Right in San Francisco

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.

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     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.

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    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.

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   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.

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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