The Times They Are A-Changing

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 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.” Thus wrote President-elect Barak Obama in Audacity of Hope.

Two days ago, we witnessed the truth of the first sentence, as people of “vastly different political stripes” came together to elect the most liberal, least experienced, and least known President in the history of the nation. Over the next four years, we will discover how true the second sentence is.

The post-mortem of this election will go on for months, if not years. Volumes will be written about why Obama won and why McCain lost – which voting blocs went which way and why, what campaign mistakes were made by the losing side, and what brilliant strategies contributed to the win. There is no question that Obama ran a brilliant campaign. He is, without a doubt, the most charismatic speaker to hit the political scene in a very long time. He can talk about “hope,” and “change,” and “yes, we can,” and “we can get there,” and create an enormous amount of enthusiasm in his audience without ever specifying exactly what we’re hoping for, what we’re going to change and how, what it is that we can do, and where it is that we’re going.

In this year of the perfect political storm, with the economic meltdown being the final, insurmountable wave that sank the Republican ship, a sufficiently large number of people simply didn’t care about those questions. It was enough that he was handsome, articulate, and charismatic. It was enough that he was different from anyone else in the race. They were like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland who sometimes believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Of course he could attend Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church for twenty years, but not know about his radical anti-American views. Of course he can lower taxes on all but the wealthiest 5%, introduce billions in new government programs, and reduce the federal deficit at the same time. Of course we can achieve energy independence without increasing our own domestic oil production. "Yes, we can!"

None of it mattered in the end. The press was all too happy to let him skate on the inherent contradictions of his message, and those who had already made an emotional decision to support the young, handsome, charismatic, articulate Senator who made them feel good when he spoke simply weren’t interested in digging out the facts for themselves. They rejected the known quantity of John McCain for the "blank screen" of Barak Obama on which they could project their desire that he would somehow magically make things all better. Talk about an audacity of hope!

So now, we will find out the hard way just what kind of President he will be. I've often said that once the ballots are all counted, the American people pretty much get the government they deserve. Thankfully, it looks like the Democrats will not have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, so there will still be a need for compromise in the Obama administration. If Obama is smart enough to surround himself with smart, experienced people – people who will explain to him that America must be governed from the center, not from either political extreme – and if he listens to them, he may have a successful presidency. I hope he is successful, because, for better or for worse, he’s now my President, and for the sake of the country I have to wish him success – because an unsuccessful presidency could cause enormous damage that could take a generation or more to undo.

Thanks for listening.

Nice Guys Finish Last

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

It’s the day before the big election, and I’ve reluctantly concluded that Barak Obama will win tomorrow’s election. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. Big money and big media have succeeded in selling the American electorate on the most liberal candidate to run for the Presidency in my lifetime. However, I do not believe that the Democrats will achieve a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, which means that Obama’s agenda will not be totally unchecked.

Incredibly, I don’t think that most people who are voting for Obama really understand what he stands for. And it isn’t because he didn’t tell us – it’s that it wasn’t widely reported by the media, and because people didn’t want to hear it. I predict that buyer’s remorse will set in fairly quickly when people see what his agenda really is, and that he will not be elected to a second term.

Still, unless the Senate’s Republican minority finds the cojones to stand up for their values, great damage can be done in the next four years, particularly in the nation’s judiciary, and especially in the two (at least) Supreme Court positions that Obama will get to fill in the next four years. Therein lies the greatest danger to our freedoms.

The most tragic thing to us conservatives is that John McCain could have won this, but he chose not to go after Obama where he was most vulnerable until it was too late. Certainly his campaign advisors have to bear a large portion of the blame, but ultimately the blame has to fall on McCain himself. Personally, I believe that McCain was too much of a nice guy to win this election.

John McCain still adheres to the “old school” of Senate behavior: the one where personal honor is important, and personal attacks are beneath you. Where respect is shown to your opponent, no matter who your opponent is or how radical his views. I believe that he would rather lose an election than violate those principles of behavior he believes in…and I believe that, given what he’s been through in his life, he doesn’t view a lost election as the worst thing that could happen to him.

The Democrats, on the other hand, care about power, and don’t care what they have to do to achieve and retain it. They will maintain that black is white and up is down, if that’s what it takes to get back in power. They would rather lose in Iraq and see that country in chaos than see George W. Bush get credit for anything. We’ve seen that pattern of behavior time and time again over the last few years from Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, John Murtha, Ted Kennedy, and the other usual suspects.

I happen to agree with Bill O’Reilly when he said that McCain should have said, “Look, I’m going to appoint Rudy Giuliani as Attorney General, and Mitt Romney as Treasury Secretary, if they’ll accept the positions, and I’m going to go after every CEO and every government official that was responsible for this economic chaos. If you elect me, I will go after the people that caused this, and I will hold them accountable for their actions.” Had he done that, he probably would have won. Had he gone after Obama’s judgment for his relationships with Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayres, Tony Rezko, and others, much earlier on in the campaign, it could have made a difference.

There are so many things that McCain could have done, but didn’t do, that could have made the difference in the election. It’s nearly inexplicable that he didn’t do any of them. I’m sure that there will be many post-mortem books written about where McCain went wrong. Perhaps there will be some lessons learned that will make a difference in 2012. But this time around, the nice guy is going to finish – well, not last…that honor will go to one of the fringe candidates that our country still allows to be on the ballot – but not first either, and that the only place that counts.

Thanks for listening.

The Passing of (Another) American Hero

Greetings from the Left Coast!

Almost a year ago, in early November of 2007, I wrote about the passing of Retired Brigadier General Paul Tibbets, who piloted the Enola Gay on August 6, 1945, when it dropped a uranium bomb on Hiroshima. I called him an American hero. About a week ago, I learned of the passing of another American hero. This one lived a few doors down from me for several years, and yet I never really knew the story that lay behind the automobile license plate that said, “Pearl Harbor Survivor.” To me, he was a nice old man (a few decades older than me, anyway) in flannel shirts and tan slacks. I knew him as a retired carpet layer – an occupation he amazingly continued in until the age of seventy-two. But Ralph Verne Nichols was there at the beginning of what Paul Tibbets helped to end.

What I now know came to me through his son, Chief Petty Officer Russ Nichols, who at the time of this writing is stationed at Naval Station Bremerton, Washington. Russ was kind enough to share a few pages of his father’s journal, in which Verne described firsthand what he saw and felt on that December morning nearly sixty-seven years ago.

After graduating from USC with a Bachelor of Science degree and a Doctorate of Law (Verne was a bright young man – he had been valedictorian of his high school graduating class as well), he joined the Navy. He arrived in Pearl Harbor in late November, 1941, aboard the battleship U.S.S. California. Upon arrival, he was supposed to transfer to the U.S.S. Enterprise, but she was still at sea.

Students of World War II will recall that Pearl’s aircraft carriers were out on maneuvers, and were delayed by a storm, which is why they were not in port on the morning of December 7. Had it not been for that storm, and had they been in port, the outcome of the war in the Pacific could have been quite different. Admiral Nagumo held back his final wave of attack aircraft because he didn’t know where the American carriers were, and wanted to keep his aircraft in reserve to protect his own fleet in case they were discovered. The attack mission they didn’t fly was supposed to put Pearl Harbor’s shipyards out of commission. But because the mission didn’t fly, the shipyards survived, and several hundred American heroes working around the clock were able to get severely damaged ships back in action – all because a storm delayed the return of America’s carrier fleet.

But since the Enterprise wasn’t around, Verne’s orders were changed, and he transferred to the U.S.S. Curtiss, a seaplane tender. The Curtiss normally berthed just ahead of all the battleships on battleship row, but on the night of December 6, she was returning from a day at sea towing targets for American planes, and the recognition signals had been changed while she was away. In the resulting confusion, she ended up moored at Pearl City just behind the battleship U.S.S. Utah, a little farther away from the main action.

Here’s what happened the next morning, in his own words:

“I had just finished my sunny-side up eggs and was looking out our bomb bay doors when I saw a series of explosions from Ford Island and then as the sound reached me came the explosions. I was absolutely spell-bound and horrified as I saw the explosions ripping apart hangers and blowing up planes and gasoline. In just a few moments the general quarters alarm was sounded. My general quarters station was in the radio shack which was the highest point top-side near where the Captain and Navigator were located. As green as I was I knew we were being attacked and as I went up the last steel ladder before reaching the radio shack I could see the Japanese zeros with their bullets ricocheting off our steel bulkheads. Everyone was so caught off guard that at first no one was found who had the key to the ammunition locker but soon someone took a steel bar and forced the lock. A little later our 50 caliber machine guns went into action. Then suddenly there was a salvo from our forward five inch guns. We found out almost immediately that we had hit one of the midget Japanese submarines that had found its way thru the nets into the harbor. They had fired a torpedo just missing our ship. We were all stunned as we saw the effects of the initial phase of the sneak attack, as all the battleships alongside battleship row had been hit and were burning fiercely. Our communications line with the transmitter room aboard ship became inoperative and Chief Petty Officer Stout signaled me silently to take them a message. I had just delivered the message when an explosion ripped through the transmitter room and I was hurled back against the bulkhead. A 500 pound bomb (delayed action) had just gone down thru three decks and had exploded next to the compartment where the transmitter room was located. One of the men in the transmitter room, whom I had only known about two weeks, ran with one foot cleaved off by a falling transmitter to the main deck aft seeking medical aid. During the confusion that followed he died from loss of blood before anyone could help him. I dazedly made my way back to the radio shack amid all the smoke, confusion and strafing bullets. I had no sooner dogged the door when another loud explosion rocked the ship. At first we thought it was another bomb but soon the Captain was on the loud speaker and said: “A Japanese plane has just struck amidships.” Evidently this was one of the Japanese kami-kaze planes and he took many of my shipmates with him. The wreckage was about 40 feet from the radio shack.”

The bomb that bounced Verne off the bulkhead had exploded between the 150,000 gallons of aviation gas they had aboard, and their two ammunition holds. Had the bomb exploded a little bit to one side or the other, I suspect that Verne's story would have ended there, and you wouldn’t be reading this right now. Verne’s journal doesn’t go into much detail about his back injury – he does say that it gave him intermittent trouble all the time he was in the service, and concedes that “to this day it hurts where I was blown against the bulkhead.” The fact is that it made it very painful and difficult for him to sit for any length of time. So, in case you were wondering why a guy with a law degree was laying carpet – that’s why. It would have been too painful to try to sit in a courtroom, so he went back to the career that had paid for his college education.

Like countless soldiers and sailors before and since, Verne made a deal with God that December morning: “if he would see me thru this holocaust that I would try my best for the remainder of my life to serve him.” No one on this earth keeps a record of how many who make that deal actually keep their end of the bargain. Verne kept his - that was obvious to anyone who knew him at all. And that in itself may tell you all you really need to know about what kind of man he was.

After receiving an Honorable Discharge at the end of the war, Verne did what most veterans did: he came home, and raised a family. I never heard him talk about what he had seen and experienced. I’ve noticed that most men who have gone through what Verne went through tend not to talk much about it. When he passed away on October 9 at the age of 90, he had helped to raise seven children, who had raised twenty-four grandchildren, who were busy raising twenty-six great-grandchildren. Not many of us will get to see that many of our descendants, and I’m sure he considered himself blessed. And if you had asked him, I believe he would have told you that his family was more important than anything he did in the war.

According to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, cited by Tom Bevan in his blog post at Real Clear Politics two years ago on the 65th anniversary of the attack, there were at that time only 5,000 remaining of the 70,000 sailors and soldiers who were stationed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. There are fewer every day. One day soon, they will all be gone, and we will all be the poorer for their passing.

Last Friday, October 17, 2008, one of them was laid to rest at Floral Hills Cemetery, Lynnwood, Washington. I was not in attendance, but my wife led the music at his memorial service, so I got her firsthand report. Aside from his substantial family, there were not a lot of others there…but when you’re 90 years old, you tend not to have much of a peer group left, and he had spent the last fifteen years of his life living in Southern California. Still, one can’t help but feel that, by rights, the world should have taken greater note of the passing of another hero.

Some have called them America's "greatest generation." Certainly they were a great generation. But there have been many, and, God willing, there will be many more. What Verne's generation did, after saving the Free World, was to make sure that the next generation carried the seeds of its own greatness, which it could then pass on to the generation after that - so that when the time arose for great deeds again, as it inevitably does, there will again be those who can and will rise to the occasion. Look around yourself today, and you'll see them.

So I’d like to thank Chief Petty Officer Russ Nichols, United States Navy, for sharing such an intimate glimpse into his father’s life, and I’d like to thank Russ for his own service to our country. And I would like to thank Verne Nichols not just for his Naval service, but for something even more significant: I’d like to thank him for the example he set, over the last six decades and change, for his seven children, and twenty-four grandchildren, and twenty-six great-grandchildren, and for anyone else who was paying attention. And I’d like to say that I’m sincerely sorry that I didn’t take the time to get to know him better when I had the chance.

Thanks for listening.

Potpourri

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

This is tax day for those of us who filed an extension back in April. As I write out the check and address the envelope, I can’t help but think of Senator Obama’s promise that he only wants to raise taxes on the top 5% of Americans – the rest of us will get a tax cut, and that’s only fair…isn’t it? Yes, class warfare is alive and well in America, and the Democrats love to fan the flames. Of course the whole thing is bogus. There are any number of good articles out there that debunk the claim that Obama will give tax cuts to 95% of us. If you care to look for them, you’ll find them. I don’t have the energy to recap them all here. Not after writing the check I have to write.

Of course, now that I’ve filed, in a few more months I’ll get my $1,200 “stimulus” check. In fact, if the Democrats get their way, there may be even more “stimulus” money coming back to me. What I’d really like to know, though, is how much it cost the government to take my money in, and then process a check back to me. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to just let me keep more of it in the first place?

And when did the New York Times jump the shark? Its reportage has become so predictable, it has become such a caricature of itself, that I think it’s clear that it has. It’s only a question of how far back we have to go to find the moment. Speaking of predictable reportage, how about this: The NYT review of the movie American Carol, which is a satire of Michael Moore’s movies, says that “Cheap shots and mean spirits abound,” and that the movie contains “satirical bigotry.” On the other hand, Bill Maher’s new movie, Religulous, which is guaranteed to offend just about any person of faith, is “extremely funny in a similarly [referring to the movie Borat by the same director] irreverent, offhanded way.” But, after all, “The majority of Americans…embrace some form of blind faith,” so "The majority of his subjects are easy targets."

This attitude is nothing new, of course, nor is it confined to the New York Times. Frankly, the last straw that caused me to cancel my subscription to the Seattle Times was the blatantly anti-religious bias that was evident in the way the paper covered The Passion of the Christ compared to The Last Temptation of Christ.

But that’s OK…the beauty of a free market is that people get to vote with their pocketbooks, and newspapers like the New York Times are losing circulation like crazy: down 3.8% in the 6 months ending this past March. Of course, it would never occur to them that their editorial bias has anything to do with declining circulation. They’re convinced that they are on the side of the angels, and they’re being victimized by alternative media like the Internet.

Oh, and did you hear the news about the new porn flick that stars a Barak Obama look-alike? HA! Who am I kidding? Nobody could get away with making a movie like that – howls of outrage would ring from sea to shining sea, they would be castigated by every news outlet in the world, they would be called racist, they would probably be sued by somebody like moveon.org, we’d never hear the end of it! It would be a national and international outrage! No, Larry Flynt’s porn movie, which reportedly has already been shot, stars a Sarah Palin look-alike! And we all know that’s just all in good fun. Why, it’s in the fine old American tradition of political satire, and who could possibly object to that? Double standard? What double standard?

Thanks for listening.

Enough With the Timelines!

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

Today, it’s thought-experiment time. Imagine this scene: It’s halftime at the Seahawks game. It’s a close game – the Seahawks got off to a slow start, but they now appear to be firmly in control and have a small lead. Just before the second half kickoff, Mike Holmgren announces that, come 4:00, whether the game is over or not, the team is going to hit the showers. He doesn’t think the fans have the patience to stay in the stands any longer, it just costs too darned much to keep the lights on in the stadium, and, besides, the players need to get home to their families.

Can you imagine the outcry? Yet this is exactly the strategy Barak Obama wants to follow in Iraq. We heard it again from Joe Biden in the VP debate: President Obama will have all our combat troops out of Iraq in 16 months.

This should be intuitively obvious, but apparently it isn’t, so I’ll say it anyway: it is stupid, and unforgivably irresponsible, to tell your enemy when you’re planning to quit fighting. So either they’re lying about the 16 month timeline, or they’re stupid and irresponsible. Either way, it’s a problem.

Even if – and I’m not saying this is the case – you believe your ally isn’t stepping up, and you need to give them a deadline so they’ll get serious about accepting responsibility for their own security, you do that in private. You don’t publicize it to the world (which, by definition, includes your enemies), and you don’t formalize it in legislation. Twist all the arms you want behind the scenes, but when you’re in the middle of a war, the only acceptable outcome is victory, and the only acceptable message to send to your enemy is that you won’t stop until you’ve achieved it.

I don’t care whether you think we should be there in the first place. I don’t care whether you think that the intelligence was manipulated to convince us to go to war. It’s pointless to debate that anymore, because it doesn’t matter at this point! We’re there. What matters is to win – and, yes, I can define what winning means. Winning means getting Iraq to the point where their elected government is in firm control of their own armed forces and police, and is capable of using the armed forces and police to protect their own borders and their own people. It means having a free, stable, and independent Iraq that continues to be our ally in the war on terror.

And, yes, we can get there. We are getting there. General Petraeus has done a brilliant job in turning the situation around. All it takes now is not quitting.

Thanks for listening.

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.