our country has ever experienced.  I really don’t want to vote Republican this year, but if Clinton were to win the nomination, I’d have to vote for John McCain.

On the other hand, There’s a lot that I like about Obama, most of it stuff that seems to tick everyone else off.  I like that he listens to people who don’t believe that the US is the most wonderful country on the planet, and that he’s an intellectual with a conceptual view of the world.

Part of me likes that Obama is willing to open discussions with our enemies, but he underplays the difficulty of actually doing that: he’ll be swimming with the sharks, and if he’s not careful, he’ll get his leg bitten off.

But when it comes to Iraq, he’s lost me.  Both Obama and Clinton believe that our next task with Iraq is getting out.  While our adventures in Iraq were ill-advised at best, the next President must play the hand that he is dealt.  McCain was refreshingly honest when he remarked, a few months ago, that we might be in Iraq for 100 years.  In other words: Brother, you bought yourself a protectorate.

The Iraqi government is making progress in organizing itself and preparing to function as an independent state.  But it’s a difficult job and cannot be accomplished on a timetable driven by American politics.  It’s not, as some (including Obama) imagine, that the Iraqis are imply lazy, and if we simply hold their feet to the fire, they’ll buckle down and solve all their problems.

If we move out in 2009, we endanger Iraq’s progress, and in turn we risk destabilizing the region.   None of the advocates for withdrawal has come up with a good answer to that.

Obama has an answer, but it’s not a good one: he plans to talk to Iran and hope they’ll make nice.  It’s one thing to talk to our enemies, but it’s quite another to expect that they will act in our interest–instead of theirs–as an immediate result of such talking.

I’d like to vote for Obama, but in some respects he makes it really, really difficult.

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31. May 2008 by admin.

Today, the Democratic rules committee meets to decide what to do about Florida and Michigan, which were disqualified by the party because they held their primary elections too early.  In 2004, John Kerry was the clear winner after only a few weeks of campaigning, and many people across the country felt disenfranchised because they were voting only after the winner had been determined.So this year, many states fell over themselves trying to hold early primaries. New York moved its primary to early March, and Florida and Michigan moved theirs to January, in violation of Party rules. The decision had been made in 2007, and the consequences of that decision were clear: their delegates would be barred from the convention.

In response, the candidates refrained from campaigning in the two states, and Obama took his name off the Michigan ballot. Clinton won both states, through name recognition and the fact that she had yet to endure the slings and arrows of the campaign season.

And now that Clinton is behind, she’s yelling ‘disenfranchisement’ and demanding that the delegates from these states be seated with their full voting rights. (This is why, despite the fact that I voted for Clinton in March, I’m against her now: she has no integrity.) The voters of Florida and Michigan were disenfranchised by their state Party leaders, who thought they could break the rules and then get absolution through moaning and wailing.

As far as the rules committee’s decision, sadly, I don’t think it really matters. It won’t matter how the issue of Florida and Michigan are resolved, and it won’t matter who wins the Democratic Party’s nomination for President: the party will lose anyway. Maybe their candidate will be elected, but I doubt it.

The two candidates are perceived as members of a ‘disadvantaged’ groups: Hillary Clinton is a woman, and Barack Obama is black. If you favor Clinton over Obama, you’re a racist, and if you favor Obama over Clinton, you’re a sexist. Whoever wins will alienate the other half of the party’s base, and no party can expect to win that way without broad appeal beyond the base, which neither candidate has.

On the metrics, it’s hard to assess who would be the better candidate. Obama got more votes in primaries and caucuses, but in polls matching them against John McCain, the Republican candidate, Clinton does a few points better.

It’s been suggested that Clinton and Obama could both be on the ticket if the winner picked the loser to be the Vice President. Alas, I don’t think that will work either. Clinton as Vice President will be the Democrats’ Dick Cheney: the dark force that is the real power. Obama-Clinton mirrors Bush-Cheney too strongly. And if Clinton, through some degree of political legerdemain, became the Presidential candidate, many people would believe that she stole the nomination from Obama. In either case, the ticket would get lukewarm support, at best, across the Democratic spectrum, and that will not suffice to win.

Posted in Presidential election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton | No Comments »

17. May 2008 by admin.

On Thursday, President Bush addressed the Knesset in Jerusalem, and made the following remarks…

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Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

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Well, maybe.

The remarks were taken in the US as an ‘outrage,’ and a slap in the face to Barack Obama, who has indicated that he would be willing to talk with our adversaries.  But to talk to our enemies–to at least initiate a conversation–is not appeasement.  That’s when you give your enemy something that he wants so that, hopefully, he’ll go away and not bother you again.

Years ago, we considered communism as radical, if not necessarily terrorist.  Yet we talked with the Russians and the Chinese, and despite their far greater power to destroy us than the current threat, we were able to keep the world in one piece.

It doesn’t hurt, other than from the standpoint of national pride, of which we have more than enough, to try to talk to our enemies, recognizing, however, that they may not want to talk to us.  One of the essential reasons that our enemies are our enemies is that they believe that their cause is right, and Bush is correct in noting that it’s really unlikely that “some ingenious argument will persuade them that they have been wrong all along.”

On the other hand, if Bush is looking to lecture someone about the futility of negotiating with terrorists, he needed only to look around him in the Knesset, or in a mirror.

For decades, Israel has been engaged in one ‘peace process’ or another in which it concedes something of value  to its enemies (who are sworn to Israel’s destruction) in exchange for peace, but the peace never materializes.  (Can someone explain to me how this differs from appeasement?)

The Palestinians, with at least the tacit consent of their government, launch rockets into Israel, and Israel, for its part, keeps a stiff upper lip about the destruction they cause.  On the other hand, if Israel exercises its right of retaliation, they are quickly brought to heel by world opinion for having created a ‘humanitarian crisis.’

For his part, after his trip to Israel, Our Fearless Leader went to Riyadh, where he tried to persuade the Saudis  to open the spigots and produce more oil.  The Saudis said no.  Bush made a similar trip earlier this year, complaining about how the high price of oil was affecting the American economy, with the same result.

On the one hand, the Saudis probably see themselves as businessmen, facing one of the basic problems of any business: establishing the most satisfactory price for their product.  But then why are we trying to bend over backwards to be their friends?  (Oh, that’s right: we do that anyway: at all levels of government, we’re more than happy to help big businesses because they will purportedly help the economy.)

On the other hand, the Saudi government does things to its people that would result in armed revolution if anyone tried them here.  And Saudi Arabia is the homeland of most of the 11 September hijackers.

So are they really our friends?

I don’t know, but I guess we have to keep up the illusion that they are, because otherwise they won’t sell us oil, and then we’ll all starve.

Posted in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Terrorism, George Bush (43), Barack Obama | No Comments »

15. May 2008 by admin.

Before I move on to ‘the other guy,’ a final thought on Hillary Clinton: I think I understand why she refuses to admit defeat.  She knows that she’s ticked so many people off that to run again in 2012 is already a lost cause: it’s now or never.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama is preparing to accept the Democratic nomination for President.  Unless he gets hit by a truck or something (why do we worry about this now: we didn’t in the past!), he will probably be the candidate to run against the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain.  (Why don’t we worry about McCain getting hit by a truck?)

Barack Obama burst onto the scene in 2004, with a speech at the Democratic convention.   When he first campaigned for President, I thought he was a good orator, but underneath it, a political lightweight.  (Or is it that I resent that he’s the first candidate for President who is younger than I am?)

What fools we all were this year!  The states were all falling over each other, trying to have their primaries earlier.  We all thought it would be like 2004, when the winner seemed apparent after a couple of states.  But it didn’t happen that way this time.

Obama inspired his supporters in a way that no recent politician has, and did especially well in caucuses.  But a victory in the big states eluded him (except for his home state of Illinois).

And then there was the matter of his now ex-pastor, the Reverend Wright, who has gone on record to denigrate this country.  He suggested that we brought the events of 11 September on ourselves: curiously, my mother would have agreed with that.  And when the issue came before the public, Obama delivered a thoughtful speech about how he could no more disown his pastor than his grandmother.  I respected him for that: I want a President who recognizes that not everyone believes that our country is always right.

I was dismayed when, in response to further comments from the Reverend Wright, Obama threw him under the bus.  But I understand why he did it.

And then there was the episode where Obama remarked that he believed that small-town Americans were ‘embittered’ by the economy, which led them to vote Republican.  The chorous of disapproval was astonishing: one columnist remarked that Obama was ‘finished’ as a result of that remark.

I find this troubling.  I believe that there was a lot of truth to Obama’s observation.  It’s happened often enough that a political group has achieved success by telling its citizens that all their problems were due to something that, in reality, was quite irrelevant.

But worse than that, Obama has been recently referred to as an ‘elitist’ for these and other remarks.  No, he’s not an elitist.  He’s educated, he’s got a brain, and he knows how to use it.   But somehow we’re supposed to shun that in favor of the guy who knows how to bowl.

Anyway, I respect Obama, and I hope that he makes it to be the Democratic candidate.  But will I vote for him?

Tune in tomorrow….

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