Sidney^®

(Article first published as Democrats to Obama: Stay Out of Town on Blogcritics.) As the clock ticks down to zero hour for the Congressional Super Committee, President Obama is on a nine-day relationship-building junket to Asia. Leaving town when Congress is struggling with issues crucial to the American economy has become Obama’s stock-in-trade. Prior to the Asia tour, he spent weeks on the campaign trail, ducking the difficult job of developing a meaningful resolution of the debt crisis. He did, however, use his electioneering to sharpen his divisive rhetoric, which accomplished nothing except to widen the partisan divide.

Oh, and one other thing. It clarified Obama’s re-election strategy. Like the sun rising in the east, he will, of course, continue to lob blame bombs in all directions. But, he’s also putting geographic distance between himself and Washington D.C.  He places a lot of faith in the out-of-sight-out-of-mind maxim, hoping physical separation will disassociate him from the mess he’s helped create.

Obama’s re-election game plan should not come as a huge surprise since it has a lot in common with his governance style. For the latter, he offers meaningless straw man proposals for chronic problems that can neither work nor be accepted. And when they aren’t, he casts aspersions on whomever for rejecting them.

The latest two examples are his “millionaires and billionaires” debt solution and is his jobs plan. Both are non-starters because there’s a lot more harm than the little good in them and so cannot responsibly be put in place. But, they’re great sound bites for those desperate for easy solutions to devastating dilemmas. Obama hopes enough of those folks are out there to keep him in the White House.

To be sure, Obama’s strategy, whether governance or re-election, is much easier than long hours at the negotiating table facing huge helpings of bitter choices. And at least part of that strategy is getting support from unexpected places. Democrat Congressman Heath Shuler, D-N.C., agrees that Obama should stay out of town.

Shuler is the co-leader of a bipartisan group of 100 representatives urging the Super Committee to cut the debt by $4 trillion. He doesn’t think a divisive President can help that effort. Obama has made himself such a lightening rod for political rancor that the resolution process stands a better chance of succeeding without him. That’s a pathetic commentary on the so-called leader of our Country especially from someone who sits on the same side of the political aisle.

Shuler’s bipartisan effort, co-led by Republican Mike Simpson (R-ID), is one ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak outlook. Unlike the rest of their colleagues, they and the other 98 representatives in their group, want all options on the debt reduction table. Without both revenue increases and spending cuts, there’s no chance of a sustainable debt reduction. Without both revenue increases and spending cuts, there’s no chance for a sustainable debt reduction.

The question is whether anyone in D.C. is listening to them. Some in Congress are already revving up the blame machine, as the Super Committee remains deadlocked. The prospect of failure looms so large that, today, the smart money in town is squarely on fiasco. Two years ago, Obama was labeled the “Great Mediator”. Where is that guy now? Oh, yeah, he’s out of town.

When asked, given the perilous economic times at home, whether the President would cut short his Asian trip, White House officials said no. They fear that a foreshortened trip would be a slap in the face to Asian allies. But, it seems a small risk in order to prevent people from growing old on our unemployment line.

What this Country needs, even more than debt reduction, is an actual leader. We just can’t seem to elect one.

See you on the left-side.

(Article first published as Obama Roasted by Nuclear Option Fallout? on Blogcritics.) With his poll numbers falling at least as fast as our economic outlook, a desperate Barack Obama exercised the nuclear option in his re-election bid. On September 19, Dan Pfeiffer, the President’s communications director, told the New York Times that the period of political compromise is “behind us”. This week, nine months into the current Congress and fourteen before the election, Obama went on a scorched earth campaign swing using the same spiel. In choosing to wage war on everything to his right, including, expressly, the middle ground, he has rained hellfire down on political negotiation. Has he roasted himself in the process?

Obama has never been much for bipartisanship anyway. From his first days in office, when he rebuffed Republican overtures with his “I won” retort, he has shown neither the aptitude, nor inclination, for it. With the new Republican House, Obama’s notion of negotiation is a lot more like dictation. He only tried to work out a deal with Republicans on one occasion and that failed when he kept moving the goal posts. Most often, his approach has been as it was with his jobs plan. Unveiling proposals to everyone at the same time while unilaterally anointing them beforehand as bipartisan. That is, and will always be, an amateurish non-starter.

By the middle of September, Obama’s re-election chances were dimming, even without a consensus Republican opponent. His base, consisting of leftist groups, was increasingly disenchanted. Independents, whom he has pursued ardently for the past year, remained aloof. Even California voters, for the first time since Obama’s inauguration, disapproved of his performance. Special elections in New York and Nevada went to GOP candidates because voters spurned Obama’s policies.

Things got so bad for the President that Clinton Strategist, James Carville, urged him to fire his staff and learn how to actually compromise. Instead, Obama’s response is to become more combative, more divisive and more extreme. Dismissing voter rejection, the President believes that isolating himself on the political left and excoriating all who disagree is a winning strategy. If he’s correct, it will be the first time in American history that an incompetent wins re-election by a take-no-prisoners appeal to extremism.

Fortunately, Obama’s strategy isn’t working. Oh, he’s made those in his base less jittery with assurances that his next term will be more to their liking. But, the left can’t get him elected. He needs the Independent vote, which he carried in 2008. To attract them, Obama has engaged in emotional, and distorted, rhetoric aimed at making the Republicans look so bad that he looks good by comparison.

Among his weapon of words is legislation that has no chance of passing. Obama plans to introduce several bills of that kind just to paint Republicans as wrong for the country. Basically, our President will throw childish temper tantrums in an effort to make himself look better than the adults in the room. “Hope and Change” has become “The Best of the Worst”. Not even Democrats are getting in line behind that.

While rhetoric and Bush got Obama elected in 2008, he’ll need more than verbiage and the Tea Party to do it again. He’ll need Republicans to nominate the wrong candidate, a polarizing right-winger, like Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann, who makes thinking people cringe. A majority of American voters generally reject extremist candidates on both ends of the political spectrum. While fanatics do occasionally win elections, it’s because they are smart enough not to campaign as one. And neither Perry nor Bachmann is that smart.

Obama’s campaign swing this week was full of bombastic self-praise for his successful first term and exhortations for four more years of the same. If an economy and job market made perilously worse are accomplishments, if dead end government programs and spiraling debt are resume headliners, what’s failure? We’ll never know because we’ll be moving to Australia.

See you on the left-side.

(First published as Why Obama’s Jobs Speech Will Be a Nonstarter on Blogcritics.) President Obama will give yet another major speech this Thursday night. He’ll speak in broad platitudes and intone about the seriousness of our predicament. He will emphasize the necessity of working together. He will, of course, offer way too little in the way of specifics, but whatever it is will have a huge price tag. And his speech will come a cropper, die aborning, stumble out of the gate, take a dirt nap. Pick your metaphor. The speech will go the way of all of his other featured addresses, which is to say, precisely nowhere. Why? As Elizabeth Barrett Browning once wrote, “let me count the ways” or at least the three main ones.

First, Obama talks too much. He’s a man of big words and small deeds, long on rhetoric and short on results. In fact, his Administration has produced no sustained economic growth in its existence. We’ve heard the reasons for this failure repeatedly and the only thing that changes is the length of the list. It grows. And grows. Bush, the evils inherent in the American financial industry, the Tea Party, the Republican House majority, the Tea Party, the tsunami in Japan. But, when the smoke is blown away, what remains is what Obama has actually done. And it is a pitifully small pile of inconsequential, albeit costly, programs.

Lest we forget, the Republican congressional majority has existed for only the last 8 months or twenty-five percent of Obama’s time in office. For the first 24 months, he had his way with Congress, to the point of losing control of the House in the 2010 elections. What were the President’s economic accomplishments during that two-year period? Absolutely nothing that had a sustainable impact. Much of what he did had no impact at all.

The futility of the Administration’s efforts to jump start the economy is not limited to embarrassing hype programs like Cash for Clunkers. A much more telling example is Obama’s efforts to resurrect the housing market, the other elephant in the room that he mostly ignores. There was HAMP, 2MP, HAFA, PRA, HAUP and several others. Despite those efforts, and the billon$ they cost, the housing market is now in a double dip recession. You could argue successfully that it never arose from the first one. But, economists agree that, if it did, it fell into the second one last May. So much for the power of acronyms over actions.

Second, with his majority in the House a thing of the past, Obama must compromise to move the country forward. But, he either misunderstands compromise or simply can’t bring himself to engage in it. That’s really a coin toss. Compromise is not in his nature. For example, he is advertising his Thursday night speech, with its first word yet to be heard, as “bipartisan”. This billing could simply be political, as in everything the President says is bipartisan and therefore anyone who disagrees with him is necessarily partisan.

Or, as likely, Obama believes that if he moves away from any part of his original agenda, he is being bipartisan. But, this belief, of course, ignores the meaning of the word. Bipartisan means of, relating to or involving representatives of two different parties. Unless you suffer from a mental disorder like schizophrenia, you can’t be bipartisan all by yourself. The President needs to come to grips with this fact and stop listening to the little voices both in his head and in his Administration. He actually has to involve Republicans in defining solutions. Simply making unilateral pronouncements and daring his opponents not to accept them isn’t bipartisanship. But, it is a strategy for failure.

Third, making a significant, and sustainable, reduction in the unemployment rate is beyond Obama’s capabilities and those of his hand-picked advisors. This reason is the crux of the problem with all of his speechifying. He’s not very good at politics, but he’s even worse at problem solving. To gain acceptance of his ideas, he prays on people’s fears, distorts opposing viewpoints and protects sacred cows beyond our ability to support them. None of this will fix our unemployment quandary.

Joblessness cannot be dealt with in the vast vacuum of political posturing. The unemployment rate will come down when the economy recovers and not before, at least not in a lasting way. Getting the economy on track means taking strong actions. We are way past short-term fixes for political advantage. We need: (a) tax reform including, among other things, incentives to business, (b) repeal of much of the costly, burdensome business regulations put in place since 2009, and (c) a serious commitment to deficit reduction, which requires effective entitlement reform. These actions create the stable environment that businesses need in order to recover and begin hiring in earnest again.

The good news for Obama is that if he can get those things done, he can also get re-elected. But, as long as his speeches are major and his actions minor, he doesn’t stand a chance. And that’s good news for everyone else.

See you on the left-side.

(Article first published as The Fatal Conceit of Perpetual Prosperity: Will It Sell? on Blogcritics.) Winston Churchill once said, “The biggest argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Today, the truth of that observation is being determined in democracies around the globe. In the U.S., with politicians sharply divided along partisan lines on how to solve our fiscal crisis, voters will decide on the path forward. Are they up to the task? Will they buy the perpetual prosperity pitch or insist on belt-tightening? With the chips down, will Americans both recognize and reject political absurdities or is Churchill right? Will they be as foolish as some of their currently elected officials?

The prospect of perpetual prosperity can be alluring. This enticement lies at the heart of Obamanomics, which promises endless entitlements for some through higher taxes on others. But, as the demand for entitlements increases through larger aging populations and expanding social services to many more, the price tag grows exponentially. This necessitates a bigger and bigger revenue pot or deeper and deeper annual deficits. Since most of Obama’s fellow democrats agree that deficits must be tamed, entitlements require a mushrooming revenue stream gushing into federal coffers.

Under Obamanomics, the funding source is higher taxes on the rich, of course, but the sustainability of that model is not addressed. The continuing ability of those footing the bill to meet the growing demand for their money is simply assumed. These people are supposed to be a perpetual moneymaking machine with a need-to-achieve compulsion that assures ever more federal revenue.

A telling dichotomy underlies this belief. While abiding achievement is assumed in one part of the population, indelible dependence is assumed in the other, much larger, part. Viewed in microevolution terms, this change in a once-unified group marks the beginning of two subspecies, producers and consumers. Under predictable evolutionary progression, producers prosper, even if it means migrating to more accommodating locales, while consumers eventually go extinct.

The analogy could not be clearer. The indispensable core of Obamanomics is also its inevitable demise. Friedrich Heinemann, the Corporate Taxation and Public Finance Department Chair at the Centre for European Economic Research, defines the problem as a forced morality change.

In a study of the long-term impact of social norms on the welfare state, Heinemann concludes that increasing benefits and unemployment fatally destabilize the system. A generous welfare state creates a dependency in those who take from it, undermining the social norms indispensible to its survival. People become so used to feeding at the public trough, they will cheat to keep the benefits coming. Heinemann’s is not a politically correct study, but reality rarely is.

The reaction of the Greeks to their Government’s austerity measures is also real and underscores Heinemann’s point. After decades of extravagant social spending, the Greeks have shot through dire straights and are dangling in mid air over financial ruin. Keeping them from falling into the abyss is the refusal of European leaders to see their banks and their economies undone by unpaid Greek loans. But, the eurozone’s rescue imposes “austerity” on the country, if living within its means can be fairly called austere.

And the Greeks don’t like it one bit. They burn. They loot. They riot. They vent their displeasure like spoiled children whose profligate parents are trying to change their ways. And yet, public support is critical to the success of reforms necessary to restore financial health. Whether it is ultimately given is anyone’s guess.

Meanwhile, in a show of resolve, Wisconsin voters rejected the bullying tactics of national unions, refusing to restore democrat control to their legislature. All the national boys could buy for their thirty-five million dollars in campaign spending was a net gain of two seats. Sounds vaguely like the federal deficit.

Granted, this was not a direct showdown on Obamanomics. But, it does maintain the reforms that were ushered in by the 2010 elections, which were a rejection of Obama’s fiscal policies. And you can bet that, had the unions succeeded, our president would be on the stump today pushing the result as next year’s victory predictor.

Will the country’s voters follow Wisconsin’s lead and opt for responsible government or will they burn and loot in the footsteps of Greek rioters? Is there really a choice? On October 8, 2008, the national debt stood at $10.1 trillion. Today, less than three years later, it has spiraled past $14.6 trillion for a 45 percent increase. Other than hand waving and smoke screens, all we have to show for it is an historic downgrade in our credit rating.

In 2012, voters can turn out the lights on Obama or tune up the orchestra because it’ll be time for “Nearer My God To Thee”.

See you on the left-side.

At different times in American history, the Do Nothing label has been stuck to Republican politicians and even the entire party. Like the time, way back in the day, when Woodrow Wilson glued it on President Taft and his administration. The most famous use of the term was by Harry Truman in his successful campaign against Thomas Dewey in the 1948 presidential race. The phrase helped to keep “Give ‘Em Hell Harry” in the White House confounding all political predictions. More recently, Do Nothing has been pasted, wrongly, on the Republican members of the 112^th Congress and, rightly, on Mitt Romney, the presidential wannabe.

In the past, Do Nothing was a pejorative, a brand to be avoided. After all, politicians who sat around doing nothing were worse than leeches on the body politic. But in today’s political culture, it is a strategy to be cultivated, a way to get your way risk free. No one exemplifies the new thinking better than Harry Reid. Not that Do Nothing is his entire game plan. The whirlwind of legislation he helped to push through the 111^th Congress made the country’s head spin. Without question, he’s a bona fide dynamo when it comes to expanding government.

But, when it comes to paying the piper for all the cool new stuff, Harry is strictly Do Nothing. The Senate Majority Leader has ducked every opportunity to develop a detailed proposal to address the national debt. The last time his Senate even offered an annual budget was in March 2009 when the red ink was a demure $10 trillion. By the end of this year, it will tip the scale at almost $15 trillion.

How did it grow so big so fast? In the year of our last budget, the deficit, at $1.4 trillion, was the largest since 1945. 2010’s $1.3 trillion operating loss was the second largest in the same time period. According to White House numbers, the 2011 deficit will come in at $1.6 trillion, the largest in U.S. history. To put this into sharper focus, on only four occasions has the deficit breached 10 percent of GDP, during three wars and now.

With the debt rising like a surging tide, why has there been no budgets to stem it? These days, budgets require difficult choices with high degrees of political risk. To the politically driven, preaching from the Book of Platitudes is infinitely more preferable than thinning sacred cow herds. Kicking the can down the road beyond the next election is definitely the way to go. So, when absolutely pressed, Do Nothings choose to grandstand down to the wire, then erect a labyrinth of smoke and mirrors and declare victory.

Where does this leave us?  Pretty much left out. The ridiculous debt ceiling agreement just inked by Obama is a perfect example. The many commentators currently mired in the weeds of speculation about the political winners and losers of the deal are missing the big picture. First, there’s so little substance to the terms of the agreement that it’s no deal at all. Second, we’re all losers. The whole episode is an international embarrassment to the people of this country. Rather than coming to grips with a crippling debt of their own creation, our politicians brought us to the brink of disaster with political posturing. And in their wake, the only thing that changed is the growing crisis.

Why don’t the Republicans, and specifically the Tea Partiers, deserve the blame here as well? For starters, they have offered several plans for dealing with the debt. Granted, each of them is flawed, but the Democrats refused either to open negotiations or counter with equally detailed versions. More than that, if it weren’t for the unseemly behavior of Reid’s Party and their monster pieces of legislation, there wouldn’t be a Tea Party. The baggers are a response to what’s wrong with the current bunch of ruling Democrats.

During last fall’s Lame Duck Congress, Reid refused to raise the debt limit even though he had the votes to extend it into 2013. His motivation was purely political. He wanted Republicans to “have some kind of a buy-in on the debt”, which is double talk for taking some of the blame. Of course, that wasn’t his approach twelve months earlier when the Democrat-controlled Congress upped the limit on a strictly partisan vote. But, back then, Republicans were effectively without power, putting them out of blame’s reach as well. So, they weren’t much use to the Senate Majority Leader.

Will the debt crisis ever be solved? Not by the Do Nothings. Small people create big problems, but they rarely solve them. It’s time to elect some big people for a change.

See you on the left-side.

WASHINGTON DC (AP) ­– The Chinese government this week sold the assets of the former U.S. government to American business interests for .00001 cents on the dollar. The fire sale brought the curtain down on an investment drama that ended poorly for both China and the U.S. After Uncle Sam defaulted on payments, the Chinese were forced to foreclose on significantly overvalued collateral securing their investment. Their own government in limbo since the foreclosure, Americans can breath a little easier with a coalition of compatriot businesses now in charge.

In a press conference yesterday, a coalition spokesperson explained that business takeover of government is necessary to restore the American value system. To avoid the devastating mistakes of the past, the coalition will run the country strictly on a profit motive.  Any endeavor that appears to be undertaken for altruistic reasons is viewed incorrectly.

The first action of the coalition is to sideline the U.S. Constitution. Once a viable document, it has become an excuse for masses of regulations that stifle business growth. Six Sigma is now the framework of the land.

Next up on the launch pad to oblivion are the three branches of government. There were just too many checks and not enough balance, with no hope for change. The destructive inefficiencies generated by large groups of dysfunctional people with a monopoly on laws build on each other eventually destroying the system they infect. It’s time to wipe that slate clean and start anew. Beginning immediately, the government is run by a Board of Directors populated by co-operating representatives of coalition members. Of course, Board members remain only as long as they successfully discharge their duties.

At the top of the Board’s agenda is simplifying tax-based revenue generation. All income, business and individual, is taxed at a flat tax rate of 5 percent. No deductions, no write-offs, no kidding. Tariffs, subsidies and other industry supports are also terminated.  However, business incubators will be funded to accelerate the successful development of growth industries.

Next on the list is a valuation assessment of government programs and agencies using best business practices. Those with the potential of at least breaking even will become independent cost centers. Those with benefit levels exceeding revenue generation capabilities will be cut. The national transportation infrastructure including, among other assets, roads and bridges, will be maintained and improved to promote interstate commerce.

American citizens who desire to participate one day in the benefits offered by government support programs can opt in by paying premiums to the agencies. These payments will serve as the basis for later eligibility payouts. The pay-as-you go mistakes of the Social Security program, like the branches of government, are history. Beneficiaries get what they pay for, augmented by revenue earned through prudent investment of the benefit fund.

Because people need it throughout their lives, healthcare is a special case. “Quality, affordable care” rolls easily off the tongue but, so far, has defied implementation. The subject requires further study. A panel of industry experts will recommend a delivery system to the Board before the end of the fiscal year.

One of the many advantages of a business coalition government is execution of long-term vision. Rather than being held hostage to frequent national elections that necessarily focus on the short term, the coalition can set and implement far-ranging goals.

Among them are self-help programs and services that strengthen the American economy through an educated workforce and full employment. As a first step, formal education from kindergarten through graduate schools will be provided gratis as will a wide range of community youth services. Similar investments in our future growth will follow.

Government regulations will be significantly streamlined, though not eliminated. While red tape’s stranglehold on business processes will be cut, reasonable safety measures to protect employees and the public will be preserved. At the end of the day, injured workers and consumers are bad for business. Arguably, poisoning the planet is even worse.

As far as the Department of Defense goes, it went, at least in name. It is now the Department of War because it should be called what it is. And there is only one justification for military conflict. Profit. Lots of it. No gain, no pain.

In broad strokes, that about does it. For those who think the world is controlled by a secret international society of business bad guys, they’re already running the government and everything else. For the rest of us, it would at least be worth a try.

See you on the left-side.