Right in San Francisco

Trusting Government

    One of my favorite writers, Erick Erickson, recently referred to "a time (when) distrust of government is commonly held sentiment." Trusting government has three dimentions: are they trying to do the right things?; are they competent to do them?; and, are they corrupt? Most of the political energy goes into the first question - and reasonable people can reasonably disagree on the particulars - but small government conservatives point to the second and third questions as perhaps equally important.

    First some Gallup Poll perspective on today's attitudes (November 2012) relative to the past few decades. In answer to the question "How much of the time do you think you can trust government in Washington to do what is right" the recent reading is 19% for "just about always or most of the time" - about on a par with the Clinton years and half to a third of the George W Bush years. That breaks down to 67% for the judiciary, 56% for the executive, and 34% for Congress (House and Senate). The whole is less than the sum of the parts.

    There are a number of examples which are seeping into the consciousness of the public who want things from government, but are increasingly doubtful about the ability of the public sector to deliver:

    - Obamacare. Despite explicit and repeated promises, people are seeing double digit increases in their insurance costs and millions are being forced to fend for themselves as employers don't hire or drop insurance coverage for their employees.   

    - Budgets. For years the Democrats have been opposed to even the concept of budgets, and with sequestration the administration has threatened to veto any legislation which would allow judgement about what costs should be cut.

    - Benghazi. In the capstone of the Arab Spring, the administration put State Department personnel in an unnecessarily dangerous position, did not take action when they came under attack, deliberately deceived the public about the nature of the attack, and has been totally unsuccessful in pursuing the perpetrators.

   - Bridges. For a bit of local flavor, we have the $6.4 billion, two and a half decades in development, Bay Bridge which has been re-built with 1200 large bolts which violate industry technical standards and are failing prior to a planned Fall grand opening. And the same gang is starting on a doomed $68 billion High Speed Rail project.

    It is fairly easy to make the case that the gusher of money in the Stimulus Plan contributed to the most federal corruption since Warren Harding.  A few examples:

    - Solyndra. In the poster child for the Obama administration's favoritism for large contributors and bad business judgement, the Department of Energy lost over $400 million on this solar panel company, and then illegally allowed a restructure of debt which made the contributor whole.

    -  MF Global. Former Goldman Sachs chairman, Democratic governor of New Jersey, and US Senator Jon Corzine illegally used over $1 billion in customer account funds to cover his bad company bets on European bonds. While some of the money has been recovered, no criminal charges are being considered.

    - Farmer Reparations. In a program with few controls and rife with fraud, the Department of Agriculture has given over $3 billion in "reparations for discrimination between 1981 and 1999" to African American, Hispanic, American Indian, and women farmers. Verification requirements are like the previous "no income/no assets/no job" mortgage requirements that let to the housing collapse.

    - The Attorney General. Google "Eric Holder/corruption" to read about Fast and Furious, the New Black Panther Party, and the rebirth of ACORN, as well as his warm-up tour in the Clinton administration.

    The public's political attitudes swing in long arcs. One benefit of President Obama's re-election is that people will have a full eight years to recalibrate on what government can really do - regardless of what they might want it to do.

                                            -----

    This week's audio clip is an interview in which Senator Harry Reid agrees with the above point - he likes Obamacare, but, like Senator Max Baucus, sees it headed for a trainwreck.   

 

bill bowen - 5/3/13  

 

Keystone XL Paralysis

    Not since his year-long dithering before agreeing to double American troop strength in Afghanistan with a commitment to withdraw by a date certain has President Obama so clearly demonstrated his inability to make important decisions. In the interim there have been many examples of his vacillation - budget negotiations with John Boehner, the Libyan revolt, the Benghazi fiasco, and the drip, drip, drip in Syria come to mind - but the endless hand-wringing over the XL Pipeline clearly demonstrates the downside of avoiding makeable decisions.

    The factual setting:

        -  The debate was seriously begun in 2008 when Transcanada Pipline LTD proposed the $7 billion, 1700 mile route from Alberta through Nebraska and Oklahoma and on to refineries on the Gulf - an extension of several other projects which have proceeded with little opposition.  Since the pipeline crosses a border the State Department has been the lead federal agency, approving plans for facilities at the border in 2008 and, in a revised Environmental Impact Statement in August of 2011, finding "no significant impacts". The Ogallala aquifer under the Sand Hills of western Nebraska has been the emotional touchpoint; after considering many options, Transcanada has chosen a route approved by the Nebraska government.  Nevertheless, the Environmental Protection Agency is responding to its clients and continues to throw up roadblocks, trying to prevent the president from acting on the State Department's direction.   

        -  There are approximately 175 billion barrels of oil located in Alberta in a highly viscous form mixed with clay, sand, and water - enough to meet the total requirement of the United States and Canada for 20 years. The United States uses about 19 million barrels per day; with fracking and horizontal drilling U.S. production is projected to increase to about 8 million bpd next year. Keystone XL would increase capacity by 830,000 barrels per day, on top of current imports from Canada of 2.7 million barrels per day. The alternative is more imports from places like Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria.  

        -  Extraction of the oil has three environmental impacts: use of large quantities of water, release of 12% more CO2 than conventional oil extraction, and the concentration of heavy metals (chromium, silenium, cobalt, etc.) which have been trapped in the sand. Scientists argue the details, but the general contention of environmental contamination within Canada is clear, and the Canadians will go forward with or without us.  

        -  The United States is criss-crossed by two million miles of energy pipelines, some 50,000 miles of which carry unrefined oil, and many of which already cross Nebraska. The alternatives if Keystone XL is not built? Canadian railroads are now moving about 100,000 carloads of oil per year; rail shipments from the booming Bakken fields in North Dakota (along the proposed XL route) have helped drive US rail shipments to 600,000 rail cars per year; and Canadian pipeline companies are working on routes to west coast ports for China and Canadian east coast refineries. Keystone XL is the least cost, least environmental risk option.

    To the environmental movement which is disappointed with Obama's failure to prioritize "cap and trade" legislation, their inability to slow down the state-regulated fracking revolution, and failure of several years of international "climate change" conferences,  Keystone XL has become the cause celebre. (Lest one feel too sorry for them, they have decimated the coal industry and prevented a once-promising nuclear renaissance.) All of the usual suspects are railing against the pipeline - The Sierra Club, The National Wildlife Federation, The National Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Earth. The objective is to shut down carbon-based energy at its source; from there the logic breaks down completely.

    Poor Barack. If he had said OK back in 2009 this could have been a non-issue. As it is, he has the ideologues screaming for him to stop the river from flowing. And the poor fellow must do something.

                                                ----- 

   This week's video shows Senator Ted Cruz' perspective on President Obama's effort to scuttle the immigration bill - as he did as a senator in 2006. All else is possible, if Republicans are not faced with millions of new Democratic voters in the next few years.

bill bowen - 4/26/13

The Lame Duck

    Barack Obama has never seemed to be interested in or good at governing - sometimes to the detriment of the nation, and sometimes to our benefit. The paramount question four months into his second term is who will guide the ship of state through 2016. A few points in evidence:

    - Exhibit number one is the failed effort to do something - anything - after the Newtown Connecticut school shootings. First he outsourced the effort to Joe Biden; then the NRA (perhaps the most vilified lobbying group in Washington) called for no compromise and armed guards in schools; then Senator Feinstein took the lead in the Senate; then the options peeled off one by one - no registry; no assault weapons ban; no size limit on ammunition clips; and finally, no background checks for gun show or Internet sales. Obama's contribution - a campaign-style tour with parents of kids who were killed. His result - even four Democrats voted against him on the key vote in the Senate, fearing Wayne LaPierre of the NRA more than the president.

    - Exhibit number two is the immigration reform initiative. Republicans are poised to accept the inevitable, hoping to make the path to citizenship longer than the political careers of the legislators. Leadership rests with a bipartisan group of eight Senators. Having defaulted on his commitments to Latino leaders in Term One, he gives an occasional speech about how important it is to solve the problem of 11 million "undocumented immigrants" (the new politically correct term) but few know or care what he thinks about the details - or what anybody in his cabinet thinks. As a result, the Republicans will get more secure borders, a more "what's in it for business and farmers" criteria for visas, and the ability to take this political pox off of the table.

    - Exhibit number three is the implementation of Obamacare. Having loudly declared that "nobody will have to give up their insurance plan or their doctor", we now see that he missed by a few million folks as employers drop their insurance plans, reduce work hours, or limit the number of employees to avoid the federally-required gold-plated plans. And lamenting the refusal of many Republican governors to set up "insurance exchanges" where companies and individuals can buy insurance, the feds will now need to manage half of the states and HHS Secretary Sebelius  is requesting $1 billion for an education campaign and has delayed to 2015 the availability of options for small companies due to "operational difficulties."  There was no mention of Obamacare in the president's budget speech.

    - Exhibit number four is the ongoing budget / debt limit / sequestration theater. Most agree that Obama overplayed his hand with his impending doom description of the impact of 2% budget cuts, and misjudged the Republicans' willingness to accept the defense component. So he now has a budget proposal which accepts some entitlement reductions, but asks for another large tax increase. Too little, too late; nobody expects this to be the structure of an agreement. When the next debt limit discussion comes around this summer, look to John Boehner to set the agenda.

   In domestic terms, this is probably as good as Republicans could have hoped for, having lost the presidency and the Senate. In foreign policy terms the abandonment of Benghazi and the disaster in Syria show the downside of not having a president who can lead. But that is a subject for another day.

                                                    -----

    This week's video is Barney Frank's use of the Boston bombing to call for greater government spending and blame the sequester. The Democrats' answer to Todd "legitimate rape" Akin.

bill bowen - 4/19/2013

 

Seeking Optimism

    At a recent large family outing I got cornered by a liberal Democrat who was lamenting the growing disparity between the rich and the poor and the bleak prospects for the younger generation. With the hard-earned lesson that one doesn't seek converts in such settings, we steered off to the steep financial bifurcation in sports, music, and writing. Here is what I would have liked to say:

    1. These things come and go. It helps to study the presidencies since World War II to see the impact of different policies, personalities, and management approaches. Particularly look to Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan, and Clinton (with help from Gingrich) as leaders of energetic growth - and Carter and Obama as overseers of decline. Partisans and ideologues can parse the causes, but it is clear that America is strong enough to overcome an ineffective president who does not understand or appreciate the vitality of the free enterprise system.

    2. We all want peace and prosperity, we just start with different approaches. Democrats, particularly of the Obama variety, start with "fairness", wanting to build the social safety net with resources taken from those who have done well. Republicans want to provide the opportunity for all to rise, believing that society prospers when it captures the talents and initiative of all, without limits. Equal results versus equal opportunity.   

   3. On an individual basis, Rick Santorum had it right. We know the keys to a successful life:

        - Get an education. Income levels jump and unemployment levels plummet when one gets a high school degree, and further again with a college degree.

        - Get a job. Don't expect to start as president of Google. Everybody in my family worked in restaurants at one time or another, learning self discipline, customer service, and the value of a dollar.

        - Get married before you have kids. The hill is steep enough for moms and kids to not be part of the trend where half of today's births occur in one parent families.

    I doubt that any of this would have had an impact on a life-long San Francisco Democrat. Nor would adding data - Jimmy Carter's 12 % inflation; Obama's $17 trillion debt; Reagan's 18% growth in after-inflation per capita GDP; the top 10 % currently paying 71 % of federal income taxes with 43 % of the income; the difference in growth in Red states versus Blue states. Maybe the history of the country's transition from agricultural employment to industrial employment, to office employment, to the new information age would have fostered some optimism - so long as it wasn't couched in terms of success of individuals and the free market system rather than the government' accomplishment - as in "you didn't build that."

    The next time I will bring the baby pictures.

                                               -----

    In this week's video the "Iron Lady" addresses the gap between the rich and the poor.

    And as a bonus, a tribute to the other female world leader to die this week.   

bill bowen - 4/12/2013  

 

Global Leadership? : Nyet

    One could make the case - and Dinesh D'Souza has quite convincingly - that President Obama's policies for much of the world reflect the anti-imperial activism of his Kenyan father and, to a lesser extent, his Indonesian stepfather. Thus, his non-response to the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria. Thus his retreat from Iraq without leaving any forces behind. Thus his leaving the fight against Al Queda in North Africa to the French. Thus his ineffectual and ambivalent treatment of the war which he escalated in Afghanistan. Among the progressives on the left and many libertarians on the right, this is OK. There is too much global discord for us to settle it all.

    But what about the "leading from behind" strategy in the rest of the world?  What will eight years of President Obama do to the military and economic Pax Americana that has existed since 1945? There are plenty of clues:

    -  With all of the histrionics about the impact of the sequester on the social safety net, there has been nary a peep from the Commander in Chief about the impact on the military. The closest thing has been the call of narrowly-confirmed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel for "fundamental (downward) Pentagon spending changes".

    -  The decennial change of leadership in China has received little fanfare in the United States, but it no accident that the first foreign trip of new President Xi Jinping was to Moscow. Or that China is beginning efforts with Australia, Brazil, Russia, and Iran to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

   -  From Vladimir Putin's perspective, the Eurozone's confiscation of Russian deposits in Cyprus, with the blessing of the American-led International Monetary Fund, stimulates a rethinking about Russia's place in the world at a time when the Obama administration has demonstrated its "flexibility" by cancelling the planned Eastern Europe missile defense shield - with no quid pro quo. The Russians have reason to be offended, and latitude to respond.

   - And what of the remaining two members of George W Bush's "axis of evil"?  North Korea and Iran barrel ahead on their paths to become realistic nuclear threats. Realizing that the American "nuclear shield" may no longer be operable, Japan and South Korea are taking first steps to develop their own deterrents. Without a credible assurance of American protection, the same will undoubtedly happen in the Sunni world once Iran crosses the threshold.

   It's not a pretty picture. Maybe the world will move slowly or the House and Senate will be able to exert real pressure on President Obama's military and foreign policies. Maybe there is enough financial strength in the European and American economic systems to retain primacy for a decade or two. But don't look to Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Chuck Hegel to usher in a new era of American global leadership.  Quite the opposite.

                                                    -----  

    For this week's video we have NBCs Brian Williams expressing shocked surprise that Obamacare's requirements for extended coverage without real cost containment are driving double digit rate increases. Next step - price controls.  

bill bowen - 4/5/13   

Education: The Positive Republican Issue

    Enough of being the "Party of No". Republicans have had a tough few years trying to be the responsible parent, insisting on financial discipline and limited government. While most voters understand the need to balance their household budgets and wouldn't want to leave their kids with a mountain of personal debt, the Democrats have benefited politically by emphasizing the specific and tangible while the Republicans have been stuck with the abstraction of trillions. Enough!!!

    Maybe, just maybe, the sequestration exercise has demonstrated that we can cut 2% off of a 16 trillion budget without the sky falling, and we can move on to a subject which is in the Republican wheelhouse of Opportunity, Liberty, and Personal Responsibility; one where we are on the side of the angels.  

    The set-up: Much data shows that there is a growing gap between the well off and lower economic classes as a result of globalization, technological advance, and the growth of single parent/wage-earner families. The central strategy of the Obama administration - increase taxes on the successful to fund extended unemployment benefits, egregious expansion of disability benefits, free healthcare, and a host of safety-net programs. The best strategy - improve education to allow those with the most talent and work ethic to prosper and raise society in the process. This is a civil rights issue.

    Some thoughts for the "big picture" folks:

    -  Since the creation of the federal Department of Education in 1980, our relative performance in the developed world has dropped to "average" despite being the leader in spending.  Something isn't working.

    -  In his recent short book, "Obama's Education Takeover", Lance Izumi explains how the Obama Administration's press for national standards, curriculum, and testing would move America away from local control and parental involvement.

    -  Obama's recent call for "universal preschool" would not only cost many billions of dollars, but it would expand Head Start to middle class families and drive out private secular and church options with questionable demonstration of lasting results from existing public programs.   

    And in terms of "act local", Republicans have several winning issues:

    -  School accountability. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers may oppose any objective evaluation of teacher performance, but there 10X as many parents as teachers - and many if not most teachers are upset with the protection of incompetents. There could be no better bete noir than Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers.

    - School choice . A third of the states now offer some form of voucher or subsidized school savings account.  Parents do know what is best for their kids - whether it be traditional public schools, charter schools, secular private schools, or religious schools.   

   - Liberal overreach extends to such things as eliminating the pledge of allegiance to the flag,  challenging Junior ROTC programs, and continuation of school assignment policies which contain vestiges of social engineering long after the courts have declared busing unnecessary.    

    For those Republican presidential aspirants looking to 2016, "candidates make the issues". Marco Rubio has the inside track on today's consensus "must fix" immigration reform, but that should be off of the table within a year. The name Republican with a deep history in the education wars is the former governor of Florida with his Foundation for Excellence in Education.  Memorabilia collectors should hang on to their Bush-Clinton stuff.

                                                    ----- 

    In the spirit of the season, here's the Senate Majority Leader explaining that the American income tax is voluntary.

bill bowen - 3/29/13

 

We Are All Cypriots

    Back in the 60's when Berlin was surrounded by 20 Soviet Army divisions in East Germany, President Kennedy, acting as the leader of the Free World (a quaint anachronism in itself) famously declared "Ich bin ein Berliner" - "I Am a Berliner". For the moment, the front line for our Western system of individual rights rests in Cyprus. Ironically, the attack comes from the European governments and the strongest defenders are the Russians.

    Quickly, how did we get here?

        - This is Act XXV of the Eurozone drama. Since 2008 one country after another has needed bailouts for their financial institutions which are inextricably tied up with excessive government spending. To many this seems like an inevitable outcome of trying to combine a common currency with separate national budgetary authorities. That's a subject for another day, better covered by more knowledgeable writers not named Krugman.  

        -  Tiny (1,200,000 population; $18 billion GDP) Cyprus saw the opportunity to expand their financial industry by applying low taxes and loose oversight to become a conduit for businesses, government officials, and gangsters in Russia and the former Soviet republics to get their money into the Eurozone, with much being recycled back into Russia to buy companies and real estate there. (Russian deposits in Cypriot banks total about $30 billion; about $14 billion of annual direct investment in Russia comes from Cyprus.)

        - Like Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Italy, Cyprus spent beyond its means, benefiting from low borrowing rates of the German-backed Eurozone with loans from its own banks, banks throughout the zone, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Cyprus also borrowed $3 billion from Russia.

        - The bill has come due. Cyprus needs a $13 billion bailout from the internatonal banking system who - in the form of the Europeran Central Bank, major country financial ministers, and the International Monetary Fund (e.g. the U.S.) - are demanding that Cyprus come up with $7.5 billion, which they can only do by confiscating a portion of the $90 billion in deposits in the banks. Traditional rules would have the bank owners wiped out first, bank bond holders second, and uninsured deposits third. To get to the $7.5 billion, the European Union czars jumped right to the depositors, insured or not, and totally ignored any consideration of the account holder's total wealth or income.  

        -  From there, the question was how new center-right government of Cyprus would allocate the confiscation between large depositors (like the Russians) and the small depositors (like the voters.)  In any case it would be a confiscation, which Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev likens to the behavior of the Soviet era. The long battle for the security of the individual from arbitrary, after the fact assaults by the government has taken a significant step backward.

        - At this point the resolution is unclear. The Cypriot parliament has rejected the plan, ostensibly foregoing any further European loans and resulting in a hard bankruptcy, but creative minds are looking at other options - closing one bank; selling rights to drill for natural gas off of the coast; a loan from Russia; anything.  

    And let's provide a little American context:

        -  We have not fixed the fundamental flaws in our banking system that led to the crisis in 2008, and our government continues with fiscal policies driving Greek-style debt. We will not be as powerless as Cyprus, but the debtor does not get to set the rules.

        -  During the 2008 crisis there was attention to insurance for small bank deposits, and the arguments were about allocation of risk among the bank owners and bond holders, with the government throwing money at the industry, not confiscating deposits. Even the MF Global fiasco, which represented a politically-connected crook getting away with stealing customer deposits, did not involve government seizing deposits.

    A year or two ago nobody would have thought it possible in the Western financial system - from Europe, to North America, to Japan - for the government to confiscate bank deposits. But most in America would not have thought that the federal government could force a citizen to purchase a service like health insurance that they didn't want or that the federal government could force a church (or any person of conscience) to directly or indirectly pay for contraceptives and morning after pills. But they can, and they do.

    Ich bin ein Cypriot.

                                                   -----

   This week's video bonus, from a reader in Virginia, is a libertarian take on ordering a pizza in a data-intensive world.

bill bowen - 3/22/13  

Rand Paul's Filibuster: A Perspective

    A president has to trust the common sense of the American people. On the small stuff the people, wanting  to have faith in the president, will give him wide berth. (Let him flit around on Air Force One while shutting down White House tours.) On the middle stuff he can fool most of the people enough of the time. (Of course he will address spending just as soon as he gets the fat cats to pay their fair share in taxes.) But on the big stuff he can't believe that, as Jack Nicholson's Col Jessup yells in A Few Good Men, "You can't handle the truth." Rand Paul believes that we can.

    The conflict between national security and individual liberty in a post-911 world  is complicated. People of good will on the left and on the right will disagree on much, but the zealots of Code Pink agree with the zealots of the libertarian movement that we need to discuss the limits of government power. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) don't want the discussion; Ron Wyden (D-OR), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Mike Lee (R-UT) do.  

    Unfortunately, Barack Obama is with McCain - perhaps because he is tangled up ideologically; perhaps because he enjoys having few limits on his power; perhaps because he doesn't think in terms of how the Constitution set up the government in the first place. Twelve years after the attacks in New York and Washington, we have:

        - A president who led the criticism of his predecessor's use of "enhanced interrogation technques" refusing to share with the Senate Intelligence Committee the legal rationale supporting the killing of Americans;

        - An administration which insists on calling the murder of 13 people at Fort Hood by Major Hassan an "act of workplace violence";

        - An administration which is told that it cannot close the detention facility at Guantanamo, and doesn't seem to understand (or accept) the difference between civilian and military judicial systems;  

        -  A security establishment which continues to blur the distinction between the role of the CIA and the role of the military in fighting foreign wars;

        -  A Nobel Peace Prize winning president who maintains a central personal role in deciding what targets to approve for drone strikes, without a public discussion of criteria or any judicial review;

        -  The establishment of a cybersecurity mission at the Pentagon with vast powers to monitor civilian travel, purchasing, reading, and assembly patterns with hardly a peep from the folks who went ballistic about Dick Cheney's purported interest in library records.

        -  The New York Times finally reporting on the killing of not only American-born  Al Queda leader Anwar al Awlaki, but also his 16 year old son and another American whose offense was purely in the propaganda realm.  

    Out on the right are the conspiracy theorists who are still incited by the government's ham-handed assaults on a white separatist family at  Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992 and the Branch Davidian compound in Waco in 1993, and the Second Amendment advocates who see a need for militias to protect ourselves from King George III.  That thread is not healthy for democracy, but it is fed by Obama's leftist policies and his refusal to acknowledge any limits on government power.   

   Eric Holder's answer to the question before Paul's filibuster - does the president have the authority to kill Americans on American soil without due process and in the absence of an imminent threat?: "It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States."  And after the filibuster, a petulant Holder wrote "The answer to that question is no."

    A small victory for liberty. Thank you Senator Paul.

                                                    -----

  This week's video is a brief year-old exchange about the killing of Americans between Jake Tapper of CNN and President Obama's deliberate know nothing press secretary.

bill bowen - 3/15/2013

 

Obama's Evolving Sequester Strategy

    President Obama's sequester strategy has progressed through several phases:

        1. Stand fast with his base in refusing any change to entitlement programs and demanding further tax increases on the rich by elimination of loopholes. That has worked several times; why not again? Plan A failed when the Republicans were surprisingly willing to accept arbitrary cuts to the military, allowing sequestration to go into effect.

        2. Build up the story that this Republican idea came about because Boehner and his Tea Party allies will not accept a "balanced approach." Plan B failed when Bob Woodward loudly proclaimed that the sequester was a White House idea, and John Boehner repeatedly made the point that Obama had received his $650 billion in (10 year) tax increases in January. It also ignored the fact that the House has passed two bills to provide a more flexible way of applying the cuts - bills that the Senate ignored and the White House threatened to veto.

        3. Scare the public - and the Republican House members - with a litany of all the bad stuff that will happen. Plan C failed when planes didn't fall from the sky. Obama's message has changed to the gradualism of the pain, and the administration is doing what it can to make it real by doing things such as releasing thousands of illegal immigrants, furloughing meat inspectors, cancelling White House tours,  and holding back on military deployments. But the reality is that we can absorb cuts of 2.4% on a $3.6 trillion budget without calamity, no matter how hard Janet Napolitano and Ray Lahood try.

       4. Scare the public and the markets with fear that the Republicans will shut down the government by not passing another "Continuing Resolution" to authorize keeping on when the current resolution expires on March 27. Plan D failed when the House passed a bill on Wednesday to authorize spending through September at sequestration levels, with language that allowed some judgement as to how the military cuts would be implemented. The Senate will apparently pass it, and Obama will reluctantly sign it. (These Continuing Resolutions are necessary because for years the Senate and Obama have not done legally required budgets.) And the markets? Record highs.

    What has the Commander in Chief been thinking? That he could engineer a Democratic capture of the House in 2014 by blaming the Republicans for gridlock and a loss of government services?  He seems, however, to have had a different result.  A public which once believed Obama's claim that he could extend free healthcare to 30 million people without costing anyone "one thin dime" (a $6.2 trillion error, according to the GAO), is catching on to the flim flam. With the Washington Post giving Obama Pinnochios for claims about who proposed the sequester, layoffs of  teachers, and paycuts for Capitol Hill janitors some press integrity has returned, and the President's approval ratings have dropped well below 50% with about equal numbers holding Obama and the Republicans to be at fault.  

    While it feels good to have some financial discipline return, the reality is that year over year spending has flattened out but we remain at the heightened levels which began with the stimulus plan in 2009, and the heavy lifting of entitlement reform, tax reform (lower rates; fewer deductions; corporate and individual), and healthcare cost containment remains ahead. If Obama continues to pursue campaigning over governing - and he likes to do what he is good at while ignoring what he's not -  progress on the big stuff will remain elusive until 2016.    

                                                   ----- 

This week's video is an effort by Joe Scarborough to rehabilitate himself after his 2012 sell-out to Mika, by going after Paul Krugman.

bill bowen - 3/8/13

The Military Sequester: Making Lemonade

    Every year or so I write a piece that offends many of my friends. This is the one for 2013. We do not need to spend nearly as much on our military as the rest of the world combined, and sequestration seems to be the only way to tame the beast.

    Before talking about how much we need, lets put aside the question of what we do with the military and state department that we have. If this were thrust of the discussion, I wouldn't be offending my friends:

        -  Obama withdrew from Iraq and did not make an effort to leave a small peace keeping force behind. He will also abandon whatever progress has been made in his greatly expanded war in Afghanistan. They will have to fend for themselves.

        -  Obama has chosen to not get involved in the messy side of the Arab Spring - Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria. They will have to fend for themselves.

        -  Obama is doing little to reassure our friends in Japan and South Korea about North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. They will have to fend for themselves.

        -  Obama is doing little to reassure our friends in Israel and Saudi Arabia about Iran's nuclear program. They will eventually have to fend for themselves.

        -  Obama is doing little to reassure our friends in Poland and the Czech Republic about our missile defense program for them, now that Obama has been reelected and has "more flexibility". They will have to fend for themselves.

        -  Obama is committing to a significant reduction in our nuclear arsenal on the hope that our adversaries will follow suit. Fend they will.

        -  Obama has chosen a Secretary of Defense who shares his vision for a reduced military which will be less involved in the world. Senators fend for Senators.

    Lets also stipulate that Obama proposed the sequestration concept and, as Commander in Chief, has structured the implementation to inflict maximum pain and damage on the military with the expectation that conservatives would again cave in to give him tax increases without meaningful budget reductions. It would appear as if the House Republicans are finally saying "no mas", regardless of how many firemen, teachers, and soldiers Obama can line up behind him for his histrionic speeches. Good for them. The union will survive, and we may have finally turned the corner on our debt, which Chief of Staff Mullen famously called  the greatest threat to our national security.

    Now the hard stuff. We have the same military structure that was created in 1947.  Ike warned about the "military-industrial complex" in 1952, and it is still out if full force in opposition to the sequester. Donald Rumsfeld tried to shift from aircraft carriers and new generations of Air Force fighters and Army tanks - getting more unconventional forces after 9/11, but not getting rid of the old stuff. Now the Pentagon has taken on a cyber-defense mission, but again hangs on to the past. We have a military that is a jobs plan (for the bloated corps of admirals and generals as well as the folks at Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and L3 Communications), not a defense plan. 

    For the optimists, maybe, just maybe, the House Republicans will have passed the tipping point, and - thinking of the warnings of Admiral Mullen, Ike, and Rummie - they will ask  the staffers down in the bowels of the Pentagon and over at the think tanks to envision a military which lets us do what Obama chooses not to do, but doesn't cover simultaneous wars on three oceans and the plains of Poland, while obliterating Russia 10 times over.

    That's a hope, but if the House has come far enough to accept military sequestration, maybe real change is possible.

                                                -----

    This week's video extends the White House's battle with Bob Woodward, in which he was threatened for detailing the facts of Obama's original proposal of the sequestration.  

bill bowen - 3/1/13     

Immigration: Policy and Politics

    We will have comprehensive immigration reform within the next few months. The Republicans need it to survive. The Democrats cannot again stiff the demographic which gave Obama a plurality of 6 million votes in his 3 million vote victory.  

    The policy is simple. In a brief moment of bipartisan wisdom, eight Senators worked out the framework - Schumer, Menendez, Bennet, and Durbin for the Dems (mostly Northerners); and McCain, Rubio, Graham, and Flake for the Republicans (all Southern/Border folks).

The program:

    1. A path to citizenship with secure borders and visa management.

    2. An improved legal immigrant system which attracts the world's best and brightest.

    3. Strong employment verification.

    4. A guest worker program and protection of employee rights.

    The final bill will jiggle a bit, but this is about it. We will move a bit more toward the Canadian model which admits immigrants based on what skills and attributes they bring to us. Let the beacon attract people who can make us greater - and pay for our Social Security.

The politics:

    1. Republicans cannot withstand a 70% Democratic vote among the rapidly expanding 23 million Hispanics who can vote (about half do), but worse would be to add another 11 million who would vote Democratic in even greater percentages. Long term residency (without the vote) works, as do lots of hurdles and an 8 plus year delay in elegibility for citizenship - until after today's political leaders are out of Dodge.

    2. Obama's role in this is fun to watch. In his first two years when Democrats controlled Congress he did nothing. Maybe because his African American supporters do not want to give up their status as the preferred minority. Maybe because his union supporters do not want to increase competition for scarce jobs. Maybe because he was clever enough to preserve Hispanic anger with Republicans. Those with longer memories recall the junior senator from Illinois torpedoing the Bush / McCain efforts in 2007 - for the same reasons.

    Now that comprehensive reform will be one of the few high points of his second term he wants it to be his accomplishment - prominence in the State of the Union; speeches around the country; a highlight of his Organizing for America perpetual campaign. But the Group of Eight has been smart enough to say "no thanks" -  you can position your thoughts as a backup plan, but we've got this one.

    3. On the Republican side it is the first round of interviews for 2016. People like a name on important legislation: Taft-Hartley; Dodd-Frank; Hart-Scott-Rodino. Eight names is too many, and Menendez-Rubio would have had a nice ring to it - until Menendez, the only Democratic Hispanic Senator got in trouble for jaunts on a donor's jet to meet up with hookers in the Dominican Republic. On this issue -one of the most critical to Republican success - there is a temptation to make it the Rubio Plan. He is the rightful leader, has been working on the effort for years and his name ends in a vowel.  

    Meanwhile, somewhere down in the bowels of the Hillary campaign the staffers are figuring how to take down Rubio if he gets credit for leading this charge, and the fair and balanced New York Times has raised the level of discourse by explaining why his taking a drink of water during his Republican response to Obama's State of the Union speech is an obvious disqualifier.

    Whatever. We will have reform and it will be good.

                                                  -----

    This week's bonus is a presentation that Harmeet Dhillon, the Chair of the San Francisco Republican Party made to the Central Committee in San Diego as part of her campaign for the state Republican Party Vice Chair. The good news for the GOP everywhere is that even in California the opportunity and liberty messages resonate.   

bill bowen - 2/22/13    

 

The Willful Ignorance of Bubbles

    As in finance, political bubbles are characterized by willful ignorance followed by excess, a painful burst, and broad recognition that we should have seen it coming. (We pundits often claim that we did, but in doing so, it is hard to not sound like one of Sprio Agnew's "nattering nabobs of negativity". ) The real estate burst of the 00's is a classic example - everybody gained by believing that you could bundle thousands of junk mortgages together to create gold - until you couldn't. Sometimes, but not always, the financial and political are intertwined. Let's briefly take federal, state, and local examples.

    The Federal. Who really believes that trillions of dollars of budget deficits and unfunded entitlement commitments don't matter? Barack Obama may actually believe, with his Svengali, Paul Krugman, yelling in his ear, that he can repeal the laws of economics. The public may choose to ignore Paul Ryan and the clamor of the populist Tea Party types. The dollar's "reserve currency" status, backed by the immense power of the American economy, may allow us to ignore the problem for a very long time. The politics of ethnic, gender, class, and age divide may allow a gifted public speaker to focus the public's attention elsewhere. The only question is whether the politics will change before or after the pain associated with the inevitable bursting of the bubble.

    The State of California. Happy times are here again. The people have found a governor who is fiscally responsible on the small stuff and given him the highest tax rates in the country - a top 13.3% personal income tax rate; a 7.5% sales tax (plus up to 1.5% locally); a combined 68.9 cents per gallon gas tax; an 8.84 % corporate tax (9th in the nation); and $1,458 per capita property taxes (15th in the nation, kept down by Proposition 13). With total control of the state the Democrats can do as they wish, pension reform is not on the agenda, and the outflow of high tax payers will accelerate a bit. Out here the equivalent of Wall Street's "mortgage backed securities" is the high speed rail project.

    The basic premise is Too Big To Fail. If we begin with the $10 billion dollars approved by California voters in 2008, and add in $3.6 billion federal dollars approved by the Pelosi Congress, we will be so far along that nobody will be willing to pull the plug. Never mind that nobody believes that the current $68 billion price tag is realistic, that the requirement that there will be no operating subsidies will be met, or that the path won't be impeded by numerous politically-required intermediate stops between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

    Funding is predicated on the assumption that there will be tens of billions of additional federal money (read Democratic control of the House, Senate, and Presidency - and a "thank you" shout out to you readers outside of California) and there will be a "public-private" partnership with wealthy corporations who are not interested in making money. So, what will really happen? For decades the priority for transportation spending in California will be High Speed Rail for the wealthy business people and tourists who do not want to fly between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Forget the millions of blue collar workers who need buses to get from one side of town to the other for their jobs; forget the millions of middle class commuters who need their cars or light rail to get into the city to work. Eventually the voters will notice that the "all in" emotionally satisfying smaller carbon footprint of the few wipes out the good of the many.     

    The City of San Francisco. Happy times are here too. Financial constraint is unnecessary as Silicon Valley is booming (the banks are here, and the nightlife is better so the kids reverse commute), and the strength of the Chinese economy ripples onto our coast, so our politicians are geniuses. But one party rule breeds excess which is most evident at City College of San Francisco.

    Picture a system with nine main campuses and some 90,000 students in a city of 812,000 people. Add a voter population which believes in the mission of providing an affordable feeder system for California's four year colleges and training for careers such as nursing, culinary work, and information technology.  How could this be a Too Big To Fail bubble? Well, add a school board comprised of Democratic machine politicians; turn over management decisions to a council dominated by the administrator, teacher, and student unions; expand the mission so that a large part of funding goes to free  "community enrichment" courses such as memoir writing and cultural self discovery; provide socially fair staff compensation such as full health care and retirement benefits for part time teachers; eliminate any effort to measure costs of the various facilities; and on and on. Eventually, even in California, the state may well pull the school's accreditation - after eight years of warnings, after a stern "this time we really mean it" ultimatum, after the imposition of temporary outside chief administrators. Maybe.    

    So, the quandry for good hearted people who want to work for a better world, and who do not want to be part of the willful ignorance: do you try to provide a warning? do you wait for the bubbles to burst? or do you just try to help the homeless guy on the corner? Illigitimi non carborundum.

                                            ------

   This week's video , compliments of a friend from Connecticut, captures a poignant moment in New York after 9/11/01.

bill bowen - 2/15/2013  

 

Karl Rove RIP

    OK, so Karl Rove can raise millions more to start another PAC to:

    Option A. Develop databases, software, and field offices to match Barack Obama's vaunted permanent campaign organization which has morphed into Organizing for Action, a PAC funded by friendly corporations and George Soros and dedicated to supporting the Left's agenda; or

   Option B. Focus the new Orwellian-named  Conservative Victory Project on the pointed objective of preventing the nomination of conservatives for the Senate.

   Surprise. He chose Option B. So sad.

       There was hope that we had gotten over the intramural Senate suicide when Jerry Moran of Kansas replaced John Cornyn of Texas as chair of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee,  and Jim DeMint of South Carolina retired to lead the Heritage Foundation rather than foster insurgencies against inadequately conservative incumbent Republicans. Apparently not so for the Republicans who again have a reasonable chance of capturing the Senate in 2014, needing to pick up 6 seats with 23 of the 33 available now held by Democrats.

      The headline trumpeted by Rove and the ecstatic media is that bad nominees in the last two cycles cost the Republicans at least four easy seats - in 2010 Sharon Angle in Nevada and Christine O'Donnell in Delaware; in 2012 Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana. Everyone gets it. Bobby Jindal gets it. The New York Times gushes over Bobby Jindal getting it.

     For a good discussion of the conservative grass roots battles in 2010 and 2012, see Erick Erickson's editorial on Red State. Certainly the comments of Akin and Mourdock cost them winnable seats and provided brand-damaging talking points in other campaigns, but there is a broader picture. Upset victors over Republican-establishment moderates have included Marco Rubio in Florida (Charlie Crist), Mike Lee in Utah (Bob Bennet), Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania (Arlen Specter), Rand Paul in Kentucky (Trey Grayson), and Ted Cruz in Texas (David Dewhurst). Of these, at least Rubio and Cruz have legitimate presidential potential. This is the vitality of the Party.

    And there have been too many others of the style sought by Rove who snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory without the "aid" of the Tea Party - Tommy Thompson (Wisconsin); Rick Berg (North Dakota); Denny Rehberg (Montana), George Allen (Virginia), Heather Wilson (New Mexico), Linda Lingle (Hawaii). Elections are won by good candidates running good campaigns in the right environment.

    But back to the beginning. Hopefully Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, or someone else will support Option A. And, as Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post writes (with a somewhat different slant), the era of Karl Rove is over.

                                          -----           

  This week's video is a clip of the funniest commercials from the "lights out" Super Bowl. Some here in San Francisco are questioning the play-calling of our leader in the final moments of the contest, but we Republicans have recently had a similar experience on a more important national stage.

bbowen - 2/8/2013

Benghazi to Mali: Connecting the Dots

     In his inaugural address President Obama included much that people want to believe, including: "This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve  and proved our resilience.  A decade of war is now ending." Done with Bush's "bad war" in Iraq; ending Obama's inconsequential "good war" in Afghanistan. Smooth sailing ahead. Good enough to win reelection; freightening if he believes it.

    Dot 1. The al Queda franchises are alive and well - in Afghanistan and Pakistan; in Yemen; in North Africa. Gone is the spiritual leader, but remaining is the virulent anti-West Islamism. The drone war continues, killing leaders when they can be found, civilians when they get in the way, and an occasional American traitor. Finding leaders to interrogate - forget it.  Winning the hearts and minds of the populace - such a 70's concept.

   Dot 2. NATO brought the Arab Spring to Libya - a war, whether Obama was willing to ask Congress for approval or not. One ugly dictator removed; chaos in its wake.

   Dot 3. Libyan armaments make their way to Syria; former mercenaries make their way to Saharan Africa and make us learn a new set of place names - Gao, Bamako, Mopti - and learn where Timbuktu is.  They join Islamist militias who conquor northern Mali and attack western interests in Algeria.

   Dot 4. The French intervene to support African Union troops and save the government of Mali, a country of 14.5 million people with a territory almost twice the size of Texas. Europe fears an Afghanistan-like safe haven from which jihadist attacks can be launched. Obama rejects initial French calls for help with reconnaisance, air transport, and aerial refueling, but later relents as the French face little resistance. He agrees to base some American drones in neighboring Niger. Our allies need to rethink American support - in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

   Dot 5. Our outgoing Secretary of State tells the Senate, "What difference does it make whether .... (her subordinates in Benghazi) were killed by a planned terrorist attack or a bunch of guys out for a walk."  The New York Times cheers.

   Dot 6. Looming sequestration threatens meat-axe cuts of $45 billion per year on top of planned reductions with the wind down of the Afghan war.  Chuck Hagel is brought on as Secretary of Defense with the job of scaling back personnel, equipment, and missions.

    Well, Hillary  ....  acknowledging the reality that virulent anti-West Islamism is thriving across a wide swath of territory makes a big difference to Europe, to our friends in the Middle East, and to us. We are, and will remain, the dominant global military power. We have the unique ability to support allies in places like Libya or Mali with intelligence (satellite; electronic), air transportation, aerial refueling, and materiel without risking American lives. If we believe that the decade of war is ending (never mind Iran and Syria), that it doesn't matter who we are facing in North Africa, and that the French and Africans can do it without us, we will all pay a heavy price in the future.

                                                    -----

   As a change of pace, this week's video is a 24 minute tour of the international space station by a NASA astronaut.

bill bowen - 2/1/2013  

Shining a Light on the Senate

    Praise be !!!   In military terms, it is a flanking move.  With the President hardly mentioning ongoing extraordinary unemployment, trillion dollar deficits, and bankrupt entitlement programs while throwing down the gauntlet of his liberal agenda in his second inaugural address, someone in the House (Budget Chair Paul Ryan) has realized that the Democrats' weak spot is the Senate where for three years Harry Reid has managed to table any financial discussions which might put the president on the spot or cause his Democratic members to make hard choices.  

    The specific challenge: The House will delay the enforcement of the $16.4 trillion debt ceiling until May 19, allowing the Senate until April 15 to propose a blueprint for taxes and spending. The stick - no blueprint, no pay. (The House has passed such, legally required blueprints since Republicans re-took the House in 2010.) In the meantime, automatic sequestration cuts of $70 billion for discretionary programs and $50 billion for defense are scheduled to kick in on March 2, and the current Continuing Resolution Authority - Congress' annual approval to "keep on keepin' on" in the absence of a budget - expires on March 27.     

    The media may want to talk about guns, immigration, and the rest of Obama's second term agenda, but the Republicans are betting that the public will agree that you shouldn't have a long term increase in the debt ceiling without a long term plan to control spending. They'd also like to remind voters that they've already given Obama a $65 billion tax increase, but that's last month's news.  

     Whether the Democrats and the media like it or not, the people will see something other than John Boehner caving in in this financial confrontation. Prominently on the stage will be:

        -  Harry Reid in his first prime time appearance since the Obamacare sausage making. Perhaps we'll get a reprise of the Cornhusker Kickback, Louisiana Purchase, and a litany of procedural misconduct.  With Congress' approval at 7%, it will be good to place Harry at center stage.

         -  And his supporting cast:  Barack Obama's senior senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, the majority whip who may retire in 2014;  the third ranking Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York; new Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray of Washington who talks of little but tax hikes on trhe rich and protection of entitlements. .

         -  The Republicans have their own baggage in Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who seems to have gone to sleep after his October 2010 comment that his primary objective was to see that Obama did not get reelected.  McConnell slides along in the clubby Senate, but a bad performance here will result in a Tea Party supported primary opponent in his 2014 reelection bid.

         -  The rest of the Republican cast offers quite a bit of upside. Party leader Jeff Sessions is forceful, if a bit sleepy, but the exposure of members Kelly Ayotte, Ron Johnson, Pat Twomey, Mike Crapo, Rob Portman, and John Thune offer a nice blend of experience and photogenic youth.

    In both parties, behavior will be affected by the looming 2014 elections in which the Republicans will defend 10 seats to the Democrats' 23. One objective of the Republicans in this budget fight, and throughout the term, will be forcing seven mostly mediocre Democratic Senators from states carried by Mitt Romney - Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia; Mark Begich of Alaska; Mary Landrieu of Louisiana; Mark Pryor of Arkansas; Tim Johnson of South Dakota; Kay Hagan of North Carolina; Max Baucus of Montana - to take a position for Obama or for their constituents.

    There is a reason that Harry Reid and Barack Obama have kept all matters financial from reaching the Senate floor. No more.   

                                            -----

    This week's video is a snippet from Hillary Clinton's "What does it matter?" testimony at the Senate hearing. For a discussion of the unanswered questions, see my December 20 post.   

bill bowen - 1/25/2013 

 

 

Whither the Tea Party?

    Recent polling shows that just 8% of voters now consider themselves to be Tea Party members, down from 24% shortly after the passage of Obamacare. Peggy Lee's 1969 classic "Is That All There Is?" comes to mind. (Do watch the video for the full impact.) What happened?

    At it's height, the Tea Party tried to define itself in the mission statement of the Tea Party Patriots: The impetus for the Tea Party movement is excessive government spending and taxation. Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets. Nothing about guns, illegals, abortion, or foreign wars. In that mode, they were the energy behind the Republican wave that gained 63 House seats, 6 Senate seats, 22 state legislative chambers, and 5 governorships in 2010. 

    In two short years the leaderless movement has almost dissolved. The 49-member Tea Party Caucus in the House, led by Michelle Bachmann, has been unable to stop party leadership from agreeing to the January 1, Obama tax increases or the $60 billion grabbag Hurricane Sandy "stimulus lite", with its AmTrack upgrades, national highway reconstruction, and all manner of unrelated spending. Financial conservatives have been removed from the Financial Services and Budget committees. None of the Tea Party members in the Senate - Rand Paul of Kentucky; Mike Lee of Utah; Jerry Moran of Kansas - bothered with a filibuster on the tax increases.

    The Republican Party is a coalition of interest groups - evangelicals, small business owners, national security hawks, libertarians, gun owners, financial elites. In 2010 the Party leaders welcomed the Tea Party numbers and energy, fearing a "worst case" third party revolt. In 2012, they nominated a patrician who, I believe, would have been a great president, but whose campaign did not articulate or personify the mantra of fiscal responsibility and limited government. We true believers expected that an organized effort and a "fiscal prudence" theme would produce a great turnout. It didn't. Romney's defeat was particularly crushing to the amateurs who first became engaged in politics just two years ago. And the media's constant drumbeat has caused the public to identify "Tea Party" with any form of extremism.

    Where to now? Obama apparently believes that he has the measure of John Boehner and the House Republicans and that he can get massive debt limit increases and more tax increases without giving on entitlement reform or general spending reductions. Some 63% of Republican voters think that Republicans in Congress have lost touch with the values of their electorate. Meanwhile, the media have grown tired of the fiscal cliff and ignore the impending automatic spending cuts, having moved on to the more interesting issue du jour, the debate over gun control.

    Maybe if there is a bolt out of the blue there will be a rebirth of concern about debt and inflation sometime in the next couple of years, but a better bet is to follow Peggy Lee's nihilistic advice and "let's keep dancing."   

                                                    -----

    This week's video is candidate Obama's 2008 demagogueing against President Bush's $4 trillion in deficits over 8 years - about half of his pace.

bill bowen - 1/18/2013        

 

Building From the Bottom

    This week's post is offered amid the ongoing pall of disappointment (find a stronger word - ed.) with the election and the fiscal cliff. Foremost: think globally; act locally.

    Some friends ask "What can be done to revitalize the Republican Party in San Francisco?"  More ask "Why bother to try?" In the spirit of a New Year, with a new Central Committee embarking on a four year term, here are some thoughts:

    San Francisco is to California as California is to the rest of the country - more Democratic; more liberal; a political establishment less tolerant of deviation from the accepted ideological orthodoxy. Republicans will not win many elections in San Francisco in my lifetime - the last Republican mayor was George Christopher (1956 - 1964) - but the manageable perspective is about setting reasonable objectives, branding, and strategy.

    First, lets acknowledge reality: Registration is 56% Democratic, 31% "no party preference", and 9% Republican; in the 2012 elections, with 365,000 ballots cast (a high 72% turnout) Mitt Romney got 13% of the City vote, Jerry Brown's proposal to further increase the country's highest taxes got 77% of the vote, and the local Republican Party candidates (all very legitimate, if under-funded) got 12 to 17%. Losing comes easily to the Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Republicans. But, viewed differently:

        -  There are important state-wide elections - governor; senator; ballot initiatives - where a few hundred thousand votes can make a difference, and there should be more loose votes lying around for Republicans to pick up in the Bay Area than in the Central Valley and Southern California where more people already vote Republican. With apologies to the political correctness police, it is kind of like the shoe salesman having a great opportunity in central Africa.

        -  There are non-partisan local elections and ballot initiatives involving common-sense good government concepts where special interests prevent the Democrats from siding with the voters - public employee pensions; school accountability; vagrancy; rights of property owners. A responsible Republican voice is needed.

        -  Much of the real government of the City is managed by boards and commissions - Police; Fire; Planning; Port; Airport. The public supports checks and balances to ensure integrity, and politicians will appoint Republicans if they see the Party as a potential factor in their elections.

    So, what can be done?   There are no quick fixes, but the groundwork can be laid now for 2014 and beyond:

    -  Promote a platform which stresses the issues that are important to the people of San Francisco.

    -  Figure out who our allies are - particularly in business - and establish or solidify relationships.

    -  Develop a media strategy which uses all of the tools available - newsletters; social media; presentations; interviews.  

    -  Cultivate a fundraising base to support a fiscally conservative/socially moderate Party infrastructure.

    -  Recruit - Committee members; candidates; registered voters; donors.  

    -  Plan the work; work the plan.

    Sometimes keeping on requires a combination of hubris and naive belief in our fellow citizens. A majority must believe in individual liberty, personal responsibility, educational opportunity, support for job creators, and families. Even in San Francisco. We just need to speak clearly and loudly.                                

                                                         -----    

No video this week. Instead, please read this chilling David Brooks NY Times op-ed on the significance of the nomination of Chuck Hagel to downsize the military.

bill bowen - 1/11/13  

Fiscal Nausea

    When future historians write about the Great Obama Inflation their milestones will include the $800 billion stimulus plan, Obamacare, and the Fiscal Cliff - the compilation of all of the GOPs futile efforts to limit taxes and spending. Obama would have none of it and the Republicans in Congress whiffed.

    The Emotion.

        -  The Congressional Republicans are Linus to Obama's Lucy van Pelt. The President really does want to be financially responsible, we just have to give on the taxes now in exchange for future spending constraints. Trust him. Again.

        -  The populist beat the aristocrat in the election. Obama has had little to offer other than "tax the rich".  When Congress members talk to their constituents, lo and behold, they like the idea of having somebody else pay the bill. And what's the big deal if 2% of the people have their marginal tax rate go from 35% to 39.6%? Petty change.

        -  The big deal is that the quid was negotiated away for no quo. And trillion dollar deficits are a big deal. And at least half of the people do know that.

        -  It must be OK; the stock market likes it. A bit less uncertainty is good - for the moment.

        -  It is not as painful as the election, but it hurts to see folks like Paul Krugman, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden taking victory laps. 

    The Facts.

        - So, what's in it?

            --  Lots of tax increases: rates  for families making over $450,000; higher rates for dividends and capital gains for wealthier households; personal exemptions phased out for families over $250,000; higher estate taxes; expiration of the 2% payroll tax holiday.

            --  Lots of cost increases: an extension of the Medicare "doc fix"; a farm bill extension; tax credits for working families and favored businesses; a year's extension of unemployment insurance; indexing of the Alternative Minimum Tax.

            -- Cost reductions? Well, a congressional pay freeze. In the immortal words of Porky Pig, "That's All Folks".   

        - The Senate voted 89 to 8 in favor. Tom Coburn, Pat Toomey and a few others voted no, but it was token and nobody tried to filibuster. Capitulation.

        - The House voted 257 to 167 in favor, with 85 Republicans joining 172 Democrats in support. The Republicans were pleased to be allowed to vote however their constituents wanted, and promptly re-elected John Boehner Speaker of the new House. Capitulation.

    The Future.  

        Sequestration ($1.2 trillion of automatic cuts over 10 years to defense and discretionary spending) was deferred until March 1, about the time that gimmics to put off the $16.4 trillion debt ceiling breach will reach their limit. Having won the battle and taken the measure of the Republicans, Obama has declared that he will not negotiate spending cuts in exchange for increasing the debt ceiling. Prior offers to fix the inflation calculation in Social Security or increase the eligibility age have been withdrawn.  Nyet! Nyet!

     The Republicans are off to lick their wounds at a strategy session, but will probably determine that the inertia of automatic tax increases was heavily to Obama's advantage, and the inertia of automatic spending reductions is to theirs if they can find a backbone.  And maybe the tone will change when people realize that Obama's victory solved about 10% of the problem. The debt limit? Up she goes.  

                                                    -----

    This week's video is an assessment of President Obama's objectives by Bill O'Reilly. Pretty depressing, Miss van Pelt, but in a democracy people get what they want.  

bill bowen - 1/4/13

 

The Fiscal Cliff: 3 Clear Goals

    A couple of friends in London (here for the holidays) have asked "why would you Republicans risk so much damage to prevent 2% of the population from moving from a 35% to a 39.6% marginal tax rate." Republicans are obviously terrible marketers, but there are three clear considerations as they manage their two points of leverage - the fiscal cliff, and the companion debt ceiling increase.

    1.  We cannot continue with trillion dollar deficits and the Democrats refuse to slow down the pace of spending. In the short run there is little pain from the deficits- except for those looking for a job or trying to live on income from bonds - but in the long run high inflation is inevitable. That may not matter much to people on the dole or working people with salary leverage, but to the rest of us - particularly pensioners and bond-holders - it will be ugly. Very ugly.  

    2. The expansion of the federal government from 20% to 24% of the Gross Domestic Product under President Obama is not just a statistic. It reflects a transfer of power from individuals to government in the form of mandated healthcare insurance, control of student loans and the mortgage market, more payments for those not working, and more EPA and financial regulators and IRS agents. Like France where employers are reluctant to hire because they cannot fire unneeded employees (and top marginal tax rates are now 75%), American employers are reluctant to hire because of Obamacare mandates and a hostile tax environment.

    Goals 1 and 2 say "lets go off of the cliff" and pick up the pieces. Recent history has shown that we do not have the discipline to manage our finances any other way.  Goal number 3 requires a more nuanced calculation.

    3. Republicans must control the House to provide some check on a presidency controlled by the left wing of the Democratic party. In 2009 and 2010 when the Democrats controlled everything we got Obamacare and and an expensive, corrupt, and ineffective Stimulus Plan. With another Pelosi/Reid/Obama trifecta in 2014 we could get Democrat-dominated corporate and individual tax reform, blanket immigration amnesty, "cap and trade" climate legislation, and any number of other liberal wish list items. So, what is the risk of Republicans losing the House?

        - Most Americans want taxes raised for those earning over $250,000, and that was enough of an issue to carry Obama to re-election with a lousy economy and scarce other ideas.  Few seem to care that a "tax the rich" victory would do little to solve our financial problems. While a majority now feel "a pox on both your houses" if agreement cannot be reached, the public's attention span is short and the impact in November 2014 is anything but clear. If  Republican ideology is correct, a path to a balanced budget would be a major boon for the economy which would overshadow any residual blame for a two-year old conflict.   

        - And, few incumbents are really at risk.  In our polarized country only some 85 Congressional contests had two reasonable, well-funded candidates this year - 350 were not seriously contested. The allocation of seats to the states and the district boundaries shaped by the 2010 census together allowed Republicans to  win 54% of the House seats with 48% of the national House vote and will continue for a decade. Also making austerity more attractive, off-year elections draw lower turnouts favoring activists and partisans who usually have more to fear in primaries than in general elections.  With the Republicans holding a 234 to 201 majority in the new House (down seven from the exiting Congress), and relatively few facing a serious threat from the left in 2014, the Republicans would seem to have a secure blocking position, given the right leadership.  

    Perspectives change during prolonged, complex negotiations. Since impasse seems to be the only path to reducing spending and stopping the growth of government, and Boehner's effort to go beyond the will of his caucus met a stiff-arm from Obama, the Republicans would be better to let the current forces work themselves out and hire some good PR people back home. The country will survive.

                                                                    -----

    This week's video offers a glimpse at soon-to-be Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, another dynamic young Republican leader.

bill bowen - 12/29/2012             

The Queen of Benghazi

     Surprise newsflash: The consensus Democratic frontrunner for president in 2016, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who graciously protected President Obama from blame for security failures at Benghazi in October, and allowed ambitious subordinate Susan Rice to be the administration's prime source of disinformation, misses key congressional hearings (due to a virus or a concussion or whatever), while the official administration report on State's failures focuses on subordinates and she embraces all 29 recommended changes, and she hopes that firing four subordinates cauterizes the wouund.  

    Hillary has clearly learned from her husband that lying under oath is a bigger risk than any misdeeds of omission or comission. But maybe, just maybe, the House Republicans and a few reporters beyond Fox will stick with it until the questions get answered.

Before the attack:

    1. Were you pesonally aware of the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi, including the April and June bombing of the consulate and the June attempt on the British ambassador's life?

    2. Were you personally aware of the department's security measures in Benghazi - the inadequate design of the consulate facility; the removal of the Libyan embassy's 16 member Site Security Team and three small emergency response teams; the removal of a quick-response transport aircraft; the absence of Marine guards and reliance on a Libyan militia for external security? Were you involved in any of these decisions?

  3. If money is tight, why did you spend $750,000,000 to build a new embassy in Baghdad with a staff of 15,000?  

During the September 11 attack:

    1. What was the command structure for monitoring activity and directing responses during the seven-hour attack? Who were the senior officials involved from the White House, State, Defense, and the CIA? Did you have access to video from the on-site drone and ground surveillance cameras, telephone communications with the Ambassador and consular and CIA staff, and radio intercepts of the attackers?

   2. Who determined the Rules of Engagement and what were they? Why did we not deploy the special operations team located in Italy? Was there a delay in authorizing the CIA contractors at the annex to assist in the defense of the consulate?

   3. Did the desire to maintain a light footprint in the face of ongoing violent demonstrations across the region result in a decision to deny available assistance to the consulate?

After the attack:

    1. With the breadth of information available during and immediately after the attack, why did the administration continue for a week to insist that the attack was a response to a video? Who was involved in the creation of this story?

    2. Why was the investigation of the attack itself so leisurely pursued - a cursory on-site inspection of the consulate several weeks after the attack; no interrogation of an attack leader from Tunisia who was captured in Turkey; no effort to capture an attack leader openly living in Benghazi?

    The media has largely given Barack Obama a free ride because they hated Bush and loved him. With media attitudes toward Hillary being more mixed, perhaps a reporter or two will even ask these questions of the woman who once challenged Barack Obama's competence to respond to a 3 AM phone call. Or maybe Congressional Democrats will call her back to testify ... if everybody promises to not ask where President Obama was.  

                                                                    -----

    This week's video is a seasonally-appropriate flashmob from the City of Brotherly Love where baseball fans boo the Seventh Inning Stretch.  

bill bowen - 12/21/2012 

 

Post (Election) Traumatic Stress Disorder: Final Chapter

    A month after the election I am still in the "what the ****  happened?" mode - beyond denial, anger, and bargaining but not yet through depression to acceptance. Elections are about the candidates, the campaigns, and the policies. The first two of these are about somebody else and in the past - not a personal problem; it is the third that challenges one's view of the world and will play out again in the future. A few comments on each:

The candidates:

      Mitt Romney could have made a great president - smart, personally successful, great work ethic, good governor, able to assemble a great team. Conservative on most levels. Unfortunately, that did not make him a great candidate.

    Conversely, Obama was a very good candidate - loves to give speeches and is very good at it; nice family; able to play the pliant media. For better or worse, he doesn't have Romney's executive abilities, but he was foregiven his sins, generally without his needing to ask.  

The campaigns:

    By all measures Obama ran a better campaign. Three dimensions:

        1. He targeted demographics (women; African Americans; Hispanics; kids) while Romney targeted ideas (fiscal responsibility; small government; assertive foreign policy). As the incumbent, Obama was brilliant in using executive orders to energize his target groups - free contraceptives; cheap school loans; parents' insurance coverage; protection for illegal immigrant children. An interestingly vapid campaign - no touting of achievements; no vision for the future - just demonizing the opponent.

       2. There was no comparison in the Get Out The Vote effort. Obama kept much of his 2008 structure in place - field offices; the data base - and did a superb job of contacting potential voters right through election day. Some 99 % of the people on his e-mail list apparently voted. (If they voted for him, they probably also voted Democratic on the down ballot races. See Results, Senate. ) Romney started late, had fewer field offices and fewer volunteers, relied much more heavily on television ads (which paid his consultants large commissions), and his data base crashed on election day. Lets dream: The Republican National Committee and a few SuperPAC donors will find a legal way to build an organization that the 2016 candidate can slip into.

     3. Romney got pushed too far to the right in the unwieldly primary debates, did not defend himself against Democratic attacks (as he might have by doing rounds of talk shows), was able to refute the Democrats' caricature of him in the first presidential debate, then decided to run out the clock by not drawing a distinction with the president on anything.

The policies.

    Could a majority of Americans really be so far gone as to embrace Obama's policies?

     1. Free stuff for the 98%. Romney's "47%" gaffe was fatal, particularly for a patrician. To win, a Republican will have to believe (or be a good actor) that Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you" still resonates with Americans. It probably does - at least for most, most of the time.

    2. Politics of envy. Growing inequality needs to be addressed beyond the tax code; but better yet, Republicans need to again champion the land of limitless opportunity.

    3. Financial responsibility. More voters trusted Romney on financial matters and it would be a serious mistake to not have this be the central issue of the party, with Paul Ryan as the chief spokesman. Beyond politics, the country needs adult leadership to head off the looming debt implosion.  

    4. An international "light footprint". People probably do want a bit of neo-isolationism after the draining Iraq and Afghan wars. Obama's posture seems to be popular - forget Benghazi; let Egypt go; let Syria go; let the jihadists have Mali; let the central Africans kill a few million more of each other; let the world adjust to a nuclear Iran and North Korea. This attitude will probably prevail until the world comes back to our doorstep - militarily or economically.

   5. Demographic politics. Romney got to 27% of the Hispanic vote by advocating for "self deporting" of illegals - Republican consensus for a better policy is certain. The "war on women" was a sham, but the demagoguery worked, and the Republicans need to articulate a pro-life/pro-women posture in issues of health and employment.  

    With Obama being a superior candidate running a superior campaign largely devoid of policy discussion, it would be a mistake to think that a significant change of policies is needed or that Obama has a mandate to continue trillion dollar deficits with federal spending at the accelerated 24% of GDP. For the moment the party's fate is in John Boehner's hands. Pray for him.

                                                -----

Fed Chair Ben Bernanke discusses the fiscal cliff in this week's video - shortly after he announced that he will increase his printing of new money from $45 billion to $85 billion per month and keep interest rates at nil until unemployment drops below 6.5% or inflation rises above 2.5%. It gets more ugly for those living on bond dividends or fixed pensions.   

bill bowen - 12/14/12         

The Fiscal Cliff: Negotiating Lessons

    Several years ago, along life's wonderous journey, I had the responsibility for buying stuff - bottles, flour, spices, filling equipment, transportation services, and the like -for a couple of large corporations.  In the process I learned some universal truths about negotiation- some obvious; some not  - and tried to pass on some of the difficult lessons to my junior purchasing agents. In politics some is different, but most is not. Would that John Boehner had been in the class.

Lesson Number One: You have to be sure that the guy you are negotiation with has the capability and inclination to deliver on an agreement.

         -  Boehner gets this. By sending a letter signed by Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan outlining his demands, he has the House on record that increased tax revenues are OK, not only with him (as per his 2011 effort), but also with the fiscal hawks. 

        -  Obama is less clear. By sending lame duck Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to deliver his absurd opening position ($1.6 trillion tax increase; another round of stimulus spending; elimination of the concept of a debt ceiling) he missed the chance to empower a credible deal maker. Last time Obama walked away from an agreed deal - presumably after getting push back from other Democrats. Somewhere it would be good to get a signal that Obama will deliver the Pelosi/ Reid cohort this time.  

Lesson Number Two: You have to know what is most important to your adversary.

        -  For Boehner it is comprehensive agreements that will rein in budget deficits and make entitlement programs sustainable. Comprehensive revision of the tax code is important, primarily to make it more efficient. The end of the year matters less than the entire package.

        -  Obama is simpler. He wants higher tax rates for the rich as a legacy. Forget that the same result could be obtained by limiting deductions.  He has been campaigning for a year on a platform of taxing the rich (and not much else), and needs to nail that pelt to the wall with symbolic rates, not just eliminated deductions. Forget the other 90% of the budget problem - that is all negotiable as long as you don't touch the heart of Obamacare.  

Lesson Number Three: You have to be clear with yourself about who you need to please.

        - In the corporate world it is the boss, the users of the supply or service you are buying, and the top finance guy. Here's where politics is a bit different.

        -  Boehner has the more serious calculation. On the one hand he has a lot of members in his caucus who really believe (and have constituents who really believe) that trillion dollar deficits and insolvent entitlement programs are a big problem. Republicans also lost a presidential election because of their steadfast support for the 2% of the voters who already pay most of the bill and create most of the jobs. Boehner understands that Romney and company made the case and lost. Grover Norquist, who Democrats love to demonize, is not to be feared. Conservatives have been purged from key House committees.  Deficit hawks matter; tax hawks not so much.

        -  Obama would like to please his father, his early mentors, and his friends on the Left by leveling the field. Nobody knows how to deal with the root causes of growing inequality - globalization and technology - but taxes are pretty easy to understand - and popular with the 98% who are not being asked to pay more. Yet.  

Lesson Number Four: You need a flexible plan, including clear objectives, a timetable, priorities, and a communication strategy. Recognize that in America "fairness" generally results in meeting about half way.

        -  Both sides recognize that this is a multi-step process. A comprehensive agreement on taxes, entitlements, budget cuts, and the debt limit will require the buy-in of many constituencies and will not happen in 2012, but a year-end patch is necessary to head off pre-ordained calamity. One hopes that the staffs are working behind the scenes on the patch.  

        -  By agreeing to a revenue increase on the day after the election and offering a comprehensive plan starting about where the last negotiations broke off in 2011, Boehner ceded much ground for nothing in return. That may sound fair to the media and the public, but it adds pressure on House Republicans to not give much more.

        - By being so focused on a tax rate increase, Obama leaves much to give on entitlements and budget cuts- once he realizes that Boehner's first offer is serious and near his limit. (It is, isn't it? We'll know if Boehner cedes tax rates or a large debt ceiling increase as part of the year end patch.)        

Lesson Number Five: You have to be willing to walk away. Alternatively stated, it is "the principle of least interest" - the party who cares less about reaching an agreement has the most leverage.

        - For Boehner there is the ghost of Newt Gingrich who shut down the government in 1995, thus helping to drive Bill Clinton's budget surpluses and a public residue of ill-will toward Republicans. Boehner has to be ready to take the lion's share of the blame from Democrats, the pliant media, and even some Republicans if everybody's tax rates go up and everybody's favorite government program gets cut - even if temporarily. 

        -  Obama? In four years the "leading from behind" president has rarely done the hard work of governing. By nature or calculation he has rarely taken a courageous position on contentious issues (immigration reform and gay marriage as well as the Arab Spring and budget deficits) and is unlikely to risk a recession which he cannot blame on Bush if he gets his tax rate for the rich. And it is just possible that he does not want to be remembered for a second four year term with the lowest growth and highest unemployment since the 30s - and realizes that Boehner can help him avoid this distinction.   

       By agreeing to revenue increases and the framework of the Simpson-Bowles proposals Boehner has made a strong case for putting the blame for failure at the feet of Obama. The irony will be if - after a year-end patch and comprehensive 2013 negotiations - Boehner stands strong (but throws in a small rate increase as a deal clincher), our financial deficits start to heal, and the credit goes to the incumbent. That wouldn't be all bad.     

                                                -----

    This week's video reminds us that there are more important things than getting a political win.   

bill bowen - 12/7/12

Surveying the Wreckage

    Like many of my friends I am still shocked and depressed that the American voters would not be much concerned about our rapidly escalating $16 trillion of federal debt or the President's ineptitude and deliberate deception about Benghazi. But we've got to move on; taking an inventory might be a good, if painful, starting point.  

    Nationally, we're stuck for four more years with a left wing president who is a very good campaigner and a lousy executive. It was a narrow but clear victory (51% - 48%), won not on his record or his vision for the future, but on dividing the country on economic, ethnic, age, and gender lines. Our candidate could have been a great president, but allowed himself to be painted as a negative caricature, shied away from drawing sharp policy contrasts, and ran a poor get out the vote effort.  

    Republicans missed a lay-up in the Senate, losing a net two seats (for a 55-45 disadvantage) when 23 of the 33 seats up for election were Democratic. We will have the same opportunity in 2014. Pray for McCain/Graham/Ayotte to remain vocal. 

    Republicans lost at worst eight (three Tea Party)  seats in the House, retaining a 235 - 200 majority. The redrawing of districts after the 2010 census helped, and will remain in effect for a decade. Pray for Boehner/Ryan/Cantor.

     Republicans gained a net one governorship (North Carolina), bringing their total to 30. Pray for local wisdom to deal with Obamacare and public employee unions.

    In California the public voted to further raise the nation's highest taxes and to create Democratic super-majorities in the Assembly and Senate which can operate with few restraints. Republican voter registration fell below 30%, and we have instituted a "cap and trade" tax/regulatory system to punish what remains of our industrial base. There's nobody to pray for.

    In San Francisco we lost the leading moderate on the Board of Supervisors to term limits (a liberal ideologue beat a union official to represent this relatively conservative district) and voted out the one reformer on the Board of City College (which faces loss of accreditation for decades of mismanagement).  The Board did vote to ban public nudity - except at street fairs. Ditto to California on the prayer front.   

    There, that's it. My therapist tells me that I also need to separate what is temporary from what is permanent and focus on what can be done. More than a few friends from afar have suggested that a moving van might be a good start, but first I've got to sort through the "temporary / permanant" thing and get a grasp on "what can be done".  I apologize in advandce if the next few weeks feel like my therapist's couch.

                                                -----

   This week's video is an Erskine-Bowles outline of what is necessary to resolve the country's financial crisis. John Boehner is starting to sound as if he is in tune with last week's post.  

bill bowen - 11/30/12       

(Slightly) Beyond the "Fiscal Cliff"

    The financial and political papers and blogs are full of the question of whether a deal will be found to avoid the "fiscal cliff" at year end. Many commentators miss the point ... the real question is about the first half of 2013.

    Let's make sure that we are on the same page. Wanting to get through the November 6 election, and being unable to resolve big issues, politicians of both parties (the president, the Senate, and the House) agreed to a group of deferrals:

        -  They couldn't agree on taxes, so the Bush tax cuts ($330 billion annually; $42 billion for "the rich") were extended to this December 31;

        -  They couldn't agree on a budget or reductions to the trillion dollar deficits, so a set of very painful automatic cuts (about $55 billion in defense and $75 billion in other discretionary, annually) were set to kick in on January 1;

        -  The  two-year reduction of Social Security taxes, limiting the employee portion of the tax to 4.2 % rather than 6.2 % at a cost of some $200 billion, will expire on December 31; 

        -  They haven't been able to minimize deficits, so it will be necessary to increase the debt ceiling (now $16.4 trillion) around the end of the year.

    As to the cliff at the end of the year, there is some reason to be concerned that the hotter heads might prevail, as they did during the first effort to pass the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) back in 2008 when the stock market went down 7% in a day before the Republicans relented, or during the argument over increasing the debt ceiling in 2011 which led to S&P downgrading US debt. With President Obama and Speaker Boehner making accomodating noises, the consensus is that a deal will be found and happy times will be here again.

    Not! The symptoms may be masked, but the disease rages on.

    Nothing has changed about the reality that we continue to run trillion dollar deficits, Social Security and Medicare remain on the short road to bankruptcy, the corporate and individual tax codes are riddled with inefficient favoritisms, and government policies (Obamacare; EPA; Dodd-Frank; etc.) continue to hold back the economy. No year end deal will solve any of these problems.

    So, what really will happen? 

    1. There will be a very limited deal to push solutions into 2013.

      -  Obama will want to raise taxes on the rich as part of a deal to kick the problem into 2013 - his successful mantra from the campaign, and just about his only coherent thought on matters financial. Boehner will probably give him a reduction in exemptions on high wage earners (and maybe a rate increase if Obama demands symbolism) and will want a commitment to address entitlements along with comprehensive tax reform and spending cuts in the first half of the year. If the past is prologue, Boehner will give something in exchange for a promise.

        -  There will be an agreement that nobody wants the sequestration plan for automatic cuts to defense and discretionary programs to take effect. Both sides will agree to push that into next year, perhaps with a fig leaf of minor Democratic concessions in exchange for some defense cuts.

        -  The consensus is the Social Security taxes will go back up - after all, the program is going broke, the recession officially ended in 2009, and AARP wants to protect the seniors.  

    2. The Republicans will make careful use of their hammer, the debt ceiling limit - which will be breached in December, but can be extended into 2013 by creative accounting.  Treasury Secretary Geithner is whimsically recommending that the concept of a limit be eliminated; the Republicans will probably re-set it for a mid-year clash at about $17 trillion to force action on debt-reduction negotiations.

    3. Paul Ryan will be the center of negotiation for a "Grand Bargain" on taxes, spending, and entitlement programs. Beyond taxing the rich, Obama doesn't seem much interested; Geithner will probably be moving on; and spending bills are supposed to originate in the House anyway. (Note that full acquiescence to Obama's "tax the rich" strategy would close less than 10% of the budget gap, even assuming that it didn't hurt the economy. Much, much more is needed.) Look for something resembling Bowles-Simpson with cuts far exceeding taxes, particularly if Erskine Bowles were chosen to replace Geithner.

    There is a relatively narrow window of opportunity before the next political cycle.  If House Republicans don't force action by late 2013, the chances for anything approaching financial solvency approach nil. In any case they will get the blame, they might as well do it right.

                                                 -----  

  This week's video is the real story of General Petreus' resignation.

bill bowen - 11/26/12     

Reince Priebus' "To Do" List

    Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus' luster has diminished a bit from his halcyon days as chair of the Wisconsin Republican Party (capturing virtually everything in a period of a few years), so I invoke his name in reference to the Republican party elders. With 10 days' reflection, here is the "to do" list:

Short Term (week 1) (retrieved from the trash outside RNC Headquarters)

1. Call the DC suicide hot line. Tell them to be on the watch for Dick Morris and Karl Rove.

2. Send congrats note to Bob McDonnell at the Republican Governors' Association on expanding the number of Republican governors to 30. Grass roots; dealing with education and jobs creation; national thought leaders; deep, diverse bench; yadda, yadda, yadda.  

3. Call John Boehner to offer help and stiffen his backbone. Let him know that you have also talked to Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor.

4. Take Chris and Tagg  off speed dial.  

4. Send apology note to Charles and David Koch. Invite to the Holiday party at Sheldon's place in Macau.

Mid Term (weeks 2 to 4)

 Get Congressional leadership right.

    -  Talk to John about Cathy McMorris Rogers for the # 4 House leadership position. No need to worry about committee chairs- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is doing fine at Foreign Affairs and one out of 20 isn't bad.   Re-elect solid African American Tim Scott as the leader of the Class of 2010.

    -  Light a candle for Nancy Pelosi. Nothin' like good old Nancy to keep our ranks solid and help with our fundraising.

    - Get John Cornyn out of the Senate Campaign Committee Chair. Losing three of our 10 seats while picking up one of the Democrats' 23 doesn't make it. Let's try him as Mitch McConnell's # 2. We've got the same 23 to 10 chance in 2014, so a bit more should be expected. It might even be a good idea for the chair to work with Jim DeMint to avoid primary fights and any more Todd Akins or Richard Mourdocks.   

Longer Term (before the next tropical retreat)

1. Let's dust off the Bush/McCain immigration reform proposals that the junior senator from Illinois helped torpedo back in 2007. Emphasis - long term green cards.

2. Let's find an alternative to Planned Parenthood that deals with women's health issues without the abortion piece.

3. Ditto AARP. Help Hannity push AMAC.

4. Get the geeks together. Our voters may be less into all this social media stuff, but lets get real. We can't keep getting trounced on GOTV.

5. Karl didn't go from being a genius to being an idiot overnight. We've got to figure out how to use the PACs to build party infrastructure. Ads are good, but there is a diminishing return and a few million bucks in field offices got Obama a lot.

6. Forget Texas secession - work on California.

7. Keep perspective. Take that Zen class.

                                                -----

  This week's video is from a press conference by Senators McCain, Graham, and Ayotte calling for a Joint Select Committee of Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Armed Services to investigate the Benghazi fiasco. One can only wish that the media and the public would care about security and the cover-up as much as about Petreus' affair.  

bill bowen - 11/16/2012 

The Hispanic Vote

            “Mankind is facing a crossroad - one road leads to despair and utter hopelessness and the other to total extinction - I sincerely hope you graduates choose the right road”   
―    Woody Allen,    Mere Anarchy   

   I thought about writing about California - top income tax rate raised to 12.3%; sales tax raised to an average of 8.25%; corporate taxes raised $1 billion; Republican registration below 30%; Republicans in Assembly and Senate below one-third needed to block anything; exodus accelerating - but I decided to take the other road.

    The unequivocal message of Tuesday's vote is that Republicans cannot win presidential elections without a fundamental change in the approach to Hispanic voters. "W" got some 40 % of this vote; McCain 31%; Romney under 30%. The good news is that most of the illegals are here to work and to provide a better life for their families. If the Republican Party cannot connect with that, we are done.

    What is needed is not just outreach and marketing, and being the party of small business is not enough. There is, however, a set of positive policy prescriptions available that should not offend conservatives:

    - Expanded use of e-verify to enable employers to confirm the status of those they hire, with penalties for non-compliance.

    -  A renewed "guest worker" program for seasonal workers;

    -  Long term residency cards without citizenship or voting rights;

    -  Citizenship for military volunteers, and perhaps some similar other groups;

    -  Access to schools, drivers licenses, and healthcare for those here legally. Full tax payment required.

    Fortunately the Republican Party has a core of prominent leaders who could formulate a plan, sell it to party activists, and market it to the public - Governors Susana Martinez, Brian Sandoval, and Luis Fortuno; Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz; former Governor Jeb Bush; Governor Rick Perry. Those in the border states get it; Northerners and Californians do not.  

    The Democrats? They have have no Hispanic governors and but one senator. Cynics would like the status quo which works well for them; others might demand full citizenship. They are beatable.

    For those who doubt the need for urgent change in the Party's policies affecting Hispanics, we have seen the future - and it is California.

                                               -----   

    Here's the most important person in the Republican Party speaking about Hispanics. One hopes that he has learned something betrween August and November.

bill bowen - 11-9-12

 

Competence and Trust

    Presidential elections are importantly about policies, but they are also about competence and trust. The shift in this election has occured in large part because the debates have given Mitt Romney an opportunity to demonstrate that he is not the person that hundreds of millions of Democratic dollars tried to paint him to be, but more subliminally the public is seeing the staggering the gap in competence between "The Amateur" president and the "Bain / Massachusetts CEO". Take a few examples:

    -  Financial management. 

            --  Congress gave Obama a $787 billion "Stimulus Plan", much of which went to ideologically-driven long term projects like high speed rail, green energy, and electric cars. Much of the money went to cronies - Solyndra; Tesla; Fisker; many more - and Obama joked that many of the projects turned out to not be "shovel-ready".  Along with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi he completelly gave up on budgets.

            --  Romney started as a management consultant, made millions successfully running Bain Capital, then saved the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, before returning to Massachusetts where he closed a $3 billion budget deficit as governor.

    -  Fast and Furious.

            --  Obama and Eric Holder have refused to disclose who approved this "gun-walking" fiasco  which resulted in the death of a border patrol agent and numerous law enforcement personnel in Mexico.

    -  Benghazi.

            --  Hillary Clinton is taking the fall for failing to react to what the Libyan president had called a "state of maximum alert" in the Benghazi area prior to 9/11/12

            --  Obama has blamed the intelligence community for his weeks-long efforts to characterize the attack by al Queda -affiliate Ansar al - Sharia as the spontaneous response to a video.

            -- Secretary of Defense Paneta is emerging as the culprit in refusing to provide available and sought after assistance to those defending the ambassador and the facilities during the seven-hour firefight.    

    -  Bipartisanship.

            --  Obama ignored the recommendations of his Simpson-Bowles Commission, and torpedoed a potential "Grand Bargain" with Speaker Boehner by greatly increasing demands for tax increases after a tentative deal was reached. He rarely meets with leaders of either party.

            --  As governor of Massachusetts Romney met regularly with legislative leaders of both parties, closed a large budget gap, passed healthcare reform, and created a scholarship program for the top quarter of high school graduates.

    Aside from whether the voters want larger or smaller government, a flatter or more graduated tax system, and more liberal or conservative social policies, they need, want, and deserve competence in the White House.   

                                                    -----

    This week we have videos of the competing closing arguments of the intellectually bankrupt Obama campaign and the "Two Clear Paths"  Romney campaign. The momentum continues.

bill bowen - 11/1/12

Those Middle Class Republicans

    I was stunned, absolutely stunned, by the latest week's polling by Democrat-leaning Public Policy Polling  for the ultra-liberal Daily Kos and the activist public employee union, SEIU. The Romney "up four" suggests that the recent Gallup polls showing him up 4 to 7 points nationally may not really be outliers. More interesting are some of the cross tabs, the slicing and dicing of the data.

    Some of the data was not new news:

        -  Democrat and Republican defectors are in single digits, with independents favoring Romney by double digits.

        -  White voters favor Romney 60 to 37%, with disappointing results among minorities.

        -  Voters under 30 favor Obama, but all groupings over 30 favor Romney, increasing with age - the old observation that if you aren't liberal when you are young you have no heart; if you are not conservative when you are old, you have no brain.

        Some was surprising:

         - Even with this pollster, Romney and Ryan had net favorable ratings while Obama and, particularly, Biden were net negative.

        -  Native Americans favored Romney 52 to 41. This may be an outlier sample, but it is a totally new thought to me and worth understanding.

    For people trying to figure out who the "middle class" is, the data is very interesting:

        -  In economic terms, those earning under $30,000 per year and those earning over $100,000 favored Obama. Those in between favored Romney, with the greatest strength in the $75,000 to 100,000 range. All of the "tax the rich" rhetoric seems to be OK with his base at the top as well as the bottom. Aspirants to richdom favor Republicans.

        -  Education is even more interesting. Those who did not graduate high school favor Obama about two to one; those with post graduate degrees favor him by 15 points. High school graduates, college graduates, and those with some college favor Romney by double digits. There seem to be more doctors, lawyers, and academics than MBAs.

    Whether "middle class" is defined in economic or educational terms, the territory belongs to Republicans. This long election season has included an unusual amount of class warfare by the Obama campaign. The "aha moment" of the Daily Kos polling is the degree to which the Republicans are the party of the economic and educational middle class while the Democrats are the party of the economic and educational elite taking care of the "huddled masses" - or using them to maintain power.  

                                                        -----  

    This video is for those who are waiting to hear the new agenda for President Obama's second term and haven't had a chance to grab a copy of his new pamphlet.  

bill bowen - 10/25/12

 

 

Debating Lessons and Campaign Momentum

   I feel a bit of the pain that the Democrats felt after the first presidential debate. " Why didn't my guy talk about ... ?"; "why didn't he call the other guy out on his gross distortions ?"; "how did we ever agree to that moderator?" By chance I experienced the emotions first hand when I recently did a debate on NPR about the candidates' economic policies with the president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It ain't easy, but here are some learnings:

    First the bad:

        1. It is difficult to determine when to challenge your opponent's distortions. (There are few actual lies, just a lot of deliberate distortions.) The audience generally likes the conflict, but gets bored with the details, there is usually not a clear TRUTH, and you want to spend your time talking about your positives. Even the next-day fact checkers will usually split the difference. Romney's choice to cede the 7.8% unemployment rate without discussion might have disappointed some partisans, but it allowed him to spend his time on the larger picture - a good call. Overall there was too much contention both ways.

        2. It is critical to have internalized the best opposing arguments during your preparations. Rob Portman's preparation for the first debate had Romney on the top of his game. This time, Romney was taken back by Obama's assertion that he had called the Benghazi attack terrorism on the following day (and by moderator Crowley's intervention as part of Team Obama.) This was true to a point, but there are numerous devestating follow-on points which went unsaid - at least until the next debate.

        3. You will miss opportunities. Another green energy company went bankrupt on Tuesday, costing the taxpayers $250 million; Obama's White House pays women substantially less than men; Romney really could have shown a personal side by offering the college student some advice on finding a job rather than going immediaterly to the "50% of college graduates are unable to find a job" criticism.    

        4. The fear of a mainstream media bias is real - and should be limited by getting detailed agreement on format and the role of the moderator before the moderator is selected. Crowley publicly repudiated her instructions to not become part of the story, selected a larger share of "social issues" questions than in the first debate, gave more time to Obama (ditto the prior two debates), and interrupted Romney 28 times to Obama's nine - not letting him answer on health care, for example. That's beside her support for Obama on Benghazi.    

   And the good: 

        1. What really matters is the big facts. The economy sucks; Obama has no plans to fix it; Romney has a plan; Romney has demonstrated that he understands business and can fix things. People may get lost on how many oil wells were drilled on public land, whether the capital gains tax will be 15% or 20%, and whether Obama's pension plan has investments in China, but they do get the big picture.  

        2. Romney was ready on the obvious big challenges - his active championing of women in his Massachusetts administration (the importance of his record is reflected by the force of the Obama campaign's effort to ridicule his "binders of women" comment), his approach to immigration and Obama's failure to deliver on his commitment to Hispanics, his commitment to 100% of Americans, including the 47%.

        3.  What gave Romney momentum after the first debate was his blowing up the caricature of an uncaring plutocrat. Obama's efforts in that direction in the second debate fell flat ("Romney has a one point plan - help the rich") and the late question about what is most misunderstood about him gave a great opportunity to talk about his counseling work in Boston and the Olympics. He could have used more humor and better connection with the questioners, but Obama set the tone.  

        4. Most importantly, it matters what you spend the debate talking about.  Many of the snap polls had Obama doing a bit better than Romney in general with Romney doing significantly better on the economy, jobs, and taxes.  Fox and MSNBC focus groups of "undecided voters" both showed movement toward Romney. Perhaps the most telling sequence of the debate was the response to an African American voter who was disappointed by the lack of progress under Obama - the president had nothing to say; Romney gave a concise litany of economic failure and broken promises.

    With three weeks to go Romney and Ryan have shown that they are qualified, serious, viable alternatives to Obama and Biden. The polls two days after the "Crowley debate" show continued movement in Romney's direction. It is time to be thinking about potential game changers - an unlikely major failure by Romney in the October 22 foreign policy debate; a spectacular attack on the jihadists who attacked the consulate; an unanticipated foreign crisis.  This would seem to be about where Team Romney had hoped to be three weeks out.

                                                            -----

This week's video is an ad funded by Thomas Peterffy, a successful Hungarian immigrant, who lived with the results of a socialist system.  He eloquently captures the perspective of immigrants who frequently speak at Tea Party rallies.

bill bowen - 10/20/12

Obama's "New Normal"

   With the debate-induced collapse of the "demonize Mitt Romney" strategy, Team Obama's positioning is now "things are getting a little better and this is as good as anybody could do." Lets take a look.  

    Much of the media have supported the Obama contention that the Labor Department's much-quoted 7.8% September unemployment number represents a significant breakthrough - never mind that it is based on a "household survey" showing an increase of 873,000 jobs - the most since 1983 - while the survey of employers showed an increase of 114,000 - much less than what is needed to keep up with growth of the workforce.  (See Jack Welch's critique of how weird the 7.8% number is.)  The reality is that we still have about 23 million un- or under employed, almost 1/6 of the population under the poverty line, 47 million on foodstamps, and household income down 8.2% in four years - all after the recession officially ended in June 2009. And every weapon the administration has is being deployed - we are adding over $1,000,000,000,000 in debt annually, and the Federal Reserve is printing money with no apparent concern for the inevitable inflation.  No wonder Rasmussen has 29% of the public saying that the economy is getting better while 53% say it is getting worse.

    The speechwriters for the ongoing debates will have a hard time with this reality. For the Democrats the message has to be about a questionable rate of change on the margin when everybody knows that we remain mired in high joblessness and declining incomes. For the Republicans the message needs to be about ideas to make things better rather than quibbling about accounting or hoping for bad numbers. Romney / Ryan fully understand the reality and should be able to win this discussion when speaking directly to the public, but there is some danger of appearing too harsh.

    More broadly, the "America in Decline" narrative is eating at our psyche. This was Jimmy Carter's problem - just turn down the thermostat. No Barack! That is not who we are.   

    The second dimension that will unfold in the Romney / Ryan campaign is "what would be different in another four years of Obama?"  As the "blame Bush" argument has gotten long in the tooth, there has been a turn to "blame Congress" (The Republican House; not the Democratic Senate.) So, whether this is legitimate or not, how would it change in a second Obama administration?

        -  Both moderately liberal Charlie Cook and moderately conservative Stu Rothenberg agree that the House will in all likelihood remain Republican. With the current balance  being 242 Republican to 193 Democrat, even if all of the "toss-up" races were to go Democrat, the Republicans would hold a safe majority of 10 or more seats. 

        -  John Boehner - who Obama stiffed on a near budget deal in 2011 - will be speaker again. Even the Democratic sympathizers agree that Obama doesn't like to interact with people who don't agree with him - reporters, Congressional leaders, foreign leaders. And the total lack of "reach-across-the-aisle" votes on Obamacare and the Stimulus Plan provide no relationships to build on. 

        -  It is a bit late in the cycle, but perhaps Obama will yet explain how he will work with a Republican House to finally promote a Simpson-Bowles "grand agreement". Short of that, what you have is the end of the "Bush Tax cuts", an expiration of the temporary partial Social Security tax holiday, the implementation of the automatic budget cuts in January, and another impasse when the next requirement to increase the debt ceiling arrives. Today is as good as it gets.     

    In 2008 the American voters were willing to swing for a vacuous "Hope and Change" message from a candidate with no business or leadership experience. This time they have a clearer choice between a successful businessman with a record of positive bipartisanship in Massachusetts or Obama's "New Normal."  That's easy.

                                                                      -----

    This week's video is a 2008 clip of Obama explaining how to run a campaign when you have no record and no ideas - a stunning preamble for the anti-Romney campaign which was punctured in the first debate.

bill bowen - 10/12/2012

 

It's Romney's to Win (It Really Is ! )

  This was written Wednesday afternoon. It is doubly true after the first debate.    

    Those of us who obsess over a second Obama presidency need to stop offering unsolicited advice to our chosen candidate and realize that this is not his first rodeo. It might be useful to instead reflect on the broader shape of the election and the advantages that Romney has.

    First, I will stipulate that Obama Is leading by low single digits, a bit more in the battleground states than in the country in general. Time is short and he has slipped a bit in the past month, but the next phase involves an intense exposure of the candidates directly to the electorate.

    A year ago, the premise of many was that in an election involving an incumbent the voters first look at the incumbent's record. If it is OK, game over. If not, they look at the challenger to see if he/she is OK.  Beginning with the Republican primaries, the Obama strategy has been to debunk Romney rather than to defend Obama's record or to offer strategies for short or long term  economic recovery. That leaves a major opening for Team Romney.

    1. The Romney campaign does not need to exert much energy pointing out that Obama's economic stewardship has failed. Even the most passionate liberal understands that 23 million unemployed and $16 trillion of debt reflects an ongoing misery. Heck, even Joe Biden is ranting about "the middle class that has been buried the past four years". Ditto foreign policy where our troops are dying as we skulk out of Afghanistan and the State Department's incompetence and cover-up in Benghazi reflect a naive belief that weakness will bring peace to our friends - governments and individuals - in the Middle East. The 15%  of the electorate who still need to be convinced understand the state of the nation.

   2. Likewise, there is no question about Romney's competence and experience - his education, in business, as governor, in the Olympics. With the millions of dollars of personal attacks, virtually none have been about competence. That's not nothing.

  3. So the challenge for Romney - in the debates, in pesonal appearances, in advertising -  is to demonstrate that his experience and success in business and government are relevant to the country's problems. This has two parts:

        -  He is a data-driven numbers guy. He doesn't really need to teach the electorate about the relation of marginal corporate tax rates to deficits. He just needs to demonstrate that he understands and cares.  Less is more.

        -  He needs to demonstrate that he is a decent guy who is concerned about all of the people. Notwithstanding his 47% gaffe, his performance as governor and in his personal life demonstrate the reality. 

    Pundits will dwell on a phrase or the details of an answer in the October 3 debate, but it will take a few days to determine what the public really saw. The good news for the Romney camp is that at this point the election is about Romney. With three unfiltered shots at 50 million viewers, he has the controls.

                                                                    -----

   This week's video is an Illinois legislative candidate's reprise of a famous cartoon.  

bill bowen - 10/4/12 

Fair and Balanced Gaffes

   Definition of "gaffe" - when a politician tells the truth.

   Actually, there are several kinds of gaffes:

    1. Joe Biden gaffes. Joe is a buffoon; everybody knows that Joe is a buffoon; he gets a pass.

    2. Intentional gaffes - or at least ones where the gaffer knowingly applies over the top spin with the expectation that the media will give him / her a pass. Example: the assaults on US embassies and consulates from Morocco to Jakarta, with mobs burning American flags, chanting "Death to America", and hanging President Obama in effigy do not reflect an anti-American attitude or criticism of Obama's policies. After all, he gave a great speech and has a big advantage over Romney on foreign policy.

    3. Gaffes when speaking among friends (or assumed friends) which reflect a politically incorrect point of view.

        -  Mitt Romney's comment that voters who pay no federal income taxes or are dependent on the government for free stuff are unlikely to vote for him. The error was probably in using a 47% figure since it is more complex than that. Mitt's "bad" - and a damaging one.  

        -  President Obama's comment on Univision that he can't change Washington from the inside - as an excuse for why he hasn't even tried to live up to his promises on immigration reform.  What? He is the president isn't he? And he had both houses of Congress for two years didn't he?  

        -  Obama's earlier comment that small business owners didn't build their businesses. It is a fair point that government helps create the enabling environment, but does he really have so little respect for the efforts and contributions of individuals?

    There are some obvious lessons here:

    1. In the age of iPhones and Twitter there is no "friendly audience". All is public.

    2. The mainstream media is not going to treat Democratic and Republican comments equally.  This Sunday's talk shows were full of Romney's 47% comment with nary a comment on Obama's Benghazi mess or his criticism in the Univision interview which included a surprising Hispanic sensitivity to the Fast and Furious scandal as well as his failure on immigration reform.

    3. Gaffes hurt most when they reinforce a negative image that has been established by opposition advertising - Romney the heartless plutocrat; Obama the anti-business socialist.

    4. It is essential that the Romney campaign be about the issues, and not let the Democrats make the discussion be all about Romney's failings or the horse race.  Other Republicans have been complicit in their public criticism of the campaign - if they have complaints, an in-house phone call would do a lot more good for the campaign, if not for the commentator's public profile. For those who think that supporters should support during the peak of the battle, remember Peggy Noonan et al.

    The upcoming debates will provide a great opportunity for Romney to speak directly to 50 million people without the filter of the media. There will be some room for nuance in what he says. There is some fear that the moderators - Jim Lehrer of PBS; Candy Crowley of CNN; and Bob Scheiffer of CBS - will tilt the stage, but Mitt will have the microphone.  For those of us who believe that his policies and demonstrated capabilities are more in line with what the American people want (and if you doubt it, read this Politico polling), this will be the moment.

                                                            -----

   This week's video is Mitt Romney's stunningly good presentation at this week's Clinton Global Initiative Conference. It is a bit long (22 minutes), but shows a great depth of thought about foreign policy and the opportunity for the government and private companies to jointly foster middle class prosperity in emerging countries.  Send it to your "undecided" friends.

bill bowen - 9/28/12  

Obama's Foreign Policy Collapse

    Nothing is more central to the Obama foreign policy than his outreach to the Muslim world as reflected in his June 2009 Cairo speech. As is often the case, the speech was soaring. It reflected a great sensitivity to Muslim religion, culture, and history. It also leaned forward in criticizing the Bush policies - interrogation, Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan. At various points it criticized Germany (the Holocaust), Spain (the Inquisition), and Israel (West Bank settlements). What it did not do was mention the positives of America's relation with the Muslim world - for example, it rightly praised Al Azhar and the University of Cairo, but made no mention of the prominent American University in Cairo. It did not offer concrete assistance, set goals or challenge the Muslim leadership.

    So, three years later what do we know?

`1. Our friends cannot depend on our support.

    -  In Egypt we have abandoned not only Hosni Mubarak, but also the moderates as reflected in the military, the tourist industry, and the Coptic Christisan community.  Obama doesn't know if Egypt - the most important state in the Arab world - is an ally.

    -  In Israel there is a break with the leadership, with Obama refusing to meet with Premier Netanyahu. All options for stopping Iran's march to nuclear weapons are on the table - where they will remain.

    -  Obama was silent while the Iranians put down pro-democracy demonstrators in 2009.

    -  He is again silent in 2012 when the Iranian-backed president of Syria slaughters 20,000 civilians seeking his removal.

    - Allies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates can only wonder what awaits them.  

    2. Our enemies see us in withdrawal and sense that they can attack with impunity.

    -  In Afghanistan the resurgent Taliban are conducting more brazen attacks on our troops who are hanging on until 2014. President Karzai is taking an increasingly independent posture, recognizing that his future does not rest with the United States.

    -  The United Nations Secretary General attends a Non-aligned Conference of 120 nations in Iran whose final statement supported Iran's right to a nuclear program and opposed any sanctions.

    -  Anti-American demonstrators, with Al Queda influence, are free to attack embassies, consulates, schools, and businesses with little consequence.

   3. It is, of course, somebody else's fault.

    -  The animosity between the Muslim world and the West built up over centuries and cannot be solved in one term. With Obama's background, he is the best hope.  But for some reason the Pew attitude surveys of Middle Eastern countries show a decline in positives for the United States since 2008 in every case.

    -   The attack on the Benghazi consulate was spontaneous and not anti-American or against Obama's policies, although the (politically incorrect) Libyan president, the 9/11 timing, and the weapons and tactics of the attackers all indicate that it was. The State Department investigation will probably be available about November 7.

    -  The attention should be on Mitt Romney for criticizing the Cairo embassy's apologetic message which was later disavowed by the State Department and the White House.

    The Obama administration's response to events across the Middle East is similar to its response to the domestic economy - passive, ineffectual, and blame shifting.  The quandry for the Romney campaign - how much time to spend discussing Obama's foreign policy failures when the public wants to hear specifically what he will do to fix the economy. Perhaps things will get so bad that even CNN and the networks  will have to set the record straight on the collapse of Obama's foreign policy. Good luck with that!

                                                                -----

   This week's video is of UN Ambassador Susan Rice doubling down on the administration's position that the rash of violent demonstrations from Morocco to Jakarta had nothing to do with anti-Americanism or the Obama administration's policies.

bill bowen - 9/21/12 

The Critical Debates

    With the unexpected "Clinton Bounce" from the Democratic convention, the good news is that there is no Clinton on the ballot, the merits of the case against Obama have not changed (probably improved with the demonstrated failure of "leading from behind"), Romney and his PACs  have plenty of money, and the debates offer a real opportunity to make the case to a large audience. So, what to look for?

    Of the presidential debates on October 3 (Jim Lehrer of PBS; domestic), October 16 (Candy Crowley of CNN; domestic and international), and October 22 (Bob Schieffer of CBS; international) the first offers the best chance for Romney to make his case on the economy. The vice presidential debate on October 11 (Martha Raddatz of ABC; domestic and international) may show the greatest distinctions but will be less important. The presidential debate audience is projected to be some 50 million - more than twice that of the convention speeches.

    Perhaps the first question is what are debates about - substance or imagery?  Much has been made over the years about the Nixon-Kennedy debates where the latter's youthful optimism contrasted with Nixon's somewhat bedraggled appearance, and Reagan's good natured  "there you go again" response to a point made by Jimmy Carter. You can bet that the make-up experts in both camps will do well; if there is any risk it is that Romney will come in too tightly wound. Obama will be rehearsing with John Kerry (who has a history with Romney from Massachusetts) while Romney will be rehearsing with Rob Portman (who played that role with John McCain.) The staffs will be working overtime to find that one precious zinger.

    On the substance, I've got to believe that Romney has the advantage if he doesn't roll out his 59 point plan. He has the recent experience of the 20 Republican debates as well as earlier contests while running for the Senate and governor in Massachusetts. Obama had his experience in 2008 where he did adequately, but this is not his forte of speechifying and his refusal to hold press conferences for the past two years reflects a discomfort with hostile or follow-up questions.  This will be more facts, and less rhetoric with the fact checkers able to confront the fabricator.  

    Romney is a smart guy with smart advisors who should be able to figure out what he needs focus on: the failure of Obama to do much to fix the economy in four years; the absence of any Democratic plans to make things different in a second term (goals, but no plans); the unending trillon dollar deficits which will crush our kids and our ability to provide leadership in a world which needs us. It would be good to call out Obama on his choice to not address the country's major issues (as reflected in the absence of budgets), in favor of demagoguing  the Republicans who are willing to offer serious solutions for serious problems.  This is the time and the forum to test the hypothesis that the American people are looking for leadership to address our long term economic issues. There are a few areas where he will need to play defense - immigration for one - but he is the right of center guy running in a right of center country and the debates should be his to lose.  

                                                                ----- 

   And this message from a friend in Washington.

bill bowen - 9/14/2012

 

HarryCat and Dick G. Actually, the participation of cabinet members is restricted by the Hatch Act - they cannot speak or be delegates for example - but they can attend. See this memo from the White House General Counsel describing the limitations.

(Democratic) Conventional Thinking

     If presidential elections were only about giving great speeches - and arguably 2008 was - President Obama would be in a lot better shape. To the uncritical neutral observer Michelle Obama was as great as Ann Romney as a witness for hubby's "likeability"; San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro was as good as Marco Rubio in telling his family story; Bill Clinton burnished his credentials as the economic genius of the 90s - without any mention of his central role in deregulating the banks; and Barack explained that change is difficult and will actually take 8 years. Good speechwriters, and good presenters all. So, what is the confirmed cynic to think?

    First, what was not discussed: the real 23 million under or unemployed; the $16 trillion in debt; the declining income and net worth of American families; the deliberate reduction in American influence in the world - Syria, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Eastern Europe, Latin America; individual responsibility.

   Second, who was not there: Hillary; the 65,000 "fans" who were to be bused in from all over the Mid-Atlantic states to fill the stadium for Obama's speech; the many Congress members from Red states who do not want their names attached to the president; the many union leaders who didn't like the non-union venue; any realistic presidential candidates for 2016 (if it is to be O'Malley, bring it on.)

  Third, there is a lot of anger and victimhood in the Democratic base. It helped to watch the president of NARAL, the abortion-rights group, with the sound muted. The gestures and facial impressions could not have been more angry and threatening. (I was reminded of Dinesh D'Souza's insight in 2016: Obama's America that a key to Obama's success was his likeability in contrast to the anger of prior African-American political leaders.) The strategy was quite clear - red meat for the base for most presentations, peace and harmony during the network prime time hour. The message for the smaller audience from speakers such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO, and Elizabeth Warren is that the oppressed groups - women, African Americans, Hispanics - need the government to help them, and the evil Romney ticket wants, as Joe Biden put it, to "put them back in chains."

    And then there's the "Forward" thing. A tribute to Jimmy Carter? A tribute to Teddy Kennedy, including an inconclusive clip from a debate with a youthful Mitt Romney? A slot for John Kerry? A headline speech by a president from the last century?  All that was missing was a video riff of George W. Bush creating all of the problems that Barack has been so effectively overcoming.

    Perhaps most importantly, a campaign can be about four things - the incumbent's record (avoided); the villainy of the opponent (emphasized); plans for the future (none); and vision. As Erick
Erickson has pointed out, the Democrats are victims of their media-supported delusion that the public wants what the left wing of the Democratic Party wants. Thus the opening video that we are all part of the government, the heavy focus on free abortion without limits, some mention of Obamacare, and the platform gaffes of removing God and downgrading support for Israel. In playing to the base within the auditorium, the Democrats moved far to the left and provided hours of Republican advertisement material for the real middle class - a mistake not made by the Republicans in Tampa.

    And Obama's final speech demeaning the Romney/Ryan lack of foreign policy experience - as if he had any in 2008 and it wasn't Hillary who did all of that work. Between that and the Bill Clinton speech there must be quite a few voters disappointed that there isn't a Clinton on the ballot.

                                                                -----  

This week's video, perhaps already seen by many, is the fiasco of the Democratic Party's dispute about whether the platform should include a reference to God and the status of Jerusalem.  It is a good thing that the small attendance projection caused a rescheduling of Obama's acceptance speech away from the lightning-prone Bank of America Stadium.

bill bowen - 9/7/2012

(Republican) Conventional Thinking

     So, was it an inflection point? 

     The common political wisdom is that voters re-elect an incumbent without much thought if things are going OK, that folks will take a look at the alternative if the economy is awful, that the Obama campaign has made a large early effort to paint Mitt Romney as a heartless extremist, and at this point the race is a toss-up. The Tampa convention was the first great opportunity to demolish the Democrats' greatest (only?) story line. How'd it go?

    First, do no harm.

        -  The libertarian wing was kept within the tent. There was some huffing and puffing about rules for delegate selection, but the 190 Ron Paul delegates (out of 2286 total) behaved. Gary Johnson will carry the Libertarian Party banner in the election, but Romney will have the vast majority of their votes.

        -  The social conservatives had their moments with Rick Santorum's and Mike Huckabee's speeches and the platform carried the traditional broad injunction against abortion, but few outside of the Left will see this as significant.

         -  The protestors were kept at bay and Joe Biden thought better of his initial plan to cause mischief by campaigning in Tampa. No Chicago 1968.

    The big stuff.

        -  Romey's speech can best be summarized in his phrase that Obama promised to make the oceans recede and to heal the planet; Romney would do everything that he could for people and their families.  He had the right level of detail, the right tone on the nation having hoped for Obama's success, and a high degree of American exceptionalism. The very telling stories about his ministering to church members and his support for women as governor of Massachusetts deserve media coverage, but will probably need to be made a subject of campaign advertisements.   

        -   Ann Romney was magnificent. Peggy Noonan's observation that more specific vignettes, "show, don't tell" in literary terms, has merit, but her most poignant stories are about Mitt's reaction to her cancer and MS and she shares Mitt's discomfort in talking about herself. Her comment that he views helping others as a privilege and not a political talking point leaves the filling in of examples to others.

        -  The Republicans offered a serious discussion to a serious public. Chris Christie's claim that the public will appreciate a party that tells the truth will be tested - particularly on entitlements. With Paul Ryan's presentation of the Romney economic agenda - including the "bring on the Medicare fight" challenge -  there could not be a better salesman for the medicine that is needed. It is fortunate that the Republicans could offer a string of governors - Christie, Walker, Kasich, Haley, Martinez, Fortuno, McDonnell  - to demonstrate that the application of conservative principles can balance budgets, lower taxes, and grow employment.   

        -  Neither Romney nor Ryan has solid foreign policy credentials. It is a shame that Condi Rice - who shares the intellectual leadership of the party - will not be a fixture in a Romney administration. The party has obviously moved beyond the other foreign policy speaker, John McCain.  

        -  All of the speakers got the memo to keep it positive. The media ignores the difference between Republicans attacking policies and results and Democrats attacking people, but the speakers were consistent on the prior. Let's see what Charlotte holds next week.  

    And the nuances.

        -  The significance of 42 year old policy wonk, Tea Party favorite, "Young Gun" Paul Ryan is compelling. Like Bill Buckley in the 60s, he legitimizes the intellectual argument for small government. Whether the Republican Party has coopted the Tea Party or vice versa is unclear, but the party has clearly moved beyond the "big government conservatism" of the Bush era - a message emphasized by his absence.      

        -  Beyond Ryan, one has to be impressed by the number of 35 to 50 year old rising stars, the number of legitimate women and minority speakers, and the number of swing states with Republican governors. The Democratic convention will provide an interesting contrast. Perhaps it is inherent that the incumbent president will suck up all of the money and publicity, but the second tier of Biden, Pelosi, and Reid should give Democrats pause.

    Now begins the 10 week sprint to the finish line. Obama is stuck with the economy and sees his best chance as continued vilification of Romney and Ryan. With a few hundred million dollars and three presidential debates, Romney should be able to demonstrate that he is not only experienced and competent, but also a reasonably nice guy. He has a lot of material to work with, and Tampa was a big step in that direction. Confidence grows.

                                                            -----   

    This week's video is Obama-endorser turned Republican Artur Davis' speech - one of the best of the convention - aimed at the millions of 2008 Obama voters with buyers remorse.  

bill bowen - 8/30/12  

Focusing on Florida

    Presidential campaigns can be sliced by demographics, ideology, or geography. A big piece of the Obama campaign emphasizes demographics with the "Republican War on Women", "Tax the Rich",  and "African Americans for Obama".  Both campaigns focus on the dozen or so swing states in their advertising buys. The Romney campaign - with less of a gender, income, age, or ethnicity slant - may be doing most to shape its choice of issues around the geography.  

    Take Florida.

    It is hard to see a path for Romney to the necessary 270 electoral votes without Florida's 29. (A sweep of Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin plus the reliably Red states would yield 272, but .... See the interactive map at www.270toWin.com) Florida is a "must have". It was narrowly carried by George W in 2000 and 2004, then carried by Obama by a relatively narrow 51 to 48% 1n 2008.  What to do?

    First, it is essential to be on the offensive with the messaging about the Romney plan to save Medicare. It should be simple: for those over 55 there will be no change while Obama will take billions from payments to doctors and hospitals to fund Obamacare. For those under 55 there will be an option of private plans with "premium support" for the poor or retention of Medicare while Obama has no plan. Romney was explaining this in his management consultant / white board style in South Carolina last week when he again got sidetracked about his personal tax rate. There will be enough time, venues, and money to make the point.  

    Second, it is necessary to put some distance between the Romney and Obama policies relative to Israel. This was done on Romney's July 29 trip: Jerusalem is the capital; cultural differences explain the gap between the Israelis and the Palestinians; "any and all' measures should be on the table to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

    Third, for those outside of Florida who think that policies on Cuba should be softening 53 years after Castro's revolution, sorry. In January, flanked by numerous leaders of the exile community and responding to Obama's plans to allow financial remittances and ease travel,  Romney declared "no accomodation, no appeasement."  Maybe when Castro dies.

    Romney would also seem to hold some advantage with his surrogates and party organization in Florida. Republican governor Rick Scott has tanked since his 2010 election, in part because of efforts to purge voter rolls of illegal immigrants, but Republicans easily control the state Senate and House of Representatives. Senator Marco Rubio and former governor Jeb Bush remain highly popular and committed to Team Romney. The other senator, Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson, who holds a modest lead over challenger Connie Mack IV, will draw some Democrats to the polls, but the playing field tilts Republican.

    The most recent Rasmussen poll show Romney ahead, but within the margin of error.  If you only have capacity for one state, this is the one to watch - or to work for if you live there.

                                                                    -----

 This week's video, a satire of an earlier Chrysler commercial, is better than the original.

bill bowen - 8/24/2012

Digesting Paul Ryan

    The central point for those few Republicans who wanted a more cautious choice for Vice President: the highly successful CEO has hired a brilliant Sales Vice President. Consider:

     1. Mitt Romey has solved the problem of boring people by getting bogged down in the details of budgets. If he is going to win, somebody has to explain entitlement reform, tax reform, and the economic folly of Obamacare. Romney needs to project a vision, not be forced to argue with reporters and the Obama campaign about budget offsets and 10 year projections. Ryan can make that stuff interesting, and few will challenge his assertions.

   2. For the majority who think that the economy is the number one issue, we now have a team of Mister Inside (Paul Ryan who is as knowledgeable as anyone in the country on federal spending) and Mister Outside (Mitt Romney who is as knowldegeable as anyone in the country on what makes the private sector work.) These are different, and both bases are covered by stellar performers.

   3. The public's perception of Ryan before his selection was 39 % positive; 25 % negative. The optimistic Ryan pitches growth rather than austerity - enough to easily carry him in a Democratic Wisconsin district. As a Catholic from a working class background, he will have personal resonance  with "Reagan Democrats" from Pittsburgh to St. Louis.  The national Democrats will attack him as pro-life, pro-gun, and pro conventional marriage - but a majority of Americans agree with all of these positions.

   4. The youthful and intelligent Ryan affords an opportunity to draw a sharp contrast with the 70 year old, bumbling Joe Biden. Key dates: September 3, effectively the last date by which Biden could be replaced on the ticket, and October 11 , the Vice Presidential debate.  It ain't Gingrich - Obama, but it should still be quite entertaining.  

   5. And for those who want bipartisan cooperation in Washington, Ryan has developed his most recent Medicare reform proposal in conjunction with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and has been "endorsed" by former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles as "...amazing. He is honest, he is straightforward, he is sincere. And the budget that he came forward with is just like Paul Ryan. It is a sensible, straightforward, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit just like we did, by $4 trillion."  This while he remains a Tea Party favorite who solidifies the likelihoood of the Republicans enjoying a significant enthusiasm / turnout advantage.

     Sometimes things seem so obvious on the morning after.

                                                                    -----  

    This week's video is a tribute to Joe Biden's twin brother, Leslie Nielsen.

bill bowen - 8/17/2012

 

 

The Great Polling Scandal

     Those looking beyond Rush Limbaugh and Rachel Madow for political predictions turn to polls. Unfortunately, the integrity of pollsters can be as bereft as the Senate Majority Leader, the president's Super Pac, and the Huffington Post.  Let's take the recent New York Times / CBS / Quinnipiac presidential poll of swing states as an example.  

     The troubling (for conservatives) polls released on August 1, show Obama ahead 51-45 in Florida, and 50 - 44 in Ohio, with the driving factor being the popularity of his "tax the rich" message. How could this be, when most other polls show the Romney "must win"states of Florida and Ohio within the statistical margin of error? True, the national Rasmussen and Gallup polls showing a dead heat may not be reflective of swing states where the Obama campaign has spent $100 million trashing Romney, but why would Rasmussen show a virtual dead heat in these states while the NYT group shows a 6 % difference? And why does the NYT poll show equal opinion on who would do better on the economy while most polls show a substantial Romney advantage on this key question? Ah, the art of sampling!

   The first cut on sampling is adults versus registered voters versus likely voters. Rasmussen polls the slightly more conservative "likely voters", as determined from past voting records and survey questions. But in this case the NYT did also.

   The second cut in the pollster's modelling is Republican voters versus Democratic voters versus Independent voters and there's the rub.  

        * In Florida in 2008 voters were +3 % Democrat; in 2010 they were even; the NYT used a voting sample of +9% Democrats in 2012. (?)

         * In Ohio in 2008 voters were +8% Democrat; in 2010 they were +!% Republican; the NYT used a voting sample of +8% Democrat. (?)

   So, what is the right portion of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents to poll?  The hard left Huffington Post recently lamented the waning enthusiasm of Democrats, with Gallup showing 51% of Republicans more enthused than in the past elections as compared to 39% of Democrats. Thus the increasingly shrill and totally unfounded claims of "tax fraud", "felon", and "beneficiary of Chinese prostitution rings", "responsible for a woman's cancer death", and "connected to Latin American  Death Squads" coming from Obama and his surrogates. Try as they might, the Obama campaign cannot seem to gin up the base near 2008 levels - but the NYT pollsters apparently think they will.

     For the New York Times this polling fraud is a two step dance. In the core of a July 27 op-ed by Charles Blow, is the phrase "(t)hen, of course, there’s the widespread voter suppression mostly enacted by Republican-led legislatures," the premise being that while the polls may show Obama leading, a number of new voter identification laws and shortened voting periods will disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minorities, resulting in Obama underperforming his current polling surge. Inflate the expectation; explain the shortfall as racist voter suppression.

    How to remain sane for the next three months (if your baseball team has already tanked)? I'll pay attention to Gallup and Rasmussen for horserace data and trust Karl Rove to do something worthwhile with his $300 million.  Romney is within the margin of error and he and the conservative superPACs have yet to open fire.

                                                                      -----

   This week's video is of Texas Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz - Princeton BA; magna cum laude Harvard Law; national champion debater; clerk for US Supreme Court Chief Justice Rehnquist; and a bunch of other impressive stuff.

bill bowen - 8/10/2012

 

 

Predicting the Senate

    With America's most despised politician Nancy Pelosi speaking inanely about Romney's NAACP appearance and exploited Jewish Republicans, there is virtually no chance that the voters in the 435 Congressional districts will make her speaker again. It would be nice if some of her magic could rub off on the Senate.    

     The current Senate has 51 Democrats, 47 Republicans, and 2 independents who caucus with the Democrats. The Vice President breaks ties, so if Romney wins, the Republicans need to gain three seats; if Obama it is four. Of the 33 seats up for election, 10 are held by Republicans, 22 by Democrats and one by retiring independent Joe Lieberman. The math seems easy, but for sooth it is not so.

    The two most reliable pollsters on Congressional elections, Charlie Cook (leans Democrat) and Stu Rothenberg (leans Republican) paint similar pictures.  About half of the seats are "safe", the Republicans will likely gain Nebraska and lose Maine. Beyond that Republicans have a good chance of pick-ups in Missouri and North Dakata and a lesser chance of losing Massachusetts. That leaves a likely net plus one or two with the other required two or three coming from Montana where they enjoy a small lead, and Virginia and Wisconsin which are real toss-ups. Net plus one to five. As a wild card, Democrats are advertising for weaker Republicans in upcoming primaries in Wisconsin and Missouri, as Harry Reid did successfully in Nevada in 2010.  And another wild card -  in Maine Angus King  is heavily favored  to replace Republican Olympia Snowe - he is running as an independent and is expected to caucus with the Democrats, but if the stars align he may feel that he could accomplish more by giving the Senate to the Republicans.

     The flood of money in 2012 politics is obvious in the Senate.  Noteworthy is Massachusetts liberal  Elizabeth Warren's $6.9 million take in the first quarter - twice anybody else. Beyond the individual candidates, the Senate Democratic Campaign committee has raised some $78 million while the Republican counterpart has raised $69 million.  And then there are the Democratic and Republican Super PACs with millions to spend in the contested races. It is nice to live in "ad free" California where there is no contested election.  

    Like the 2010 cycle when S.C. Senator Jim DeMint led efforts in primaries to elevate conservative candidates such as Rand Paul (KY), Marco Rubio (FL), Mike Lee (UT), and Pat Toomey (PA),  his $8 million Senate Conservatives Fund has targeted inadequately conservative party favorites - successfully promoting Richard Mourdock (IN) and Ted Cruz (TX) while losing in the primaries to more moderate conservatives in Nebraska (Deb Fisher won), and Utah (Orrin Hatch won). In any case, the Senate Republicans will move a bit further to the right, and there is plenty of evidence that the Tea Party lives.

    Not yet burbling is the future of Mitch McConnell who has teamed with Harry Reid to make the Senate the place where all good House bills go to die without embarrasing the President. One can imagine Jim DeMint's demand that (perhaps with a different Republican leader) supermajority Senate rules not be allowed to block House legislation headed for the desk of President Romney. But that's getting a bit ahead of events.

                                                                      ----- 

   This week's video is of Mitt Romney receiving the endorsement of Polish freedom leader Lech Walesa, two weeks after Barack Obama nabbed the endorsement of Venezuelan Socialist dictator Hugo Chavez. No contrast on foreign policy?   

bill bowen - 8/3/2012

Mitt's Polish Connection

     As the political discussion shifts for a moment to the international stage the Romney camp's hope is to capitalize on Mitt's role in saving the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics and stress his two foreign policy themes: he will be a stronger military and diplomatic leader of the Free World; and he will be a more reliable partner for our long term allies. Beyond the Olympics, most attention will go Romney's fourth visit to Israel where he will meet with former Boston Consulting Group colleague Benjamin Netanyahu. The Polish visit is being shrugged off by much of the media, but it may be more important.  

    On the substance:

          -  The Poles, caught between Germany and Russia, have embraced the West and the United States since Reagan backed down the Soviet Union.  They joined NATO in 1999, the European Union in 2004 (but not the common currency), and have provided units of 2500 troops in Iraq and 2600 in Afghanistan.

           -  After six years of missile defense negotiation and agreement between the Bush Administration and the governments of Poland and the Czech Republic, Obama abandoned the plan in 2009 without consulting with the Poles and Czechs, and getting nothing in return from the Russians. He chose the 70th anniversary of Russia's invasion of Poland to make the announcement.  

           -  Beyond the substance, relations with the Obama administration have been prickly. In May Obama offended many Poles by refusing Lech Walesa's request to represent a WW II Polish hero at a Medal of Freedom ceremony - probably due to Walesa's caution about our "slipping into socialism". Obama's inadvertent reference to "Polish (not Nazi) death camps" at the ceremony, brought the current Polish president's response that "we always react in the same way when ignorance, lack of knowledge, bad  intentions lead to such a distortion of history, so painful for us here in  Poland, in a country which suffered like no other in Europe during World War  II." Reagan and the Bush's were friend of Poland; Obama not so much.

           -  Romney's characterization of Russia as "our number one geopolitical foe" plays well in Poland, following Obama's accidental on-mike assurance to Russian leaders that he would have "more flexibility" to deal with central European issues after the election.

    And on the politics:

           -  Narrowly, there are about 10 million people of Polish ancestry in the United States.  In a time of ethnic politics - African-Americans for Obama; Hispanics for Obama - they are an identifiable subset of "Reagan Democrats", making up 9.3% of voters in Wisconsin, 8.6 % in Michigan, and 6.7% in Pennsylvania where the election promises to be very close.

           -  Few seem to be watching the large geopolitical trends, but as we have been focused on the Muslim world since 9/11 (Iraq; Afghanistan; the Arab Spring), Putin's Russia has gone about consolidating the Kremlin's power internally, and reestablishing it's hegemony over much of the former Soviet Union with the Georgia War in 2008, and the establishment of the Belarus/Kazakhstan/Russia Customs Union in 2010.

    There are lots of options for Romney to make symbolic visits to allies who have been shorted by the Obama Administration - Canada; Mexico; the United Kingdom; Germany; Japan - but his choice of Poland shows both a bit of "out of the box" thinking, and a broad geopolitical grasp. Not that the media will give him credit for a very real foreign policy difference with the Obama administration.

                                                                   ----- 

     Senator Scott Brown's "Let America Be America Again" is the best political ad in a long time - bipartisan references, patriotic, pro-jobs, and even pro Red Sox.

bill bowen - 7/27/2012 

         

   

Mitt's Excellent Campaign

   With the business-ignorant president howling about the timing of Mitt Romney's leave of absence from Bain to save the 2002 Olympics, and some conservatives arguing for a "tax records for college transcripts" challenge, it is useful to take a step back and look at the broader campaign.

   The highlights:

      -  Romney navigated the primaries despite a series of media-hyped alternatives and the Obama campaign's active efforts to get a different opponent through attack ads, advocacy of cross-over voting, and enflaming social conservatives who would support Rick Santorum.

      -  Romney has eliminated Obama's fundraising advantage, both through the conservative PACs, which are limited in their flexibility, and his more recent surge to a $100,000,000 monthly take in contributions to his campaign and the Party. Obama will not have the huge fundraising advantage that helped bury John McCain in 2008.

     -  Romney has managed to keep the party largely united, with potential wild card conservatives such as  Jim DeMint, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin joining the team. Unlike Obama who campaigns alone, Romney is surrounded by people like Paul Ryan, Rob Portman, Tim Pawlenty, and Marco Rubio. He has Reince Priebus while Obama is stuck with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. Romney needs to navigate the Ron Paul faction, but there will be no splinter candidate of the Tea Party and efforts to promote a viable third party disruptor have fizzled.

    -  Despite a $100,000,000 blitz of negative advertising by the Obama campaign in which Romney has been outspent four to one in the few swing states, the polling continues to show a virtual dead heat.

    -  "Wrong track" continues to poll at 65 %; a strong plurality of voters continue to consider the economy to be the primary issue; Obama's favorability rating continues to linger in the dangerous 45 - 47% range (much worse on his handling of the economy.)  Unemployment sucks. Housing sucks. Trillion dollar deficits continue. A "fiscal cliff" of tax increases and spending cuts looms on January 1. The GDP growth rate remains at an anemic 1.9%. The 2008 candidate of Hope offers none, just division and envy.

   -  The bin Laden bullet has been fired, and there is not much else to crow about internationally: Syria; Iran; Egypt; Israel; Pakistan/Afghanistan; Europe; Russia; China. No help for Obama there.

    - Easy targets abound - ones that the public understands with a catch phrase: Solyndra; Keystone; Fast and Furious; Leading from Behind. The president's prized initiative, Obamacare, remains double-digit unpopular.  

    At this point the Romney campaign has the feel of front line infantry watching and waiting while the enemy rushes across the open space whooping and hollering.  Romney's been here before. He's run senate, governor, and presidential campaigns.  He's won and he's lost. He understands strategy, pacing, and management of resources. He's plenty smart and successful. His focused to do list:

    1. Select the best vice president possible. My expectation is that he will lean in the direction of who can do the best job, with the hope that the public appreciates qualifications enough to convey some political advantage.

   2. Take the tour of Europe and the Middle East to expand his knowledge, establish some relationships, and - most importantly -  gain a bit of international credibility.

   3. Manage the August 27 to 30 convention as a launching pad for a two month sprint.

    At this point there is plenty of time. There are plenty of good issues. There is no profit in trying to explain a "leave of absence" and legal tax deductions to a media that is only interested in gotcha's. And Obama's economy isn't going anywhere.

                                                              -----

   For anyone offended by the above "business-ignorant president" comment,  this week's video is President Obama's explanation that small business owners did not create their businesses. It is great when he gets on a riff about what he really believes.

bill bowen - 7/20/12

 

 

Veepstakes - Condi

    On the great parlor game of VP prognostication I am an outlier, along with Bill Kristol. Like many, I am looking for clues and rationale, but I don't come up with the conventional wisdom,

    As for clues:

       -  Ann Romney's comment that a woman was in the VP mix was not some off-handed throw-away. In the one discussion that I have had with her, Mrs. Romney was adamant that she could not call Rick Perry's wife to offer some human support when Anita Perry was pilloried for making a religious comment. Political wives understand that anything they say will be attacked, and that everything must be orchestrated.

       -  Mitt Romney's comment that Russia is our "number one geopolitical foe" plays to Condi's core expertise as a Russian scholar. It preceeded her presentation to the major donor June 23-24 gathering at Park City Utah at which Condi gave a tour de force evaluation of the world stage, which was, by all accounts breathtaking. She knows the history, the proclivities of our friends and adversaries, and most of the world leaders.

   And the rationale:

       -  Romney wants somebody with whom he is compatible. No superstars who might upstage him - Chris Cristie; Marco Rubio; Paul Ryan. Like Romney, Rice is quiet, reserved, thoughtful, analytical, not a career politician- and she is a consumate team player.

       -  Despite Romney's strengths - Bain Capital, Massachusetts governor, Salt Lake Olympics - he has no real international experience, nor do any of the other frontrunners. He understands that international events can unexpectedly take center stage - 9/11 for George W. - and that his agenda will be significantly impacted by China, Europe, and the Middle East. It will be necessary to move from the Obama "leading from behind" Doctrine to reestablishing the United States as the leader on the world stage.

      -  Some of the politics are obvious - woman; African American; unquestioned academic and government experience. The political downside is also obvious - "a return to the policies of the past that got us into this mess". One substantive debate with Joe Biden should put that to rest.

   The real problem is that she has seemed sincere in saying that she is not interested, and her real aspiration is to follow Bud Selig as the commissioner of baseball. When Babe Ruth was criticized for making more money than Herbert Hoover, he observed that he had a better year. The same could be said for the Portland Sea Dogs backup centerfielder. Here's hoping that Condi realizes it is more important to replace Obama than Selig.

                                                                    -----

     This week's videos (one and two) are part of a noble effortby President Obama to bring us all together and stamp out racism in America. 

bill bowen - 7/13/2012

RomneyCare 3.0

   Well, I've spent a week away from sharp objects, reading as much about John Roberts' decision as I could, and listening to as many opinions as I could stand. Here's mine.

    We are less free, less prosperous, and probably more equal. Liberals like that trade-off; conservatives not so much.

    Reagan was right: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same." Freedom is also not secure in the Constitution if the federal government can punish inaction and force employers to purchase insurance for their employees with provisions which they find morally offensive. It really doesn't matter whether it is the Commerce Clause or taxing power. The Supreme Court has said that it is OK, and it is up to the people to protect themselves. Message received.

    The first line of attack for repeal is the one that appeals to libertarians. My sadness is not so much with Justice Roberts as it is with the American people who, it would seem, are well down the road to accepting government power over the details of their lives in exchange for a promise that everybody will be taken care of, regardless of personal responsibility. Even in the Bay Area - a haven for liberals, but also the center of anti-government convulsions of the 60s - there is not a word about the loss of freedom. This decision will eliminate any question of whether the 2010 election was a "one-time wave" by galvanizing the Tea Party and the lingering Ron Paul supporters, but that won't win Ohio.

   The central line of attack must merge ObamaCare  and the ongoing economic malaise - and it is easy to do. Despite the wasteful trillion dollar stimulus and unprecedented Federal Reserve activism, we remain with high unemployment three years after the "Bush Recession" officially ended. The difference from past recoveries?  Obamacare's crushing trillion cost and uncertainty for business. The economic issue isn't the relatively modest "individual mandate tax" or even the trillion dollars of other taxes on the public; the larger problem is the smothering regulations and costs imposed on employers. Who would think that we could insure 30 million people without addressing the major cost drivers in our healthcare system and place the burden on employers without substantial economic damage?

    But repeal alone won't win Ohio. Fortunately Governor Romney has a good start on the "Replace" content, even if the presentation needs improvement.  From his website and many speeches:

    1. Restore state leadership and flexibility: "block grant" Medicaid; limit "one size fits all" federal standards for insurance coverage requirements; foster exchanges and high risk pools.

   2. Promote free markets: cap medical malpractice suits; promote purchasing pools for individuals and small businesses; protect people with pre-existing conditions who have had continuous coverage; facilitate IT.

  3. Empower consumer choice: allow purchase across state lines; allow consumers to purchase insurance with pre-tax dollars (move away from the employer - dominated model); explore alternatives to the "fee for service" model; expand "Consumer Reports"-type ratings to inform consumers.  

    Romney will not get much media help in explaining that he has a plan, but he will have a billion dollars to speak directly to the voters and he starts with a strong majority of voters still favoring repeal. He will need some tweaks - if people want insurance plans that keep their kids on until age 26, insurance companies can amortize that - but he knows this territory. The only challenge is to be sure that the voters understand that this isn't separate from the message on the economy. It is at the heart of the economic problem.

    Despite Obama's outlandish claims, the people can be trusted to understand.

                                                           -----

   For those looking for something simpler and more important than Chief Justice Roberts' finding, here is a simple discussion of the Higgs boson, whose recent discovery at CERN is sure to lead to a few Nobel prizes in theoretical physics, as well as a complete explanation of the universe.  

bill bowen - 7/5/12

Stealing From the Kids

     Karl Marx and the Obama campaign believe that personal economic benefit drives the politics of the huddled masses; the proletariat just need to be educated by the Party about how the State can eliminate their exploitation by the 1%. Let's consider how this "economic self interest" narrative applies to today's kids. (Anybody under 30 is a kid in my world.)

     1. Jobs. As bad as the headline 8.2% national unemployment rate is, for those age 20 to 24 the Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs the number at about 40%. For minorities it is approaching 50%. Advantage Romney.    

     2. Healthcare. Obamacare cuts both ways. For kids who haven't broken out of the nest, insurers must offer coverage under their parents policies up to age 26; on the other hand, the individual mandate is aimed at young workers who choose to prioritize other expenses. Politically a draw.  

     3. Housing. Inflation adjusted prices continue to fall from their 2006 peak and are now about where they were in 1990. The second component of affordability is well in hand, with 30 year mortgages under 4%. For those with a job these are the best of times. Advantage Obama.   

     4. Debt. There's the killer. A baby born today has $50,000 of direct federal debt. Unfunded federal liabilities - including Social Security and Medicare - exceed $60 trillion, $520,000 per household, and that doesn't include state and local government pensions. My head is spinning. Advantage Romney.

     More on the minds of kids is the increasing cost of college and student loans. Tuitions have gone up as a result of decreased government subsidies and lower returns on endowements (among other things) at a time where the lousy job market is keeping more students in school. Obama has seized the political high ground by advocating reduced interest rates while the Republicans have predictably demanded that spending be contained.  Advantage Obama.   

    And for you Baby Boomers who hope that you can run out the clock to a comfortable retirement before the check comes due, today's kids will have a choice about how to respond to this generational larceny:

       -  Door Number 1. Suck it up for grandma. Index Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and government worker pensions to inflation, and pay the interest on the debt. Its OK if there's nothing left for defense, education, or social services. We owe it to the Boomers to honor our obligations; after all, we'll be there some day.

       -  Door Number 2. Look to the future. Let inflation balance the books of the past by wiping out the value of bonds and pensions as Social Security and Medicare go bankrupt. Focus spending instead on education, research and development, and infrastructure. If we owe grandma a $50,000 pension, let's pay it in drachmas. 

   While Romney supporters would like to think that the jobs and national debt arguments would sway young voters, Obama maintains a 20% lead - down from the 30% margin he enjoyed over John McCain, but substantial never-the-less. Contrary to the common perception, the 18 to 29 vote represents about 18% of the total, down from the low 20s three decades ago. Apparently Door Number 2 looks pretty good if you are under 30 years old, if you care.

                                                           -----

     This week's video is an astounding Huffington Post video rebuttal of recent absurd Obama campaign claims. Perhaps they are trying to become legitimate reporters. 

    And a bonus Weekly Standard article and video of Mitt Romney's response to the Supreme Court Obamacare decision as well as Erick Erickson's thoughtful perspective on the decision.  It will take me a week to get up off of the floor.  

 

bill bowen - 6/29/12  

Cooperation - Washington Style

   Let's make this simple. The American public wants political leaders who work across the aisle to get things done. Barack Obama has not shown a proclivity to work with Congress, even when it was controlled by Democrats. To the dismay of some conservatives, Mitt Romney governed Massachusetts as a joint venture with the dominant Democrats.

    The polling numbers would vary by specific subject but, in general, the public believes that more compromise is needed in Washington. Congressional approval ratings - 20% among Democrats; 17% among Republicans; 16% among Independents - reflects both those who are upset that their point of view isn't prevailing and those who abhor the impasse. This isn't about the Republicans controlling the House and demanding fiscal restraint; polling was little better in 2009-10 when the Democrats ran both houses of Congress and spent their time on the Stimulus Plan and Obamacare. The 84% of independents who do not approve would like to see more cooperation within the Congress (House and Senate) and between the Congress and the White House.

    So how did Mitt Romney do between 2003 and 2007 when he was governor of Massachusetts?  There will be lots of claims and counter-claims about job creation, and he did veto some 800 spending measures from the Democratic legislature to balance the budget without increasing income or sales taxes; however, there is no doubt that he worked closely with Democratic leadership in crafting Romneycare at a point when many Massachusetts Democrats wanted a state-run health care program. Appointment of judges was also instructive; with a Democratic-dominated Governor's Council having a veto over his selections, he created a "partisan-blind" nomination process which resulted in appointments which were about one third Republican, one third Democratic, and one third independent. He gets dinged by Democrats and the media for having been a "CEO Governor" who did not trade jobs and capital projects for votes, but he did meet regularly with the Democratic leaders and surrounded himself with competent staff.   

   And President Obama? The recent decision to not enforce immigration laws for young illegals is instructive. (A similar "executive order" approach has been taken on EPA regulation against coal-fired electical generation, non-enforcement of the Defense of Marriage Act or medical marijuana laws, and allowing  internet gambling.) If the objective had been to help young immigrants, Obama could have marshalled  Senator Marco Rubio (who had been working on a bill similar to Obama's proclamation), Senator Dick Durbin (author of the failed DREAM Act), and perhaps Senator John McCain (who has long favored comprehensive immigration reform) to generate a Durbin-Rubio Immigration Reform Act. But then, that was neither his style nor his objective. It is particularly fitting and symbolic that Daryl Issa's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has found Obama's Attorney General in contempt of Congress for stonewalling an investigation into a botched gun sales sting.  

   All pundits agree that this presidential election will be won in the middle - among the soccer moms, in the suburbs of Cleveland, with the Reagan Democrats. Up with the pragmatists; down with the idealogues. With the Republicans heavily favored to retain the House, the best that an Obama election would offer is four more years of impasse. Romney offers cooperation with a Republican House and a Senate which will represent a check on extreme positions - whether it is marginally led by Mitch McConnell or Harry Reid. For those who really do want cooperation in Washington, that's a distinction with a big difference.

                                                              -----

    This week's video is a unique political ad by Roger Williams, a conservative candidate for Congress from central Texas.

bill bowen - 6/22/12 

 

Vindicating Joe 'You Lie' Wilson

    When Congressman Joe Wilson cried out "You Lie", during President Obama's health-care address to Congress in 2009, he violated the Congressional rules of decorum, but did raise a question that gets more pertinent as Obama ramps up his electoral rhetoric. Is it OK to say things as fact that are really opinions? What about stretching data to fit your narrative? What if you know it is false, but others will believe you? What if everybody knows it is false, but it would be really, really nice if it were true?   

   Actually, in the past couple of months President Obama has made at least three statements which were so divorced from obvious reality that one has to wonder what he thinks and what he thinks the public thinks.

      1. In early April, Obama - flanked by the uncomfortable Felipe Calderon of Mexico and Stephen Harper of Canada - railed preemptively against the potential "activist" Supreme Court which might strike down Obamacare,"a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected Congress."  In 2009, Obamacare passed the House 219 to 212 with all Republicans and 34 Democrats voting "no";  it passed the Senate 60 to 39, with no Republican votes. The stench of the deals needed to obtain its passage contributed greatly to the rise of the Tea Party and the Democrats major electoral losses in 2010. Today the public wants it repealed by 50% to 40%. Maybe his base likes it; maybe it is a legacy that will grow in popularity over the years; maybe it was a tribute to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's legislative skills; but a mandate in Congress?  It would be interesting to know if he believes that.

    2. In May Obama called Mitt Romney's criticism of Obama's spending and debt as a "cowpie of distortion", requiring the hapless Jay Carney to claim that under Obama spending has increased at the slowest rate since Eisenhower. Well, if you take the level of Bush spending (No Child Left Behind; Medicare Part B; Iraq; Afghanistan) as a base, add the TARP and the Stimulus to create a "Revised Bush Base", and accept the limitations later placed by a Republican Congress, a cross-eyed statistician might be able to ignore the fact that Obama has run up $5.5 trillion of debt and consistently had federal spending over 24% of GDP for the first time since World War II. It would be interesting to know if Obama believes that he has exercised fiscal restraint - or if he thinks the public will believe it.

   3. Now, President Obama has done what what even Paul Krugman has called "bungled the line" by claiming that the private economy "is doing fine". One can accept his real point that public sector employment is being reduced while private sector employment is growing slowly, but we are still down 5 million jobs from the pre-recession peak, household incomes are shrinking and household wealth is down 40% in three years, foreclosures are unabated, and there is broad public economic fear for the short term - and the long term. It would be interesting to know what Obama thinks the private economy is - Wall Street? Small businesses? The 80 + % of workers not employed by the government?  Even offering the most gracious interpretation, what thought came to Obama's teleprompter-less mind to make him say this?

   Maybe Congressman Wilson was just a bit prescient. Even the Washington Post gave the President three pinnochios for the "fiscal restraint" claim, and the "doin' fine" comment will be grist for thousands of American Crossroads commercials. (I would offer it to Howard Dean who feels that Obama would be OK if he could just find a good slogan.)  Perhaps we don't need to wait until November for Hans Christian Anderson's young child to make his observation about the emperor's sartorial deficiencies.

                                                             -----

   This week's video is of Senator Diane Feinstein (D - CA) complaining about recent intelligence leaks - some from the top of the administration - which have compromised work with Israel against the Iranian nuclear program, the work of a Pakistani doctor who helped verify Osama bin Laden's location, infiltration of al Queda in Yemen, Obama's personal weekly approval of a terrorist "kill list", and other sensitive operations.  At least we can take comfort from President Obama's position that politically-motivated leaks would be offensive.

 

bill bowen -6/15/12 

Obama's New World

     In the broad arc of Barack Obama's political career this is a new world. Among the unfamiliar factors that he must deal with: insurrection from the Clinton/labor wing of the party; requests for help from at risk supporters; and a growing capacity for criticism in the media. And that was before the major Spring economic slowdown and the Wisconsin wipe-out.   

     Most importantly, there is a recognition among the Democratic political class that it is not good for them to be attached to Obama's anti-business stance. First there was Newark Mayor Corey Booker who found Obama's attacks on Bain Capital to be "nauseating"; then basic support for Booker's criticism by former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and former "car czar" and MSNBC commentator Steve Rattner; and finally former President Bill Clinton's declaration that Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital was "superb".  While weak "contextualizations" followed, it is obvious that it is OK to stray off of the reservation and undercut one of President Obama's few potential campaign themes.  It is just possible that Clinton harbors some resentment for Obama's criticism of "economic policies of the last few decades."   

    A corrolary: there is no "you help me and I'll help you". For Obama it is all about Obama.  Elizabeth Warren, who organized his consumer protection efforts did not get the opportunity to run the department because Obama did not want to fight for her; now she on her own against Scott Brown in Massachusetts who is doing remarkably well among Obama voters.  And labor's 15 month jihad against Scott Walker in Wisconsin? Not worth a drop-by on the weekend before the recall election even though Obama was campaigning for himself in Minnesota and Chicago. What does this say about giving your all for Obama who will be a lame duck in five months?

    And now Maureen Dowd, lamenting the wandering administration and campaign: "The president who started off with such dazzle now seems incapable of stimulating either the economy or the voters." (This is undoubtedly the first time that I have quoted the queen of liberal snark.)  Far Left supporters like Medea Benjamin have started open criticism of Obama's weekly "Kill List" review of terrorists to be target for drone attacks. It may be just me, but it seems as if Politico and ABC have decided that their futures are best served by a rediscovered balance.  

    More than the specifics, the question is whether Axelrod and company can restore the discipline needed for a campaign against a formidable, centrist Republican whose party has already gone through its convulsions and come out with everybody except Ron Paul focused on beating the socialist president.  Mainstream Democrats - and a few reporters -  seem to understand that it will take more that some good speeches and populist rhetoric, and that some "leading from in front" will be needed. For David Axelrod that must be a greater concern than the future of the Service Employees International Union.

                                                                    ----- 

This week's video is a " Values" advertisement by  Committed Catholics to Win (cc2w.org). Romney support will not come only from the Koch Brothers and American Crossroads. 

bill bowen - 6/8/12 

California's Train to Oblivion

I recently listened to a (perhaps disingenuous) pitch from my Congressperson, Nancy Pelosi, to the effect that budgets are important in that they reflect moral choices of society. I then listened to a group of California Democrats (and even a few Republicans) praising California's high speed rail project which will cost somewhere between $70 and 100 billion dollars in capital over the next two decades. How to reconcile the two?

A bit of background:

- In 2008 the state's voters approved a $10 billion bond measure to start a $40 billion project to build high speed rail (200+ mph) between Los Angeles and San Francisco by way of the Central Valley. By 2012 the cost had escalated to $100 billion; the federal Stimulus Plan had kicked in $ 3.3 billion; Governor Brown had been elected; and the project was downsized to a $70 billion connection between upgraded commuter rail systems in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. The long term vision remained the same, but it would be built in stages - the first being a non-electrified stretch roughly between Bakersfield and Fresno; a few billion would be spent upgrading the bookend commuter systems.

- At this point there are a few weak spots in the plan:

-- Passengers will have to change trains to make the full trip - but just until 2028;

-- The claim is that ridership fares ($ 81) will cover the operating costs, but similar systems in Japan and Europe require subsidies at twice the fare rates and higher ridership;

-- California has agreed to take $ 3.5 in Stimulus funding turned down by other states, and $10 billion in voter-approved state bond funding. The remaining $55 billion is to come from an unidentified mix of federal and state funds, diversion of funds to be taken from utilities and industry in the voter-approved "cap and trade"system to go into effect by 2020, and private investments. The presumption is that once started, the federal and state authorities will be unable to turn it off. (Implicitly, the Democrats will regain control of the US House and hold the presidency.)

- And the trade-offs that California's political class is making:

-- The current state budget has reduced the k-12 school year from 180 to 175 days; next year it could be reduced to 160.

-- Tuition in the state university system has doubled in the past five years. Next year state grants for high achieving, low income students will be reduced by a 18%.

-- The prison system is being realigned by pushing thousands from state facilities to county jails (without commensurate funding). Funding for the court system is down 24% in the past four years and will be cut another $544 million in the next budget.

-- The governor is proposing increasing the state sales tax to 7.5 % - the highest in the nation - and the top income tax rate to 13.3 %. Gas taxes are already the highest in the nation. California ranks 50th in business climate according to Chief Executive Magazine.

-- And the social safety net is being shredded - MediCal; job training; children services; everything.

So, why the train? And what lessons can be drawn by folks in other states?

1. Trains are cool. My grand-kids love Thomas. If they can run on electricity derived from solar and wind power they are uber ecological.

2. Politics are messy. "Free" seed money leads to addiction. Local politicians can be bought by a few construction contracts and the promise of a local station. Construction industry companies and unions are powerful everywhere. In a one party state, nobody crosses the machine.

3. Californians still dream of the era when they were national leaders. Prior generations - including the current governor's father - built roads, water systems, and airports. Current leaders want a legacy.

While others wait for June answers to the Supreme Court Obamacare decision, the Wisconsin recall outcome, and the euro Greek eviction notice, out here on the Left Coast we wait to see if the Democratic state senate and the Democratic state assembly are willing to cross the Democratic governor and go with the non-partisan Legislative Analyst's Office and effectively pull the plug.

 

-----

This week's video (provided by a vigilant reader) has two parts, a trailer for "2016", a political movie to be released this summer, and a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference by writer Dinesh D'souza which explains President Obama's inner compass as pursuit of his father's anti-colonialism.