Words Mean Something

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.

A couple of weeks ago, in my local newspaper, I spotted an AP story headlined, “Obama criticizes Palin on earmarks.” In that story, Senator Obama is quoted as saying: “Come on! I mean, words mean something, you can’t just make stuff up.”

After I picked myself up off the floor and cleaned up the coffee I had just spewed all over my breakfast table, I started thinking about this. And after having the phrase rattling around in my head for a couple of weeks, I’m compelled to ask the good senator a couple of questions:

In 2004, right after you were elected to the United States Senate, you said, “I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years, and my entire focus is making sure that I’m the best possible senator on behalf of the people of Illinois.” Did those words mean something?

Four days later, a reporter asked why you had “ruled out” a 2008 run for the Presidency. You replied, “I am a believer in knowing what you’re doing when you apply for a job…and I think that if I were to seriously consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, before having served a day in the Senate. There might be some people who are comfortable with doing that, but I’m not one of those people.” Did those words mean something?

In January of 2007, you told Larry King, “I’m a big believer in public financing of campaigns.” In November of 2007, you told the Midwest Democracy Network, “If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.” In April, 2008, you told FOX News that you would be “very interested in pursuing public financing, because I think not every candidate is going to be able to do what I’ve done in this campaign and I think it’s important to think about future campaigns.” Did any of those words mean something?

In March, 2008, you said of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother…” What, exactly, did those words mean?

Those 130 times that you voted “present” instead of “yea” or “nay” in the Illinois State Senate – on bills like the one that wanted to prevent adult book/video stores and strip clubs from being within 1,000 feet of schools and churches, or the one that wanted to prosecute students as adults if they fire guns on school grounds, or that much-discussed bill that had to do with partial-birth abortion – what, exactly did that word mean?

I guess that words mean something only as long as they’re not your words. Although I did find some words that I'm sure do mean something. They're from your book Audacity of Hope where you said, "I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them." Over the next few months, we'll all get to see what those words mean.

Thanks for listening. No, not you, Barak, because I know you’re not.

Let's Play Rhetorical Question!

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those out there who just can’t be bothered.

The problem with most discussions on the economy is what software engineers call the “M.E.G.O.” factor – which stands for “My Eyes Glaze Over.” So today’s episode of Rhetorical Question will focus on some basic economic concepts in a fun and informative fashion in the hope that we can impart some nuggets of wisdom while avoiding the “M.E.G.O.” factor. Ready? Here we go:

Q: Where do jobs come from?

A: I'll assume for this discussion that you’re asking about private-sector jobs. Because, after all, if it wasn’t for the private sector, there wouldn’t be any tax revenue to pay for public sector jobs. So the answer is that private-sector jobs are created when (1) businesses are formed, or (2) when businesses grow.

Q: How do new businesses get started?

A: Suppose you have an idea for a new widget. You’re convinced that this is the greatest innovation since pre-sliced bread, so you decide to quit your job and build it in your garage. You’ve just created a new business…but very soon you’re going to discover several things:

1. You no longer have a job (you quit it, remember?). That means until you get some widgets to sell, you’re going to have to support yourself from your savings, or take out another mortgage on your house, or run up your credit cards, or borrow money from someone, or all of the above.
2. In the beginning, most of the money you get from selling your widgets will go into the production of more widgets. It will take longer than you expected before you will actually be able to pay yourself as much as you were making in the job you quit and still fund the business of making more widgets. Meanwhile, if you borrowed money, the people you borrowed it from are going to expect you to pay it back. With interest.
3. You’re also going to discover that you’re working harder, and longer hours, than you ever have before in your life, while you’re still making less money. Some people, when they realize this, say, “to hell with this!” and go back to working for someone else. That’s one reason why so many new businesses fail.
4. You may find someone who is willing to fund your business in exchange for part ownership. This might seem attractive, or even necessary to survival. But it also means that you’re going to have to share the profits of your widget business, and when Amalgamated Widgets, Inc., finally realizes that your widgets are better than theirs and buys your business, a big chunk of that money is going to go to the person who put up the money. So, if at all possible, you’ll probably keep busting your backside to build your business without giving up any ownership.
5. If you’re lucky, or really good, or both, you will eventually get to the point where you can hire other people to do most of the hard work and still take out enough money to live comfortably yourself. You’re now creating jobs. And, by the way, small businesses create far more jobs in this country than big corporations do.

Q: What causes a business to grow and hire more people?

A: A business will hire more people when there is so much demand for its products and/or services that it cannot fulfill that demand without hiring more people. If the business can make more money without hiring more people, it will. In fact, if the business can make more money with fewer people, it will. To put it another way, businesses will only hire more people when hiring more people will lead to the business making more money.

Q: My God! Isn’t that greedy and cold-hearted?

A: Didn’t you read through the thought experiment above? If we’re talking about your widget business, would you hire people if it wouldn’t result in making you more money? Why should you? And why should anyone else have the right to tell you that you have to? In fact, when you hire your first employee, you will probably make less money until the business has ramped up enough as a result of the new hire to cover paying two people. And as you continue to grow, you’ll wrestle with that trade-off every single time you make a hiring decision!

Q: OK, OK, I can see that point if we’re talking about a small businessperson in his garage. But what about the big corporations?

A: What about the big corporations? First of all, most of them are publicly held. That means that ownership, in the form of shares of stock, are freely bought and sold on one of the many stock exchanges in the world. Typically, the shareholders elect a Board of Directors, and the Directors hire (and fire) the top executives of the corporation and decide how much they get paid. And when I say “shareholders,” I’m not talking about the fat-cat investors of a century ago. Today, thousands upon thousands of Americans have their own stock portfolios, and many thousands of others own stock indirectly through pension plans, mutual funds, 401k retirement accounts, etc., etc. So, unless you know absolutely no one who falls into any of these categories, these shareholders, even of the much-reviled “Big Oil Companies,” are your friends and neighbors…and maybe even you yourself. In fact, I recall years ago working for a mid-sized company that was not publicly held, and that strenuously resisted going public because the company president did not want to have to be accountable to “the little old lady in tennis shoes,” as he so picturesquely put it.

A publicly held corporation has one primary goal: to maximize the monetary return to the shareholders. Some companies do that by paying dividends. That means that, at the end of the year, the Board of Directors decides that some portion of the net profit of the company is going to be paid directly to the shareholders in cash – equally divided according to the number of shares each shareholder owns. In other cases, particularly in fast-growing companies, the shareholders expect to make their money by selling their shares at some point in the future for more than they paid for them. This is called a "capital gain."

Corporate executives have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. If a company does things that cause financial harm to that little old lady in tennis shoes, the corporate executives can go to jail. In fact, we’ve passed laws in the last few years that make it far easier than it used to be to criminally prosecute executives for a breach of their fiduciary responsibilities. And you can’t have it both ways: you can’t tell companies that you’re going to send their executives to jail if they don’t look after the best interests of their shareholders, and then in the next breath tell them that their companies are making too much money!

Q: Well, why shouldn’t we at least tax the heck out of these big corporations that are making so much money?

A: If you raise corporate income taxes, will the company end up with more income, or less income?

Q: Less income, I suppose…so what?

A: If a company has less income, are they likely to hire more people or fewer people? (Hint: the answer is “fewer.”) And if the income gets reduced to the point where the shareholders are no longer happy with their return, what’s the likelihood that the company may actually cut jobs in order to get the financials back in shape? (Hint: the answer is “almost a certainty.”) Not to mention the fact that the stock would become less attractive to investors, so the company will have more difficulty raising money to fund any kind of business expansion.

Q: OK, fine! Can we at least raise the capital gains tax?

A: If you tax a particular behavior, will you get more of it, or less of it? (Hint: the answer is “less.”) So it follows that if you raise taxes on investment, you will get less investment. People who have money to invest will look for other things to do with it that will get them a better return. That means less money is available to fund start-up garage-based widget manufacturing companies. That means less money is available to fund more ambitious start-up companies like, say, biotech firms that think they may be able to make the next big cancer-fighting breakthrough. That means less money going into the stock market, which means companies have a more difficult time raising capital, which means less growth. Any way you slice it, it means fewer jobs.

Q: So you're saying it wouldn’t necessarily be smart to elect a President who is committed to raising corporate income taxes and nearly doubling the capital gains tax?

A: Congratulations - we have a winner!

Thanks for playing Rhetorical Question.

Seven Years Ago Today...

…over 3,000 Americans lost their lives in the worst terrorist attacks ever to take place on U.S. soil. I’ll bet that you can remember exactly where you were when you heard the news. I know I can – it’s one of those events that burn themselves into your memory. I’ll never forget it, just as I’ll never forget hearing the news of the Challenger explosion, or the news that President Kennedy had been assassinated.

Take a deep breath, and think back to that day, and how you felt. Think about the climate of fear in the ensuing weeks, as we all waited for the proverbial “other shoe to drop,” sure that there would be additional attacks. Think about how the fear was escalated by the appearance of anthrax powder sent anonymously through the mail. No one knew then that it was, apparently, a case of domestic terrorism – we all believed that it was one more piece of evidence that our nation was under attack by ruthless murderers who hid in the shadows and struck unexpectedly, killing for the sake of killing and for the disruption it caused. Because, in fact, we were.

A lot of revisionist history has been written in the last seven years – but if you were old enough to know what was going on back then, I want you to remember how it all felt. Everyone – everyone – believed that we would be struck again, and soon, and that the possibility of attack with weapons of mass destruction was very, very real.

Imagine now that you were the President of the United States, and that, as the chief executive officer of the country and the commander-in-chief of its military forces, it was your job to try to keep the country safe. What would you have done?

George W. Bush decided that, as a nation, we could no longer afford to stay with our traditional policy of striking back only when we were attacked. He was not willing to risk the possibility that the next attack might kill tens of thousands of Americans by slipping chemical or biological weapons into a municipal water supply, or that America could lose an entire city if the terrorists got their hands on a nuclear weapon. Instead, he made a fundamental decision to change our foreign policy. He declared war on the terrorists, and stated that we were going to go after them.

He has been greatly criticized for making that decision. Many of the nations around the world, who were quick to offer sympathy and condolences to “America the Victim,” were suddenly outraged when we decided that we would no longer be a victim, but would stand up and fight back. There were many reasons for this change of heart. In some cases, it was because our “allies” were literally on the take – remember the Oil for Food scandal? – but I personally believe that much of the outrage arose from embarrassment because we were doing what they were afraid to do. It’s human nature to be angry at someone who makes you look bad.

The Democrats bang the drum over and over and over and over about the “failed policies” of this administration. But have you noticed that they never actually articulate what those failed policies are or exactly why they are failures? Could someone please explain to me what they are? Because he has not failed at the most important task that he set for himself seven years ago: we haven’t been attacked again. And I don’t think it’s because the terrorists don’t want to attack us anymore, do you? We keep hearing about how the President’s policies are creating more terrorists, and making America less safe – yet we haven’t been attacked again these seven years. And it isn't because they aren't trying.

There are those who believe that if we would just be nice to the terrorists, they wouldn’t hate us anymore. There are those who believe that we should negotiate, without preconditions, with nations who support and advocate terrorism, and who praise those who practice it. There are those who believe that terrorist acts are basically criminal actions and should be left to the police and the court systems. There are those who believe that heinous murderers should be accorded the same protections granted to soldiers who are fighting in the uniforms of their countries. Who believe that they should be brought into the country and granted the same Constitutional rights as American citizens. There are those who believe that everything should be left in the hands of the United Nations (perhaps the most laughable idea of all), and that America should never take any unilateral military action.

Ross Perot is famously quoted as saying, in the aftermath of his departure from GM’s Board of Directors, “At General Motors, when they see a snake the first thing they do is form a committee on snakes. At EDS, when we see a snake, we kill it.” That sounds a lot like the debate over what to do about terrorism. Maybe Ross’ viewpoint is due to the fact that he’s another one of those Texas “cowboys,” but it sure sounds like common sense to me.

People who murder innocents for political gain, who coerce women and even the mentally handicapped to wrap themselves in explosives and blow themselves up in public places, who decapitate journalists and film the process, and who torture people who are unlucky enough to be captured rather than killed, are not “insurgents,” they are not “freedom fighters,” they are not even “enemy combatants.” They are the scum of the earth. They are the snakes. They deserve no mercy and no quarter. Like a cancer, they need to be excised from the rest of the civilized world.

Very bright people differ on how likely another terrorist attack is. Matthew Bunn of Harvard presented a mathematical model, published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, that estimates the probability of a nuclear terrorist attack in the next decade to be 29%. Others, such as Graham Allison, the founding dean of Harvard’s modern John F. Kennedy School of Government and author of Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, have argued that the chances are as high as 50%. Can you imagine the effect on our nation – not just of having a city wiped off the map with potentially hundreds of thousands or even millions of casualties, but of the ensuing economic and social upheaval that would follow? You think the economic effect of 9/11 was bad?

It’s easy to be a proverbial “armchair quarterback.” It’s easy to criticize someone else’s decisions when the weight of responsibility is not on your shoulders. But I have to ask: if the probability is a mere fraction of what Matthew Bunn or Graham Allison advocate, if it’s just one in ten, or even one in a hundred, of losing an entire city to a terrorist attack in the next ten years, who do you want in charge? The people who want to talk to the snakes and convince them that we’re really nice people so they should be nice to us too? Or the people who want to find the snakes and kill them?

I will never forget where I was, what I was doing, and how I felt seven years ago today. And, God help me, but I don’t think I have it in me to ever forgive either. So, “W,” between now and next January, keep killing those snakes while those of us who have some common sense keep trying to elect someone who feels the same way about them to take over the job.

Thanks for listening.

Double Standard? What Double Standard?

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.

Once again, the morning newspaper has left me shaking my head. Not really in disbelief, because I’ve seen too much bias in recent years to be particularly surprised at anything I read – it’s more of a “how can they be so blind to what they’re saying” head shake.

The headline, from the Associated Press, was “Palin disclosures put campaign on defensive.” It was all about how the disclosure that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old unmarried daughter was pregnant was “the latest in a string of disclosures that left the John McCain campaign defending his choice and the thoroughness of the background check of the little-known Alaska governor.”

What were the other disclosures? Well, it seems that she dismissed Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan after she was elected governor in 2006. Not surprisingly, Mr. Monegan wasn’t happy about losing his job. He speculated to a reporter from KTUU in Anchorage that he thought he probably had been dismissed because he resisted pressure from “Palin’s staff and husband” to fire a state trooper who was involved in a “bitter custody battle” with Sarah Palin’s sister after a 2005 divorce. Now, mind you, Palin’s ex-brother-in-law had allegedly fired a Taser at his young stepson and threatened to kill his father-in-law. It is not unreasonable to think that maybe, just maybe, a person who would do those things shouldn’t be carrying around a gun and a badge if the allegations are true. It’s also worth noting that the custody case, and many of the complaints filed against the trooper by Sarah Palin and her husband, predate her election to the governor’s office – when she was still a private citizen.

The result is that the Alaska State Legislature has appointed an investigator to look into the allegations. Sarah Palin’s response to the investigation, if I may be so bold as to paraphrase, was, “Bring it on!” McCain’s campaign has stated publicly that they were aware of the investigation, had looked into it themselves, and were convinced that there was nothing of substance there.

Oh, and the other disturbing disclosure was that Sarah Palin’s husband was arrested for drunken driving 20 years ago. No, I’m not joking. I don’t think they were even married at the time.

So the personal attacks begin. Oh, that’s not the way they’re spinning it – the spin is that the story isn’t about Palin, per se, but about what it tells us about the vetting process (or lack thereof) of the McCain campaign. Bullfeathers. I believe that fair-minded Americans will see this for exactly what it is: a blatant attempt to attack and discredit Sarah Palin. And we will see the attacks increase and escalate, because Sarah Palin represents a huge danger to the Obama campaign, simply because she’s conservative, she’s popular (her approval rating in Alaska is 80%), and she’s a woman.

But if you want to talk about the vetting process, let me just mention that the Democrat Party just nominated a Presidential candidate who:

• Spent 20 years sitting in the congregation of a pastor who is on record as spewing absolutely outrageous and hateful lies about his country, and about white folk, among other things. We’re asked to believe that Obama didn’t actually hear any of those particular sermons, and didn't know what was being said.
• Served on a board of directors with, gave speeches with, and has repeatedly been a guest in the home of unrepentant “radical activist” (read “domestic terrorist”) William Ayres. (He held a 1995 campaign event at Ayres' house, and Ayres and his wife, former terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, were contributors to one of his campaigns.) Mr. Ayres was a member of the Weather Underground in the 1960s and 1970s, and admitted to participating in the bombings of the New York police headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol Building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972, although he was never charged or convicted. And before you start telling me that this is ancient history, let me stress that it is the “unrepentant” part that has us conservatives a little twisted up. As recently as September 11, 2001, the New York Times quoted Ayres as saying that he found “a certain eloquence in bombs," and that he didn't "regret setting the bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Furthermore, he believes that America "is not a just and fair and decent place," and his response to the suggestion that America is a great country is that "it makes me want to puke."
• Has been involved in questionable real estate deals with indicted Chicago real estate developer Tony Rezko.

I could go on, but I think that’s plenty for now. Might I suggest that there’s something wrong with the vetting process of the entire Democrat Party? And with media outlets who are just fine with that, but who dig up the fact that Sarah Palin’s husband had a DUI 20 years ago?

The more I read the newspapers and listen to the “alphabet networks” in this country, the more convinced I am that the only reasonable explanation is the one Bernard Goldberg advances in his book Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. (An excellent book, and one that is definitely on the Leftcoast Blues recommended reading list.) As amazing as it may seem, Goldberg is convinced that his former colleagues honestly believe that they represent mainstream American thought. They spend all their time hanging out with people who think the same way they do, going to the same parties, and reading each other’s work. Their belief system is never seriously challenged, because they simply never interact with anyone who doesn’t share it. Consequently, they really don’t believe that they are biased at all – they truly believe that they are moderate in their political thinking, and don’t understand why people accuse them of being otherwise.

They just don’t get it. Unfortunately for them, we do. Which is why newspaper readership continues to decline across the country, and why the major network news shows continue to struggle to maintain their ratings. But by all means, keep up the attacks - they'll do more to help elect McCain and Palin than any positive news coverage could ever do!

Thanks for listening.