Sidney^®

(Article first published as The Sum of Our Parts on Blogcritics.) Most everyone has heard the saying, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s been around for quite a while and generally means that, together, pieces produce a result not independently obtainable. It has several applications. First uttered by Aristotle as a philosophical precept, it is also a tenet of Gestalt psychology and an expression of the concept of synergy.  And, it’s a notion most of our politicians wish didn’t exist, especially during election season.

In attempting to influence voters, politicians too often aim their pitches at the primal parts of our mental processes. They excite our fears, our prejudices, our inceptive character traits, anything that represses critical examination of the positions they advocate. But, it is our ability for analytical thought that makes us more than the sum of our emotions and lesser cognitive processes. Every time it is defeated, we lose, too.

Barack Obama consistently appeals to our baser instincts to whip up support for his agenda. One of his favorite techniques is to demean those he opposes and then use ridicule, and often dishonesty, in his public pronouncements. There are almost as many examples of this technique as there are Obama speeches. In his 2010 State of the Union address, he chided U.S. Supreme Court justices, seated before him, for a ruling with which he disagrees. For good measure, he also mischaracterized the Court’s decision.

Last week, the president used a derisive red herring to impugn the integrity of business for being anti-regulation. He also launched into a dishonest bit of demagoguery about Republicans, the safety of children and corporate jets. Earlier this year, he invited key Republicans to his budget address only to deliver a partisan, and perfidious, attack rather than a serious proposal. A few days ago, he blistered the entire congress for lacking the study discipline of his daughters who are 10 and 13 years old. This from a ‘leader’ who has yet to offer anything substantive of his own.

On the other end of the political spectrum, too many conservatives also rely on emotional calls to action rather than thoughtful discourse. While not the name-calling petulant that is Obama, Michele Bachmann rarely speaks in other than the broadest of conservative strokes. Without a scripted speech, she usually makes little sense of it. Her most recent gaffe is confusing John Wayne, the movie star, with John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer. But, she also identified Concord, New Hampshire as the birthplace of the American Revolution. While Obama has too many states in his Union, she has too few Concords in hers.

When Bachmann has to extemporize, she talks in circles as in last month’s Fox News Sunday discussion of same sex marriage. She should be thankful that the voters in her congressional district have given her the House to call home and simply stay there.

As counterproductive as emotional political debate is, who is really to blame? Certainly, politicians are happy to engage us at that level. Emotional appeals are much easier than offering coherent and detailed proposals, which can be challenged and rejected along with their authors. But, is it also what voters want? Do we prefer our fears and prejudices heightened to figuring out the best solutions to the issues we face? Today, when knowledge is instantly available on the Internet, no political scholarship site ranks among the top five hundred most visited in the U.S.

We also have a tendency to substitute personality for scrutiny, preferring to base our assessments on who is speaking rather than what is spoken. But, fact finding is the guardian of our election process. In my case, for example, I have a human on my shoulder because I need more than just a spell checker to write my blogs. But, she remains in the background because we want our arguments to rise or fall based on their strengths or weaknesses. And, of course, I’m a lot cuter.

Perhaps, Ross Perot’s pie charts during the 1992 election campaign would be the brunt of jokes in any election year. If that’s the case, the laugh is on us.

See you on the left-side.

(Article first published as A Little Pawlenty Is Plenty on Blogcritics.) If you’re one of the millions who doesn’t have a clue about Republican Presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty, and you want to change that, watch this. It’s a video from a Sunday news show recorded earlier this month featuring an interview of the former Minnesota governor. In it, Pawlenty bobs and weaves his way through defending his questionable “Better Deal” plan for fixing our deep national debt problems. He also repeatedly ducks pointed questions about his alleged fiscal failings when he was at Minnesota’s helm, preferring, instead, to expound on Obama’s shortcomings. All in all, the Republican candidate comes across as a smarmy politician. Heaven knows we have enough of them already.

But, does Pawlenty’s performance in a single TV interview accurately portray the candidate? Or, is he even worse than he seems? Of course, smarmy is enough to cost him the nomination as outward appearances have outsized importance in our 24 x 7 video world. Digging for substance is simply too much work. In Pawlenty’s case, digging won’t make a difference because what you see isn’t as bad as what you get.

Let’s start with Pawlenty’s self-laudatory autobiography, Courage To Stand, published just in time for his presidential campaign. In it, and in speeches since, he takes credit for steering a liberal Minnesota down a conservative fiscal path. His biggest claimed accomplishment is balancing budgets through spending cuts rather than tax increases.

Unfortunately for TPaw, both Republicans and Democrats in the Gopher State dispute his claims and the disputes ring truer than the claims. Budget balancing was done, in part, with $2.7 billion in cuts later invalidated by the Minnesota Supreme Court including its Chief Justice, a Pawlenty appointment. Meanwhile, there were fewer costs to fund at the state level, but property taxes were hiked by $2.5 billion to cover the shortfall locally.

Later, necessary revenue increases were financed by upping cigarette taxes which Pawlenty called ‘fees’. He was also helped by $2 billion in federal stimulus money. Today, only months after his departure, Minnesota is facing a $5 billion deficit. So, yes, the numbers on the sheet did balance. But, it was done with smoke and mirrors and federal funds rather than hard choices.

Then there is Pawlenty’s Google gaffe in his Better Deal spiel. In order to make up for reduced revenue from his proposed tax cuts, Pawlenty would eliminate any government service also provided by private industry. He would find those competitive private services through Google. No wonder Pawlenty remains at the bottom of candidate polls. Substituting the world’s most popular Internet search engine for deliberative strategic decision–making is for losers.

These days, Pawlenty believes his road to success is paved with the carcasses of his opponents. At the beginning of his campaign, just a little while ago, he refused to criticize Romney and others. He believed his autobiography and Better Deal plan were all he needed to capture the lead. Now, he’s ripping into other Republicans like a greedy kid with his Christmas presents.

While criticizing the opposition is, of course, standard campaign fare, Pawlenty’s shots at Romney should backfire big time. He is busy filleting the former Massachusetts governor for RomneyCare, the precursor to the hated ObamaCare. And Romney is very vulnerable on that score. But, Pawlenty is similarly susceptible to attack. In his gubernatorial days, he was a huge environmental activist.

In 2007, he signed cap and trade legislation, calling global warming one of the most important issues of our time. Later, he appeared in an ad with Janet Napolitano, urging congress to pass similar legislation. Now, as a national candidate, he’s confessing the error of his ways. To distance himself from his activist days, Pawlenty claims he was never that enamored with going green, characterizing his ardor as a mere ‘flirtation’. But signing cap and trade into law sure seems like going all the way.

Pawlenty’s spine is so weak, he can’t help but flip-flop. Since the GOP’s current frontrunner is an expert at the triple backflip himself, the Party doesn’t need another flailing aerialist.

See you on the left-side.

If past voter behavior is any indication, President Obama will have difficulty winning the next election with the gargantuan economy millstone hanging around his neck. The unemployment rate today stands at 9.1 percent, up from earlier in the year. But, that figure doesn’t include everyone who is out of a job or has to settle for part time work when full time is needed. When those people are counted, the percentage rises above 16 percent of the labor force.

How bad is this situation for Obama’s 2012 chances? No president since FDR has been re-elected with unemployment above 8 percent. Worse, only one presidential incumbent in more than fifty years has been re-elected with unemployment above 7 percent. That luck guy was Ronald Reagan who won the 1984 election with a jobless rate of 7.2 percent.

Faced with a persistently tough economy, Obama’s response for many months has been that “things would have been worse” without him. In fact, the White House goes so far as to claim that the Obama Administration prevented the second Great Depression. But, like a donut hole, these are hollow assertions because they are impossible to prove. Republicans are saying just as easily that things are much worse as a result of Obama than they otherwise would have been. The GOP contention is that the economy would be rosy by now if only someone competent had been in charge.

Voters generally avoid “would have been” dead ends, preferring the where-are-we-now reality check, which means the millstone is Obama’s to jettison. Accordingly, the pro-Obama strategists have come up with a different reason to forecast a 2012 victory for our current president. They believe voters will ignore the pain if the economy is showing steady improvement by November of next year. Apparently, the reasoning is that since things have been so bad for so long, some improvement will look even brighter by comparison, assuring Obama’s re-election. In other words, if you’re a long-time incompetent but can manage to rise to mediocre down the stretch, you’ll finish first.

Fortunately for the preservation of success as a national goal, the “steady improvement” bit is a tough sell. Experts announced the end of the Great Recession two years ago. But, since then, the same experts have been continually baffled by unexpected downturns and surprising stagnation. Just last week, economists were scratching their heads over May’s economic report of higher unemployment, a slowdown in manufacturing and a decrease in consumer spending.  Thanks to a flatlining recovery, double-dip is now on many a lip.

So, what will Obama end up doing about the millstone weighing him down?  From a big picture view, what he’s always done. Play his blame-games, lashing out in his trademark derisive manner at his two favorite targets, Republicans and “the rich”. In April, Obama blistered all of them in what was billed as a serious fiscal policy speech. Instead, it was long on inaccuracies and short on specifics that make dollars and sense. It was basically an attempt to exploit social divisions that Obama’s ‘unity’ presidency has fostered from its inception.

But, a broad-strokes picture of the progressive left vision isn’t enough to capture the wider spectrum of voters essential to Obama’s re-election. He will need at least a facade of facts that point the finger of blame for the economy outward. We’re starting to see the groundwork laid for that endeavor.

Liberal economists, such as former Chief Economic Adviser Christina Romer, argue that the stimulus package should have been much bigger. Something in the neighborhood of $1.2 to $2 trillion would have really gotten the economy going.  Of course, it was Obama’s congressional majorities that passed the stimulus package. So, even if you can stomach the argument, where does the blame lie for the less than adequate stimulus size?

On a recent Sunday talk show, Congresswoman Donna Edwards hinted at another faux fact to push blame for the economy on others. According to Edwards, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the rich are responsible because they’re hoarding their money instead of spending it.

Apparently disagreeing with Romer, Edwards lauded the stimulus but stated that it was stifled by the stingy folks with all the money. At the same time, her Progressive Caucus advocates taxing the rich out of existence. She can’t have it both ways and she, like Obama, needs to keep the rich around. Without them, who’s there to blame?

See you on the left-side.

(Article first published as 2012: An Election To Lose on Blogcritics.) The election chatter among political pundits these days centers on their belief that, come 2012, the White House is Obama’s to lose. These opinions are hardly surprising. Elections with an incumbent running are typically all about the officeholder’s performance. Opponents are often bystanders, their fortunes rising or failing on how voters feel about the state of their lives during the incumbent’s term. So, according to the experts, Republicans in 2012 can run the elephant and hardly anyone will notice because attention’s spotlight is focused on Obama.

Under that theory, if the election were held today, the elephant would win because the state of our economy makes most of us very cranky. And, according to the prevailing wisdom, people vote their wallets first and foremost. How bad is it? In the first quarter of this year, GDP fell to an anemic 1.8% from 3.1% in the previous quarter. Unemployment in April rose again to 9% while the number of people who gave up looking or settled for part-time work climbed to 15.9%. The housing market remains unstable. The huge government debt hangs like Damocles’ Sword over everything.

Of course, today is not November 6, 2012 and things can change between now and then. But, by enough? Probably not. Twenty eight months into Obama’s presidency, we’re still wallowing deep in the doldrums caused by the Great Recession. The recovery, to the extent it exists, is “uneven”. Robust is not a word on anyone’s lips, not even Obama’s. The remedies he has tried since January 2009 have not turned things around as he promised they would. In fact, things got worse than he claimed they would ever get. What he’s likely to do in the next 18 months has virtually no chance of making a significant improvement for a couple of reasons. It’s obvious by now that he doesn’t know how to jump-start a capitalist economy. And his record shows that even his instincts are wrong.

What we can expect to get from him is a lot of pious rhetoric, and taunting and mocking, of course. But, what we won’t get is a detailed plan for a return to economic prosperity. He never comes up with the specifics of anything. All he seems to do is hand wave his way through speeches loaded with emotional trigger words and pointless platitudes. Analyzing that for anything substantive is like catching grains of sand pouring through your fingers. Try as hard as you might, you’re not going to come up with anything solid.

The economy is much more likely to show signs of a real recovery before November 2012 if Obama gets out of the way. He just has to stop trying to raise killer taxes and over-regulate businesses. Give them breathing room and see what they can do. At least then all we’d have to contend with is his taking credit for the efforts of others. But, even if a sustained upturn begins later this year or next, is it enough to get Obama re-elected? I don’t think so. He turns too many people off with his leading-from-behind style, his government-can’t-get-big-enough expansion and his class warfare battle strategy.

Obama’s a politician, not a leader. He’d rather sit on the sidelines, ridiculing and jeering, than take the initiative in charting a course through hard times. He plays waiting games, baiting others to offer detailed solutions so he can attack them based on the current political wind speed and direction. Rather than facing up to difficult choices, he spews counterproductive rhetoric that divides when unity is sorely needed. Our President simply is not up to the commander-in-chief task.

His years of day-in-and-day-out failings are difficult to escape. Voters are unlikely to forget the difference between the promise of Obama in 2008 and the reality of his performance by 2012. Even now good feelings about him are less enthusiastic and fade faster than those enjoyed by other White House occupants. In the latest example, the bounce he got from bin Laden’s assassination earlier this month has evaporated. This week his Presidential Approval Index hit minus ten.

It is true that people vote their wallets. In this case, they can’t afford more of what Obama has been trying to sell. Rejecting his pitch is something to vote for. That, and the large gray circus animal.

See you on the left-side.

Given the path that led to Osama bin Laden’s hideout, attention is beginning to refocus on Eric Holder’s seemingly endless criminal investigation of CIA interrogators. We now know that the successful search for the World’s most wanted terrorist began years ago with information offered up during several “harsh” interrogations. No kumbaya coffee klatch those, they raised the considerable ire of the ACLU and other Obama supporters. As a result, during the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama, in a bow to his base, pledged to end what he called torture of terrorist suspects.

True to that pledge, the new U.S. Attorney General launched his “rule of law” investigation in August 2009, barely seven months into Obama’s presidency. Almost two years later, the investigation is still in progress. We don’t know what that progress is or exactly what conduct is under investigation or how long it will continue. But, we do know some things.

For instance, those under investigation are government employees and contractors who were, unquestionably, following Bush administration policies o.k.’d by the Bush Justice Department. We also know that an investigation of the same individuals for the same conduct was concluded in 2007. A career prosecutor, not a political appointee, cleared them of wrongdoing.

We know, too, that no new evidence was discovered by Obama’s White House or Holder’s DOJ. So, the motive for the second investigation boils down, not to facts, but to who’s in charge. The new guy simply disagrees with the earlier investigative findings because he believes, contrary to U.S. law, that “cruel, inhumane and degrading” treatment is torture.

What’s wrong with that? For starters, put yourself in the place of the CIA guys and others under investigation. They acted in good faith. And yet their own Justice Department is now 22 months into its second investigation, with no end in sight. How about that for cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment?

Then there’s the problem of later administrations prosecuting people for legally sanctioned activity. It raises the odious specter of an unconstitutional ex post facto prosecution, applying a new standard retroactively to criminalize conduct that was legal when undertaken.

It also has a chilling effect on our intelligence operators who can now be certain that subsequent administrations may level criminal charges against them. The result will be an anemic intelligence effort in defense of our country. Everyone will be too concerned about being prosecuted tomorrow for doing their jobs today. The most effective intelligence force on the planet, outside of Israel, of course, will be reduced to political correctness. Raise your hand if you think that’s a good idea.

Last Thursday, a 911 family member asked President Obama to support her request to end Holder’s investigation. She simply wanted the President to offer his opinion to Holder that the investigation should be shelved permanently. Her request sprang from the belief that the investigated should be honored, rather than hounded, for their part in tracking down bin Laden, among others. The President refused her entreaty.

Even so, what are the chances that Holder’s investigation will lead to charges being filed? Pretty much zero. If the matter went to trial, the defense would have a field day because it knows what happened. The government would be compelled to release documents describing the interrogation techniques and naming those interrogated. The defense could assert that these techniques were not only legal at the time but also led to bin Laden’s dead end. That last part is an association Obama would rather skip.

And then there’s bin Laden’s problematic end. Is it possible that the manner of his death offends Holder’s sense of inhumane treatment? After all, the old terrorist was unarmed when a strapping young Navy SEAL splattered his brains on the wall. And the jungle drums of the left are beating in an angry rhythm of denial of due process.

You can bet we’ll never know Holder’s feelings about bin Laden’s execution, at least until his memoirs are published years hence.  Obama is enjoying his bump in popularity too much to permit that ugly little distraction. Rule of law, indeed.

See you on the left-side.

It’s becoming one of the most clichéd phrases in American politics. Everyone’s saying it. Just the other day, Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York City, agreed with it. And, it’s pretty hard not to agree with him. The rich must pay their fair share of taxes. But, what does that actually mean? No one really says. It’s pretty much whatever politicians want it to mean at a given time. That works for them, of course. They never want to be pinned down on anything. But, what about for the rest of us?

Not so much. The politicized notion of the rich paying their fair share is bogus times three and hurts everyone. The first part of the fakery is the illusion that the rich are our social welfare safety net. We don’t have to cut spending, we just have to cut deeper into their bank accounts. So, for example, Obama’s debt reduction plan pins 25% of the projected decrease on grabbing more from households with incomes exceeding $250,000 annually.

Sound great? Not if you think beyond the emotional “us-against-them” appeal inherent in the fair share con. The amount of Obama’s latest proposed tax increase won’t put a pea-sized dent in the debt. In fact, we can take all of their money and still not satisfy the enormous entitlement appetite our politicians have been whetting for decades. The fair share sales job has put us where we are today, in the debt throes of a fiscal disaster. And still, politicians play that card.

Even worse is the fact that taking more from the taxpayers Obama has targeted stunts economic growth. They are the builders of a robust economy. Their businesses create jobs. Their spending expands economic opportunity for all of us. It’s an elementary school lesson that many of us have forgotten over the years. Using these folks as our revenue punching bag won’t be cutting off our noses to spite our faces. It will be shooting ourselves in the head.

The next ingredient of the fair share hustle is that the taxman’s super-sized ammo will never hit us, the non-rich. But, of course, we’re wrong about that, too. Even now a bigger gun is turning in our direction. After all, those making more than $250,000 aren’t really rich. No question, they’re well off. But, statistically, they’re no closer to Warren Buffet’s $50 billion net worth than the 47% of Americans who pay no federal income tax at all. Unless we make Ryan-deep cuts in our spending, we’ll all be hit with much bigger tax bullets. The arithmetic doesn’t add up any other way.

The final piece of the fair share shakedown is the way in which “fair” is calculated. For example, Obama’s determination of which taxpayers to hit with hikes is not based on an objective assessment the value of the benefits they receive. It’s a function of the amount he needs to keep his spending agenda on track and the size of the increase he can sell.  It’s a purely political reckoning, an end run across the expediency goal line. That’s very scary because it’s a subjective technique that can be used to justify any action against any group.

If we use a cost-benefits approach to determine fairness, taxes would be lowered for the rich and raised for everyone else. That is, we’d end up with a flat tax because the rich don’t benefit anymore than we do from government services. In fact, they benefit less. We all share equally from national defense, public safety, infrastructure and education expenditures. But, the rich miss out on most of the government’s largesse.

Obama does offer a fairness argument of sorts. The rich owe more to repay all this country has given them, as if it made the money and throw it on their doorsteps. The biggest thing the country really did was create opportunity and get out of the way.  That’d be nice for the rest of us, too.

See you on the left-side.