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Friday, January 29, 2010
If someone asks you to help them rob a bank, there's nothing wrong in saying 'No'. Nor is there any shame in declining to help someone do anything that is dangerous or counter-productive.
And it doesn't matter a bit if it is the President of the United States who is asking you to help do something really dumb. Smart people say 'No' to doing dumb things. Smart people say no to running up trillion dollar deficits. Smart people say no to ruinous environmental policies. Smart people say no to ill-conceived plans to screw around with health care. Smart people say no to treating terrorists as if they were coming criminals. So Republicans ought not flinch at being referred to as the 'Party of No', they ought to embrace it and run with it as far and as fast as they can. As a parent might tell their child, 'you're dreaming if you think I am going to help you screw your life up', so too should Republicans tell the American people 'as long as Obama keeps asking for our help to ruin America, we're going to keep telling him no'. If the GOP allows Obama to frame the issue as Republican refusal to fix America, the GOP will lose. But if the GOP frames this as they're being unwilling to assist in the suicide that Obama seems committed to pursuing, they - and America - will win. Thursday, January 28, 2010
Following up on yesterday's post, can anyone think of a single thing that Obama said last night that is likely to make a single employer post a want ad? A single consumer to go out and spend? A single bank that tells its loan officers to open up loans? A single person to wake up this morning thinking that today will be better than yesterday?
And for all his positive press, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell didn't go far enough, he needed to spend less time talking in the abstract and more time drawing distinctions between what Obama wants to do and what the GOP wants to do. Wednesday, January 27, 2010
What a surprise, St Elizabeth sticks with the bum until the final nail is driven into the coffin of John Edwards' hopes of winning the White House. She doesn't leave him when she finds out he's cheating, she doesn't leave him when the Enquirer starts digging around, she only leaves him once he no longer has anything that she wants.
There is only one question to ask while watching Obama's address tonight (other than why did he have to pre-empt 'Modern Family'?): will the American public hear something that makes them go out and start spending again? Or will they hear something that makes them continue to sit on their hands? Or, even worse, will they hear something that makes them hunker down even more?
(And for those who believe that production is the key, turn the question around: will business hear something that makes them want to ramp up the production line?) Right now, banks aren't lending, customers aren't borrowing, consumers aren't consuming, businesses aren't hiring... all because Obama (with some help from the clueless Bush Administration) scared everybody into thinking that we were on the verge of total economic collapse (when in fact, there were pockets of trouble that could have been handled without scaring the pants off of everybody) and he has done nothing since then to give the equivalent of an 'ALL CLEAR'. The stimulus didn't make anybody feel better, his attempt to remake health insurance didn't make anybody feel better, nor did his bailing out GM and Chrysler and his attacks on banks and financial institutions. So as Obama goes through his laundry list of proposals, the public (to the extent they're listening) is going to evaluate each one in terms of 'will this help, will it do nothing or will it hurt?'. And unfortunately for Obama and unfortunately for us, he's not cut out for providing much of the first... in large part because he doesn't understand us. He thinks more government is going to make things better... while we think otherwise. So he's not going to say or propose much that is going to give someone the comfort to go out tomorrow or this weekend and put money down on a new car or new house. Heck, I doubt he's going to say anything that makes someone even comfortable enough to go shopping this weekend at the local mall. Nor is he going to say or propose anything that removes the fear of business that it is a waste of money to hire somebody new. He's not going to say or propose anything that makes a local company start planning on expanding its market, a package goods company to invest the money in a new line of products, a home builder to give the go-ahead to starting a new development, a loan officer to okay a business loan. People are scared right now... and they're going to be looking to Obama to say that words that makes them feel just a little bit better. But they're not going to hear it, they're going to hear more of the same types of stuff that Obama and his allies have been pushing all along. More stimulus dollars, more regulation, more government employees doing more things. They're going to hear things that makes them think the light is a long way off. I may be wrong... but I doubt it.
Political pundits can go on and on and on for why Obama is sinking in the polls but there is - as Occam's razor would suggest - a simple explanation.
America thinks of its President as a repairman, hired to 'fix' the problems that exist at the time. Unfortunately for both Obama's ratings and the American public's pocketbooks, Obama hasn't fixed much of anything. Not only that, he hasn't given anybody the impression that he will be fixing much of anything in the not-too-distant future. And not only that, the problems he seems to be trying to fix aren't the problems America wants fixed. Unsurprisingly, when one hires a repairman to fix something and the repairman goes off on some combination of (1) failing to fix the problem he was hired to fix, (2) trying to fix things the customer doesn't think are in need of fixing, and (3) coming up with totally off the wall ideas for fixing the problems the customer wants fixing, the customer is going to have second thoughts about the wisdom of having hired that repairman. And that pretty much describes what is happening. Obama was hired to fix the economy and keep us safe... but the economy ain't been fixed and we sure as heck don't feel safer. He wasn't hired to federalize health care... but that's where he has invested a lot of time. To the extent he has paid attention to fixing the things we want fixed, his proposals - on the economic front, by the stimulus and bailing out GM and Chrysler and going after banks, and on the national security front, treating terrorists like common criminals, toadying up to villains of the world - haven't impressed us. And when America doesn't get their problems fixed, we turn our fury on the guy who ran for the office pledging that he would be the guy who fixed everything. Sunday, January 24, 2010
Obama campaign adviser David Plouffe was just brought into the White House to help in the wake of the Democrats losing what is called Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts senate seat... and he wastes no time offering up his solutions in today's Washington Post.
And to which I think: if this is the best thinking the Democrats have, the country is going to have some bad times ahead and the Republicans are going to have a very good November. Let's start with his number one piece of advice: pass the health care bill. He describes the current plan (but, curiously, without saying exactly which of the competing plans he is referring to) as a 'good plan'. Someone ought to explain to him that any plan that is disliked by as many people as this plan is is, by definition, not a good plan. Not only that, but he exhibits the annoying characteristic found in most liberals that the public is just too stupid to think through things themselves, in Plouffe's world, the only reason the public dislikes the plan is because we've been scared by the likes of Sarah Palin saying things that just aren't true. To Plouffe, it is impossible that we've looked at the plan(s) and concluded that whichever version the Democrats push is going to raise our premiums and taxes and lower the quality of care we receive. His next points are no better. He wants to show that government can 'create' jobs. He, like so many of the Obama Administration, probably never having any significant experience in the private sector (and lobbying for the government doesn't count, you're still working for the government) somehow thinks the government can create jobs. It doesn't and most people - at least those outside government - know that. He wants to trumpet how much good the stimulus plan did for America. Like his views of Obamacare, he has a view that is odds with most of America, which properly concludes that the stimulus did little. But, unwilling to concede that perhaps he has made a mistake, he concludes that we're the idiots, that we have been unable to see what he sees. And his list goes on. He wants to fight back against charges that Obama has run up incredible deficits by arguing that Bush ran up deficits as well. For a supposed political pro, he somehow misses the point that the public is upset about spending and they're not going to give Obama a pass, we want to see spending cut - and not just on the margins. We know spending went up with Bush, which is one of the reasons McCain isn't in the White House. But Plouffe seems stuck thinking that screaming 'it's not my fault' is going to work. We don't care who's fault it is or was, we want to see spending go down, and we're going to punish whomever doesn't address the issue. And finally, he thinks the key is running 'great campaigns'. Yeah, that's the ticket, put a pretty ribbon on a bunch of junk and you'll have us all excited. It's a nice twist that the adviser to the candidate who made some nice points with his crack about 'putting lipstick on a pig' is himself advising that candidate to 'put lipstick on a pig'. If that's the best the Democrats have, I almost feel sorry for them. Okay, I don't. But they are pretty pathetic. It's a shame so many people took so long to realize it. But at least they finally did. It's a start. Friday, January 22, 2010
Acknowledging that I am a Leno fan, I nonetheless want to take some shots at some of the silly commentary coming from the O'Brien side...
Yes, his staff is out of jobs and, yes, many of them had moved to Los Angeles from New York. But if they hadn't moved, they would have been out of jobs a lot earlier. And how can they claim the show had such great fan support in light of the fact that the ratings - the cold, objective measurement of support that they are - were not very good? And why be upset at NBC? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to get mad at the guy who pushed for the 11:35 time slot only to fail to deliver the viewers? (hint: it's O'Brien). Did these people think that NBC had an obligation to pick the guy with the lower ratings over the guy with higher ratings? But my favorite complaint is from the fan who likens O'Brien getting fired to "everybody has been in a job and been put in a position and then been kicked to the curb because [the bosses] decide 'I like this guy better." Yeah, that's it, the bosses picked Leno for no good reason at all, they just 'liked him better'. Isn't this more a case of the Peter Principle at work? O'Brien did fine work at 12:30, he wanted the promotion, he got the promotion, he proved unable to handle the new job, he got fired. Thursday, January 21, 2010
In politics, there is both what one wants to do and what one can do, and what one thinks about an issue and what one says about that issue...
Obama and the Democrats aren't giving up on their dream of nationalizing health care. They may finally acknowledge that they don't have the votes (after months of maintaining in public that they do) to pass Obamacare, and they may accept some watered down 'compromise' but that in no way should make anybody relax and think that the Democrats aren't still determined to enact something far to the left of what the public is willing to accept. The question is how they're going to go about it. Are they going to use the regulatory machine to enact what they don't have the legislative votes to do like they've done with having the EPA regulate carbon? Will they attempt to use the courts to achieve through judicial ruling what they don't have public support for? I don't know but I do know that zealots don't renounce the faith upon encountering a few roadblocks... they remain true to the cause and they try to find some other way of getting what they want. Wednesday, January 20, 2010
In 2005, I cautioned Bush and the GOP from getting too giddy over Bush's re-election, arguing that it was less an endorsement of Bush and his policies than a repudiation of Kerry... and Bush didn't listen, totally misreading reality by claiming he had 'political capital', only to watch the GOP lose its majority in the next election.
In 2009, I cautioned Obama and the Democrats from getting too giddy over Obama's election, arguing that it was less and endorsement of a liberal agenda than it was a combination of McCain being such a terrible nominee and a repudiation of Bush... and Obama and the Democrats didn't listen, attempting to push their policies on a public that really isn't interested, and now has suffered three high-profile losses in a row and is in danger of losing a whole bunch of seats this November. And in 2010, I caution Republicans and conservatives from getting too giddy over Brown's win of the Massachusetts Senate seat. This was a repudiation of Coakley and Obama and what the Democrats are trying to do... it isn't an endorsement of Republicans and conservative programs (note that in Brown's victory speech, he claimed this a victory for independents, he didn't claim a victory for either the GOP or conservatives). The key to Brown's victory was his winning the independent vote and they voted for him as a counter to the Democrats and not because they have all decided they're really conservative Republicans. The GOP has benefited from 'not being liberal Democrat' in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races as well as in the Massachusetts Senate race... and being the opposition can win one some seats, especially when the party in power so misreads public sentiment. But at some point, GOP candidates are going to have to be 'for something' as opposed to simply being against whatever the Democrats are trying to do... and it is critical that the GOP offer up programs that appeals to independent voters and not just the far right slice of the electorate. As much as conservatives hate to hear it, they're going to vote for the Republican come heck or high water, the real battle is for the independents - who, by definition, don't completely agree with the conservative agenda - and the GOP will remain in the minority if they insist on pushing a hard right agenda. Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Let's see, guy is hired to a top position, guy not only fails to do the job as well as expected, he doesn't even do as good a job as his immediate predecessor, guy is fired after just months on the job, guy walks away with $40 million golden parachute... with nary a peep of complaint from Washington liberals.
Then we have someone hired to do a job, by all accounts meets the expectations of the job but has compensation slashed, exercises provision in employment contract to resign and receive somewhat less than $4 million in severance... and Washington liberals are aghast (and yes, despite the (R), Grassley is a liberal). The former: Conan O'Brien. The latter: Anastasia Kelly, former counsel at AIG. If there ever was a textbook example of paying a failure a lot of money to go away, it's Conan O'Brien. It is going to cost NBC a bunch of cash to free themselves of the ratings albatross that is O'Brien. And there isn't any complaining over O'Brien collecting money despite having failed spectacularly to produce the ratings he was supposed to produce. But.... no one is complaining about O'Brien getting money, the only complaints are about how mean NBC is in not letting O'Brien stay on the air with his lousy ratings. NBC, through its corporate parent, GE, received federal support... so where is the complaining about selfish O'Brien getting a bunch of money even though he was (partially) responsible for losing millions for his company? (compared to the money NBC would have made had O'Brien's ratings no sucked). Friday, January 15, 2010
Krauthammer's column nails it that Obama's historic drop in popularity is due to Obama's trying to push a too-left agenda.
What Krauthammer doesn't point out that Obama was able to win election because he kept that from the American people. Obama was able to frame his campaign message in a way that appealed to more than just the 20% or so of the public who considers themselves liberal. Most people can rally around a message of 'keeping America safe', 'restoring America's prestige in the world', 'fixing the economy', 'helping Americans advance to retirement' and so on... and those are all themes that liberals and conservatives can each easily take as their own. The devil is in the details, in this case, the specific programs to accomplish those goals. A liberal and a conservative are going to have very different approaches to rebuilding the economy, to keeping America safe and so on. And the disconnect for Obama is that while a good chunk of America wants the overall goal, they have no interest in accomplishing it the way Obama wants. They don't agree that fixing the economy involves multi-billion bailouts of banks and automakers. They don't believe improving health care should be done through a government takeover of the health care system. The longer a politician is able to avoid the specifics, the longer he will be able to keep talking in terms that appeal across the political spectrum. Obama was never forced to talk specifics and he took advantage of that to win. But as Krauthammer points out, a President has to act and this is where Obama was finally forced to show his hand... a hand that America is rejecting pretty consistently across the board. Thursday, January 14, 2010
ADVICE FOR THE GOP (and advice they (1) won't read and (2) won't follow):
Some, but not all of the reasons for the dislike of Obamacare is the feeling it contains a bunch of special deals for favored segments (the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Compromise) while the public at large gets screwed with a combination of higher costs and lesser care. Since the public (rightfully) feels that there is only so much to go around (in effect, a zero sum), the more they see the special treatment given to some, the more they feel they're not going to like what is left for them. The White House/Congress/Labor deal reached today that exempts union-negotiated health care plans and government employee health care plans from taxation applied to 'Cadillac plans' is the latest example of this 'give to Peter and screw Paul' approach to legislation. Given the need to keep the overall 'cost' of Obamacare down to a certain level, to the extent that sponsors were counting on tax money from Cadillac plans to help finance Obamacare, exempting union-negotiated health care plans and government employee health care plans will only result in higher taxes charged to those who don't have union-negotiated health care plans and who don't work for the government. And since taxes deter whatever is being taxed, people who work in the private non-union sector will find their health care choices limited while government workers and union members won't. Ads should be running immediately asking why it is okay for union members and government employees to be exempted but not regular folks who work in the private sector. If it is good enough for a clerk at the DMV to get special treatment, why isn't it okay for the people who have to wait in line at the DMV to get the same special treatment? If it is okay for a worker at GM and Chrysler - firms that only exist because of taxpayer support - to get special treatment, why isn't it right that the same special treatment be given to those who buy GM and Chrysler cars? As I've said before, the American people are usually pretty generous. I bet there is going to be some serious donations flowing out of America and into Haiti in the next days and weeks. But Americans very much dislike being played for fools and they dislike having to pay the full price while someone else gets a discount. The GOP and other critics of Obamacare can get some serious mileage from this... but they won't.
For all of Conan O'Brien's whining about being pushed back, keep in mind that his troubles are attributable to one simple fact: his ratings are not as good as Jay Leno's ratings are.
If O'Brien had better ratings, no one at NBC would be talking about moving him out of the 11:35 time slot. And as far as his complaint that he hasn't gotten that much time to improve his ratings, most TV shows that get lousy ratings don't get months and months, they get canceled. And given that O'Brien has had a show for years (unlike Leno when he first took over from Johnny Carson), apropos of the Passover question, why should anyone expect his ratings to get better over time? If there was something O'Brien could tweak with his show to improve ratings, why wouldn't he have already done it? And for O'Brien's supposed reverence for the 11:35 time slot, it looks pretty clear that the majority of the audience at that hour doesn't want the type of show that he (and Letterman) want to do, they're more receptive (as proven by the ratings) for the type of show Leno puts on. The big mistake NBC made wasn't in moving Leno to prime time, it was agreeing to give O'Brien the Tonight Show slot in the first place. They saw O'Brien as a talent they didn't want to lose, unfortunately for all involved, his talent isn't at 11:35 but rather at a later time. Wednesday, January 13, 2010
What a crock, the idea that bankers are 'apologizing for actions that led to crisis'... but not for the reasons that one might think.
The bankers didn't think they were doing anything wrong at the time, they didn't think they were doing anything particularly risky. That they had in fact done so was only discovered in hindsight when everything blew up around them. Put another way, they were right to pursue the lines of business they did right up to the point where they were wrong to do so. And I don't place much stock in there being some number of people, both in and outside these firms, who were predicting that banks were in for a fall. No matter what the business venture is, there are ALWAYS going to be some people who see doom and gloom on the horizon, who predict disaster will result from following (or, in some cases, from not following) a particular strategy... and being a dissenting view doesn't mean being right. And if financial firms had done something different, there would have been some number of people who would predict disaster from that course of action. (and it isn't just related to business, there are naysayers in every aspect of life. Obama won the election, but I bet there were people in his campaign who were arguing the campaign was being run poorly and that Obama was going to lose if he didn't change direction. I made a game-winning basket today, yet there was at least one teammate who felt I should have passed (to him) rather than taken the shot myself. I can go out to dinner with some friends, at least one of which will probably argue that we should have gone somewhere else). Apologizing implies not only a recognition of having made a mistake but a desire to not make the same mistake in the future. But what are bankers going to do differently in the future that is any different from what they did in the past? Are they going to not pursue what they think to be profitable lines of business because someone somewhere is arguing otherwise? Me thinks not. Thursday, January 07, 2010
Obama's being criticized for taking a 'law enforcement' approach to dealing with the would-be Christmas bomber, in deciding to treat him as a common criminal rather than as a terrorist to be interrogated and dealt with by a military commission.
But there's another aspect of the whole matter that screams 'law enforcement'... the process that resulted in the terrorist being allowed to board the plane in the first place. In criminal matters, there is a relatively high burden that police and prosecutors have to overcome in dealing with someone they think is about to do something illegal. They can't decide for themselves to bug the suspect's house and car, they can't sneak into the suspect's house to look for evidence, they can't drag the guy in for harsh interrogation, they aren't allowed to restrict the suspect's movements and they surely aren't able to order up a Predator strike on someone they simply have a 'hunch' is about to rob a bank. It's different - as it should be - in dealing with our enemies where we're allowed to do things that we just can't do in dealing with common criminals. In such situations, if we have but a bit of doubt about someone, they shouldn't be allowed to get on a plane bound for the United States. But that doesn't seem to be what happened with the Christmas bomber, it's as if everybody involved looked at him not as a potential terrorist but rather as a potential criminal. There wasn't enough 'proof' to keep him from entering the country, the hurdle hadn't been cleared to justify revoking his visa. In war, the state gets the benefit of the doubt. In crime, the suspect gets the benefit of the doubt and in this case, is sure seems as if he was treated no differently than he would be if there was a report that he was coming into the United States to rob a bank. Treating him as a criminal post-capture is just consistent with the way he was treated pre-capture. And for all the fussing about giving him a lawyer, the bigger risk is in continuing to treat would-be terrorists as if they were would-be bank robbers. Wednesday, January 06, 2010
I don't like massive government 'stimulus' programs but that doesn't mean I need to accept all of the arguments given by anti-stimulus folks.
Recessions are caused by people with money choosing not to spend their money and recessions end when people with money choose to start spending their money. And just as government - and government spending - usually plays a big part in the events that cause people with money to stop spending, so too can government spending play a part in creating an environment in which people with money again feel comfortable spending their money. Repeating a theme that I have made many times, much of the economy - and life in general - is driven not by such traditional measures such as used by economists and market theorists but rather by the emotions of consumers and employees and employers. When people feel nice and warm and comfortable, they act in ways that result in a growing economy. And when they don't feel so warm, they act in ways that result in economic contraction. For the past year, people have been scared and their actions have reflected that fear and as a result, the economy has greatly slowed down as consumers and businesses have both cut back on spending. And the recession won't truly end (as measured by perception and not by economic statistics) until people not only stop being afraid but actually start getting that warm feeling back. Given this, there are actions that government can take and spending it can incur that helps people and businesses shed the fear and start feeling more optimistic about the future. For example, spending on anti-terrorism programs can help, especially in a time when people are afraid of being attacked (note: the relevant fear is not that someone fears being killed in an attack but rather the fear of the economic consequences of such an attack). To the extent that people are sticking money in mattresses in fear of an attack, spending on programs that are perceived to have value in deterring attacks and in limiting the damage from any successful attack would have a positive effect on the public's emotional state and thus the economy. It isn't surprising that professionally trained economists tend to dismiss my arguments, it doesn't speak well of their having chosen to spend tens of thousands of dollars on an education that teaches them to gather and analyze all sorts of economic statistics if economic policy can be broken down to something as simple as 'things are good when people are happy so let's try to keep people happy as long as possible'. And the reason I don't like government stimulus programs? Because they're not done properly. They are done in ways that do nothing to boost consumer and business confidence. One time tax rebates don't make people feel more confident. Lowering tax rates is good as tax policy, but lower tax rates aren't going to lead to businesses hiring if they don't think they're going to make the profits. Spending on government projects - even 'shovel ready' projects - doesn't reassure the public that their job prospects aren't in trouble. They may keep people off the unemployment line but recessions aren't ended by reducing layoffs, they're ended when hiring picks up... and government spending, at least the spending contained in the various stimulus bills, doesn't lead to companies starting to hire more employees. Tuesday, January 05, 2010
When Janet Napolitano retracted her comment that 'the system worked', most people took this as an admission that the system did in fact not work... an impression seemingly confirmed both by Obama's comment that a 'systemic failure' allowed the Christmas bomber to board the plane and Brennan's comment on Sunday that the 'system worked every other day' in 2009.
And that impression would be wrong, the system did work. Keep in mind that a system is not an end goal but rather a process by which one hopes to get to an end goal and thus needs to be evaluated in terms of whether the desired end goal was in fact met. Now... if one thought the goal of airline security was to keep would-be terrorists off of planes, then the system can obviously be judged a failure. However... that isn't the goal that the system was put into place to accomplish. The politicians and bureaucrats who designed and implement the system didn't design the system to keep ALL would-be terrorists off of planes... because that wasn't - and isn't - their goal. Their goals (actually, multiple goals) were to (1) create an impression that they were making an effort to keep terrorists off of plans at the same time (2) they didn't violate liberal sensibilities regarding such issues as profiling and privacy. In a perverse twist of the old line that it is better to let 100 guilty people go free than to jail one who is innocent, they decided that they would rather inconvenience millions of unlikely terrorists than to do what is necessary to keep the would-be terrorists off of airplanes. And they succeeded in doing this. The system did work. Monday, January 04, 2010
First off, happy new year.
FT.com's Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, who in writing about the AOL-Time Warner merger, says " (former Time Warner CEO Levin) having avoided apologizing for the billions of dollars destroyed by the deal...". But the 'deal' did not destroy billions of dollars. While Time Warner shareholders suffered as a result of getting stuck with AOL, AOL shareholders benefited by the (likely) same amount as their AOL holdings were bolstered by the value of the Time Warner assets. Without the merger, AOL shareholders would have suffered a catastrophic drop in the value of their holdings. It would be more accurate to say that Time Warner shareholders suffered a loss in the billions of dollars.
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