Another Example of GOP shading of truth

If only Obama could campaign on this

Maybe this will get Sheldon Silver out of office

I know that I have ranted on the GOP consistently since starting this blog because they infuriate me.  But let me say that I have long despised Sheldon Silver, Democrat of Manhattan, for his irresponsible approach to governing the State of New York from his position as Assembly Majority Leader.

Now he has apologized for covering up a fellow Democrat's sexual shenanigans using taxpayer funds.  Why would he have ever used taxpayer funds for anything like that?  It's not as if New York State is rolling in excess funding as they cut support for education and continue to have very high taxes.

I don't understand why his electorate continues to support him, but maybe this will lead to the end of his political career and that would be a happy moment for me.

The Republican's Keep Providing Irony

Yesterday I published a link to Mitch McConnell's statement that the most important priority for the GOP was to make President Obama a one term President.  Their path to that was to follow Ronald Reagan's (who I did vote for) advice for birth control "Just say NO!"

Now "Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) told MSNBC this week that “it’s not whether you like someone to elect them president, it’s whether that person will do the best for this country."

What's best for the country is Simpson-Bowles which fixes the budget deficit with 2/3 spending cuts and 1/3 revenue increases.  But the GOP will not negotiate that, rather they would run the country into the ground by just saying NO to revenue increases.  

No one in office from the GOP wants to do what is best for the country. They just want to get rid of President Obama so they can nominate more Supreme Court Justices like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and cement a Supreme Court that believes corporations have unlimited rights to give money to campaigns and the state has an unlimited right to legislate control over social issues but not economic ones.  Those are the policies that brought us the Great Recession that has ruined the retirement picture for so many.

Obama is not a Divider

Chris Christie's speech last night made me so angry for its untruths that I had to turn it off and go to bed.  Of course, the whole Republican campaign against President Obama is based upon untruths.

I will only highlight one issue here.  Governor Christie said Obama was not a uniter but rather a divider.  Well, how can you be a uniter when the leader of the opposition is on record saying that the only goal he has is making you a one term president (when he should care about what is good for the country first above all else)?

I give you YouTube evidence #1.

Mitch on tape

What will fix the cost of Healthcare

From Caroline Baum of Bloomberg:

"The challenge of saving Medicare from insolvency in 2024 would be easier if seniors had lived healthier lives. It would be a lot easier if the system corrected the perverse economic incentives that reward doctors for unnecessary procedures."

“Nothing changes until the people giving the care change the care,” says Don Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from 2010 to 2011. That requires “redesigning the way care is given into an integrated system, with primary care as the base.”

Of course, neither political party wants to conduct the debate at this level because pallative care smacks of Dr's playing God to some people.  Of course the people who say this, want every treatment for their loved ones regardless of the probability of success or the short length of any success.

Amen, there could be a middle

I can only hope that the Presidential campaigns read and understand this point of view.

Thomas Friedman today

How Discouraging

There have been several news reports about the views of the common person regarding the political candidates.

These common people generally fall into one of two camps.  On the discouraged Obama voter side, they want him to have passed health care laws that would already have made a difference to their monthly finances while at the same time they are mad at him for not bankrupting the banks or making the rich pay more in taxes.  It is apparent that these people do not read, do not understand political realities, nor think about politics beyond what is immediately personal to them.

On the anyone but Obama side, they think they can have tax cuts and increased military spending and get the government out of their business, but do not touch their Medicare.  It is apparent that these people might read a little, but do not understand reality and again vote only what satisfies their anger, but without any political philosophy.

It is no wonder that politicians are mired in the muck rather than explicitly debating their political philosophy with some details behind it.

8/18/12 Musings

In no particular order.

Everyone will agree that this election is critically important one in terms of the philosophy of government.  Are we going to have a government that fosters efficiency in health care insurance delivery or one that relies upon the private sector which has delivered the mess that we are in and made our manufacturing (with some singular exceptions) internationally uncompetitive?  Are we going to be a society that provides a social safety net on a fair uniform basis or one that sends poor people to die in the gutter as in merry old England?  Are we a society that taxes the rich fairly and promotes education while controlling defense budgets or are we one that puts defense budgets above all else and does not tax the rich fairly?  Are we a society that believes regulation protects us from the worst behavior of the private sector or one that allows the private sector run wild and leave the costs of clean up (or the impossibility of clean up) on society or just those who happen to live near there?

Government has a role to play but so far the Obama campaign is not defending the it.  They need to turn this campaign into positive themes and I hope they do it soon.

Meanwhile, 90 million people are unlikely voters.  They are either unregistered or registered and unlikely to vote.  The former favor Obama over Romney 43% to 14%.  The latter favor Obama 43% to 20%.  I don't understand how people can fail to vote if they care about the manner in which government operates.

Meanwhile, what is it about Banks that they cannot fix themselves.  How hard is it not to do business with a terrorist state that is blacklisted.  Now Deutsche Bank is being investigated for Standard Chartered type behavior.  and I am still mad about the LIBOR mischief.  What has happened to ethics in global banking?

Now on to my grandfather's native land.  Putin's inability to keep the cute female puck rockers out of jail for committing verbal protests either means there are limits on his power or he is embarking down a path of ending any political freedom to ensure that he is as close to a czar position as possible.  I will keep my investments there limited to state owned enterprises and be very aware of any dubious behaviors toward honoring legal obligations as I doubt that a court will protect a foreign investor's interest.

Ronald Reagan's Budget Director Reviews the GOP Proposed Budget

I am amazed the a card carrying GOP member would be so truthful about what the current GOP is proposing.  The hypocrisy that Romney and Ryan are running on is this apparent, but for some reason the Democrats cannot state it is as clearly as David Stockman does in this op-ed.

David Stockman Thoughts



And there is this.

Mr. Ryan must have been surprised and disappointed when the C.B.O. determined that changing Medicare in this fashion would actually increase total health care costs (as a percentage of the economy).

The reasoning is straightforward. At present the federal government buys health care for about 100 million Americans. Buying at scale and pooling risks, the government can get lower prices than you would get on your own.

Medicare is also highly efficient in terms of its administrative costs, which are about one-fifth of what it costs to run leading private insurance companies.

Global Competitiveness of Labor is Complicated

There are a lot of stories around today that discuss one angle or the other about what the country needs to do to improve the lot of labor.

First, there is nothing the government can do beyond creating a a framework that encourages people to take charge of their own situation and make a good decision.  The government cannot provide wages to an additional 25 mm people or whatever the number is of unemployed and underemployed.  So individuals need to decide what skills they have or need and where their target markets for employment are.  They should take on debt for education prudently.

The one thing we know about individuals is that they are not trained to manage this well, nor do many of them have the ability to manage pensions or health care well on their own.  It is unfortunate that retiree health care got tied up into defined benefit plans because defined benefit plans with universal health care would have taken care of a lot of this leaving the individual primarily responsible for only their own education and work skills.

Now one thing that politicians gloss over in discussing all this is the fact that workers in foreign countries cost less.  The reason they cost less is that the cost of living in these foreign countries is lower and they have universal health care so that labor cost does not directly include the cost of health care.  It is in the individual and corporate tax rates.  The big problem for the U.S. is that we spend so much on defense (that the other countries do not) that we don't have the funds available to spend on health care.

Thomas Friedman was focused this a.m. on education and the need for it to improve.  But we are not losing employment to countries with better education systems.  Education will not return the jobs that we lost.  Education will only allow workers to fill the jobs that are open because there are not educated people to fill them.  That will take a period of time exceeding any one politician's necessary time line to be reelected.  That is President Obama'a #1 reelection problem.

Beyond that, we need entrepreneurs to create jobs that workers can fill.  But these entrepreneurs need to  be cognizant that older workers offer advantages and should not be ruled out.   I bet more than 50% of the long term unemployed are over 50 and are educated in a sound way.  However, entrepreneurs can only create jobs if there is demand for their output.  Demand is created by fiscal policy that creates spending which creates demand.  Tax increases do not inhibit job creation supported by increased demand.  No entrepreneur holds up filling a job because his marginal tax rate is 39% vs 35%.  Increased demand increases his profit by at least 60% of each dollar profit if he can produce the output.

Relative competitiveness of labor is a function of each country's labor force's education, work habits, total cost of employment, and transportation costs from work place to market.  That is too complicated for there to be any generalities and why capitalism is the best way to manage the process to produce the most efficient economy.  Unfortunately, that story does not fit the political news cycle.

We are asking a lot of our politicians

I have been thinking about how the primary campaign, the general election campaign and the actual job of president require 3 different skill sets and nothing in the 1st two actually shows you how they will do in the job if they win.

The Primary campaign requires one to raise money, meet people and make them believe that you will remember them at the end of the day.  You also have to convince your base that your policy beliefs are in line with theirs.  None of this is a test of managing as the candidate has people to do that for them.

The General Election campaign used to require more managing but again it is done by people the candidate hires.  Now, it is all about fund raising, convincing your money backers that you will not change your view on the policy they care the most about.  In addition there is pandering to the uninformed voters in the middle that they can have their cake and eat it too (which most definitely they cannot any more).  Once again, the candidate is the one being managed by the staff not the other way around.

Then the candidate wins the election and needs to manage the government by hiring managers who will look to him for direction and then go do it.  Nothing in the campaign tells us whether they will be good at that or not.  The President needs to manage the process of government by negotiating with the legislators to provide passing margins for the legislation we need to run the government.  Nothing to do with the campaign tells us whether they will be good at that or not.

President Obama has done well managing the government but not the legislative process.  Most of that is the GOP's fault arising from their desire to make him a one term President, but the record is the record and Mr. Obama did not push the Simpson-Bowles agenda because, in my mind, he did not want to upset his support from those on the Democratic left.

Mr. Romney would seem to be able to do this well but we cannot be sure what he stands for.  The anti-government tea party that he has acquiesced too is bound and determined to overturn many things that I believe in.  Would Mr. Romney be prepared to build coalitions with centrist Democrats and Republicans to thwart those who would do more radical things?  I doubt it because Governor Romney believes corporations should have unconstrained rights to use their money in political campaigns and any in the GOP that cooperated with compromise on revenues would have vicious primary campaigns in 2014.  So, I hope we never see a President Romney.