Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can't be bothered.
I have a dream, ladies and gentlemen. A dream in which a credible Republican leader (and, yes, I realize that "credible Republican leader" is unfortunately an oxymoron at the moment) says to Barack Obama what Daniel Hannan is saying to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Give a listen, and mentally replace "Mr. Prime Minister" with "Mr. President," and the references to Great Britain with references to the United States. I think you'll find that the meaning transfers pretty well.
Thanks for listening.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
An Open Letter to America
Are you happy now? Is this really the government you wanted? Where Congress demonizes private citizens to the point where they fear for their lives and safety? Where, after deliberately inserting language into the stimulus bill that allowed these bonuses to be paid, they then turn around and threaten to specifically target these people with a confiscatory 90% tax if they don’t give the money back – even though they were contractually entitled to it? Is this the government you wanted?
And don’t tell me that the bonuses weren’t deserved, because you don’t know that. You don’t know who got bonuses, you don’t know what they had to do to qualify for them, and you don’t know how much worse things at AIG might have been without these particular individuals. You simply assumed that because AIG lost a lot of money and got a government bailout, and because Congress and the media sensationalized the situation, and because we’re talking about large sums of money, these people didn’t deserve to have their employment contracts honored – even though the total amount we’re talking about is less than one-tenth of one percent of the bailout money AIG received – so you grabbed your pitchfork and torch and joined the mob. Shame on you.
There is no slope slipperier than the one you set foot upon when the government starts deciding what people in the private sector “should” be paid. To paraphrase the Reverend Martin Niemoller:
And don’t tell me that the bonuses weren’t deserved, because you don’t know that. You don’t know who got bonuses, you don’t know what they had to do to qualify for them, and you don’t know how much worse things at AIG might have been without these particular individuals. You simply assumed that because AIG lost a lot of money and got a government bailout, and because Congress and the media sensationalized the situation, and because we’re talking about large sums of money, these people didn’t deserve to have their employment contracts honored – even though the total amount we’re talking about is less than one-tenth of one percent of the bailout money AIG received – so you grabbed your pitchfork and torch and joined the mob. Shame on you.
There is no slope slipperier than the one you set foot upon when the government starts deciding what people in the private sector “should” be paid. To paraphrase the Reverend Martin Niemoller:
First they came for the Wall Street CEOs, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Wall Street CEO.
Then they came for the bonus recipients, and I did not speak out, because I was not a bonus recipient.
Then they came for big business executives with private jets, and I did not speak out, because I didn’t have a private jet.
Then they came for the “rich” people who made more than $250,000 per year, and I did not speak out, because I wasn’t “rich.”
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Some Food for Thought
Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.
Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, of Great Britain, was approximately 30 years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and turned 42 the year the U.S. Constitution was ratified. He watched the birth of the new nation from his side of the Atlantic. While unverified, the following quote has long been attributed to him:
We have a president who is determined to play the class warfare card at every opportunity. On page five of Mr. Obama’s federal budget, you will read, “While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not.” Did you catch that? If you make a lot of money, President Obama apparently believes that you must have done something shady or underhanded to do it – you haven’t been “playing by the rules,” and he goes on to say that it is his duty to change that. I find that disturbing.
Demonize the rich. Make them pay for all those nifty government programs. After all, they don't deserve to have all that money! It isn't fair that they should have so much! They probably cheated to get it anyway! Keep that largesse coming.
May I recommend instead the words of another president: “Property is the fruit of labor…property is desirable…is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.” That was Abraham Lincoln, whom Barack Obama claims to admire.
And while we’re quoting great statesmen, consider Thomas Jefferson’s words: “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.”
Thanks for listening.
Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, of Great Britain, was approximately 30 years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and turned 42 the year the U.S. Constitution was ratified. He watched the birth of the new nation from his side of the Atlantic. While unverified, the following quote has long been attributed to him:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”We’ve managed to beat the 200 year prediction so far, but some things are starting to worry me. As we’ve observed in earlier posts, 41% of all Americans paid no federal Income Tax in 2006. That’s pushing dangerously close to a majority. And we continue to hear that we can have it all, and only the “rich” will have to pay for it – 95% of all Americans, we are told, will get tax cuts.
We have a president who is determined to play the class warfare card at every opportunity. On page five of Mr. Obama’s federal budget, you will read, “While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not.” Did you catch that? If you make a lot of money, President Obama apparently believes that you must have done something shady or underhanded to do it – you haven’t been “playing by the rules,” and he goes on to say that it is his duty to change that. I find that disturbing.
Demonize the rich. Make them pay for all those nifty government programs. After all, they don't deserve to have all that money! It isn't fair that they should have so much! They probably cheated to get it anyway! Keep that largesse coming.
May I recommend instead the words of another president: “Property is the fruit of labor…property is desirable…is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.” That was Abraham Lincoln, whom Barack Obama claims to admire.
And while we’re quoting great statesmen, consider Thomas Jefferson’s words: “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.”
Thanks for listening.
March's Trip to the Perspective Store
Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.
Golly, the government, from President Obama on down, are sure twisted up about the fact that AIG actually honored their contractual commitments to employees who were due “retention bonuses.” The grandstanding is over the top. Congress is looking for ways to actively punish the employees who received those bonuses. Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer are breathing out personal threats against them.
Did anyone ever think that maybe, just maybe, some of those employees actually deserved the bonuses? That things would have been worse if they hadn’t done whatever they had to do to qualify for their bonuses? Of course not – not when there’s political gain to be had in demonizing the evil corporate giant.
Here’s the thing: AIG is a gigantic company. You probably can’t even imagine how gigantic it is. At the end of 2007, according to their annual report, they had over $1 trillion in assets. Yes, they lost roughly $38 billion dollars in 2008, according to the “adjusted net loss” number publicly available on their Web site. Honest people can differ on whether they were truly in danger of failing as a result of this loss – because by my calculations that would still leave them with about $962 billion in assets – or whether any business should be viewed as “too big to fail,” but the bottom line was that the government invested somewhere around $170 billion of your money to make sure they didn’t.
The bonuses that everyone is so twisted up over totaled about $165 million. That may sound like a lot, but it’s only one tenth of one percent of the $170 billion the government pumped into them. And it’s less than two one-hundredths of one percent of their remaining assets, if my calculations are correct.
And have you noticed that you’re not hearing much about how many people received bonuses? If you do a little digging, you’ll learn that 73 people got $1 million or more, and the top recipient got $6.4 million. But we don’t know how many people overall were in that bonus pool. What we do know is that if companies are forced to break their contractual obligations to their employees, it’s going to make it more difficult for them to find the quality employees they’ll need to succeed in the future.
This should also point out, to other CEOs, the dangers inherent of taking money from the government –you can no longer just tell them to go pound sand when they start telling you how much you should pay your employees.
Thanks for listening.
Golly, the government, from President Obama on down, are sure twisted up about the fact that AIG actually honored their contractual commitments to employees who were due “retention bonuses.” The grandstanding is over the top. Congress is looking for ways to actively punish the employees who received those bonuses. Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer are breathing out personal threats against them.
Did anyone ever think that maybe, just maybe, some of those employees actually deserved the bonuses? That things would have been worse if they hadn’t done whatever they had to do to qualify for their bonuses? Of course not – not when there’s political gain to be had in demonizing the evil corporate giant.
Here’s the thing: AIG is a gigantic company. You probably can’t even imagine how gigantic it is. At the end of 2007, according to their annual report, they had over $1 trillion in assets. Yes, they lost roughly $38 billion dollars in 2008, according to the “adjusted net loss” number publicly available on their Web site. Honest people can differ on whether they were truly in danger of failing as a result of this loss – because by my calculations that would still leave them with about $962 billion in assets – or whether any business should be viewed as “too big to fail,” but the bottom line was that the government invested somewhere around $170 billion of your money to make sure they didn’t.
The bonuses that everyone is so twisted up over totaled about $165 million. That may sound like a lot, but it’s only one tenth of one percent of the $170 billion the government pumped into them. And it’s less than two one-hundredths of one percent of their remaining assets, if my calculations are correct.
And have you noticed that you’re not hearing much about how many people received bonuses? If you do a little digging, you’ll learn that 73 people got $1 million or more, and the top recipient got $6.4 million. But we don’t know how many people overall were in that bonus pool. What we do know is that if companies are forced to break their contractual obligations to their employees, it’s going to make it more difficult for them to find the quality employees they’ll need to succeed in the future.
This should also point out, to other CEOs, the dangers inherent of taking money from the government –you can no longer just tell them to go pound sand when they start telling you how much you should pay your employees.
Thanks for listening.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Cognitive Dissonance and "Doublethink"
Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.
Psychologists speak of a concept called “cognitive dissonance.” It’s the uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. For example, it is known that smoking causes lung cancer, and, arguably, most smokers want just as much as anyone else to live a long and healthy life. So the act of smoking is dissonant with the desire to live a long life. Humans generally relieve this kind of discomfort by rationalization. ("Only a few smokers actually develop lung cancer, and they're generally much heavier smokers than I am.") People who are very, very good at this kind of rationalization can take it to the next level: “doublethink.”
This term, coined by George Orwell in his famous novel, 1984, is described as, “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” Some people have an amazing ability to perform this mental trick, which Orwell further describes as “controlled insanity.” As Exhibit A, I give you Warren Buffett, America’s “Billionaire Next Door,” and the thoughts he shared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on March 9. If you didn’t catch the program, you can still get the transcript and view the videos on the Internet, and I would encourage you to do so, because most of what you’re about to read was not widely reported.
Now, Warren Buffett is a pretty smart guy in a lot of ways. He is, at least, smart enough to have made one whole heck of a lot more money than, say, your humble correspondent. But Mr. Buffett is still human, and appears to have a remarkable talent for doublethink.
He clearly believes that the current recession is an “economic Pearl Harbor” (his term), and that we are in an economic war that requires decisive action. He believes the American people are confused and fearful, and that the government must send a very clear message, and that “The only authoritative voice in the United States who says, ‘This is what we’re going to do, this is what we’re not going to do’…is the president of the United States.”
Unfortunately, he acknowledges that “we’ve had…muddled messages, and the American public does not know…what’s going on and their reaction, then, is to absolutely pull back.”
He also takes issue with the general way that the Democrats have been behaving: “…if you’re in a war, and we really are in an economic war, there’s an obligation to the majority to behave in ways that don’t go around inflaming the minority…when Roosevelt convened Congress to have a vote on the war, he didn’t say, ‘I’m throwing in about 10 of my pet projects,’ and you didn’t have congress people putting on 8,000 earmarks onto the declaration of war in 1941…I don’t think anybody on December 7 would have said a ‘war is a terrible thing to waste, and therefore we’re going to try and ram through a whole bunch of things and – but we expect to – expect the other party to unite behind us on the – on the big problem.’”
On staying focused, he said: “…I would absolutely say for the – for the interim, till we get this one solved, I would not be pushing a lot of things that are…contentious, and…I also would do no finger-pointing whatsoever…I would not say, you know, ‘George’ – ‘the previous administration got us into this’…I think, on balance, we ought to defer most of the things that cause people to get very riled up…I think the message ought to continuously be, ‘We are in an economic war. We’re going to solve this together. We’re not going to use it as a way to get all kinds of changes made.’”
On the stimulus bill: “…the stimulus plan’s going to take a long time to kick in…the stimulus plan is part of the recovery, but it’s not the most – it’s important to put it in, but there’s other things that need to be done now to restore confidence…There are things that need to be done up front that actually are more important. But I’m still in favor of having a stimulus bill.”
When asked about President Obama openly criticizing the use of corporate jets by CEOs, Mr. Buffett defended his own use of a private jet, and said that his company has been better off for it. Furthermore, “I think it’s a big mistake to start demonizing anybody in this game.”
On the “card check” legislation that would do away with secret balloting in union certification elections: “I think the secret ballot’s pretty important in the country. You know, I’m against card check, to make a perfectly flat statement…I think card check is a mistake.”
On the proposed “cap and trade” legislation: “Anything you put in that effectively taxes carbon emissions is – somebody’s going to bear the brunt of it. In the case of a regulated utility, the utility customers are going to pay for it…But that tax is probably going to be pretty regressive.” He goes on to say that, “our own guys at MidAmerican Energy…generally do not lean in favor of cap and trade.”
But yet on President Obama himself he says: “I think that the Republicans have an obligation to regard this as an economic war and to realize you need one leader and, in general, support of that…I voted for Obama and I strongly support him, and I think he’s the right guy…”
What? Let me get this straight – you think we’ve been getting muddled messages from the administration, you’re opposed to the way the Democrats have been treating the Republicans, you’re opposed to all the pet projects and earmarks that have been hooked onto the recent legislation, you don’t think we should be pushing ahead with a lot of other “contentious” issues until we have the economy straightened out, you don’t think we should be pointing fingers at the previous administration, you think there are other things that were more important than a stimulus bill and that the stimulus bill is going to take a long time to kick in, you don’t agree with Obama’s criticism of CEO’s use of private jets, you don’t agree on the card check legislation, but you strongly support Obama and think the Republicans should fall in line behind his leadership? You disagree with dang near everything he’s trying to do!
That, dear reader, is classic doublethink.
Thanks for listening.
Psychologists speak of a concept called “cognitive dissonance.” It’s the uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. For example, it is known that smoking causes lung cancer, and, arguably, most smokers want just as much as anyone else to live a long and healthy life. So the act of smoking is dissonant with the desire to live a long life. Humans generally relieve this kind of discomfort by rationalization. ("Only a few smokers actually develop lung cancer, and they're generally much heavier smokers than I am.") People who are very, very good at this kind of rationalization can take it to the next level: “doublethink.”
This term, coined by George Orwell in his famous novel, 1984, is described as, “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” Some people have an amazing ability to perform this mental trick, which Orwell further describes as “controlled insanity.” As Exhibit A, I give you Warren Buffett, America’s “Billionaire Next Door,” and the thoughts he shared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on March 9. If you didn’t catch the program, you can still get the transcript and view the videos on the Internet, and I would encourage you to do so, because most of what you’re about to read was not widely reported.
Now, Warren Buffett is a pretty smart guy in a lot of ways. He is, at least, smart enough to have made one whole heck of a lot more money than, say, your humble correspondent. But Mr. Buffett is still human, and appears to have a remarkable talent for doublethink.
He clearly believes that the current recession is an “economic Pearl Harbor” (his term), and that we are in an economic war that requires decisive action. He believes the American people are confused and fearful, and that the government must send a very clear message, and that “The only authoritative voice in the United States who says, ‘This is what we’re going to do, this is what we’re not going to do’…is the president of the United States.”
Unfortunately, he acknowledges that “we’ve had…muddled messages, and the American public does not know…what’s going on and their reaction, then, is to absolutely pull back.”
He also takes issue with the general way that the Democrats have been behaving: “…if you’re in a war, and we really are in an economic war, there’s an obligation to the majority to behave in ways that don’t go around inflaming the minority…when Roosevelt convened Congress to have a vote on the war, he didn’t say, ‘I’m throwing in about 10 of my pet projects,’ and you didn’t have congress people putting on 8,000 earmarks onto the declaration of war in 1941…I don’t think anybody on December 7 would have said a ‘war is a terrible thing to waste, and therefore we’re going to try and ram through a whole bunch of things and – but we expect to – expect the other party to unite behind us on the – on the big problem.’”
On staying focused, he said: “…I would absolutely say for the – for the interim, till we get this one solved, I would not be pushing a lot of things that are…contentious, and…I also would do no finger-pointing whatsoever…I would not say, you know, ‘George’ – ‘the previous administration got us into this’…I think, on balance, we ought to defer most of the things that cause people to get very riled up…I think the message ought to continuously be, ‘We are in an economic war. We’re going to solve this together. We’re not going to use it as a way to get all kinds of changes made.’”
On the stimulus bill: “…the stimulus plan’s going to take a long time to kick in…the stimulus plan is part of the recovery, but it’s not the most – it’s important to put it in, but there’s other things that need to be done now to restore confidence…There are things that need to be done up front that actually are more important. But I’m still in favor of having a stimulus bill.”
When asked about President Obama openly criticizing the use of corporate jets by CEOs, Mr. Buffett defended his own use of a private jet, and said that his company has been better off for it. Furthermore, “I think it’s a big mistake to start demonizing anybody in this game.”
On the “card check” legislation that would do away with secret balloting in union certification elections: “I think the secret ballot’s pretty important in the country. You know, I’m against card check, to make a perfectly flat statement…I think card check is a mistake.”
On the proposed “cap and trade” legislation: “Anything you put in that effectively taxes carbon emissions is – somebody’s going to bear the brunt of it. In the case of a regulated utility, the utility customers are going to pay for it…But that tax is probably going to be pretty regressive.” He goes on to say that, “our own guys at MidAmerican Energy…generally do not lean in favor of cap and trade.”
But yet on President Obama himself he says: “I think that the Republicans have an obligation to regard this as an economic war and to realize you need one leader and, in general, support of that…I voted for Obama and I strongly support him, and I think he’s the right guy…”
What? Let me get this straight – you think we’ve been getting muddled messages from the administration, you’re opposed to the way the Democrats have been treating the Republicans, you’re opposed to all the pet projects and earmarks that have been hooked onto the recent legislation, you don’t think we should be pushing ahead with a lot of other “contentious” issues until we have the economy straightened out, you don’t think we should be pointing fingers at the previous administration, you think there are other things that were more important than a stimulus bill and that the stimulus bill is going to take a long time to kick in, you don’t agree with Obama’s criticism of CEO’s use of private jets, you don’t agree on the card check legislation, but you strongly support Obama and think the Republicans should fall in line behind his leadership? You disagree with dang near everything he’s trying to do!
That, dear reader, is classic doublethink.
Thanks for listening.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Dear President Obama...
Sad to say, we’ve become used to politicians that wouldn’t recognize the truth if it came up and bit them in the behind. It is the rule, not the exception, for them to tell us what we want to hear and say anything they have to say to get elected. There’s nothing new about that at all.
But you were supposed to be different. We the People elected you because you promised to change the way business was conducted in Washington. You promised transparency, and fiscal responsibility. You promised accountability. You promised change we could believe in.
Six weeks into your presidency, the reality is quite different.
Your promised bipartisanship went by the wayside as the stimulus bill was rammed through Congress with no attempt to involve Republicans in crafting it, or even in legitimate debate over what was in it. You told the American people that there was no “pork” at all in the stimulus bill. That is patently false, unless you plan to indulge in the kind of semantic gymnastics one of your predecessors indulged in over what the meaning of the word “is” is.
You promised to go line by line through the budget and eliminate waste. Those of us who know the Constitution understand that you don’t have the authority to do that – all you have is the power of the veto pen – but it doesn’t appear that you made any attempt at all to discourage the thousands of earmarks in the “omnibus” spending bill you just signed…even though you promised in your campaign to eliminate earmarks. Didn’t you understand at the time that you were making a promise you had no power to fulfill? If not, it reveals a stunning ignorance of the Constitution. If so, it means you were deliberately deceiving the people to win votes. Nothing new about that – but certainly not change I can believe in.
You stated publicly that although you found the spending bill distasteful, it was necessary to keep the government operating. That, also, is not true. Congress could have funded the government as long as necessary with more “continuing resolutions” that would simply have kept spending at last year’s level. By Senator Evan Bayh's estimate, that would have saved $250 billion over the next 10 years. That’s over a quarter of what the stimulus bill cost us. Instead, government got an 8% budget increase while the country is mired in what you keep telling us is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. My family didn’t get an 8% budget increase this year. The nation’s hundreds of thousands of unemployed didn’t either. I don’t see why the government should.
But in your eyes, it was “necessary” – just as it was necessary to pass the largest spending bill in our nation’s history before it was too late. Just as it is now necessary to move ahead NOW with health care reform, more money for education, and energy legislation that will kick the economy while it’s down.
I could go on, but the pattern is clear. You have an ideological agenda to implement, and you’re sprinting to the left as fast as you can, pulling the nation behind you, trying to get as much done as you can before enough people figure out what’s going on and put the brakes on. As Rahm Emanuel said, you don’t want to waste a good crisis.
There’s no change here in terms of how business is getting done. You’re just better than most at saying one thing while doing another and making people believe that up is down and day is night. But let me remind you of another quote from someone you claim to admire: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” I don’t believe that a majority of the American people share your ideological vision for the country – and you don’t either, or you wouldn’t be in such a hurry to implement your policies before it’s too late.
It’s a shame, really. You could have done so much good for the country. Instead, you’re proving yourself to be just another dishonest politician.
But you were supposed to be different. We the People elected you because you promised to change the way business was conducted in Washington. You promised transparency, and fiscal responsibility. You promised accountability. You promised change we could believe in.
Six weeks into your presidency, the reality is quite different.
Your promised bipartisanship went by the wayside as the stimulus bill was rammed through Congress with no attempt to involve Republicans in crafting it, or even in legitimate debate over what was in it. You told the American people that there was no “pork” at all in the stimulus bill. That is patently false, unless you plan to indulge in the kind of semantic gymnastics one of your predecessors indulged in over what the meaning of the word “is” is.
You promised to go line by line through the budget and eliminate waste. Those of us who know the Constitution understand that you don’t have the authority to do that – all you have is the power of the veto pen – but it doesn’t appear that you made any attempt at all to discourage the thousands of earmarks in the “omnibus” spending bill you just signed…even though you promised in your campaign to eliminate earmarks. Didn’t you understand at the time that you were making a promise you had no power to fulfill? If not, it reveals a stunning ignorance of the Constitution. If so, it means you were deliberately deceiving the people to win votes. Nothing new about that – but certainly not change I can believe in.
You stated publicly that although you found the spending bill distasteful, it was necessary to keep the government operating. That, also, is not true. Congress could have funded the government as long as necessary with more “continuing resolutions” that would simply have kept spending at last year’s level. By Senator Evan Bayh's estimate, that would have saved $250 billion over the next 10 years. That’s over a quarter of what the stimulus bill cost us. Instead, government got an 8% budget increase while the country is mired in what you keep telling us is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. My family didn’t get an 8% budget increase this year. The nation’s hundreds of thousands of unemployed didn’t either. I don’t see why the government should.
But in your eyes, it was “necessary” – just as it was necessary to pass the largest spending bill in our nation’s history before it was too late. Just as it is now necessary to move ahead NOW with health care reform, more money for education, and energy legislation that will kick the economy while it’s down.
I could go on, but the pattern is clear. You have an ideological agenda to implement, and you’re sprinting to the left as fast as you can, pulling the nation behind you, trying to get as much done as you can before enough people figure out what’s going on and put the brakes on. As Rahm Emanuel said, you don’t want to waste a good crisis.
There’s no change here in terms of how business is getting done. You’re just better than most at saying one thing while doing another and making people believe that up is down and day is night. But let me remind you of another quote from someone you claim to admire: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” I don’t believe that a majority of the American people share your ideological vision for the country – and you don’t either, or you wouldn’t be in such a hurry to implement your policies before it’s too late.
It’s a shame, really. You could have done so much good for the country. Instead, you’re proving yourself to be just another dishonest politician.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Kudos to Senators Bayh and Feingold!
Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.
Lest you think that I never have anything good to say about Democrats, I am on record today as a fan of Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana. Senator Bayh has gone on record as opposing the $410 billion “Omnibus” spending bill that’s currently before the Senate. I’ve listened to an interview with him, and I’ve read his opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, and he is opposing the bill for precisely the right reasons…as is Democrat Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. Thank you, Senators, for putting the nation before your own party and risking the Wrath of Harry for doing so.
Now…I’ve got a few words for some other folks out there. You may want to send the kids to their rooms before I get rolling.
To all of the Republicans in the Senate and House: grow some gonads, pull your earmarks out of the budget bills, and stand up and show some leadership! Stop trying to be “Democrat Light,” for cryin’ out loud.
To the voters in the State of Maine: Do us all a favor, and don’t send Olympia Snow and Susan Collins back to Washington again. To the voters in the State of Pennsylvania: Same goes for Arlen Specter. If you want Democrats to represent you, then elect Democrats. The last thing the Republican Party needs is Republicans who vote like Democrats.
To the voters of the State of Nevada: Have you looked around your state lately? Even healthy companies are cutting back and cancelling conventions and out-of-town meetings…because they’re afraid of coming under government criticism – from the ruling party that is being ruled in part by your Senator. I’ve heard estimates that the travel and hospitality industry may lose 400,000 jobs this year. How many of those jobs will be in Nevada? Do you really think that Harry Reid is looking after your interests?
To the voting public as a whole, if we’re smart, we will do the following: any legislator who voted for the $787 Billion stimulus package without reading it (which is most of them), should be voted out of office. Spending $787 Billion of our children’s and grandchildren’s money needs a better reason than “because Nancy/Harry said so.” And any legislator of either party who is still slipping earmarks into legislation should be voted out of office. Just stop it. Now. If you want to spend our money, put the bills out there where they can be publicly debated and voted on.
And finally, to President Obama: If this $410 billion monstrosity of a spending bill lands on your desk – and it probably will, because there are plenty of legislators on both sides of the aisle who care more about hanging onto their power than about doing what’s right for the country – veto it! This is your chance to prove that you actually do stand for some of the things you campaigned on.
Everything you’ve done so far since your election has confirmed my suspicions that you are exactly what your voting record indicated you would be: the most far-left Senator in the United States Senate (and that’s saying something), and someone who cares more about ideology than about truth (or anything else, for that matter). This is not “last year’s business.” It is, as Senator Bayh says, this year’s spending, and our children’s money. You campaigned for fiscal responsibility. You campaigned against earmarks – in fact, you said you would ban them – and for transparency and accountability. Veto it, or stand exposed as just another in the long line of politicians who were happy to tell the voters what they wanted to hear in order to get elected, only to be exposed as a liar once they took office.
I’d love to have you prove me wrong. But I’m not holding my breath.
Thanks for listening.
Lest you think that I never have anything good to say about Democrats, I am on record today as a fan of Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana. Senator Bayh has gone on record as opposing the $410 billion “Omnibus” spending bill that’s currently before the Senate. I’ve listened to an interview with him, and I’ve read his opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, and he is opposing the bill for precisely the right reasons…as is Democrat Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. Thank you, Senators, for putting the nation before your own party and risking the Wrath of Harry for doing so.
Now…I’ve got a few words for some other folks out there. You may want to send the kids to their rooms before I get rolling.
To all of the Republicans in the Senate and House: grow some gonads, pull your earmarks out of the budget bills, and stand up and show some leadership! Stop trying to be “Democrat Light,” for cryin’ out loud.
To the voters in the State of Maine: Do us all a favor, and don’t send Olympia Snow and Susan Collins back to Washington again. To the voters in the State of Pennsylvania: Same goes for Arlen Specter. If you want Democrats to represent you, then elect Democrats. The last thing the Republican Party needs is Republicans who vote like Democrats.
To the voters of the State of Nevada: Have you looked around your state lately? Even healthy companies are cutting back and cancelling conventions and out-of-town meetings…because they’re afraid of coming under government criticism – from the ruling party that is being ruled in part by your Senator. I’ve heard estimates that the travel and hospitality industry may lose 400,000 jobs this year. How many of those jobs will be in Nevada? Do you really think that Harry Reid is looking after your interests?
To the voting public as a whole, if we’re smart, we will do the following: any legislator who voted for the $787 Billion stimulus package without reading it (which is most of them), should be voted out of office. Spending $787 Billion of our children’s and grandchildren’s money needs a better reason than “because Nancy/Harry said so.” And any legislator of either party who is still slipping earmarks into legislation should be voted out of office. Just stop it. Now. If you want to spend our money, put the bills out there where they can be publicly debated and voted on.
And finally, to President Obama: If this $410 billion monstrosity of a spending bill lands on your desk – and it probably will, because there are plenty of legislators on both sides of the aisle who care more about hanging onto their power than about doing what’s right for the country – veto it! This is your chance to prove that you actually do stand for some of the things you campaigned on.
Everything you’ve done so far since your election has confirmed my suspicions that you are exactly what your voting record indicated you would be: the most far-left Senator in the United States Senate (and that’s saying something), and someone who cares more about ideology than about truth (or anything else, for that matter). This is not “last year’s business.” It is, as Senator Bayh says, this year’s spending, and our children’s money. You campaigned for fiscal responsibility. You campaigned against earmarks – in fact, you said you would ban them – and for transparency and accountability. Veto it, or stand exposed as just another in the long line of politicians who were happy to tell the voters what they wanted to hear in order to get elected, only to be exposed as a liar once they took office.
I’d love to have you prove me wrong. But I’m not holding my breath.
Thanks for listening.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
The Community Organizer - Part 2
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 days ago, we quoted from Rules for Radicals where Saul Alinsky says, “The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms…He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work.” This whole subject was important enough to him that he devoted an entire chapter to the “ethics of means and ends.” I think it’s important enough to present for your consideration the series of rules he laid out in that chapter:
Food for thought, isn’t it? Certainly one could survey history and find numerous examples that illustrate each and every point above. Still, the list strikes me as pragmatic at best, and cynical at worst. Nevertheless, it was written by a man who had an undeniable influence on Barack Obama’s formative years as a community organizer in Chicago, and the principles are likely to permeate his administration. At least now you know what to look for.
Thanks for listening.
A couple of days ago, we quoted from Rules for Radicals where Saul Alinsky says, “The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms…He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work.” This whole subject was important enough to him that he devoted an entire chapter to the “ethics of means and ends.” I think it’s important enough to present for your consideration the series of rules he laid out in that chapter:
- “One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.” In other words, we tend to be much more concerned about morality when we are not directly involved.
- “The judgment of the ethics of means and ends is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment.” This is similar to the concept that whoever wins the war gets to write the history of it. If your side wins the conflict, you will get to be the one who passes judgment, and by definition, whatever means you used to win will be judged entirely ethical.
- “In war, the end justifies almost any means.” This is pretty self-explanatory, and one that liberals consistently ignore…at least when they’re not the ones in charge of the war.
- “Judgment must be made in the context of the times in which the action occurred and not from any other chronological vantage point.” Another one that liberals consistently ignore in their pursuit of revisionist history (e.g., the voyage of Columbus, the treatment of the Native Americans, the struggle to abolish slavery in the United States, the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, etc.)
- “Concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa.” In other words, if you have only one choice, the ethical question will never arise.
- “The less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means.”
- “Generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics.” This is, of course, closely related to rule #2.
- “The morality of a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory. The same means employed with victory seemingly assured may be defined as immoral, whereas if it had been used in desperate circumstances to avert defeat, the question of morality would never arise.”
- “Any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.”
- “You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.”
- “Goals must be phrased in general terms like ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ ‘Of the Common Welfare,’ ‘Pursuit of Happiness,’ or ‘Bread and Peace.’”
Food for thought, isn’t it? Certainly one could survey history and find numerous examples that illustrate each and every point above. Still, the list strikes me as pragmatic at best, and cynical at worst. Nevertheless, it was written by a man who had an undeniable influence on Barack Obama’s formative years as a community organizer in Chicago, and the principles are likely to permeate his administration. At least now you know what to look for.
Thanks for listening.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
The First Six Weeks
Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.
According to the local newspaper, today (3-3-09) is a “square root day” – a date when both the month and the day are the square root of the last two digits of the year. And that means…well…nothing of significance, really, except that it’s kinda cool in a nerdy sort of way, and we won’t have another date like it until April 4, 2016. But in the spirit of “square root day,” and all matters numerological, I thought I’d share a few more numbers with you.
We’re just finishing the first six weeks of the Obama Presidency. Over the last 6 weeks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped from 7949 on Inauguration Day to 6726 at today’s close. That’s a 15% decline, on top of the 17.5% decline between Election Day and Inauguration Day. Yep, an overall 30% decline since Election Day. Now you can blame the previous administration all you want, but the fact is that stock prices are driven not by what has happened, but by what investors believe will happen. And clearly they don’t have much faith in Obama’s ability to make things better. In fact, according to Rasmussen, investor confidence reached a record low on February 25. And the longer this goes on, the harder it’s going to be for Obama to dodge responsibility for it.
Also, according to yesterday’s Rasmussen tracking poll, his popularity has dropped from a 70% approval rating down to 58%. He’s now lower than Jimmy Carter was six weeks into his Presidency, and some of us still remember how that turned out. The number of people who strongly approve of President Obama has dropped to 39%, and the number who strongly disapprove of him has risen from the low teens on Inauguration day to 29%.
Yet, they don’t seem to be that concerned about the status of your 401k. Just a couple of weeks ago, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said, “I think it is unwise to believe that either everything we do is designed to cause an immediate market reaction or that the score should be kept by that.” So they continue sprinting to the left as fast as they can.
We’re looking at a budget plan that projects a $1.75 trillion deficit for 2009, and most honest analysts believe that’s an extremely conservative estimate. And despite his campaign promise to ban earmarks, the budget bill, which Obama has said he would sign, contains roughly 8,600 of them, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. How do they defend it? Well, according to chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, “That’s last year’s business.” Said Peter Orszag, the administration’s budget chief: “We want to just move on. Let’s get this bill done, get it into law, and move forward.”
In a way, it is “last year’s business:” according to the congressional report that accompanies the budget legislation, President Obama himself, along with Rahm Emanuel, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and three other Cabinet secretaries who served in Congress last year are themselves responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars of those earmarks. But I’m sure that’s not what Emanuel meant. He just wants to forget about what they said to get elected, and focus on the political agenda they now want to enact. Remember yesterday’s post about how truth to them is relative and changing?
Of course, much is made of Obama’s plan to “cut the deficit in half” by the end of his first term, but that strikes me like the department store “sale” where they mark up the prices so they can “discount” them back to where they were. The fact is that even if Obama can cut the deficit in half by 2013, it will still be bigger than any deficit under the Bush administration. And once you get past 2013, the deficits are expected to start growing again as more and more Baby Boomers hit retirement and start drawing Social Security and Medicare benefits. So I don’t quite get why “I inherited this terrible deficit, therefore…um, let me see…I know - I’m going to quadruple it! And then I’ll cut it in half over the next three years, and you'll be happy because you’re so dumb you won’t figure out that it’s still the largest in history!” is supposed to be an applause line.
But maybe math works differently on Obama’s side of the looking glass. Anyway, happy square root day. And thanks for listening.
According to the local newspaper, today (3-3-09) is a “square root day” – a date when both the month and the day are the square root of the last two digits of the year. And that means…well…nothing of significance, really, except that it’s kinda cool in a nerdy sort of way, and we won’t have another date like it until April 4, 2016. But in the spirit of “square root day,” and all matters numerological, I thought I’d share a few more numbers with you.
We’re just finishing the first six weeks of the Obama Presidency. Over the last 6 weeks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped from 7949 on Inauguration Day to 6726 at today’s close. That’s a 15% decline, on top of the 17.5% decline between Election Day and Inauguration Day. Yep, an overall 30% decline since Election Day. Now you can blame the previous administration all you want, but the fact is that stock prices are driven not by what has happened, but by what investors believe will happen. And clearly they don’t have much faith in Obama’s ability to make things better. In fact, according to Rasmussen, investor confidence reached a record low on February 25. And the longer this goes on, the harder it’s going to be for Obama to dodge responsibility for it.
Also, according to yesterday’s Rasmussen tracking poll, his popularity has dropped from a 70% approval rating down to 58%. He’s now lower than Jimmy Carter was six weeks into his Presidency, and some of us still remember how that turned out. The number of people who strongly approve of President Obama has dropped to 39%, and the number who strongly disapprove of him has risen from the low teens on Inauguration day to 29%.
Yet, they don’t seem to be that concerned about the status of your 401k. Just a couple of weeks ago, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said, “I think it is unwise to believe that either everything we do is designed to cause an immediate market reaction or that the score should be kept by that.” So they continue sprinting to the left as fast as they can.
We’re looking at a budget plan that projects a $1.75 trillion deficit for 2009, and most honest analysts believe that’s an extremely conservative estimate. And despite his campaign promise to ban earmarks, the budget bill, which Obama has said he would sign, contains roughly 8,600 of them, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. How do they defend it? Well, according to chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, “That’s last year’s business.” Said Peter Orszag, the administration’s budget chief: “We want to just move on. Let’s get this bill done, get it into law, and move forward.”
In a way, it is “last year’s business:” according to the congressional report that accompanies the budget legislation, President Obama himself, along with Rahm Emanuel, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and three other Cabinet secretaries who served in Congress last year are themselves responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars of those earmarks. But I’m sure that’s not what Emanuel meant. He just wants to forget about what they said to get elected, and focus on the political agenda they now want to enact. Remember yesterday’s post about how truth to them is relative and changing?
Of course, much is made of Obama’s plan to “cut the deficit in half” by the end of his first term, but that strikes me like the department store “sale” where they mark up the prices so they can “discount” them back to where they were. The fact is that even if Obama can cut the deficit in half by 2013, it will still be bigger than any deficit under the Bush administration. And once you get past 2013, the deficits are expected to start growing again as more and more Baby Boomers hit retirement and start drawing Social Security and Medicare benefits. So I don’t quite get why “I inherited this terrible deficit, therefore…um, let me see…I know - I’m going to quadruple it! And then I’ll cut it in half over the next three years, and you'll be happy because you’re so dumb you won’t figure out that it’s still the largest in history!” is supposed to be an applause line.
But maybe math works differently on Obama’s side of the looking glass. Anyway, happy square root day. And thanks for listening.
Monday, March 2, 2009
The Community Organizer
Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.
The rumblings of discontent have begun. Even some of those who voted for Barak Obama are now having buyer’s remorse. They’re simply amazed at the policies his administration is pursuing…although they shouldn’t be.
If you want to know what makes Barack Obama tick, you need to go back to his days as a community organizer in Chicago. You need to understand what community organizing is all about, and to do that, you need to go back to the seminal writings of Saul Alinsky, widely viewed as the father of community organizing. His Rules for Radicals, first published in 1971, is still available if you look for it. I did, and I read it. He states the purpose of the book very clearly: “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”
Now I know that not many people have actually read this book lately, so let me share a few more passages with you. You should keep these in mind as you’re trying to understand why the Obama administration is doing what it’s doing, because this is where he came from, and this is the philosophy he was trained in:
Thanks for listening.
The rumblings of discontent have begun. Even some of those who voted for Barak Obama are now having buyer’s remorse. They’re simply amazed at the policies his administration is pursuing…although they shouldn’t be.
If you want to know what makes Barack Obama tick, you need to go back to his days as a community organizer in Chicago. You need to understand what community organizing is all about, and to do that, you need to go back to the seminal writings of Saul Alinsky, widely viewed as the father of community organizing. His Rules for Radicals, first published in 1971, is still available if you look for it. I did, and I read it. He states the purpose of the book very clearly: “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”
Now I know that not many people have actually read this book lately, so let me share a few more passages with you. You should keep these in mind as you’re trying to understand why the Obama administration is doing what it’s doing, because this is where he came from, and this is the philosophy he was trained in:
"All of life is partisan. There is no dispassionate objectivity."If you think about it, this explains a lot, doesn’t it?
“An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma. To begin with, he does not have a fixed truth – truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing. He is a political relativist.”
“In this world…’reconciliation’ means that when one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it, then we have reconciliation…”
“The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms…He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means only whether they will work.”
“…in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of mankind.”
“Ego must be so all-pervading that the personality of the organizer is contagious, that it converts the people from despair to defiance, creating a mass ego.”
“Before men can act an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced that their cause is 100 per cent on the side of the angels and that the opposition are 100 per cent on the side of the devil. He [the organizer] knows that there can be no action until issues are polarized to this degree.”
“The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization.”
“…every move revolves around one central point: how many recruits will this bring into the organization…The only issue is, how will this increase the strength of the organization…Power is the reason for being of organizations.”
“Every organization known to man, from government down, has had only one reason for being – that is, organization for power in order to put into practice or promote its common purpose.”
On tactics: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it…in a complex, interrelated, urban society, it becomes increasingly difficult to single out who is to blame for any particular evil…a target…must be a personification, not something general and abstract…Furthermore, any target can always say, ‘Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?’ When you ‘freeze the target,’ you disregard these arguments and, for the moment, all the others to blame.”
“…human beings can sustain an interest in a particular subject only over a limited period of time…After a period of time, it becomes monotonous, repetitive, and emotional treadmill, and worse than anything else a bore. From the moment the tactician engages in conflict, his enemy is time.”
“There is a way to keep the action going and to prevent it from being a drag, but this means constantly cutting new issues as the action continues, so that by the time the enthusiasm and the emotions for one issue have started to de-escalate, a new issue has come into the scene with a consequent revival.”
Thanks for listening.
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