Are we in a Recession-?
It's been a long time since we had one. The one in 1992 was a "hair-shirt" recession. We talked ourselves into it and we popped out again without the majority of the country feeling anything except worry. We haven't had one in a long time. We're losing the population that lived through the Big Depression.
The slight depression early in the Bush years scared the Republicans enough to push for tax breaks. This one is being fueled by:
1 Fears of a Democrat controlled Congress and White House. Together they have promised to not only let the Bush Tax Breaks expire (prompting a huge tax increase) but to add new taxes and regulations to businesses and The Rich. (Whoever they are-we're never told if we are one or not I don't know who to hate, feel pity or be depressed over.) The Democrat controlled govt is already talking about protectionism and abrogating the NAFTA trade agreements simply "because". They over look the historical affects of the Smoot-Hawley Act which is credited with destroying over 60% or the worlds trade and driving the worldwide Great Depression even deeper. They claim they want the US to use "soft force" to deal with drugs, narco-terrorism and terrorism. Yet they refuse to approve the Columbia Free Trade Agreement. This agreement will improve exports from the US. It will allow Columbian farmers to have a viable economic alternative to the cocaine and marijuana crops. What do the Democrats REALLY want-? The world and America waits for some clarity.
2) the Credit Freeze. Nobody knows what their collateralized securities are worth. They're forced to mark them to market, but the market keeps moving and when it drops the asset value drops. Which spins the cycle yet again. There was some fraud and some theft but not to the degree that companies are writing off their holdings. The knock-on effect is that all funding institutions are looking for belt-and-suspender guarantee on any loans. If the Freeze continues then only the credit card companies with usurous rates will be providing liquidity to the economy.
3) Sinking Dollar is harming our exports. We need an active Fed to start pulling dollars off the market. They can do this by buying in dollars with either foreign currency or swapping some of the gold we hold. At around $1,000/per ounce the US needs to sell some gold, platinum and palladium. (no wonder the meth addicts are stealing catalytic converters from the driveways at night). Gold, Silver,oil are commodity prices all reflect the surplus of US Dollars floating about the world. We cannot raise interest rates in the middle of this credit freeze. Too many contracts are tied to the Fed Rate.
Here are a couple of tidbits from the daily news feed that you may have missed;
The leader of the NBER personally thinks we are sliding into a recession. The NBER, (National Bureau of Economic Research,) a non-profit research organization, typically declares start and end dates for U.S. recessions. The group has not officially declared the U.S. is in a recession.
Transportation is a leading indicator of the economy.
BNSF Idles Freight Cars Due to Downturn
Freight railroad BNSF Railway Co. is parking miles of rail cars in some parts of the country because there is not enough freight to keep them moving, the Associated Press reported Monday.
ISM Contraction May Indicate Trucking Upturn, Analyst Says
Last week’s Institute of Supply Management report that showed continued contraction may actually be good for the trucking industry’s outlook, according to an industry analyst, the Associated Press reported.
I read the two as saying long term freight is gonna slow down. Short and intermediate freight demands will draw down inventories until demand returns. Manufacturing will slow and if demand does not rise, stop. Then we are in deep trouble. Loans must be paid, insurance must be paid, rents, leases and mortgages must be paid, even if there is no manufacturing or sales of goods and services.
Things are not that bad. They probably will never get that bad. Our fears will make them worse. Our politicians may create a problem where one could have been avoided. we don't have to have a recession or depression. The market is correcting itself. The fire will be over before the fire brigades can react-but they may pass laws that make it harder to avoid or correct in the future.
In seven months we will know much more than we do today. Unfortunately, the country cannot hold its reath for that long. Plans will be made, approvals granted or denied, commitments made based upon the best estimates of what the economy will be doing in 2009 and 2010.
What does it all mean-?
How do you read the headlines-?
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Monday, April 7, 2008
Friday, March 7, 2008
Economics, Politics, Anticipation
WSJ email alert from the Recession-Now front lines:
NEWS ALERT
from The Wall Street Journal
March 7, 2008
U.S. recession fears mounted as employment fell in February at its fastest rate in five years, suggesting that the housing and credit crunch is gripping the broader economy. U.S. nonfarm payrolls fell by 63,000 in February, after declining 22,000 in January. If not for a rise in government jobs last month, payrolls would have fallen by more than 100,000. However, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.8% from 4.9%.
Ahead of the jobs report the Federal Reserve raised the amounts outstanding in its Term Auction Facility available to banks to $100 billion. The Fed's move lowered the odds of a change in the federal funds rate before the next meeting, but raised the chances of a three-quarter point reduction on March 18.
For more information,
For more analysis of the economy, see: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics
A reason to vote for McCain
Another indication of the affects of politics on business-I am seeing and hearing Investment Bankers and business owners starting to change deal structure and pricing in anticipation of a Democrat take over.
The general line is to lock in M&A terms now before Obama comes with his 28% Capital Gains rate, before the Bush tax cuts expire, before the death tax goes back to 55% over $1M valuation, etc. Lots of talk about shifting assets to trusts and getting creative in ways to avoid the hits.
Business owners are starting to look at ways to deal with increased regulation. Nobody has anything specific yet, but the general tone is that the increased regulation will be more in line with union rules and union organizing attempts. Things that stress business and create a favorful union organizing environment are expected.
Estimates that a full-tilt union America will drive up the cost of everything by 20%... That seems scary, but it was what I heard yesterday... Add to that the tax increases and credit crunch, plus whatever mischief Congress creates to replace the Alternative Minimum Tax... There are gonna be a lot of folks with six figure household income scrambling for tax shelters and new income opportunities...
The markets run ahead of events. Right now there is a bit of panic and a lot of fear. But the tide was already shifting in consideration of higher gasoline prices ($5-$6/gal-?), tighter credit, fewer home starts and less consumer spending...
The Democratic Congress and the Democratic Candidates have succeeded in scaring the marketplace-and the world... It's gonna take some strong medicine to prove them wrong... Cassandra is respected a lot longer than Pollyanna ever was...
Are we talking ourselves into a recession-?
George Anders column in Wednesday's WSJ reflects a lot of the thinking I am hearing and seeing...
NEWS ALERT
from The Wall Street Journal
March 7, 2008
U.S. recession fears mounted as employment fell in February at its fastest rate in five years, suggesting that the housing and credit crunch is gripping the broader economy. U.S. nonfarm payrolls fell by 63,000 in February, after declining 22,000 in January. If not for a rise in government jobs last month, payrolls would have fallen by more than 100,000. However, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.8% from 4.9%.
Ahead of the jobs report the Federal Reserve raised the amounts outstanding in its Term Auction Facility available to banks to $100 billion. The Fed's move lowered the odds of a change in the federal funds rate before the next meeting, but raised the chances of a three-quarter point reduction on March 18.
For more information,
For more analysis of the economy, see: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics
A reason to vote for McCain
Another indication of the affects of politics on business-I am seeing and hearing Investment Bankers and business owners starting to change deal structure and pricing in anticipation of a Democrat take over.
The general line is to lock in M&A terms now before Obama comes with his 28% Capital Gains rate, before the Bush tax cuts expire, before the death tax goes back to 55% over $1M valuation, etc. Lots of talk about shifting assets to trusts and getting creative in ways to avoid the hits.
Business owners are starting to look at ways to deal with increased regulation. Nobody has anything specific yet, but the general tone is that the increased regulation will be more in line with union rules and union organizing attempts. Things that stress business and create a favorful union organizing environment are expected.
Estimates that a full-tilt union America will drive up the cost of everything by 20%... That seems scary, but it was what I heard yesterday... Add to that the tax increases and credit crunch, plus whatever mischief Congress creates to replace the Alternative Minimum Tax... There are gonna be a lot of folks with six figure household income scrambling for tax shelters and new income opportunities...
The markets run ahead of events. Right now there is a bit of panic and a lot of fear. But the tide was already shifting in consideration of higher gasoline prices ($5-$6/gal-?), tighter credit, fewer home starts and less consumer spending...
The Democratic Congress and the Democratic Candidates have succeeded in scaring the marketplace-and the world... It's gonna take some strong medicine to prove them wrong... Cassandra is respected a lot longer than Pollyanna ever was...
Are we talking ourselves into a recession-?
George Anders column in Wednesday's WSJ reflects a lot of the thinking I am hearing and seeing...
Hurry, hurry, hurry to carry out corporate acquisitions before the November elections, some attorneys and investment bankers are telling their clients. That is because they think a Democratic presidential victory could create more roadblocks for takeovers.
Guessing what political-office seekers might do if elected is never a sure thing. Some stances taken on the campaign trail have a way of fading from sight once the election is over. Other positions prove impossible to implement.
Higher capital-gains taxes could also jolt the takeover market, though getting congressional approval for such changes won't be easy. In Senate votes in the past few years, both Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton have voted for ending the current 15% capital-gains rate and returning to higher levels.
Mr. Obama told the TechCrunch Web site in November that he favored capital-gains tax rates close to 28%, where they were under the Reagan administration, though not quite that high. Mrs. Clinton hasn't been as specific.
For individual shareholders, a higher capital-gains rate would mean keeping less of the proceeds from selling a company. That could be a particular sore point for owners of closely held companies, who may have personally built up the value of such companies over decades. As a result, some private-equity firms are urging potential sellers of companies to act fast, while the 15% capital-gains rate still applies.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
New Year, New Outlook
Happy New Year.
Yes, I know it's March. March and April have long been associated with New Year- new beginnings, new flowers and new life after a long grey/gray winter (grey with an "e" seems more dreary than with an "a"). Spring seems a more appropriate place for a new year than the Gregorian Calendar that places January 1 as the start of all new things...
I have always had more luck when the business of the new year began along with the rise of grass and green. Warm winds blow more favorably than the cold cutting damp knives of January.
As you noticed from my last post. I became disenchanted and frustrated with the NFL, the New England Patriots, our political tussling, the impending holidays and arrival of family from far and near. I was becoming a grouchy curmudgeon. Who would want to read that drivel.- even if I was right... I have tried hold to the advice that Thumper's Father gave him in the movie "Bambi"; "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."... We can all grinch, complain and gripe... My Grandfather used to say "A kicking mule can't pull"... I have decided to stop kicking... well at least as much events allow.
My Grandfather followed a mule plowing for most of his life. My Father graduated from high school during WWII. He could have had a farming deferment. Being young, energetic and having a hangover he spent one morning walking behind the mule watching it's rear end and decided he would rather go fight Germans... He was 20 years old at the Battle of the Bulge... As he aged he remembered the funny times during the war and tried to forget the horrors. He was among a group that liberated a concentration camp. "It was just a little one " my Aunt said... (Her husband spend the war at Fort Dix wrestling paperwork. We didn't spend much time around her. Stupidity might be contagious. We took no chances.)
It affected my Father when he would remember the horrors of what supposedly civilized people had done to others. He had a hard time sleeping for many years. He went from a small town in a corner of Georgia where most farming was still done the way it had been done for 100 years to the world of mechanized genocide. There was one Jewish family in the country. There were no Catholics. Nobody in his world had ever expressed that kind of hatred and evil... There was some bigotry towards blacks, but the depression had hammered the whole countryside. Everybody was broke. It's hard to hate when you're all in the same boat.
My father died in 1959 in a car wreck. That was long ago, far away and ancient history.
Except it's not. George Santayana is attributed to the misquote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". History does seem to run in cycles. It does not run in ruts. Things are never exactly the same as they were before. We can learn something of the future by studying the past and looking for the reasons that people made decisions which led to known results. We do that by studying history. It seems we concentrate too much on battles, elections and personal lives of dictators, kings and royalty. We don't spend enough time looking at the common people. We look at the weapons and great buildings and not at the homes and daily lives of those who make the machinery of civilization work. Yet, when the great leaders need a war, they turn to these people for justification, fodder, support, sacrifice, and sacrifice. When we study businesses we do the same things. We look at the large enterprises, the leaders of these monster corporations... We don't study either the people who make the wheels turn, the paperwork move and the details attended. We don't study successful individuals and look for clues to what habits and traits made them so.
We like to think that we are wise. We are the "thinking ape ". But we are often blind to the people and changes around us. We make plans. We present them for approval, revision, alteration, amendment and finally funding. We give credit to ourselves for our success. When it fails we blame "bad luck " . I have yet to see a successful person attribute their position to "luck " Yet, we study their failures to avoid "bad luck " corrupting our plans... This all seems a bit arrogant to me.
We won WWII. We have no real idea what we did right. We did not have the best trained army. We didn't have the most modern and effective weapons. We were able to build and supply ourselves and our allies. We didn't get into a war of attrition in the traditional sense. We did not repeat the meat-grinders of WWI. The more books are written and the more detailed history is revealed, the more I read it as a very close run. We could have lost.
I think the defining difference between WWI and WWI was American leadership and the spirit of the American people. We were at war. We had been attacked. We struck back and then began the the search for allies, understanding the enemy and preparation to win. We faced an enemy that had attacked its neighbors, had enslaved its citizens and slaughtered thousands because they didn't fit some grand design. We faced an enemy that had wealth, intelligence, cunning, a ruthless disregard for human life be it their own forces or their enemies or the innocents. They were killers willing to use the most modern weapons and means to make the world into a better place for their kind. We had no illusions about their barbarism. We were clear in our commitment that their kind could not prevail or only be knocked down to return again stronger and more deadly.
We were attacked again in 1993 and 2001. In 1993, we treated the attack as a police action. We investigated and found the bad guys. We arrested them and gave them civil rights of a citizen and protections that they would never have given us. Throughout the 1990's we were repeatedly attacked. We continued to treat it as a police issue. We'd fire off a few cruise missiles to blow up some tents, an aspirin factory and bluster about.... We weren't serious about responding militarily. We were afraid of actually facing a serious enemy. We long lived in a delusional world of peace-harmony and political answers to all questions. Our thought leaders were convinced that all evil of the world originated somewhere in America and we should be ashamed of our success. On September 11, 2001 we were attacked by an enemy using airplanes as missiles. Suddenly, we were at war. Our Thought Leaders could not wish away 3,000 dead and replace the vanished buildings.
We faced an enemy that possessed no national homeland, no national boundaries, no national infrastructure, no factories, no government agencies, no way that we could strike back by sending in bombers and cruise missiles. The nation state had dissolved. However, like our enemies from the past these monsters had attacked in many countries , had enslaved its citizens and slaughtered thousands because they didn't fit some grand design. We faced an enemy that had wealth, intelligence, cunning, a ruthless disregard for human life be it their own forces or their enemies or the innocents. They were killers willing to use the most modern weapons and means to make the world into a better place for their kind. They didn't covet our land, our wealth, or citizens, our peace or our prosperity. They hated us because we would be most likely to oppose their planes for world domination. Of all the nations in the world they chose America aas the toughest one to cow with threats and intimidation. They tested us with their 9/11 attack. They tested our newly elected President. Unfortunately, for them, this time they had a President who was willing to fight.
We went after their asylums in Afghanistan, the Philippines and South East Asia. We have had some successes. We have had a hard time convincing many nations and people that we face a united and organized enemy. Our intelligence and forecasts showed that Iraq, which had killed thousands of Iranians and Iraqi Kurds with poison gas, posed athreat. We went to the UN for sanctions and the authorization to use force to enforce the sanctions. WE asked and waited long months for answers to the future of those weapons of mass destruction. When we had no further choice we invaded and removed Saddam Hussein from power. We then engaged in helping the Iraqi people recover from 35 years of totalitarian dictatorship and subjection. It has been a rough process. We have adjusted and things are improving. The terrorists and criminal sectors of Iraqi society saw an opportunity to seize power. New generals, new tactics and the willingness of the Iraqi people to fight for their new lives have dramatically changed things over the past year. Our newspapers and TV media have chosen to ignore our victories. Our Thought Leaders still see America as the font of all evil in the world...
. Our own military has dubbed this "the long war". Like previous "long wars" this may take a long time. We Americans have become accustomed to wars of short duration. We have not fought a long war since our struggle fro independence. We had to convince many that our cause was just and our course correct then as well.
Our enemy hides among the citizens of the world. They are as much at home in the highrise towers and hallways of power and wealth of modern cities as they are in villages and mountain caves. They go by many names. They hide behind the words of religion. They find a cover in religious fervor but when they are at full rampage, they take drugs, rape, steal, murder and desecrate without any consideration of any religion or the laws of any god or nation. They are killers. We refer to them Islamofascists or terrorists . We really don't know what to call them because they are very clever at turning our own civil libertarian concerns against us.
We know that they wish to kill us. They wish to attack and slaughter as many of us as possible. This will weaken our resolve and frighten their enemies. They will be able to convert the weak and assume world supremacy and the fulfillment of some nebulous grand design. They seek and will use any weapon that can kill tens of thousands of us in multiple attacks.
We have grown weary of the war. Our citizens have grown tired of the struggle. Our news media wants a different story. (They bore easily). Democracies have never had the long term will to face a tyrant. The longer we go without another attack, the easier it is to want to withdraw. have we not been attacked because of some plan or simply because we have been lucky, thus far.
Our new President will be tested. The Democrats have chosen to hold a race to withdraw from the major battlefield of this war. Altho, most recently they have decided that rather than remove the troops several hundred miles away they want garrison them inside large fortifications. They propose to fight a counterinsurgency war using the trench warfare tactics that created a meat grinder in "the war to end all wars" 90 years ago.
We are at war. Yet, our economy continues to grow and blossom. 95% of all workers are working. 96% of all mortgages are being paid on time. the revenues collected by the US govt are at all time highs. We do not have a draft to call up more military. Oil is expensive, but it is because the markets are uncertain about its availability 90 days from now. The oil speculators are chary of events in the oil producing regions of the world. There is no shortage of oil.
What the high oil prices have done is make alternatives economically viable. In 1977, I heard Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani speak. The first OPEC cartel price increases had shaken the world. Yamani had gone to school in America and knew us well. Like Admiral Yamamoto before him he knew that when they provoked America they "awoke a sleeping tiger". He feared that raising the prices too high or too quickly would prompt American ingenuity to find alternatives to their oil.
We are close to that point now. The high prices at the gas pump are prompting the govt., investors, inventors and entrepreneurs to seek alternatives. Ethanol and soy deisel now provide great farm subsidies but they pose long term problems. Wind and solar power are dependent upon the wind blowing and the sun shining. Improvements in solar power generation chips make it seem that we face another "Moore's Law" style revolution. If all these measures prove as promised what does that mean for the Middle East-?
Without oil wealth at the present level, will the world still scramble for access, control, possession-? If we only need oil as a lubricant, will the terrorists still get their funding-? Will terrorist states still fund their proxy wars-? What will the Islamofascists do when there is no more oil wealth-?
We must remain true to our American principles. We face many problems in the future. However the future is not carved in stone. We can still change the fates that our politicians say are aligned against us.
We cannot surrender to the fear mongers who would make us hide from the future. We cannot solve the problems of the future by retreating into the failed answers of the past. We cannot withdraw from the world. We cannot build walls and barriers to protect ourselves from everything. We are Americans. We are optimistic. We are inventive. We are creative. We are imaginative. We do not "muddle through", except when we are preparing to change the game...
We are the lucky beneficiaries of a grand experiment in participatory democracy. We are the first nation founded not by a tribe, a geographic boundary, race, religion or act of some government. We are founded on the philosophy that "all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator of certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
From that premise, we hold that all humans have a right to life, liberty and the freedom to pursue happiness... This makes us very much at odds with any nation or person that would deny or restrict life, liberty or freedom to anyone else. We have struggled with this history within our own boundaries. We have not won all the battles. We have too many who would take and even more who would surrender their freedoms for the politicians promise of the better life as a slave. Too many who would exchange the freedom to pursue happiness as we each define it for the promise of safety, security, jobs, health, housing, education and old age assistance... That way lies the trap of slave master, the tyrant, the return to serfdom
Thanks to Wikipedia for the history links...
Yes, I know it's March. March and April have long been associated with New Year- new beginnings, new flowers and new life after a long grey/gray winter (grey with an "e" seems more dreary than with an "a"). Spring seems a more appropriate place for a new year than the Gregorian Calendar that places January 1 as the start of all new things...
I have always had more luck when the business of the new year began along with the rise of grass and green. Warm winds blow more favorably than the cold cutting damp knives of January.
As you noticed from my last post. I became disenchanted and frustrated with the NFL, the New England Patriots, our political tussling, the impending holidays and arrival of family from far and near. I was becoming a grouchy curmudgeon. Who would want to read that drivel.- even if I was right... I have tried hold to the advice that Thumper's Father gave him in the movie "Bambi"; "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."... We can all grinch, complain and gripe... My Grandfather used to say "A kicking mule can't pull"... I have decided to stop kicking... well at least as much events allow.
My Grandfather followed a mule plowing for most of his life. My Father graduated from high school during WWII. He could have had a farming deferment. Being young, energetic and having a hangover he spent one morning walking behind the mule watching it's rear end and decided he would rather go fight Germans... He was 20 years old at the Battle of the Bulge... As he aged he remembered the funny times during the war and tried to forget the horrors. He was among a group that liberated a concentration camp. "It was just a little one " my Aunt said... (Her husband spend the war at Fort Dix wrestling paperwork. We didn't spend much time around her. Stupidity might be contagious. We took no chances.)
It affected my Father when he would remember the horrors of what supposedly civilized people had done to others. He had a hard time sleeping for many years. He went from a small town in a corner of Georgia where most farming was still done the way it had been done for 100 years to the world of mechanized genocide. There was one Jewish family in the country. There were no Catholics. Nobody in his world had ever expressed that kind of hatred and evil... There was some bigotry towards blacks, but the depression had hammered the whole countryside. Everybody was broke. It's hard to hate when you're all in the same boat.
My father died in 1959 in a car wreck. That was long ago, far away and ancient history.
Except it's not. George Santayana is attributed to the misquote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". History does seem to run in cycles. It does not run in ruts. Things are never exactly the same as they were before. We can learn something of the future by studying the past and looking for the reasons that people made decisions which led to known results. We do that by studying history. It seems we concentrate too much on battles, elections and personal lives of dictators, kings and royalty. We don't spend enough time looking at the common people. We look at the weapons and great buildings and not at the homes and daily lives of those who make the machinery of civilization work. Yet, when the great leaders need a war, they turn to these people for justification, fodder, support, sacrifice, and sacrifice. When we study businesses we do the same things. We look at the large enterprises, the leaders of these monster corporations... We don't study either the people who make the wheels turn, the paperwork move and the details attended. We don't study successful individuals and look for clues to what habits and traits made them so.
We like to think that we are wise. We are the "thinking ape ". But we are often blind to the people and changes around us. We make plans. We present them for approval, revision, alteration, amendment and finally funding. We give credit to ourselves for our success. When it fails we blame "bad luck " . I have yet to see a successful person attribute their position to "luck " Yet, we study their failures to avoid "bad luck " corrupting our plans... This all seems a bit arrogant to me.
We won WWII. We have no real idea what we did right. We did not have the best trained army. We didn't have the most modern and effective weapons. We were able to build and supply ourselves and our allies. We didn't get into a war of attrition in the traditional sense. We did not repeat the meat-grinders of WWI. The more books are written and the more detailed history is revealed, the more I read it as a very close run. We could have lost.
I think the defining difference between WWI and WWI was American leadership and the spirit of the American people. We were at war. We had been attacked. We struck back and then began the the search for allies, understanding the enemy and preparation to win. We faced an enemy that had attacked its neighbors, had enslaved its citizens and slaughtered thousands because they didn't fit some grand design. We faced an enemy that had wealth, intelligence, cunning, a ruthless disregard for human life be it their own forces or their enemies or the innocents. They were killers willing to use the most modern weapons and means to make the world into a better place for their kind. We had no illusions about their barbarism. We were clear in our commitment that their kind could not prevail or only be knocked down to return again stronger and more deadly.
We were attacked again in 1993 and 2001. In 1993, we treated the attack as a police action. We investigated and found the bad guys. We arrested them and gave them civil rights of a citizen and protections that they would never have given us. Throughout the 1990's we were repeatedly attacked. We continued to treat it as a police issue. We'd fire off a few cruise missiles to blow up some tents, an aspirin factory and bluster about.... We weren't serious about responding militarily. We were afraid of actually facing a serious enemy. We long lived in a delusional world of peace-harmony and political answers to all questions. Our thought leaders were convinced that all evil of the world originated somewhere in America and we should be ashamed of our success. On September 11, 2001 we were attacked by an enemy using airplanes as missiles. Suddenly, we were at war. Our Thought Leaders could not wish away 3,000 dead and replace the vanished buildings.
We faced an enemy that possessed no national homeland, no national boundaries, no national infrastructure, no factories, no government agencies, no way that we could strike back by sending in bombers and cruise missiles. The nation state had dissolved. However, like our enemies from the past these monsters had attacked in many countries , had enslaved its citizens and slaughtered thousands because they didn't fit some grand design. We faced an enemy that had wealth, intelligence, cunning, a ruthless disregard for human life be it their own forces or their enemies or the innocents. They were killers willing to use the most modern weapons and means to make the world into a better place for their kind. They didn't covet our land, our wealth, or citizens, our peace or our prosperity. They hated us because we would be most likely to oppose their planes for world domination. Of all the nations in the world they chose America aas the toughest one to cow with threats and intimidation. They tested us with their 9/11 attack. They tested our newly elected President. Unfortunately, for them, this time they had a President who was willing to fight.
We went after their asylums in Afghanistan, the Philippines and South East Asia. We have had some successes. We have had a hard time convincing many nations and people that we face a united and organized enemy. Our intelligence and forecasts showed that Iraq, which had killed thousands of Iranians and Iraqi Kurds with poison gas, posed athreat. We went to the UN for sanctions and the authorization to use force to enforce the sanctions. WE asked and waited long months for answers to the future of those weapons of mass destruction. When we had no further choice we invaded and removed Saddam Hussein from power. We then engaged in helping the Iraqi people recover from 35 years of totalitarian dictatorship and subjection. It has been a rough process. We have adjusted and things are improving. The terrorists and criminal sectors of Iraqi society saw an opportunity to seize power. New generals, new tactics and the willingness of the Iraqi people to fight for their new lives have dramatically changed things over the past year. Our newspapers and TV media have chosen to ignore our victories. Our Thought Leaders still see America as the font of all evil in the world...
. Our own military has dubbed this "the long war". Like previous "long wars" this may take a long time. We Americans have become accustomed to wars of short duration. We have not fought a long war since our struggle fro independence. We had to convince many that our cause was just and our course correct then as well.
Our enemy hides among the citizens of the world. They are as much at home in the highrise towers and hallways of power and wealth of modern cities as they are in villages and mountain caves. They go by many names. They hide behind the words of religion. They find a cover in religious fervor but when they are at full rampage, they take drugs, rape, steal, murder and desecrate without any consideration of any religion or the laws of any god or nation. They are killers. We refer to them Islamofascists or terrorists . We really don't know what to call them because they are very clever at turning our own civil libertarian concerns against us.
We know that they wish to kill us. They wish to attack and slaughter as many of us as possible. This will weaken our resolve and frighten their enemies. They will be able to convert the weak and assume world supremacy and the fulfillment of some nebulous grand design. They seek and will use any weapon that can kill tens of thousands of us in multiple attacks.
We have grown weary of the war. Our citizens have grown tired of the struggle. Our news media wants a different story. (They bore easily). Democracies have never had the long term will to face a tyrant. The longer we go without another attack, the easier it is to want to withdraw. have we not been attacked because of some plan or simply because we have been lucky, thus far.
Our new President will be tested. The Democrats have chosen to hold a race to withdraw from the major battlefield of this war. Altho, most recently they have decided that rather than remove the troops several hundred miles away they want garrison them inside large fortifications. They propose to fight a counterinsurgency war using the trench warfare tactics that created a meat grinder in "the war to end all wars" 90 years ago.
We are at war. Yet, our economy continues to grow and blossom. 95% of all workers are working. 96% of all mortgages are being paid on time. the revenues collected by the US govt are at all time highs. We do not have a draft to call up more military. Oil is expensive, but it is because the markets are uncertain about its availability 90 days from now. The oil speculators are chary of events in the oil producing regions of the world. There is no shortage of oil.
What the high oil prices have done is make alternatives economically viable. In 1977, I heard Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani speak. The first OPEC cartel price increases had shaken the world. Yamani had gone to school in America and knew us well. Like Admiral Yamamoto before him he knew that when they provoked America they "awoke a sleeping tiger". He feared that raising the prices too high or too quickly would prompt American ingenuity to find alternatives to their oil.
We are close to that point now. The high prices at the gas pump are prompting the govt., investors, inventors and entrepreneurs to seek alternatives. Ethanol and soy deisel now provide great farm subsidies but they pose long term problems. Wind and solar power are dependent upon the wind blowing and the sun shining. Improvements in solar power generation chips make it seem that we face another "Moore's Law" style revolution. If all these measures prove as promised what does that mean for the Middle East-?
Without oil wealth at the present level, will the world still scramble for access, control, possession-? If we only need oil as a lubricant, will the terrorists still get their funding-? Will terrorist states still fund their proxy wars-? What will the Islamofascists do when there is no more oil wealth-?
We must remain true to our American principles. We face many problems in the future. However the future is not carved in stone. We can still change the fates that our politicians say are aligned against us.
We cannot surrender to the fear mongers who would make us hide from the future. We cannot solve the problems of the future by retreating into the failed answers of the past. We cannot withdraw from the world. We cannot build walls and barriers to protect ourselves from everything. We are Americans. We are optimistic. We are inventive. We are creative. We are imaginative. We do not "muddle through", except when we are preparing to change the game...
We are the lucky beneficiaries of a grand experiment in participatory democracy. We are the first nation founded not by a tribe, a geographic boundary, race, religion or act of some government. We are founded on the philosophy that "all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator of certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
From that premise, we hold that all humans have a right to life, liberty and the freedom to pursue happiness... This makes us very much at odds with any nation or person that would deny or restrict life, liberty or freedom to anyone else. We have struggled with this history within our own boundaries. We have not won all the battles. We have too many who would take and even more who would surrender their freedoms for the politicians promise of the better life as a slave. Too many who would exchange the freedom to pursue happiness as we each define it for the promise of safety, security, jobs, health, housing, education and old age assistance... That way lies the trap of slave master, the tyrant, the return to serfdom
Thanks to Wikipedia for the history links...
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Hollywood Attacks
Until we are able to love ourselves, how can the world love us?
The new fall movies have been announced. Following in the steps of "Valley of the Wolves"
Eventually we'll be allowed to see, "The Kingdom" staring Jamie Foxx as leader of an FBI antiterrorist team;"Lions for Lambs" with Tom Cruise playing a Senator making foreign policy; "Charlie Wilson's War" with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts; "The Valley of Elah" starring Tommy Lee Jones; ." Battle for Haditha" by Nick Bloomfield and Grace is Gone" by James C. Strouse.
Hollywood is taking advantage of the lame-duck Presidency, the 2008 election cycle and the background noise about the war in Iraq to fill it's wallet. The movies will be released in the fall with all the noise and attention that a Hollywood movie generates. Then in the Spring we will get the Academy Awards, presented again by Jon Stewart. and in the fall, just in time for the actual voting we'll get the DVD releases.
Todd McCarthy observes in Variety:
Following the pattern of "Constant Campaigning" set by the Clinton White House, Hollywood has found that they can play politics and increase box office to everyone's benefit. Politicians need the attention and money that celebrities can bring. Hollywood needs the political stew to bring the stories that will guarantee box office success.
"Wag the Dog" was not about a President hiding a scandal behind an international incident. It was about Hollywood (the tail) wagging the dog (the President). George Bush has not been as good for Hollywood. He has committed no scandals. He has not tolerated any lapses among the administration. He has not given any basis for believing that he would go nuts and blow things up, get bogged down in minor indiscretions that would lead to an escalating series of violent acts to cover up, or leave his wife for another woman or intern. He is not a drunk, an addict, a predator. His wife is none of those things either. The Bushes is boring in the best possible way.
Hollywood cannot wait for him to leave. They want another Clinton White House. Scandals, screw-ups, firings, tax increases, inflation all mean better financial times for Hollywood. (Inflation will drive up the value of the assets collateralizing their loans and make it easier for people to pay more than $7-$9 dollars for a seat.) Threats of war with Russia or China will make good movie backdrops. Terrorist attacks will drive people to escapist fare. Steady headlines will mean steady box office. Hillary or Obama either one fits a preset Hollywood stereo type and will be just bad enough to generate 1,000 story and plot lines. They'll back both. But eventually Hillary will get their support because the Clinton's are a known factor. They are safe box office. Obama may not be the kind of greedy grasping weasel that Hollywood can trust to keep the spin machinery going.
What the world thinks of America will be driven by these movies. People will sit in darkened theaters watching our movies and believing they are reflection of real life and real Americans. They have been doing this for over 90 years. Michael Moore's "Fareheit 9/11" grossed over $222 million. Since then, the current administration has been -THE- target for profits.
Of course, another terrorist attack and the mood of the nation may swing back in support of the one who has kept us safe for over six years. There is also the possibility that the nation will become tired of being force fed all the anti-war propaganda.
That would fly in the face of the famous Mencken quote "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the American boobsousie". Our appetite for celebrity seemingly knows no limit. Our ability to concentrate and think about an issue can not gain attention for any period of time. Maybe we are as naive and foolish as H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain described us.
Hollywood wants a "sure thing" and is not beyond cooking the books, manipulating the politicians and public opinion to get ever more profits. I doubt we'll ever see a movie with that plot line... Even Joel Surnow, the director of "24", would not bite the hands that feed him so very well.
As Brett Harte wrote about the man who when asked why he had gone to gamble knowing the cardroom cheated. The man replied "It's the only game in town."
If the public decides that Hollywood is at war with them and begins to reject the movies it will mean bad things for Democrats. If the public decides that the Democrats are too shrill, too childish and incapable of being trusted with power, Hollywood could suffer. Large bets by both Hollywood and the Democrats. could tempt some weaker souls. Is it really the "Only Game in Town" ?
The new fall movies have been announced. Following in the steps of "Valley of the Wolves"
In the noble tradition of mainstream genre cinema, the script takes a real-life event as a starting point and then spins off into Loony-Tunes land. On July 4, 2003, U.S. forces surrounded the HQ of an undercover Turkish unit in Sulaymaniyah, northern Iraq, led its 11 members out with hoods on their heads, and had them deported, even though Turkey was officially an ally in the war. The so-called "Hood Event" was seen by Turks as a national humiliation.and the not yet released "Redacted" the private vanity flick funded entirely by billionaire internet dilettante Mark Cuban and directed by Brian de Palma
On the one hand, the basic format is peppered with some pure trash-exploitation elements, such as a strung-out U.S.-Jewish doctor (Busey) at Abu Ghraib who's trafficking inmates' organs to London, New York and Tel Aviv. Busey's few scenes -- and the whole tiny, undeveloped subplot -- are disposable.
We have coming first to our TV sets, some of our favorite stars on late night talk shows peddling the flicks, then the various entertainment/celebrity news magazines and cable channels, then the week before they are released we'll get the reviewers comments.From its title and intriguing opening (which shows words blacked out on a document by a censor's pen), the film seems determined to explore the repackaging of actual events by official and corporate media. In fact, it does nothing of the kind. From the first sequence, of Latino grunt Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz) recording his buddies on video camera for a docu ("Tell Me No Lies") he hopes will get him into film school, "Redacted" is much more about the process and techniques of filmmaking than media distortion or coverups.
The breezy Salazar's fellow soldiers in Alfa Company, Camp Carolina, Samarra, fall into the usual stereotypes: bookish Gabe Blix (Kel O'Neill), who spends his time reading John O'Hara's "Appointment in Samarra"; soldier-with-a-conscience McCoy, a lawyer (Rob Devaney); and racist tree-swingers B.B. Rush (Daniel Stewart Sherman) and Reno Flake (Patrick Carroll). Their leader, Master Sgt. James Sweet (Ty Jones), is a motormouth hardass on his third tour of duty
It's soon clear De Palma intends to construct the whole movie from "found footage" -- Salazar's vid diary, security camera tapes, an Arab TV channel, websites (both U.S. and Islamic fundamentalist) or other docus and testimonials.
Drama finally clicks into gear when a car driven by Iraqis doesn't stop at the checkpoint, and Flake and Rush open fire. Even when it turns out the car contains a pregnant woman rushing to get to a hospital (where she subsequently dies), the two soldiers remain unrepentant. In dialogue that sounds too theatrically scripted, Rush contends, "You can't afford remorse. You get remorse, you get weak; you get weak, you die."Violence escalates when the locals take revenge on one of the group, in a well-staged shock sequence. After a night raid on a private house, seen from the p.o.v. of an embedded journalist, and the subsequent media hoo-ha, Flake and Rush pressure the rest of their group to return on a private mission. Secretly helmet-cammed by Salazar, this ends in the horrific rape of a 15-year-girl and the shooting of her and her family.
Ironically, pic's most powerful section is its final 10 minutes, as McCoy's traumatic experience is reduced, back home, to a bar yarn that ends with friends cheering him as a hero. De Palma follows that with a photo montage of real-life Iraqi victims of violence, dubbed "Collateral Damage" -- a harrowing couple of minutes that seems, alas, to be a coda to a better picture than "Redacted."
Eventually we'll be allowed to see, "The Kingdom" staring Jamie Foxx as leader of an FBI antiterrorist team;"Lions for Lambs" with Tom Cruise playing a Senator making foreign policy; "Charlie Wilson's War" with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts; "The Valley of Elah" starring Tommy Lee Jones; ." Battle for Haditha" by Nick Bloomfield and Grace is Gone" by James C. Strouse.
Hollywood is taking advantage of the lame-duck Presidency, the 2008 election cycle and the background noise about the war in Iraq to fill it's wallet. The movies will be released in the fall with all the noise and attention that a Hollywood movie generates. Then in the Spring we will get the Academy Awards, presented again by Jon Stewart. and in the fall, just in time for the actual voting we'll get the DVD releases.
Todd McCarthy observes in Variety:
Just as, during World War II, Hollywood pictures had a unified aim, to rally viewers around the war effort and present an image of the Allies prevailing, today they are also identical in nature, except in the opposite direction.
The first problem is that fictional films take at least a year, sometimes two, to create and disseminate, and thus the attitudes they reflect can be a bit stale at a time when events move so quickly (even if, alas, the war is still very much with us).
When someone like Richard Gere spouts off about Bush at the Venice Film Festival, as he just did, how much more tired can you get? Being anti-Bush simply isn't enough, as this point; there's an election coming up, a future to decide, complex issues to sort out, and Bush won't be part of the equation.
Where current events are concerned, documentaries are far better equipped to tackle them than are fictional features. The film of the year for me in many ways is "No End in Sight," a profoundly analytical, meticulously methodical and rewardingly specific study of where the U.S. went wrong once it achieved military victory in Iraq; it was the film I'd long been waiting for after the emotional hysteria of "Fahrenheit 9/11" and its ilk.
Now that the vast majority of Americans have misgivings, at the very least, about the Iraq adventure, producers are betting that mainstream audiences may be ready, up to a point, for the homefront stories of mangled, maimed and disturbed vets and their families. But the overt polemics of most of the Iraq films thus far, such as those expressed so predictably at the end of "In the Valley of Elah," seem calculated to once again stir up the Cindy Sheehan crowd, to preach to the converted of four years ago. Move on, indeed. (Emphasis added)
Following the pattern of "Constant Campaigning" set by the Clinton White House, Hollywood has found that they can play politics and increase box office to everyone's benefit. Politicians need the attention and money that celebrities can bring. Hollywood needs the political stew to bring the stories that will guarantee box office success.
"Wag the Dog" was not about a President hiding a scandal behind an international incident. It was about Hollywood (the tail) wagging the dog (the President). George Bush has not been as good for Hollywood. He has committed no scandals. He has not tolerated any lapses among the administration. He has not given any basis for believing that he would go nuts and blow things up, get bogged down in minor indiscretions that would lead to an escalating series of violent acts to cover up, or leave his wife for another woman or intern. He is not a drunk, an addict, a predator. His wife is none of those things either. The Bushes is boring in the best possible way.
Hollywood cannot wait for him to leave. They want another Clinton White House. Scandals, screw-ups, firings, tax increases, inflation all mean better financial times for Hollywood. (Inflation will drive up the value of the assets collateralizing their loans and make it easier for people to pay more than $7-$9 dollars for a seat.) Threats of war with Russia or China will make good movie backdrops. Terrorist attacks will drive people to escapist fare. Steady headlines will mean steady box office. Hillary or Obama either one fits a preset Hollywood stereo type and will be just bad enough to generate 1,000 story and plot lines. They'll back both. But eventually Hillary will get their support because the Clinton's are a known factor. They are safe box office. Obama may not be the kind of greedy grasping weasel that Hollywood can trust to keep the spin machinery going.
What the world thinks of America will be driven by these movies. People will sit in darkened theaters watching our movies and believing they are reflection of real life and real Americans. They have been doing this for over 90 years. Michael Moore's "Fareheit 9/11" grossed over $222 million. Since then, the current administration has been -THE- target for profits.
Of course, another terrorist attack and the mood of the nation may swing back in support of the one who has kept us safe for over six years. There is also the possibility that the nation will become tired of being force fed all the anti-war propaganda.
That would fly in the face of the famous Mencken quote "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the American boobsousie". Our appetite for celebrity seemingly knows no limit. Our ability to concentrate and think about an issue can not gain attention for any period of time. Maybe we are as naive and foolish as H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain described us.
Hollywood wants a "sure thing" and is not beyond cooking the books, manipulating the politicians and public opinion to get ever more profits. I doubt we'll ever see a movie with that plot line... Even Joel Surnow, the director of "24", would not bite the hands that feed him so very well.
As Brett Harte wrote about the man who when asked why he had gone to gamble knowing the cardroom cheated. The man replied "It's the only game in town."
If the public decides that Hollywood is at war with them and begins to reject the movies it will mean bad things for Democrats. If the public decides that the Democrats are too shrill, too childish and incapable of being trusted with power, Hollywood could suffer. Large bets by both Hollywood and the Democrats. could tempt some weaker souls. Is it really the "Only Game in Town" ?
Monday, July 2, 2007
Political Rant
Sunday's Washington Post has a couple of interesting tid-bits...
The first is about Hillary's Campaign working to keep Bill from stealing the spotlight from her... Its nice to see that she is being hidden again...in the spotlight, in the glare of bright lights...the focus will be on him talking about her... SO...will it be about her or about him? ... Every time he appears he diminishes her viability as a President. He sucks the air out of the room and she shrinks. She does not have the ability to stand alongside him as an equal...
Rabble can be blown by the strongest winds from one side to the other... No agendas necessary. No alternatives, no competing plans, visions or even ideas.... Just straight out demagoguing lowest denominator rabble rousing-? We will get what we deserve... Who can command the most media? Truth matters not. Lies matter not.... Appearance IS reality.... Oh, wait where have we heard that before?
Drudge reports that the NYTimes will do a hit piece on Fred Thompson's sons in the Monday paper. They will supposedly detail how the children have made lots and lots of money as lobbysists since Dear-Old-Dad Fred was in and out of Congress.... Since he has been out of office for a number of years, why is what they do relevant-? Oh-Wait..... He's a Republican.... And he's NOT yet running for office.... I wonder what other children of actors the NYTimes will profile? or what other children of politicians?... Where is Chelsea Clinton-? How is she doing these days? Appearance IS reality...give the appearance of corruption and its better than actual crimes.... It can be denied and denied for months. A real crime will only be a blip one-week headline... Look at what Congress has done with the non-crime of DoJ prosecutors. Look at the Valeria Plame debacle... Much ado about nothing... A real crime would have villains, spoils, noble causes, heroes, damsels in distress... The appearance of a crime need not have any of these elements...
The Telegraph of London reports that a study shows bbies lying from the age of six months...
The first is about Hillary's Campaign working to keep Bill from stealing the spotlight from her... Its nice to see that she is being hidden again...in the spotlight, in the glare of bright lights...the focus will be on him talking about her... SO...will it be about her or about him? ... Every time he appears he diminishes her viability as a President. He sucks the air out of the room and she shrinks. She does not have the ability to stand alongside him as an equal...
When Bill Clinton joins his wife for their first major joint campaign appearances tomorrow, the former president is planning to play the role of "biographer in chief," telling "the story" of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton -- and directing some of his high-wattage charisma toward her.
But can the former president keep from stealing the show?
Already, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has questioned whether the former first lady can claim experience in the Oval Office based on her husband's terms in office. Highly popular among Democratic loyalists, the former president has a tendency to overshadow his wife in public.And, as always, introducing the good Clinton in public hazards reminding voters of the bad, particularly his affair with a White House intern and subsequent impeachment by the House nearly a decade ago
How will she avoid the comparison of Bill Clinton's successes being the result of a Republican Congress that wanted to accomplish something and her being a member of a Democratic Congress stonewalling a Republican President... Do the Democrats even have an agenda? Does Hillary have anything to offer except her stealth takeover of the US medical industry.. (Expanding the SCHIP program to include all kids plus a few adults, + expanding Medicare by dropping the minimum age to 55 + expanding VA care to all who served whether service related or no... with the majority of the country covered by one federal freebie or another, it'll be prudent to consolidate the programs into one big Canadian rationing system... except for the rich...)
The Washington Post had an article examining the role that independents will play in the 2008 elections...
Unless they sit on their hands...... Which would throw the contest to the fanatics of either side... Will the "Kos-Kidz" out number the "Right Wing rabid radio Nut Jobs"-? What role will the Christian Coalition play?..... Unless the independents get off their collective asses they will face choices they won't like. Quite simply; If the party doesn't know who you are, they won;t run anyone who voices your concerns... Being an independent is being UNINVOLVED... why should either party run a candidate that may/may-not appeal to an undifferentiated and uninvolved mass-? The people who voted Democrat last time did so because of the war in Iraq... But what do they know of the war?... What was the Democrat platform? What was the alternative vision offered?....... five types of independents revealed in a new, in-depth study by The Washington Post in collaboration with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University.
The study is a comprehensive examination of a broad segment of the electorate -- about three in 10 voters call themselves independents -- that is poised to play the role of political power broker in 2008. Independents split their votes between President Bush and Kerry in 2004 but shifted decisively to the Democrats in 2006, providing critical support in the Democratic takeover of the House and the Senate.
The new survey underscores the Republican Party's problems heading into 2008. Fueled by dissatisfaction with the president and opposition to the Iraq war, independents continue to lean heavily toward the Democrats. Two-thirds said the war is not worth fighting, three in five said they think the United States cannot stabilize Iraq, and three in five believed that the campaign against terrorism can succeed without a clear victory in Iraq.
Seventy-seven percent of independents said they would seriously consider an independent presidential candidate, and a majority said they would consider supporting Bloomberg, whose recent shift in party registration from Republican to unaffiliated stoked speculation about a possible run in 2008.
Rabble can be blown by the strongest winds from one side to the other... No agendas necessary. No alternatives, no competing plans, visions or even ideas.... Just straight out demagoguing lowest denominator rabble rousing-? We will get what we deserve... Who can command the most media? Truth matters not. Lies matter not.... Appearance IS reality.... Oh, wait where have we heard that before?
Drudge reports that the NYTimes will do a hit piece on Fred Thompson's sons in the Monday paper. They will supposedly detail how the children have made lots and lots of money as lobbysists since Dear-Old-Dad Fred was in and out of Congress.... Since he has been out of office for a number of years, why is what they do relevant-? Oh-Wait..... He's a Republican.... And he's NOT yet running for office.... I wonder what other children of actors the NYTimes will profile? or what other children of politicians?... Where is Chelsea Clinton-? How is she doing these days? Appearance IS reality...give the appearance of corruption and its better than actual crimes.... It can be denied and denied for months. A real crime will only be a blip one-week headline... Look at what Congress has done with the non-crime of DoJ prosecutors. Look at the Valeria Plame debacle... Much ado about nothing... A real crime would have villains, spoils, noble causes, heroes, damsels in distress... The appearance of a crime need not have any of these elements...
The Telegraph of London reports that a study shows bbies lying from the age of six months...
Are we all natural born politicians.... ?Behavioural experts have found that infants begin to lie from as young as six months. Simple fibs help to train them for more complex deceptions in later life.
Until now, psychologists had thought the developing brains were not capable of the difficult art of lying until four years old.
Infants quickly learnt that using tactics such as fake crying and pretend laughing could win them attention. By eight months, more difficult deceptions became apparent, such as concealing forbidden activities or trying to distract parents' attention.
By the age of two, toddlers could use far more devious techniques, such as bluffing when threatened with a punishment.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Free Speech, Free Music, Free People
Fairness Means Fair For Who?
Whatever Happened To Markets?
Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt have noted the following bit of fluffy barking from Senator John Kerry (He served in Vietnam) talking about the "fairness doctrine"....
Hewitt points out that when you follow Trent Lott by over a week you're not exactly cutting edge, on the cusp, leading any thing... Kerry is no fool. He knows it's much safer to lead from the middle of the pack. Heck, even Diane Feinstein has come out in favor of putting the leash on media in the name of fairness... and to pull Talk Radio Leftward but not Broadcast TV Rightward. (Does that mean she has finished her Bill of Censure for Bill Clinton? She has been working on that for almost 10 years... Probably not.)
The question I have to ask and probably answer: "Where does the Internet Fit?" Is it written or spoken or video?... Yes. Its all three.
Is there a media of journalists, publishers and reporters or is it just the mindless gaggle of the bleating crowd?...(Do gaggles bleat? Probably not. This is a mixed metaphor)
Yes again. How will the politicians control it and us...or us and it?
Short answer: Royalties.
Yesterday was national internet radio silence day. Did you notice? You should have. Like blogging, reporting, citing and writing...it's something we all do. Well, its a part of what we're doing in trying to get our arms around something that is growing and evolving and changing all at the same time.
If radio and video can be restricted in its digital format, why not the written word? Who owns the medium, the ideas, the copyright? If the stream is getting paid by the advertising dollars that appear along side, on top of, in the middle and as a tag-a-long, then how is the revenue shared?
Now we are getting somewhere... Politicians understand money and regulations... They also understand how they can pick winners and punish losers. They like to choose which is which and who is whom. They prefer to work with the large and established. Its just easier (less work) to manage big bunches of anything than it is to respond to thousands and thousands of small units. Look at how they cozy up to the unions for the money and the appearance of doing good for the many even as they sell the workers into union slavery. Look at the family farmer... Nothing got done until the family farmer was replaced by major agri-business and could donate millions as well as sell billions in crops around the world... Now Congress must save the farmer...and distribute lots of goodies to the biggest of the big.
Look at what has happened to the broadcast medium since Congress let corporations own multiple outlets in a single market... "Robot radio" arrived with drop-in news and weather phoned in from a distant location to an empty building with a radio mast. One DJ spinning in circles being a personality in multiple cities all at the same time... Canned formats sliced and diced by consultants and marketing wizards so that the audience gets bored and wanders off... Bland-bland-bland so that NOBODY gets offended. No more regional hits, no regional personalities, no regional tastes, flavors or interests... Why else would the numbers be dropping at every measure? Why would the ad dollars be moving to the internet as a bigger portion of their ad buy...? One Size-Fits-Most just isn't very satisfying.
Jason Fry at the WSJ began covering this story some years ago. It got hotter, more urgent and more interesting in early March when
Last week the Copyright Royalty Board released a ruling proposing new performance royalty rates for online radio stations. An online radio station would pay .08 cent per song per listener for 2006 (the rates are retroactive), .11 cent in 2007, .14 in 2008, .18 cents in 2009 and .19 cents in 2010. Seems like little enough, but it adds up -- and this small change is a big change for small Webcasters. Under a deal brokered in 2002, small Webcasters had met their royalty obligations by paying artists and record labels 12% of revenue, but the new rules would do away with that exemption.
... arguing that even well-run Net-radio stations would see performance royalties eat up all their annual revenue -- and that's before the need to pay royalties to composers. (Performance royalties and composer royalties are separate -- the former are paid to artists and record labels, while the latter are paid to songwriters and music publishers.) "Terrestrial" broadcasters who stream radio would also pay more, and public-radio stations would no longer be able to pay a flat fee, as agreed to in a previous deal."Left unchanged, these rates will end Internet radio," Pandora.com co-founder Tim Westergren warned on Pandora's blog6. (Pandora, a combination streaming-audio service and recommendation engine, could be particularly hard hit by the new rules: As a multichannel operator, the service would have to pay $500 per channel that has a certain number of listener hours. Pandora has 6 million users, each of whom can have up to 100 channels. You can see why the company is worried.)
... it makes more sense to view what's happening now as hardball negotiating than as an endgame. Besides the possibility of striking a deal, Webcasters can appeal, and Internet-radio fans are signing petitions and writing letters to their representatives. It isn't clear if Congress will step in before the appeals process runs its course, but lawmakers have taken notice: Rep. Edward Markey (D., Mass.) said in a hearing last week that "this represents a body blow to many nascent Internet radio broadcasters and further exacerbates the marketplace imbalance between what different industries pay." Then there's the possibility that the furor could spill over to the proposed merger between Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio. Those companies have argued they should be allowed to team up, in part, because satellite radio competes with Internet radio.
... Of course not -- because that makes no sense whatsoever. Treating the two as different is missing the radio forest for the Internet trees; in a sane world, lawmakers would treat radio as radio, regardless of how it's delivered. For the recording industry's disingenuous analysis of the law governing radio and royalties, read our 2002 Real Time7, which preserves part of a Recording Industry Association of America FAQ that's been taken down. (The recording industry maintains that Net-radio operators aren't in danger of going under this time either, thanks to steadily increasing advertising revenues.)
All this aside, I've become a fan of Pandora since writing about it here8, and perhaps my recent experience with the service will serve as a warning to the recording industry of what it could be losing.
Pandora has become one of the most-important ways I find new music. It's a very simple service: You visit its Web site and tell it a handful of songs and/or artists you like, and it generates a streaming-audio channel for you, which you then refine by telling it you like a song, dislike it or are tired of it. If I like a song, I give it a thumbs-up, which simultaneously prompts Pandora to change my music channel to take that into account and bookmarks the song for later. (AJ- I, too, am a big fan of Pandora. It is so much better than much of the other music feeds. It is even better than broadcast radio over the internet i.e. www.kfog.com and www.kksf.com from the Bay Area.)
... that virtuous circle sure sounds like the old "radio is free promotion" bargain underlying traditional radio -- for which performance royalties have never been paid in the U.S. Yes, there are technological differences between terrestrial radio and Net radio, notably the ability to guide what's played, skip songs and keep track of what I like. But those differences seem to work to the advantage of artists and record labels: With Net radio, I'm more likely to hear songs I like, bookmark them and buy them. One listener's experiences aren't necessarily grounds for extrapolation, but this bargain seems like a pretty good deal for the recording industry, one it ought to be careful about altering.
That was in March. In mid-June the WSJ had the following story about internet radio racing to achieve equal footing with broadcast radio.
Internet radio, which can draw on vast troves of music from around the world and customize them to a listener's personal tastes, is growing. While ratings for traditional radio broadcasters have been lackluster, Internet radio listenership in the U.S. has risen to 29 million a week, up from 20 million three years ago, according to Arbitron Inc. and Edison Media Research.Which brings us up to yesterday.... Again from the WSJ
... the nascent industry has yet to capture the biggest prize -- portability. Some halfway solutions exist, such as music devices that allow people to stream Internet radio on speakers, or software that allows technology buffs to access Internet radio from their phones. But results can be glitchy, expensive and technically against the terms of contracts with mobile-phone service providers. Now, start-ups and giants are jockeying for position in mobile Internet radio, in a race that could rearrange the business model of music and broadcasting.
Most major radio companies are moving aggressively onto the Web and other platforms such as mobile phones. Web sites from radio giant Clear Channel Communications Inc. now account for some 20% of all online radio listening, according to J.P. Morgan.The broadcasters say listeners want to connect with the hosts and formats they know, whether it be online or over the airwaves. "That's a big distinction that we have, marquee value and brand name," says Dan Mason, head of CBS Radio. (AJ -If That is so, why does big name-big corporate radio sound so damn bland and boring? Why play the same crap in every market around the country-?)
But portability could make Internet radio operators a greater threat. Internet radio "will sweep into the car, and the traditional station is going to have to think about how they reprogram to compete," says Jonathan Jacoby, an analyst at Banc of America Securities.
Companies like Sprint Nextel are vowing to improve WiFi's reach down the road. Until they are closer to that goal, however, many Internet radio providers are skipping the car for now, focusing instead on other portable devices.That's Pandora's strategy. The company, known for a technology that tries to learn the musical qualities a listener likes and serve up songs accordingly, is working with Sprint Nextel to deliver its service to users of high-speed data phones for $2.99 a month. Tim Westergren, the company's co-founder and chief strategy officer, notes the phone will already play Pandora through a car stereo using an adaptor, and adds he also envisions a future where Pandora is integrated alongside the car radio tuner.
Slacker says it has another advantage. Most Internet radio operators are currently facing a major increase in the royalty rate they owe to artists whose songs they play, an increase so dramatic that royalty rates in some cases eclipse the company's total revenues. Most operators, including Pandora, are complaining that the higher costs may put them out of business. They're busy lobbying Congress to change the recent rate increase, imposed by the Copyright Royalty Board, a Washington, D.C.-based panel of judges.
But Slacker says it already has a higher royalty rate built into its business model. Rather than paying statutory license fees, Slacker cut deals directly with record labels. Like satellite-radio broadcasters, Slacker will turn over an undisclosed percentage of revenue in royalties, rather than paying per song and per play.
Web broadcasters are planning to turn off their music for the day to protest higher statutory royalty rates payable to artists. Some of the largest services, including Live 365 Inc., Pandora Media Inc. and Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo Music, are participating in the blackout, which organizer Kurt Hanson of online-radio service AccuRadio has dubbed "Day of Silence."
any online broadcasters say the new rate structure -- which will cost some of them several times their current total revenue -- will put them out of business. The new rates, announced in March, start at 0.08 cent per song, per play, per listener, retroactively starting in 2006, and rise to 0.19 cent by 2010. The fees start coming due July 15.The industry held a day of silence on May 1, 2002, shortly after rates of 0.14 cents per song, per play, per listener were proposed. In June 2002, the Librarian of Congress cut those rates in half, but even that rate was prohibitive for some of the smaller broadcasters. Later that year, Congress passed a law allowing small Webcasters to pay a percentage of their revenue in royalties instead of the per-song rate.
This time, the Librarian of Congress has no authority over the rates, which were set by a panel of federal judges. Legislation has been introduced in Congress that would cut the rates.
Instead of paying the statutory rates, the online companies have the option of negotiating rates separately with each artist or label, but that can be a very time-consuming process.
So What happens on July 15.........?
I hate being manipulated by big time-boring radio or controlled for-my-own-good by Congress. I enjoy the new artists. I hate the lost years when all I heard as I traveled about was the same crapola. I like being able to find new music. I like having new artists and new songs presented to me on my time...
What do Sirius and XM satellite offer? Same stuff without advertising... If I knew what I wanted, it wouldn't be new... would it? That leaves me listening to their format, their choices, their selected music and entertainment... I may as well have Rhapsody or one of the cable providers music channels... You have to know the stuff before you know if you like it. You get no vote...just a big portion served luke-cold to eat or toss out...
What does this have to do with "Free Speech" and the "Fairness Doctrine".... Everything.
What drives the markets? The audience... Who is the audience? Who decides what is fair? The audience..... Right Wing Nut Job talk Radio is entertaining. They laugh at themselves and at the absurdity of their political opponents positions.
Their political polar opposites have recently lost several hundred million dollars growing more strident and more abusive in their personal attacks. They attack any who oppose them politically. They attack any who challenge them on-the-air, in blogs or in their policies. It is a personal, ad hominem, soul destroying assault that leaves no possible room to admit error without admitting one is unworthy of being classified as human being, American.... They lose money because outrageous assaults are only funny for a brief period as parody. When it serious; it's no longer entertaining. I don't want to listen or watch... Neither do many more individuals who make up an audience....
To solve this problem... dinosaurs -of both parties- have decided that the government must regulate what we shall find entertaining. If we dislike the crapola from the left, we must have it sprinkled in equal measure across our regular-rabid-right-wing-nut-job breakfast cereal....
They have also decided that we must-must-must listen to big name-big brand -boring radio and hear only those audiences that play what they and their focus groups have decided is good for us....
BULL..... Move the servers offshore...... bring Pirate Radio back......Bring us WiFi Pirates...... Sign the individual artists... Let us buy direct....by-pass the big name boring recording industry and theyr big brand name outlets... Let the audience (Can we call us a market now?) decide..
We're not through with this internet revolution -YET-!!!
MORE ON NET RADIO
Wikiedia offers the following additional info:2007 Copyright Royalty Changes
In 2007, the United States Copyright Royalty Board proposed a rate increase in the royalties payable to performers of recorded works broadcast on the internet. This decision, retroactive to 2006, may undermine the business models of many Internet radio stations.
According to a report released in March 2007, under the newly proposed rates, annual fees for all station owners are projected to reach $2.3 billion by 2008. This figure is more than four times that for terrestrial radio broadcasters who, due to terms set forth in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, are exempt from the additional royalties imposed on digital broadcasting outlets, which compensate the performers of recorded works. Both terrestrial radio and Internet/digital radio broadcasters are responsible for royalties collected by performance rights organizations (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC) on behalf of the composers of recorded works.
Many performers of recorded works have voiced their opposition to the Copyright Royalty Board's rate increases, fearing that the rate increases would cripple the internet broadcasters that have given them valuable exposure.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
"Money Is The Mothers Milk of Politics"
I think that quote belongs to Tip O'Neil The famous Boston politician.
Roiling, boiling with envy, lust and righteous indignation the Democrats have pursued their White Whale of "the Rich" for several decades. In their pursuit of this legendary creature, they have tied the Middle Class in rules, regulations and wrapped them in snares of iron as they have taxed them most heavily... The FAMOUS ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX (AMT) was set as a trap for 21 millionaires who used the standard loop holes of state taxes, home mortgage and child exemptions to pay zero federal taxes in a single year. THIS OUTRAGE could not continue. Congress passed the AMT and next year some 20+ million taxpayers will find themselves facing this extra assault upon their earnings.
In the same spirit, Congress read about the large reward coming to Stephen Schwatrzman, CEO of Blackston Group, and like Ahab felt that old familiar yearning...
Roiling, boiling with envy, lust and righteous indignation the Democrats have pursued their White Whale of "the Rich" for several decades. In their pursuit of this legendary creature, they have tied the Middle Class in rules, regulations and wrapped them in snares of iron as they have taxed them most heavily... The FAMOUS ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX (AMT) was set as a trap for 21 millionaires who used the standard loop holes of state taxes, home mortgage and child exemptions to pay zero federal taxes in a single year. THIS OUTRAGE could not continue. Congress passed the AMT and next year some 20+ million taxpayers will find themselves facing this extra assault upon their earnings.
In the same spirit, Congress read about the large reward coming to Stephen Schwatrzman, CEO of Blackston Group, and like Ahab felt that old familiar yearning...
To compound the question is the combination of LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY and the 2008 POLITICAL SEASON... Democrats lust to take control of the presidency and both the House and the Senate...
... because the indiscriminate flood of capital that makes Mr. Schwarzman's riches possible shows no signs of abating. And stunning, because, at 15% for most of his earnings, Mr. Schwarzman's tax rate could be less than his chauffeur's.
Should Mr. Schwarzman's firm be allowed to sell shares to the public without paying corporate tax? Tax experts tell me that to do this, Blackstone -- and Fortress before it -- are taking advantage of a provision in the tax law that permits partnerships to be publicly traded, but only if they engage primarily in "passive" activities, a sop given two decades ago to oil, gas and timber partnerships. Blackstone claims it qualifies because its investments in the companies it buys are largely passive.
... as a matter of public policy, it's fair to ask: Why should the tax laws discourage private-equity firms from going public? To do so seems to favor fat cats and big pension funds at the expense of ordinary investors.The dilemma for Congress is that private-equity firms aren't the only ones caught in this maze. All sorts of partnerships, including real-estate and oil and gas, rely on the same tax trick. Changing the rules makes sense. But its effects would reach far beyond private equity.
If all this seems hopelessly complex, there is a simpler solution -- abolish the lower tax rate on capital gains altogether. That would eliminate the carried-interest problem, ensure that even the fattest of cats pay their fair share, and also eliminate the lion's share of complexity in today's tax code. With the world awash in investment capital, legislators could argue, there's no need for a tax incentive to encourage more.
Hedge funds spent $1.3 million lobbying Congress last year, a 46 percent increase from 2002, according to numbers compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics and Absolute Return magazine, an industry trade publication that tracks the largest hedge funds twice yearly. Hedge fund managers are also giving more to political campaigns; executives at the nation's 30 biggest funds increased their political donations by nearly 17 percent to $14.7 million between 2004 and 2006, the records show.
These amounts are pocket change for an industry managing more than $1.4 trillion in assets. But giving Washington any money at all reflects a major attitude adjustment in the hedge fund world. Traditionally, the industry's government relations strategy was to simply stay home.Avoidance worked well for many years. Since the first hedge fund was founded in 1949, government regulators have largely left the funds alone. Hedge funds raise money privately and cater to the super-wealthy: Getting into a fund has long required $1 million. Hedge fund managers argued that sophisticated investors didn't need the additional protection of securities laws.
Regulators started paying closer attention to the funds in 2003, when the number and impact of hedge funds increased. The SEC expressed interest in making the funds more transparent by requiring them to register with the agency. Most people in the industry opposed this; in fact, they were reluctant to turn over any information at all. However, their opinions weren't backed with much financial clout; in 2003 and 2004, the Managed Funds Association, the industry's largest trade group, spent just $142,000 on lobbying.
In December 2004, the SEC passed a rule requiring large U.S. hedge funds to register with the agency. The rule not only forced the funds to turn over basic information but allowed the agency to conduct audits. The experience taught hedge fund managers a lesson about the power of politics. They could ignore Washington, but Washington had no intention of ignoring them.
Senators Schumer and Hillary Clinton plus Mayor Bloomberg now face a quandary. Do they ignore the issue and continue to take the donations from this group of very rich individuals or do they follow the bloodlust of their most confiscatory party members... Votes vs Dollars... Which has the greater appeal? How to get both without sending the Fat Cats over to the Republican Side of the universe?
Senators Schumer and Clinton are on the fence over a bill that would force private equity firms and hedge funds to pay higher tax rates if they go public.
The bipartisan proposal, offered last week by the leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, could be prickly for the New York senators, who have pushed for increased fairness in the tax code while also advocating for growth in the financial sector, which has long been crucial to the state's economy. Opposition to the bill could also put them at odds with the dean of the state's congressional delegation, Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem, who has publicly praised the proposal.
The proposals have drawn opposition from the top three declared Republican candidates for president. "I don't like raising taxes at all," Mayor Giuliani said yesterday in an appearance on CNBC, after being asked about Mr. Rubin's statement. He said booming Wall Street bonuses had contributed to surpluses for the city, and he pushed for lower taxes on capital gains as a way to encourage investment.
Aides to Senator McCain of Arizona and a former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, have also indicated their opposition.Asked about the issue yesterday during an appearance in California, Mayor Bloomberg did not take a position, saying policymakers should look back to the writing of the tax code to determine whether the intended public purpose of certain provisions is currently being served.
The Senate proposal is seen by some as targeting Mr. Schwarzman, whose lifestyle has been fodder for the press. At a dinner held in his honor last night at the New York Public Library, several of his high-powered friends stood by him. Martha Stewart called him a "very powerful and popular figure," while a vice chairman at J.P. Morgan Chase, James Lee, told The New York Sun that Mr. Schwarzman was "building the Wall Street of the future."
Into this fevered swamp the real estate and venture capital industries see themselves being dragged and may well be hurt by accident...
Senate Finance Committee staffers are looking into reclassifying the so-called “carried interest” that alternative-investment fund managers earn from capital income to ordinary income, effectively boosting their tax rates from 15 percent to as high as 35 percent.
he real estate and venture capital industries make heavy use of the same limited partnership structure used by such funds.
“They’re concerned with highly compensated hedge fund and private equity managers. Our concern is that changes would affect not only those managers but the smallest of real estate deals,” said Steve Renna, counsel to the Real Estate Roundtable.
A spokeswoman for the National Venture Capital Association, Emily Mendell, said it would be “ironic” and “terribly, terribly unfortunate” if venture capital were swept in under the change because of the role it plays in the economy
“It is difficult to justify a 15 percent tax rate for the performance of services in one set of circumstances — private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, high-dollar real estate — while at the same time a John Deere or Mary Kay salesperson who gets a bonus for performing their job well will be taxed at a higher rate of often 33 percent to 35 percent,” the aide told The Hill yesterday.
In a limited partnership, the general manager typically takes a 20 percent cut of the profits from the investment, called the “carried interest” or the “carry,” in addition to a fixed fee that usually amounts to two percent of the funds invested.
In theory, the carry is taxed at the lower rate for capital income because, unlike a salary, it is not guaranteed and often isn’t paid in the year that the manager performs services to the partnership.
But critics argue that the treatment is a loophole that allows fund managers to escape taxation at the same ordinary income rates paid by other professionals.
...the lobbyists emphasize the importance of encouraging industries vital to the economy. In 2005, companies that received venture capital some time in the last 35 years accounted for 10 million U.S. jobs and $2.1 trillion in revenues, Mendell said.
Meanwhile, the quest for revenue due to the reinstatement of pay-go rule is also exacerbating the lobbyists’ concerns. “They’ve got to get the money somewhere under pay-go rules. Anything being discussed you have to take extremely seriously,” Renna said.
No...
Congress made the rule, it's not a law. Congress can break its own rules...and often does (Shall we discuss spending Ear Marks and 2006 election campaign promises contrasted with the recent rules changes ?)
The pay-go rule is a recipe for tax increases... It is supposed to limit the growth of government but the politicians cannot help themselves. Giving away other people's money is hard and important work. If they could not take from the middle and give to the rich and poor what would they do all year long?
Besides, Hunting Whales is fun. Playing Robin Hood is fun. Why else spend over a million dollars for a job that pays less than $200,000?
Politics -Democrats
Yep. its June....
It's hot outside and the TV season is over... America's longest running soap opera and faux news events continue to roil on. Propelled by their own steam the candidates are huffing and puffing to keep themselves and their campaigns inflated as they struggle towards the January and February 2008 primaries... After the primaries, there will be just NINE short months until anyone can actually vote.... Beginning February 6, 2008 there will be only 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 months with little new to learn that we did not learn in 2007... NINE months of watching those voted "most likely-like able-liked" by the EXTREMISTS of their party will try to convince the large bloc of unregistered, unaffiliated, turned-off, apathetic INDEPENDENT voters that they really didn't mean all those extreme things they said...
HILLARY UPDATE
The continuing weird news is that Hillary is lagging in Iowa and so she has pulled Bill out to campaign for her during the month of July... Disingenuously, the press release says that this will be his first appearance on her behalf... What was the visit and march in Selma? What was the visit in South Carolina? Rumors abound that he has his own airplane and own campaign staff. he is making calls on her behalf to raise money and garner support.... When will this end? When will SHE run on her own two left feet?.... Will she call him to help-save-her when she is President?... Everytime HE appears she diminishes in stature... "Sisters are doing it for themselves?"... Sure doesn't look that way..
Mayor Mikey = President Mikey
It sure looks like he is heading in that direction... The dots to be connected... Tonight's news says he has left the Republican Party... Shock-! Who else can we get him to take along? He was a Republican In Name Only (RINO) and only swept in behind Giuliani because the Democrats were so feeble and untrustworthy....
It's hot outside and the TV season is over... America's longest running soap opera and faux news events continue to roil on. Propelled by their own steam the candidates are huffing and puffing to keep themselves and their campaigns inflated as they struggle towards the January and February 2008 primaries... After the primaries, there will be just NINE short months until anyone can actually vote.... Beginning February 6, 2008 there will be only 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 months with little new to learn that we did not learn in 2007... NINE months of watching those voted "most likely-like able-liked" by the EXTREMISTS of their party will try to convince the large bloc of unregistered, unaffiliated, turned-off, apathetic INDEPENDENT voters that they really didn't mean all those extreme things they said...
HILLARY UPDATE
The continuing weird news is that Hillary is lagging in Iowa and so she has pulled Bill out to campaign for her during the month of July... Disingenuously, the press release says that this will be his first appearance on her behalf... What was the visit and march in Selma? What was the visit in South Carolina? Rumors abound that he has his own airplane and own campaign staff. he is making calls on her behalf to raise money and garner support.... When will this end? When will SHE run on her own two left feet?.... Will she call him to help-save-her when she is President?... Everytime HE appears she diminishes in stature... "Sisters are doing it for themselves?"... Sure doesn't look that way..
Mayor Mikey = President Mikey
It sure looks like he is heading in that direction... The dots to be connected... Tonight's news says he has left the Republican Party... Shock-! Who else can we get him to take along? He was a Republican In Name Only (RINO) and only swept in behind Giuliani because the Democrats were so feeble and untrustworthy....
Mr. Bloomberg sent out a statement at 6:05 p.m. declaring that he is leaving the Republican Party and has filed papers with the New York City Board of Elections to register as an "unaffiliated voter."BULL GARBAGE... we have a system that gridlocks by design. IT stops fanatics and visionaries from running roughshod over the opposition. Achieving things that are REALLY IMPORTANT gets done when the people (the ones who decide whats important) finally change the faces until they get the right combination for agreement. His speech from Los Angeles, California earlier in the day...
"Although my plans for the future haven't changed, I believe this brings my affiliation into alignment with how I have led and will continue to lead our City," the statement said.
Mr. Bloomberg, a life-long Democrat who became a Republican to run for mayor in 2001, is a billionaire who would not have to hold a single fund-raiser if he decides to throw his hat in the ring.
..."We have achiever real progress by overcoming the partisanship that too often puts narrow interests about the common good. As a political independent I will continue to work with those in all political parties to find common ground, to put partisanship aside and to achieve real solutions to the challenges we face."
"Any successful elected executive knows that real results are more important than the partisan battles and that good ideas should take precedence over rigid adherence to any particular political ideology."
Bloomberg's office in New York issued his statement today while the mayor was in California appearing at a number of events, including a conference in Los Angeles called "Ceasefire! Bridging the Political Divide."I think that has the smell of mendacity.... A self-made billionaire does not make consensus. He commands and people obey. Being a politician is a very different world from being a businessman... Being a mayor, even of a large cityHe said in his speech that partisanship was stopping the federal government from taking on big goals.
"When you go to Washington now, you can feel a sense of fear in the air -- the fear to do anything, or say anything, that might affect the polls, or give the other side an advantage, or offend a special interest. This is paralyzing our government -- and it's leading our elected officials to push all the big, long-term problems onto future generations: health care, Social Security, budget deficits, global warming, immigration, you name it. Their inaction and partisan gridlock are destroying our relationships and reputation around the world. "