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Saturday, July 30, 2011
Rubio gives a nice speech, but although he comes close, he doesn't connect the dots between raising the debt limit, the issue that is consuming Washington, and jobs, the issue that is most important to everybody else.
The debt, and the deficit, are two of the reasons that there are no jobs. Who in their right mind would increase hiring when it looks like Washington is going off the rails? And of the people who have money to spend, who in their right mind is going to increase their spending when two of the three branches of government are controlled by people whose goal in life is to take as much money out our pockets as possible? And they're not going to start hiring and spending until this issue gets resolved... and not by adding two and a half trillion dollars of additional debt and make believe cuts in spending... but by approving as little additional debt as possible and by making serious and significant and real cuts in government spending. Only by showing the rest of the country that it has its act together can Washington signal businesses and consumers that we don't have to worry about running out of people to buy our debt... that we don't have to worry about government raising taxes... that we don't have to worry about Washington bureaucrats raising the cost of doing business to the point where we can't make a profit. I know Rubio has only been in the Senate for seven months... but that shouldn't have been long enough for him to lose sight of how the rest of America takes its cues from Washington. When we have a President who is as bad as Obama is, and we have a Congress that is largely controlled by big-spending, big-taxing liberals, then we aren't going to be particularly optimistic and enthusiastic about hiring and expanding and spending. We're going to be worried... so (as we've done) we're going to hoard our cash and wait for the whole house of cards to collapse. I have long felt that the reason the Republicans are losing the PR battle is not because the public disagrees with our principles, but rather because the GOP has been so darn awful at connecting the dots between what we want to do and how that will make things better for those who live outside the Beltway. So the next time you speak, Senator, please spell it out for people. If they want continued high unemployment and high gas and food prices and low home values, then they should back Obama, because Obama, for some inexplicable reason, wants to keep doing the kinds of things that have directly led to such misery today. But if the public wants to get things moving in a positive direction, then they can't support those who stand for business as usual, they need to back those who want to fix Washington.... not for Washington's sake, but for our sakes.
It doesn't matter how enthusiastic your marketers are, if your product s**ks and customers know your product s**ks, then it is a giant waste of effort trying to convince the people who know your product s**ks that they ought to buy it...
And that, rather than a lack of using his 'bully pulpit', as Robert Reich argues, is the reason that Obama can't get any traction for whatever it is that is his plan for raising the deficit... and why his ratings are about as bad as for any President in recent history. Some marketers do have an ability to convince some people to buy a bad product... but only if those people are unexposed to the awfulness of the product. And that is what happened in 2008, Obama (with the help of a woefully non-curious media) was able to sell a sufficient percentage of voters that he was 'what we have been waiting for', that he would make everything right here at home and in the world at large. But once the public experiences for themselves how the product doesn't live up to the hype, they slam the door to even a small possibility of their ever buying that product again... and even if the marketers try to convince them that the product has been improved upon, that the defects have been fixed. This is because it isn't that the product s**ks that bothers them the most, it is that feel used and taken advantage of by the huckster who played to their emotions in convincing them to spend their money and hopes on something that was just so god awful. And once the public feels burned, they want to have nothing to do with that product ever, ever, ever again. Even more sad than watching people with a serious case of buyer's remorse is the marketer who simply can't admit that the product he is selling isn't any good. I pity the marketers who are still trying to convince people that MySpace is better than Facebook. Likewise with the guys who are tasked with selling the American public that union built cars are as good as their non-union built competition. And the (thankfully few) people who continue to push the idea that Bush II was a great President. And.... Reich is another one, still trying to convince people that liberal economics isn't a sure fire way of bankrupting the country, of driving producers offshore or into early retirement. He remains convinced that if only these stupid and evil Republicans would get out of the way and stop obstructing the great liberals, that everything would be just hunky-dory with the economy. And it has to really eat at him that not only do the American people not agree with him, we laugh and ridicule him (as well as the others like him) who are so stuck on stupid that they can't see that the guy they worked so hard to elect just two and a half years ago is so incompetent. If they could, they'd understand that it's not the message that needs reworking, it is the product they're trying to sell.
What a surprise it was, reading that Iraq is deadlier now than it was a year ago..... NOT!
As I predicted*, a HUGE part of the reason Iraq was as quiet as it was back then was because the crazies were just waiting us out... and as soon as we left, they'd get back to killing each other, the way they've been doing for hundreds of years. And this seems to be exactly what is happening. Our presence didn't cause the crazies to love one another, it didn't result in any change in attitude. All our troops did was give the crazies a real good reason to stay quiet.... Why go out and stir up trouble if doing so would bring down the wrath of the US military? And especially when you knew - because Obama so helpfully and repeatedly told you - that we were leaving in the not too distant future? By the way, this is why I disagree* with those who say the Taliban is becoming more aggressive in light of Obama's determination to bring troops home. We are already committed to leaving, their attacks aren't accelerating their departure. If anything, Taliban attacks give ammunition to those who argue against leaving. So to all those who claim that 'we' (or 'Bush', as the case may be) won the Iraq war, I say 'pfffft'. We didn't win the war in the way you're defining winning. We may have killed a bunch of crazies. We certainly got rid of Hussein and his sadistic sons. And we did determine that Iraq does not have WMDs. All of these are good, and I wish we had simply accomplished them and left Iraq to the Iraqis to sort out. But we did not turn Iraq into some beacon of democracy and freedom and hope that would inspire the world the way Bush and his fellow delusionists argued would be the case. * as always, you can take my word for it or search my archives yourself as I am too lazy to find and post the link. Thursday, July 28, 2011
They may or may not have considered this in their thinking, but the House GOPers who oppose the Boehner plan may actually make it more likely that the eventual deal will contain fewer - and softer - cuts in spending than would be the case with the Boehner plan currently before the House.
Huh? For any number of reasons, Boehner is determined to make a deal to raise the debt ceiling (one reason is he thinks the GOP is going to get killed if they're seen as the culprits behind default). And if he can't get the votes from the GOP side, there is only one place he can turn to for votes... the more moderate Democrats in the House. Do Michelle Bachman and the others who oppose the Boehner deal think the deal he makes with the Democrats will contain even more in cuts? Or push to balance the budget even faster? Yes, guys, I too would like a whole lot more in cuts than Boehner is proposing. I'd prefer to see real cuts in spending, not merely decreases in the amount of additional spending. But by being so dogmatic, you're making it very likely that we'll end up with an even worse deal. Now you may have decided that this is okay with you and your constituents (and your campaign contributors), that you're better off with a weak deal that you voted against than a stronger deal that you voted for. If that's the case, so be it. But if I were in your district, I would look at you as having made the weak deal possible. You can kill the weak deal, just as you can kill the Boehner deal. It's up to you to decide which one you're going to kill. Tuesday, July 26, 2011
John Boehner goes on television and declares we need to 'stop spending so much money' (something along those lines).
Yet, his plan provides for increases in spending every year, both in entitlements and in discretionary spending. I am profoundly puzzled why someone on the GOP doesn't simply call for freezing spending - on everything - at current levels. One, it cuts the deficit a whole lot more and faster than any other proposal out there. Second, and no less important, it is a very easy thing to explain to the public and get buy in for. Cuts are cuts... and not merely decreases in the amount of additional spending. And even if the GOP doesn't push on this front, I think they ought to use whatever leverage they have to enshrine into legislation an end to the Washington fiction that reducing the amount of growth is a cut. We would be in far better shape today had the GOP forced this through years ago. It is far harder to justify actual increases in spending than to argue for simply 'maintaining' spending. And it is far easier to demagogue 'cuts' than 'not high enough' increases in spending. An increase takes place when you spend more this year than you did last year. And it isn't a cut unless you spend less this year than you did last year.
Reportedly, some employers are not even bothering to consider applicants who are currently unemployed.
As 'unemployed' is not a federally protected category, an employer is legally able to exclude them from the pool of potential hires (I'm not saying this is a good idea, just that they're legally able to do so). But here comes the EEOC, which is looking into whether employers have adopted this practice as a means of discriminating against blacks and older workers (who are reportedly more likely to be unemployed). If employers were doing so, it would be a big no-no. But does the thought that employers are doing so even pass the laugh test? I think not. A pool of applicants to a particular job is going to consist of people with all sorts of experience. Right off the top, an employer can eliminate anyone who doesn't have relevant experience. With all the people with experience who are looking for jobs, why even consider looking at someone who doesn't? Of the remaining pool of applicants with relevant experience, some portion will be employed, some portion unemployed. And I would figure the racial component of the former would be within a few percentages of the latter. In other words, there are going to be blacks in each group. Just as there is almost definitely going to be older folks in each group. So tell me how excluding the unemployed from consideration gets a racist employer from having to consider black applicants? Or an employer who doesn't like old people from having to consider older applicants? It doesn't.... which means it makes no sense that an employer would exclude the unemployed from consideration as a way of discriminating against blacks or older folks. As it would appear - at least to those of us who don't see illegal discrimination everywhere in life - this is simply as it appears to be... for whatever reason, some employers think that limiting their search to candidates who have managed to hold on to their jobs would produce a higher qualified applicant pool than would be the case if they let anybody apply. Monday, July 25, 2011
Here's my response to James Capretta's suggestions on what the GOP should do next...
Dear James: No offense, but this is too much of an inside-Washington perspective... too much focus on the details of a deal, an acceptance of conditions as they exist and failing to rally the public behind what we're trying to do so that we can get what we want and not have to settle for what we might be able to get. The GOP needs to stop talking about this in the abstract. The public doesn't care about abstracts, they view the world through the prism of 'how does this affect me'... Thus, the GOP needs to be doing a better job communicating to the general public (which isn't the hard core who read NR) that Obama's spending and anti-business agenda is killing the economy... and as bad as the economy is right now, it will be even worse if the debt limit is raised without significant and measurable cuts in real spending. They have to make the public fear an increase in the debt limit more than they fear the upheaval if the debt limit isn't raised by August 2nd. And they have to sell the public on the idea that if we made big cuts in spending (and reined in Obama in other ways as well) that the economy would immediately start to improve... gas prices would start to come down, housing prices would start back up, employment would improve and so on. And if Obama gets his way? Unemployment over 10%... housing prices start downward again... health insurance prices will go up further than in the past... and so on (all reasonable predictions). Were the GOP to be doing this, they could pretty much write the package they want. Keep in mind this worked - in reverse - for Obama with his stimulus, he convinced the public that the world would end without a trillion dollar package... and the public didn't rise up in protest. It's time for the GOP to not let a good crisis go to waste. Oh, what am I thinking? The GOP has historically been rather inept from a PR perspective (too many Washington insiders in charge of policy and positioning). Oh well. Sunday, July 24, 2011
What is it about Michael Kinsley that leads him to so totally misunderstand and/or misrepresent the topic(s) on which he writes?
Today's example is his column in which he claims that refusing to raise the debt limit involves not honoring our obligation to pay the debt the country has run up. Kinsley claims that not raising the debt limit is akin to telling your bank that you're not going to pay your mortgage. But... it isn't and it doesn't. Refusing to raise the debt limit means not agreeing to take on any more debt, it doesn't mean that the country won't honor the debt that has already been incurred. Not a single opponent of raising the debt limit is in favor of not paying the debt that has been borrowed. To use Kinsley's analogy - but correctly - they're willing to pay off the mortgage, what they don't want to do is run up more charges on yet another credit card and fall even further into debt (could Kinsley really be arguing that people who are seriously in debt and whose incomes don't cover their living expenses ought to go out and get another credit card?) Kinsley also plays games by claiming that the country has "fallen into the classic debtor’s trap of borrowing to pay the interest on previous borrowings". But that's not totally true either. One could just as easily (and also misleadingly) claim that tax receipts are sufficient to cover debt service, that we're borrowing to finance current period spending. The fact is that the federal government brings in lots and lots of money every month... obviously not enough to pay for everything but sufficient to pay for any single category of spending, whether it be interest payments, national defense, social security and medicare, or whatever. But depicting federal finances and spending in this way doesn't help Kinsley in trying to portray as childish and irresponsible those who are opposed to raising the debt ceiling. So what is it with Kinsley? Is he really clueless? Or just a liberal partisan distorting the facts in order to make his argument seem more responsible? Thursday, July 21, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
As stupidity is defined as doing the same thing over again and expecting a different response, I won't make exactly the same arguments, I'll try to mix it up a bit...
More than anything else, the GOP needs to connect the dots between Obamanomics and the sad state of the economy. The GOP needs to stop talking about the issues in the abstract. Obama's advisers are right in the sense that the public doesn't care per se about the unemployment rate, the exact amount of the federal debt and deficit and so on. It isn't that we ignore these statistics, we use them as a barometer of sorts, a leading indicator of how we personally are going to be doing in the not too distant future. Someone who sees the unemployment rate increase or a report of higher than expected layoffs is going to be just a bit more concerned about their own job security. Someone who sees reports of declining house values is going to be worried just a bit more about how solid their investment in their own home is. Someone who sees oil prices rocket upward is going to be worried about how much more it is going to cost to fill up their gas tank. The GOP needs to personalize the debate, to make the public feel that their financial future is definitely going to be affected by how these policy fights turn out. It starts by tying Obamanomics to the economic problems we're having. The GOP needs to argue - over and over and over again - that Obamanomics is the reason we have such high unemployment, why housing prices are still in the toilet, why businesses aren't hiring. Every time (and there will be plenty of such times) that a bad economic number comes out, someone in the GOP needs to take the podium to tie one or another Obama economic plank to the negative report. Then the GOP needs to convince the public that our financial situation will be dramatically improved if GOP policies are adopted. The public - as a whole - needs to feel that cutting federal spending is going to help make their job just a bit more secure. They need to feel that ruling out tax hikes is going to improve the likelihood that their employer won't cut back on raises and staffing levels. They need to feel that repealing Obamacare is going to not only lower their health care costs but also to make it easier for them to get the care they want. Right now, the GOP isn't doing that, they're talking about the issues at the thirty thousand foot level... and unfortunately, this is a level that is over the heads of most of the people whose support is crucial to win not only this fight but to ensure that Obama is a one term President. Thursday, July 14, 2011
From a conservative's perspective, dealing with the debt limit isn't that big a problem... it involves the concept of proximate cause.
In layman's terms, and in this case, proximate cause involves looking at who is the one who had the most recent opportunity to keep the problem from taking place. In other words, the last one to say no is the one who gets blamed. To execute this strategy, the GOP needs to put Obama and the Democrats in the position of being the ones who are saying 'no'. And to do this, the GOP simply needs to pass in the House and submit an identical bill in the Senate that provides for both an increase in the debt limit and cuts in federal spending. If they do so, one of two things will happen. Either the Senate Democrats will kill the bill, or failing that, Obama will refuse to sign it. In either case, the GOP is able to point the finger at Obama and the Democrats for being the proximate cause of the default. Had they not said no, the crisis would be averted. But since they're the ones who said no, the problem and the consequences are theirs. Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Apropos of the Obama adviser who said Americans don't base their votes on the unemployment rate, neither do they do so on the amount of government debt or deficit...
Americans vote based on what we care about. There are voters who care so much about a particular social issue that they're going to vote for the candidate who shares their thinking on that issue, and regardless of the positions the candidates have on the other issues. Most voters vote based on the economy (it's the economy, stupid). But not the economy as a whole, but rather about their little piece of the economy. And in looking at their slice of the economy, they look first at how they are doing now... and then at how they think they're going to be doing in the future. Americans don't need statistics such as the unemployment rate and level of federal debt to know how they're doing. They know if they have a job. They know if they feel safe in their homes and on the streets. They know if their company is cutting back or expanding, if they are in line for a raise or having their hours cut. They know if gas prices and food prices and taxes are going up. They know if they have enough money to pay for a vacation or to replace the family car. Voters who are unhappy about their lives tend to vote for the challenger. Voters who are happy about their lives vote for the incumbent. And it doesn't matter whether the country as a whole is doing well, all that matters to people is how they are doing. It is in trying to guess at what the future holds that we resort to looking at statistics of one form or another. If the unemployment rate is high - and climbing - we're not going to be as optimistic about being able to hold on to our jobs as we would be if the rate was low and/or going down. If gas and food prices are going up, we worry that this could lead to our having to do without something else we wanted to buy. And if the statistics lead us to worry about our future, we're not going to be happy. The exact amount of the federal deficit (and debt) doesn't matter to most voters. We're not bothered that the debt is at $XX trillion of dollars, we are worried that we're on a path that doesn't end well... for us. So it doesn't matter what the exact amount of the deal is. What matters is whether Americans view the deal as getting us back pointed in the right direction. Not for the country's sake, but for our own. Monday, July 11, 2011
If the traditional definition of chutzpah is murdering your parents, then pleading for mercy because you're an orphan, I think adding trillions of dollars in new spending, then claiming it's only fair that any spending cuts be met with trillions of dollars in new tax hikes certainly meets the definition.
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
I'm as big a fan as there is of the changes Wisconsin made earlier this year, but there's something that doesn't add up in this report about how those changes resulted in one school district swinging from a $400,000 deficit to a $1.5 million surplus...
According to the article, the district was able to create this $1.9 million swing from raising employee contributions for health care from 10 percent to 12.6 percent (I) and for pensions from 0 to 5.8 percent. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the district costs for health http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifcare and pensions were evenly split. Averaging the 2.6 and the 5.8 gains works out to an average of the two contributions of 4.2 percent. In order for a savings of 4.2 percentage points to equal $1.9 million in savings, overall spending on pensions and health care would have to be in excess of $42 million.... which isn't likely at all, given that the district only has 400 employees, as that would mean that health care and pension costs were in excess of $100,000 per employee. I know that public employees can often have sweet deals, but no deal is that sweet. Here's another way of looking at it. The district has 4,200 students. Using $10,000 in spending per pupil as a benchmark, that would work out to just $42 million in total spending on education... salaries, maintenance, supplies, etc., .... so there's no way the district could have been spending $42 million on just benefits. So unless my math logic is wrong, there's something wrong with the story as presented...
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