This is a posting about the changing news media. It’s changing because all of us are now a part of the news media whether we know it or whether we like it. I’ll tell you how to do it successfully for your business, your hobby, or your political campaign.
LAS VEGAS, NV (March 30, 2008) – Thanks to my book, politicians and political operatives ask me overwhelmingly about overcoming media bias.
The main complaint: reporters fail to give equal time or weight to both sides. And many times, the offended politician or operative has a valid point or at least a semblance of one. However, I’m not quick to bash the media – especially the television side.
First, TV news is a visual and auditory medium. So if a politician is looking to explain a complex issue, TV usually can’t do it in a 15-second sound bite or a 90- second story.
Second, TV is an entertainment medium. Reporters have a tendency to handle stories with conflict only between two sides – where one side wins and the other loses. Try getting “deep” on the immigration issue which has more gray than black or white.
Third, TV is being squeezed financially. This deals more with local stations.
TV stations must switch from the analog to the digital spectrum in 2009. That takes a lot of money. Furthermore, stations are losing their piece of the advertising pie to cable, satellite, and the Internet. Margins are tight in TV.
That means TV stations have less money to hire experienced reporters. Stations seem to be hiring more reporters – to handle the bulk of the reporting – who are just out of broadcasting or J-school. As a result, context and depth can be missing from many stories. I refer to this as TV’s youth bias.
A friend’s recent experience with a TV station best explains the three factors I just mentioned.
This friend is an author. He’s an expert on a number of issues. So, the station called him to comment on a story that pertained to one of his books. The TV reporter was a young man who asked my friend, as the photographer was setting up the camera, “What do I ask you?”
My friend was dumbfounded. “The reporter is asking me what to ask? I couldn’t believe it.” I told him not to shoot the reporter. This young reporter probably had five other stops that night for interviews on topics he barely knew about. Then I explained the three points I outlined above.
What’s happening to TV reporters today is this. They’ve become 5/7 reporter. They’re more porter, picking up stories, rather than reporter, assessing and analyzing stories.
(I can’t take credit for that. Credit Tom Armitage. Tom was a great photographer I worked with in Providence at WPRI from 1985 to 1987. To make sure I didn’t get too big of an on-camera ego, he told me that letter formula. Then he told me to carry the rest of his gear.)
The majority of what we consider media bias is errors of omission. So, I tell these politicians and operatives to stop getting angry. Instead, help these TV stations and help yourself. This pertains to businesses as well.
You need to Be The News. Create your content. And today it’s easy.
First, use your webpage. It’s exactly what I’ll be doing. When someone hits your webpage or is directed there, they should see a video presentation from you. Check with your webmaster if your site can accommodate streaming video.
Second, prepare a five minute talk. For instance, a local official believed a talk show host based an interview with him on incorrect information. I told the official to do one of two things. First, do a five minute on-camera talk to your constituency laying out the interviewer’s inconsistencies. Second, if you feel uncomfortable with that format, have someone act as a reporter asking you questions about the reporters inconsistencies.
I told him to email his constituents with a link to the five minute talk or interview. The voters who are interested will view it. The ones that don’t most likely aren’t following the issue. However, if the issue catches fire, the news media will ask to take parts of the talk or interview to use on their broadcast, which would be great. Sure, they can edit it, but at least the public can see it in its entirety.
Think of the implications for a business. Let’s say you run a motorcycle shop. Your manufacturer tells you there’s a part recall. You can be “up front” with your customers and let them know what’s happening and how you will handle it. And if nothing is happening, you can at least speak to your customer once a month about an issue concerning them.
That five minute talk or interview will, in most cases, be much cheaper than producing a 30-second TV spot. You won’t have to pay for air time. Plus, you’re reaching a niche audience – your customers – and not ten times more people who don’t care about you or your product or service.
The Internet is working. Just look at Barack Obama. You may not vote for him, but you have to admire what his campaign has done. The amount of money raised from small donors is amazing.
But Obama’s campaign is using the Internet and social websites to get the word out while circumventing the mainstream media. A recent New York Times article, “Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On,” writes this:
Senator Barack Obama’s videotaped response to President Bush’s final State of the Union address — almost five minutes of Mr. Obama’s talking directly to the camera — elicited little attention from newspaper and television reporters in January.
But on the medium it was made for, the Internet, the video caught fire. Quickly after it was posted on YouTube, it appeared on the video-sharing site’s most popular list and Google’s most blogged list. It has been viewed more than 1.3 million times, been linked by more than 500 blogs and distributed widely on social networking sites like Facebook.
So how do you do this?
Go to any production company that offers an Internet TV studio. Make sure they’re not giving you a Hollywood production – and the associated costs. All you want is a camera that focuses correctly so the image looks like you, and a good microphone so it sounds like you.
Here are some suggestions. In fact, you can see interviews I’ve done with these experts: Dave Bernstein, Mike Stewart, and Mike Koenigs.
If you’re in Las Vegas and you need a studio, here’s the one I use: Vixzen Productions.
Questions or comments, leave me here.
This post tells you about my outrageous picks at Caesars Sports Book this past weekend and how it shows the wrong way that too many of us invest.
LAS VEGAS, NV (March 23, 2008) – 12 wins, 16 losses. That’s how I did on my bets for the first weekend of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.
Before you think I’m a gambler, relax. I split the $11 bets with my father in law Dave Williams. So, I spend $5.50 per bet.
This is not about the money. First, it’s tradition. We’ve been doing this for 19 years. A bunch of us spend four days at Caesars, thanks to Sports Book Director Chuck Esposito. We eat, drink, bet, and watch nearly every game on large screens. It’s a sports junkie’s dream. Second, it’s a great way to entertain prospects and clients.
But it also showed me some interesting lessons about betting and investing.
Dave and I – and two other friends – decide who we will bet on together and then we pool our money for the bet. So, our choices are based on collective knowledge. I use the word knowledge cautiously here. None of us, with the exception of Dave, sees more than one game a week during the season. This year I saw four games – most of them involving UNLV. So, we are not any competition to the Elias service.
You now understand our miserable results. This happens every year for the first two rounds. Once we get past the Sweet 16 and we see the teams, we fare better; maybe to recoup our losses.
Today, we lost nearly every game. My partners in these bets seem to love the favorites. So, we take teams like UCLA while giving up 10 points. UCLA and most of the favorites barely win, thus we lose. Texas did the same; winning their game barely while we lost our bet, Texas minus 7 points.
That’s when I made the dumb counter decision. We need to be the underdogs. So, we picked Arkansas, a 10 point underdog to North Carolina. We also chose Oklahoma, a 7 point dog to Louisville. The result: North Carolina and Louisville won in blow-outs.
I’m beginning to think our policy for betting games should be one of these: take the underdog every time; hire the best college basketball stat guru; or flip a coin.
The stat guru is the right answer. That is, if we were serious about our returns.
But here’s the connection to investing. And it is more evident as I read a recent report from The Economist about fund managers. Primarily, the report said fund managers make too much money in relation to the returns they give clients. The report makes suggestions of how to better help the average investor; in other words, be a better basketball stat guru.
The Economist looked at the privatization of the Swedish Social Security System.
Swedes were encouraged to pick their own funds, with 456 to choose from at the launch in 2000, according to a 2004 paper by two academics at the University of Chicago, Henrik Cronqvist and Richard Thaler. But despite the large choice, most participants put their money into funds with an alluring recent record.
They went consistently with the favorites – like my betting partners. The Economist goes on.
The favourite fund at launch, specialising in technology and health care, had risen 534% in the five preceding years. Over the next three years, however, it lost 70% of its value. Oddly, once having made their choice, participants slumped into inertia; fewer than 4% changed their portfolio each year.
Then the Swedes did what I did: ran to the underdogs.
Chastened perhaps by their experience, over 90% of Swedes now choose the default option (the one that scheme members are assigned to if they do not want to make their own choice). Similar figures have been observed in America and Britain.
Like most uninformed investors, we ran to what was hot when what was hot was no longer hot.
I’ll gladly post our picks for the rest of the tourney. That way you can pick the opposites.
This is a posting about the ridiculous mass emails I receive. Some try to steal you financially; others distort political issues. I offer you some tips and two great websites: FactCheck.Org and Snopes.
LAS VEGAS, NV (March 22, 2008) – More than $30 million is coming my way. At least that’s what many emails tell me.
I average about two silly missives a day telling me that my fortunes have arrived.
The best is one of the latest. A family member of an Iraqi man who is sentenced to death needs me to help them release millions of dollars of funds being held by the Iraqi government. In return, I will get part of the booty – worth millions. That’s a new twist.
There are so many like that. Some come from Nigeria. Others are from a European lottery. They have a couple of things in common. First, they all want my personal information. Second, the email addresses make no sense. They’re either hotmail or yahoo. Ironically, one is from the “Google Email Lottery”, but the email address doesn’t use g-mail or anything resembling Google
Others try to look formal. For instance, “The Russian Foundation for basic research” (exact capitalization) informed me that “the board of trustees” named me “as one of the final recipients of a cash Grant/Donation for your own personal, educational, and business development.” They referred me to their website – which is all in Russian.
If you’ve ever responded to these emails, don’t tell anyone and don’t do it again. Delete them immediately.
The majority of you would never fall for these. You would never forward them to your friends either. Right?
Then why do you pass on the silly, political emails that a friend of little knowledge will send to you?
In my book, I call them Weapons of Mass Distortion. These are emails manipulating information and statistics to make you think one candidate or another is either lying or trying to blow up the world. Although they come from all political extremists, the dumbest come from the Right-Wing whackos.
Every now and then, one of the emails actually has some good and correct information. Most times, though, the writers of these emails use a documented fact and then twist it for their purposes.
I won’t cover them in detail here. It’s not worth the space. However, let me offer you some websites that can help you determine the authenticity of these emails.
The first is Snopes. Whenever I get an email that has been forwarded by a friend, I’ll go to Snopes and plug in some key words. Many times, Snopes has the answer. Usually, they have the full email explained. They’ll also offer the email’s status: true or false.
A second site is FactCheck.Org. This is funded by the non-partisan Annenberg Foundation. The head of FactCheck is Brooks Jackson, a respected journalist who worked for CNN and The Wall Street Journal.
FactCheck also has weekly video casts. This week’s video cast covers the most recent political emails that have surfaced. It’s worth the five minutes.
These two websites are also worth having on your favorites list.
This post is my reaction to Barack Obama’s speech about his pastor. I hope to post a video on this topic soon.
LAS VEGAS, NV (March 20, 2008) – The now famous Barack racism speech misses the point. Racism is not the real issue here.
Go back and watch those videos of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Did you really think racism when you first heard his tirade?
Not me. I saw Rev. Wright as a fine actor performing a dead-on impersonation of an Islamic mullah from a Wahabi school in Saudi Arabia.
Maybe I’m still traumatized by 9/11. And maybe I have never been a target of racism growing up white and middle class. And maybe I’ve lost any of my subconscious racism due to my experiences with many black business people. I’m not trying to pat myself on the back here.
Hear me out. A friend of my wife is an African American woman, who, as a young woman, heard Rev. Wright speak many years ago. He was fantastic; a pillar of the community who helped many people. Now she is shocked at his tone and language in those recent videos. That’s not the person she saw decades ago. She says Rev. Wright now “has a screw loose.”
In fairness, this friend is backing Hillary.
So what happened? I don’t know Rev. Wright and neither does this friend. So, I won’t psychoanalyze him. Instead, let’s look at the trend that hit the world before and after 9/11.
It was a wave of extremism.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright – in those videos — is no different than Osama bin Laden, Iranian President Ahmadinejad, talk show pundits like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Glen Beck, and, unfortunately, our current President before the 2006 elections.
They all practiced extremism first. Racism, for Rev. Wright, is just the excuse. Osama bin Laden convinced a small amount of Muslims that America was anti-Muslim. President Bush had us believing that Muslims were infiltrating America. The talk show hosts, mentioned above, have us believing that the mainstream media is lying to us – for nefarious reasons.
These people are merely actors in the Theater of the Extreme. This ensemble might have diametrically opposed views, but they work together. Their trick is to espouse an orthodox, self-righteous dogma of hate, pride, or patriotism to control a disenfranchised group of people either through politics or the media.
More on the media’s culpability in a future post. But in this post, let’s examine extremism and racism further.
Extremism has dwindled in the past few years – certainly in America. Let’s remember, the videos of Rev. Wright were from 2003 – a time of extreme Extremism. Tensions were high. Americans were raw over 9/11. We believed Saddam had a hand in the attack on America. President Bush told other countries if you weren’t with us, you were against us. Many Republicans labeled anyone who questioned them as unpatriotic. We even outed a CIA agent.
Before I get accused of extreme bashing of the President, let me clarify those statements. I don’t consider Mr. Bush an extremist. However, I think he leaned toward extremist tendencies that blanketed the world. Would I have done things differently in his shoes? I don’t know. Post 9/11 was a scary time. Who among us wouldn’t have had a bunker mentality? Did that hurt his presidency? Yes. So, as a leader he should be criticized for his leanings toward right-wing extremism, just as liberals who lean too far toward Socialism. Fair is fair.
Like President Bush back then, Rev. Wright just caught the bug that was going around. In turn, Rev. Wright tried to infect his congregation who were susceptible to disdain for whites. But that was three to five years ago. Extremism in American politics has diminished thanks to the quagmire in Iraq, the embarrassment of Katrina, and the dwindling of American economic strength.
Let me be clear. I’m not saying racism doesn’t exist in America. It does. Nor am I saying that racism had nothing to do with this political uprising against Barack. It did.
But that’s politics. It’s a dirty game – in part — of putting negative notions in the voters’ heads about your opponent. Right now, it’s working against Barack. And he’s trying his best to fight back – using racism. Ironically, racism is both the disease and the cure in politics. However, too much antidote can cause problems. Look at the gaffe Obama made about his white grandmother who was “a typical white.”
The American political elite and the media are overdosing on the racism issue.
Apparently we can’t take too much of a good thing as a nation. After all, are we really a racist nation? Overall, no. Think about it. We’re two steps away from electing our first black President.
This post is my initial reaction while listening to Barack Obama’s speech about his pastor.
LAS VEGAS, NV (March 18, 2008) – Senator Obama framed his argument around racism. Racism, however, is not the issue. The issue is extremism.
I’ll have more on this in greater length. I’ll also tell you about a friend, an African American woman, who heard Reverend Wright preach at a young age, and now wonders what happened to this once great preacher who is now, as she says, with a screw loose.
But keep this in mind. Extremism is not exclusive to Islam, Judaism, or Christianity. They all share it. By framing this as a racist issue, Barack and others ignore the pervasive problem that is damaging society. Reverend Wright is no different than the late Jerry Falwell, Iran’s President, David Duke, and Osama bin Laden.
The Christian extemism we experience in the United States was something fostered by the current Administration which has now blown up in their face.
This posting offers the main reason (money) and a possible solution (military service) to the lack of work done by Congress and The White House.
LAS VEGAS, NV (March 15, 2008) – A learned gentleman, who doesn’t want to be identified, told me recently that Congress doesn’t solve problems completely or immediately because there’d be no reason for anyone to contribute to their up-coming elections.
He’s right.
Our elected officials are more aware of sales tactics than the economic threat of China and India. Another gentleman, with experience in government, told me this week he was always amazed that so many members of Congress had never read the Constitution. I’m not surprised.
I once flew cross-country, seated next to a Congressman. Later at baggage claim my wife was worried: “What’s wrong?” I told her I was frightened, because I knew more about economic and international issues than the Congressman did. And his dearth of knowledge was appalling.
In fairness, I’ve had intellectually invigorating conversations with a number of smart, elected officials. Among them are: former U.S. Senator Richard Bryan, current U.S. Senator John Ensign (who endorsed my book), former U.S. Congressman Bob “B-1 Bob” Dornan, and current Nevada State Senator Warren Hardy.
So, if there are some smart politicians who care about issues and the people of this country, how do we get what we had happen in Congress this past week? And how do we stop it?
First, the U.S. House forced itself to vote for an outside commission to investigate ethics complaints against lawmakers. The measure was a half-hearted attempted by the House Democrats who said during the 2006 campaign they would clean up Congress. Don’t they mean they’ll find someone to help them clean up or sweep things under the rug?
The best comment came from Congressman Todd Tiahrt, from Kansas, who is against the outside policing. He said, “If you have a single ounce of self-preservation, you’ll vote no.” Depending upon how you interpret that, you could think he is a nut case or very prescient. Does he mean he’s preserving his ability to raise money and stay in office or is he concerned about preserving the nation’s trust?
Self-preservation of the lower sort was in high order in the U.S. Senate this week also. The so-called more contemplative elected body overwhelmingly rejected a bill to put a moratorium on earmarks.
These guys have balls. In an election year, they vote no to transparency and democracy. Why? They’re holding onto their fiefdoms, their place at the trough, and the privilege they’ve created.
And how does this affect you and me?
Look at the economy. Granted, we were expecting a down-turn. But this recession (there I finally publicly admitted it) seems much deeper because of the liquidity crisis and drop in home equity due to the sub prime mess. The problem was not the investment vehicles. In fact, I would say mortgage-backed securities are brilliant. The problem was the lack of oversight by government. We wanted to keep government out of our business.
And now government needs to step in and save an investment bank, Bear Stearns. And the government needs to pump cash into the banking system in the hopes that people will start buying again – even though the move could cause other problems like the continued lower dollar and future inflation.
Look at the current scandal in Las Vegas. At least six people have contracted hepatitis C because a group of clinics re-used syringes and vials during colonoscopies. My friend and columnist Jon Ralston has been banging the pans loud on this one. He points out that prisons are reviewed more stringently in Nevada than these clinics. He writes:
But what do we make of the Swiss cheese regulation of these ambulatory surgery centers and the state’s failure to enforce the laws, as weak as they are? Indeed, there is a bitter irony here: Those who always say regulatory controls inhibit businesses too much - hello, chamber folks - should wonder what might have happened if the state had the resources and the will to use them. But these same folks also chant about government running more like a business - and if it had in this case, maybe some of this bad business could have been avoided.
It’s not that our elected officials are making bad decisions, though they are; it’s, in most cases, they’re making no decisions.
I feel like we’re in a Woody Allen movie from the 1970s. Two older women are sitting in an upscale restaurant. The first one says, “The food is not very good.” The second one says, “And the portions are so small.”
Why in 2006, when faced with the growing talk about immigration problems and even a roaming town hall tour, Congress would adjourn for the mid-term elections without even casting a vote?
Why is it that the Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is now creating economic policy when his job is to control the flow of money in our banking system? Think about what just happened this week and over the weekend with the aforementioned Bear Stearns mess. The government is bailing out an investment bank to insure there won’t be a “chain reaction of failures among its lenders and trading partners,” according to the New York Times.
That means tax-payers are going to take responsibility for the faltering mortgage-backed securities. Why? There was inadequate regulation of the mortgage industry. You’ll hear a lot of criticism of Bernanke over the next few months by certain segments of Wall Street. But remember, Big Ben is doing the job others won’t do.
Congress is like a neglectful parent who fails to work with their failing child and blames the teacher instead. The truth is that Republicans will tax-cut us to death while Democrats will spend us to death. I’m tired of the moronic Republicans who keep talking about permanent tax cuts. They will tell you that JFK proved that tax cuts stimulate the economy. Yes, it did – in 1962! We’re living in 2008. If we continue to cut taxes and INCREASE spending, the logic goes out the window.
The underlying reason for this lack of leadership and economic understanding is campaign money, lobbying money, and under the table deals to help an elected official and his or her buddies.
If you run a successful small business today in America, you are a miracle worker. You survive in spite of the clowns running our country. Ask yourself how Congress has lower approval ratings than George W. Bush and yet the incumbency rate is still at ninety percent? And why do we constantly shake our heads and wonder how a group of adults come up with the laws they give us? And yet we survive.
Can we keep this up, though? I don’t think so.
Here’s how we stop it. It’s a five-point military action plan for Congress. In short, I want our elected officials to go to war – against stupidity and special interests.
First, stop all campaign money to all campaigns. Giving to a political campaign is not written in the Constitution. Just because so many people – including the Supreme Court – say the legal bribing of a politician (my term) is free speech, we don’t have to believe that or take it.
Support candidates who take no money. The late Senator William Proxmire, of Wisconsin, only spent $7,000 on his campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s. In today’s dollars, that’s $15,000, a far cry from campaign coffers that look like the GDP of an emerging foreign country.
We have to make elections an even playing field. Each candidate, depending on the district, should receive the same amount of campaign dollars.
Giving money to a politician looks like influence peddling. Allowing someone to give money to a politician who is supposed to represent all the people is like pissing on the Pieta. Being elected to office is a sacred trust.
Second, no elected official can meet with a constituent in private. You want to bring up an issue for debate? Deliver your comments or suggestions in a public committee meeting.
Third, since Congress falls over itself praising the military, they should act like them. So, Congress should be moved to an enclosed and gated military base. They will sleep in barracks and have a regimented schedule where certain duties must be done – or they don’t leave.
Those duties will include public meetings with constituents and experts. Their schedule will also include four hours a day of lock-down reading and studying the issues that face us. There’s something to be said when you hear someone like Joe Biden talk eloquently and balanced on a foreign policy issue, compared to our President who was surprised to hear four dollars a gallon gas is a reality this summer.
I just read an interesting Wall Street Journal Op-ed piece from March 15, 2008 by South Carolina Mark Sanford, who endorses John McCain. Governor Sanford cites the efforts of U.S. Comptroller David Walker, the only honest man in Washington in my opinion, to educate America on the fiscal disaster looming in the next five to ten years. And clearly, McCain is the only candidate of the three who even knows what fiscal responsibility is.
But Governor Sanford, and for that matter John McCain, never explain to us how we can continue to fight a war in Iraq – with trillions of dollars spent and to be spent – and balance a budget. We need our elected officials to address all the issues, not just the ones that will get them elected.
Folks, we’re in Iraq for a long time. Don’t kid yourselves. We need that oil or some form of stable oil prices. But we also need to stabilize the dollar and get our fiscal house in order before all the baby-boomers retire and drain the entitlement bank – and our children’s futures. And no one even mentions this, let alone explaining the sacrifices we will all be making.
Another example: we fail to discuss the need for more education. Instead, the Democratic candidates blame NAFTA. We don’t need to put up more barriers to trade and new workers. We need to re-educate and re-train the workers we have. NAFTA has given us more jobs than it has taken away. What’s worse: our kids don’t have the tools to compete in a global economy against China and India.
Let me give you a better analogy. Would you get on a plane when you know the pilot is asleep? That’s what we’re doing with our economy and our foreign policy. You think the economy is bleak now? Wait.
That leads to point four. Campaign season will last only three months. No candidate can hit the campaign trail or debate another candidate until August of an election year. Then from August until the first Tuesday in November, they can go out and beat the daylights out of each other. Before that, they’re working on the issues, passing laws, and studying the people’s needs.
The main reason our elected officials are so clueless on the issues that affect our lives is because they’re too busy raising money for their next election.
That brings us to point five: double the salaries of Congress and the President. This way they have a good salary and that’s it. They cannot take any other payment or compensation – and every expense they incur is public record. Hey, if they don’t like the pay or the scrutiny, then find another job.
Our elected officials are supposed to be fair arbiters of our laws. Think about it: journalists have more integrity than lawmakers. Going to Congress to work for the people is a sacrifice and an honor – not a boondoggle. Elected officials are mandated to serve the country – like our brave men and women do in Iraq, other foreign countries, and here at home.
When our brave men and women leave the military, they have to go find a job or career to finally make some money. When many of our elected officials leave office, they’re set for life. It shouldn’t be that way. When you serve in Congress, your financial net worth should drop – not soar. You’re sacrificing for your country, remember?
Trust me, this plan I just laid out will work. However, it will never see the light of day.
First, Congress would never remove their cushy lifestyles. Second, the media needs those campaign dollars which eventually become advertising revenue. Third, most Americans are too busy trying to straighten out their own lives. And fourth, we lack the collective economic education to see how these elected officials – and the next ones we elevate – are killing this country.
I’m glad it’s St. Patrick’s Day. I need a pint.
LAS VEGAS, NV (March 2, 2008) – This presidential election is giving us glimpses of the future United States. Might California secede? Will New England be a federation unto itself?
Answers to that coming up. But let’s see how the Obama campaign may be unknowingly forecasting this. Bear with me.
The Obama campaign has hit a chord with new, young voters and campaign workers. These are folks who were either too young or not interested enough in 2004. Maybe they began to see how the Bush Administration and Congress are spending their futures in Iraq while ignoring the Medicare and Social Security bills to be paid for the retiring baby-boomers.
But Obama has gray-haired types, too. I think he’s tapped into their frustration with government.
People are tired of hearing the same GOP refrain of cutting taxes. They realize that Republican mantra is just as irresponsible as the old (maybe current) Democratic response to increase government spending.
Middle class folks are also tired of the GOP saying that government should stay out of people’s businesses. Too many times, we realize that the GOP is saying “let our donors do what they want without regard for the greater good.” We’re living through the credit crunch due to the sub-prime mortgage mess. It reminds too many folks of the S&L crisis in the late 1980s.
Hey, I’m the first to give small business a break. They create the jobs. But the major corporations are the ones controlling Congress and the White House. As a result, we’ve had more problems with dangerous imports and a lack of supervision for the mortgage industry, while many of these corporations create off-shore tax breaks for themselves.
We will clearly see more regulation for business in 2009 – no matter who is president. The question we need to ask, though, can we pass laws that don’t stifle business and create a level playing field. Granted, the Sarbanes-Oxley regulations have done more to drive businesses away from America while also creating higher costs for companies that stay.
Certainly, it’s more difficult to pass laws – that work — on the federal level. The reason: too much money being paid into federal candidates’ campaign coffers. That influence either waters down or creates contradictory elements in the law. As a result, that (bribe) money is a good investment for the wealthy donor. It barely hurts an industry’s bottom line while giving them breaks to make more profits. There’s a reason why the biggest scoundrel in the novel, Atlas Shrugged, is a lobbyist.
So, how will this frustration with government change America?
Recently I discussed about the possible the nation-state as we know it today going obsolete. My recent lunch guest, and great source for columns, John Alexander, raised the issue with me. Needless to say, I am intrigued three weeks after our lunch.
I raised the issue with my intellectual mentor from my days at Providence College, Rev. Paul Seaver. In return, Father Paul sent me an opinion piece called “California Split”, written by Gar Alperovitz, a professor of political economy at the University of Maryland, College Park, is the author of America Beyond Capitalism.
Alperovitz writes:
The United States is almost certainly too big to be a meaningful democracy. What does “participatory democracy” mean in a continent? Sooner or later, a profound, probably regional, decentralization of the federal system may be all but inevitable.
He also cites the corrupting effect of the campaign funding issue which I’ve been railing about for years.
Scale also determines who has privileged access to the country’s news media and who can shape its political discourse. In very large nations, television and other forms of political communication are extremely costly. President Bush alone spent $345 million in his 2004 election campaign. This gives added leverage to elites, who have better corporate connections and greater resources than non-elites. The priorities of those elites often differ from state and regional priorities.
As a result, the majority of us feel that government is not responding to us. So, could we see California secede? Or maybe the New England states will break off and form their own union?
That’s highly unlikely.
However, Alperovitz says we might see a devolution of the federal government where more power is put in the hands of the states and newly formed regional authorities. And as we continue to increase our communication technology, these new forms of local government may be more effective. While the federal government only concentrates on foreign policy, military preparedness, and interstate roads.
So, maybe Dr. Alexander has some more backing on his theory. The nation we know today may look quite differently in the decades to come.
Does it mean Californians will need passports for Las Vegas? And what special arrangements will be made for the Red Sox to play the Angels and Athletics?
Your thoughts?
LAS VEGAS, NV (March 2, 2008) – No Country For Old Men, the Oscar winning film for this year, usually elicits two responses.
The first is: “That’s the most haunting film I’ve ever seen and Javier Barden gives me nightmares.” The second is: “I don’t get it.”
I’ll address the second statement here. The first statement needs only this further comment: future film students will study this film for decades.
People “don’t get” the film’s ending, because there is none. Or better said: it’s not a Hollywood ending that offers secure irony or plot completion. No, this ending mirrors life and the haunting notion of not knowing.
If you need the writers and directors to deliver a film with a nice ending, then don’t see No Country For Old Men. Only the intellectually curious who can stand some domestic terror should witness this. It’s not a film that allows you to escape life as we know it. Instead, it rubs it in your face.
However, providing “You can handle the truth,” let me give you an underlying theme to place in the back of your mind as you watch this great flick.
Think about this: the failed American war on drugs.
Anton Chigurh, the character played by Javier Barden, is a Twenty-first Century Frankenstein and Hannibal Lecter – with a cattle prod gun and, as Jon Stewart said, “with a Dorothy Hammill haircut”. That’s as funny as it gets. He is a killing machine that leaves bodies in his wake. And he kills for one reason — to retrieve missing drug money.
Yes, there are moments in the film you need to suspend disbelief. My good buddy and writing partner, Eric Snyder, said there were times Anton Chigurh wouldn’t be able to walk away free from certain scenes. He’s right. But for the sake of this argument, many times we wonder how drug dealers like Pablo Escobar remained alive for so long as well.
In previous posts, I’ve mentioned Col. John B. Alexander, retired PhD. from the U.S. Army, the author of Winning The War: Advanced Weapons, Strategies, and Concepts for the Post 9/11 World, and a recent lunch guest of mine.
Although his book outlines winning the war on terror, he says the “illegal drug trade provides the largest source of terrorist funds.” In his book and at lunch, John explains that U.S. efforts to stop drug trafficking have only increased the price of drugs and the profits for drug warlords and cartels.
Besides reading John’s book, try this one – Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser. He shows how the conservative, anti-drug sentiment in America has placed too many people behind bars for truly petty crimes while creating an untaxed, underground economy.
I consider myself a conservative on a number of issues. For instance, military service is something I think every American should be required to do for two years. I’m a fiscal conservative who understands that cutting taxes is only half of a responsible fiscal policy.
However, the drug war is not one of my conservative issues. I think the Republicans and moderate Democrats who refuse to repeal these laws put us in danger. As John Alexander writes, “The drug trade has been estimated to cause up to 80 percent of the crime against property and 50 percent of the violent crimes against people in the United States.”
Think about that.
First, marijuana should be legalized. The police efforts to stop pot-heads are a waste of money and resources. Sure, marijuana use can lead to the use of more addictive drugs. Sorry, I don’t buy the argument. I’ll endure a few more pot-heads for a massive reduction in crime. And I’ll put the responsibility back on parents and employers.
Next, we need a systematic approach to legalize and devaluing other illegal narcotics like cocaine. Going cold-turkey to legalize all street drugs would cause too much turmoil in the short run.
At least, let’s get a dialogue started. This way an Anton Chigurh will remain just a fictional character.
LAS VEGAS, NV (March 2, 2008) — I’m getting some behind-the-scenes insight into the future Democratic Party – including a Barack running mate.
First, there is little doubt that Barack will be the nominee. As I mentioned in a previous post, mathematically he would have to have a bigger collapse than the Mets last September. There’s also all the Democratic confidence he will win the White House. I’ll leave that judgment to whatever hot-button issues – the war, terrorism, the economy, or immigration – sway voters in the summer and fall.
Second, Barack’s running mate could be Joe Biden. Even though I’ve mentioned Hillary in the past, but this morning on Meet The Press Republican strategist Mike Murphy made a great point that choosing Hillary would contradict Barack’s theme of change.
Biden, the Delaware Senator and former presidential candidate, although part of Washington for many years, still makes sense for Obama. He knows foreign policy better than anyone in the Senate. Sure, he can say a couple of off-the-cuff zingers that get him in trouble, but he’s no ideologue. Barack could do far worse.
Is this a done deal? No way. This is just early inside speculation.
Third, Chris Dodd will be the next Senate Majority Leader once Harry Reid steps down. Harry’s got two more years. I think he might call it quits and not run in 2010. And of course, that’s providing the Democrats hold the Senate.
Dodd, too, would be a decent choice for VP or Senate Majority Leader. The Connecticut Senator also dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Barack. Granted, Dodd took a lot of money from banking interests since he heads the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. But what’s impressive about Dodd is to watch him on Telemundo speaking with no translator.
I don’t know who said this during the campaign, but if the Democrats had any sense, the only two candidates they’d field would be Dodd and Biden. They’re not zealots or extremists. They work well on social issues and they understand economic and foreign policy issues.
LAS VEGAS, NV (March 2, 2008) – I’m such a party-pooper. Let me kill the buzz of this presidential campaign.
Here it is. No matter if your candidate wins the White House, you will be disappointed. Prepare yourself.
First, the new president will be subservient to the majority in Congress. If Johnny Mac gets a Democratic Congress with two-thirds majority, then he’ll be quite conciliatory. If Barack or Hillary occupies the Oval Office with a split Congress, expect either four more years of stalemate or plenty of horse trading.
The first lesson here: start paying attention to your Congressional and Senatorial races. The second lesson: once the campaign is over, don’t disengage. Ride Congress like you rode your candidate’s opponent.
Second, if Barack wins, then don’t expect the troop withdrawal he’s asking for in Iraq. It won’t happen – unless he wants a worldwide Depression. We pull out troops completely and the price of oil will seem small now.
Bill Clinton won the White House in 1992 by hammering Bush One on allowing the genocide in Bosnia. But in 1993 once in the Oval Office, Clinton admitted to the late David Halberstam in his book, War In A Time of Peace, that running on the Bosnian War was much easier than managing it.
Third, all the talk about raising tariffs to save American jobs will stop dead when the campaigns end. Like the price of oil, watch the price of goods – even at Wal-Mart – go through the roof.
Bottom line is this. A staunch party activist will be disappointed sooner. Those who lean to the party’s extreme sides will wonder what happened to your candidate once the two-person race begins. The primary campaign is designed to win a nomination – not an election. Once the real election begins, the candidates will run to the center away from the extremists in the party.
Once the election is over, the new President will take care of the people who put him or her in office. Watch the biggest donors. Yes, even Barack.
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