Mark Byron

American Rouge

Here's a piece on actor-activist Kal Penn starting his new gig with the White House Office of Public Liaison; he's a savvy and smart Obama backer and will probabaly do well as a public servant. However, this closing line of the article gave me some pause-

When pressed about preparing for his first day on the job Monday morning, he said, "I brushed my teeth; I did floss, used mouthwash ... took the bus to work, same thing that everybody does."

Not quite, Kal. Personally, I tend to ignore my teeth in the morning and brush mosly at night ;-).

No, it's the taking-the-bus part that I take exception to. Like a lot of small-towners or suburbanites, I drive to work. I don't have the option of taking the bus to work for my night classes, since the bus lines servicing my part of Lexington close down before my classes end at 9:40.

I could take the bus in for my 8AM class if I wanted to take one bus up Tates Creek in SE Lexington to downtown, then take another out Broadway/Harrodsburg to the SW to get to the Sullivan campus. Of course, it would take me about an hour to do that bus routine as opposed to the 10-15 minute commute that a straight run along the New Circle Road beltway. It would also mean starting my commute about 6:30AM rather than 7:30, thus getting up at an oh-dark-30 hour after teaching the night before. No thanks.

Big cities are more condusive to mass transit, since parking is a major hassle in big cities. Also, if your job is in the city center, the hub-and-spoke nature of many transit systems that are geared around getting people in and out of downtown will work for you.

However, if you don't do business with the city center, a lot of transit systems are poorly designed to get you from 4-o'clock to 8-o'clock on the suburban dial. You can go into the center of the dial on the minute hand and back out on the hour hand, but you can move well along the perimiter of the dial unless outer loop routes cover the areas in question.

Modern liberalism doesn't like suburbs. It is too car-dependent, uses too much energy and gets people into a cocoon of domesticy that can get in the way of community. However, our non-elite culture isn't lived in subways and busses; it's lived in minivans and mall quadrants. Not everyone's life fits into the mass transit network;their work, churches, schools and shopping are often cumberson to do via mass transit and sometimes flat out impossible.

I'll plead guilty to a reductio ad absurdum here (and also using one the nastiest dictatorships of the 20th century; when you use the Nazis to label your foes, you're reaching) , but I'm reminded of the Khmer Rouge's empting out of the cities and making everyone peasent farmers; the fact that a lot of city folks had no agricultural background didn't matter, everyone was ordered out of the corrupting urban pool.

Liberal policy seems to envision folks settling along mass transit corridors and away from a suburban framework; suburbs are seen to usestoo much land, too much gas and sets up too individualistic a lifestyle that doesn't care for the community.

That's not going to work well in a lot of areas, for mass transit doesn't fit many cities and many lifestyles. You have to work near a mass transit line that hooks up with your home or else have a nasty-long commute and may have to pick your church, your shopping and your health professionals along that commuter line.

I don't think so, Tim. That's not as rash as the Khmer Rouge, but it would take a drastic change in American culture to get us to be mass-transit centric outside of high-density corridors like the Bos-Wash megaplex.

The CTRL-ALT-DEL Economy?

Here's an interesting statement from Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer that has had my mind reeling a bit since I heard it Tuesday from, of all places, ESPN talker Collin Cowherd.

"I don't think we are in a recession, I think we have reset," he said. "A recession implies recovery [to pre-recession levels] and for planning purposes I don't think we will. We have reset and won't rebound and re-grow."

Ballmer may well be right; I was kicking this idea around with my Portfolio Analysis class last night, and it seems to make sense. Our financial system has got the jitters if not the DTs, used to using easy credit and free-wheeling derivatives and is now having to function without those financial greenies. The auto industry is undergoing an overhaul, as both Chrysler and GM go through government-shepherded Chapter 11s.

If we look to Washington, we shouldn't see too much help on the fiscal policy front. The massive stimulus package didn't do the trick and the Obama team is likely to move towards higher taxes in order to pay down the budget deficit; that might be good for long-term financial stability, but it won't be overly good for GDP growth

That's doubly true when you couple that with reforms that are likely to come out of Washington. Financial reform will likely lead to more expensive capital and more expensive credit for small businesses, as increased capital requirements for banks will likely lead to higher interest rates on bank loans; if banks need to have more equity on hand, they'll need to have a higher return on assets to offset the reduced leverage. Also, any unfunded mandates for health insurance put on businesses will lower profitability and economic growth.

So, Wall Street is looking for the Betty Ford Clinic (as one student put it last night) and Washington is doing stuff that, while helpful for the little guy, will slow the economy to a crawl.

That is, unless innovation paves the way for growth despite those downsides. Computers seem to have maxed out on their productivity-producing, but every time we think we've seen everything, we get a new ap that changes the game some more; Facebook and Twitter are two areas that have changed things as of late.

Nanotech seems to be just around the corner, but I'm not sure if the pure research we've seen to date is going to turn into real products anytime soon; if it does, it could offset the contractionary nature of our current situation much as improved logistics, the birth of the Web and other computer-generated productivity in the 1990 helped offset the Clinton tax increases and saw a growing economy despite higher taxes.

We may be in for a rather stagnant economy, where the 3% growth that we're used to might not be there until either the next big tech item comes along to boost the economy or our system digests all the financial and regulatory changes coming down the pike.

That's not all that encouraging, but that what we seem to be looking at for the near term.

Fallen Heros

A quick reminder; you only get called a hypocrite if you have standards you're trying to live up to. Folks who don't have standards don't get that rap; that's one reason why stories like Mark Sanford's resonate a but more.

When I heard the news yesterday about Sanford's clumsy affair, I was thinking that Sanford fans like John Claybourn would be somewhat crushed; Josh gives an even-handed look at his seemingly-crushed presidential hopes.

2012 is out of the question for Sanford, but something in the 2020s might still be in the cards if he gets back on the straight and narrow. He's only 49, and if he lets some time get between him and this incident, he might be viable on a national stage. Newt Gingrich gets mentioned as a viable candidate, and he notably having an an affair a decade ago with a staffer who would become wife #3 while still hitched to wife #2. Rudy had similar issues where he was an item with his current wife while still married to his previous wife and had a decent shot in 2008; he would have been a bigger factor in the 2008 primaries were he a bit more conservative on social issues.

However, the political calculus seems tacky while you have a guy who just screwed up big time and needs to mend a lot of fences, with God and his wife and sons first, then with the people of South Carolina. Jenny Sanford is leaving the door open "if he continues to work toward reconciliation with a true spirit of humility and repentance." For multiple reasons, pray that Mark Sanford get that spirit.

Pushing all the Buttons

The powers-that-be in Frankfort have been trying to get casinos in the state as a revenue booster; a broad plan to authorize a dozen casinos, most at horse racing tracks, fell flat last year, but the casino-backers are back trying to end-run the state constitution by merely installing instant lottery machines at tracks.

They've been pulling out all the stops and tugging at multiple heart-strings. One radio ad featured two-time Kentucky Derby (and Churchill Downs based) jockey Calvin Borel, noting the big impact the equine industry has on KY and that other states have such on-track gambling to help their tracks generate income; that's the "everyone else is doing it" card. "Do it for the horses" is the underlying string, which is especially touching when delivered with that aw-shucks Cajun drawl of Bo-rail; he's even showing up at a pro-slots rally in Frankfort today.

If that's not enough to get gambling-skittish folks on board, there's one more button to push; "Do it for the chill-dren."

House Democrats hope to use gambling proceeds from slots at racetracks to fund a large-scale program that would spend up to $700 million replacing dozens of the state’s oldest school buildings.

That may be doubly effective. Lotteries and other gaming endeavors are almost invariably pitched with some sort of education tie, but the old-school replacement gambit might play well in smaller towns who are old-school; they're more opposed to gambling and other vices (we've got lots of dry counties in KY where legalizing alcohol sales is a live issue) and are generally poorer and slower to replace old schools.

At first, I thought this was a do-it-for-the-kids plug only, but the gambit would likely benefit those more Bible-belty small towns away from Lexington and Louisville, who have replaced most of their pre-Baby Boom schools.

Rep. Stan Lee, R-Lexington, called the addition of the school construction dollars to the proposal “shameless.”

Brazenly textbook would be my term; they've played just about every card in the book and even invented a new card in the old-school replacement plan. It may just be too clever by half and get people to realize they're getting multiple heart-strings pulled at once.

The Mediocre Coach

I saw this story on the government looking to regulate executive pay (actually a crawler of the news on Fox as we were leaving lunch the other day) and felt like one of those movie heroes as the bomb is about to go off. Everything goes into sloooooow-moootion, and the hero hollers "Noooooooo!" in a deep voice, since everyone sounds like Barry White in slow-mo, as he either starts to run in vain towards the blast or dive out of the way just in the nick of time.

The one thing that could make sense in the proposal is to have stockholders vote on corporate pay raises; the non-binding votes that are in the proposal have very little teeth other than to possibly show up sloppy boards of directors.

What might make more sense would be to have binding votes on top executive's pay. Corporate boards have a tendency to become a bunch of yes-men (have the board meeting in Mexico and they become a Si Section;-) and rubber stamp pay raises; making shareholders approve them would be a step in the right direction. If you coupled that with Internet voting of shares rather than giving proxies to whatever faction (usually the board's) will be at the meeting that you support, that would make the corporate accountability even better.

Most shareholders don't care about the details of their company's board as long as the company seems to be doing well and the path of least resistance is to give management your proxy if they seem to be doing well. If pay raises required an active majority of shareholders to mail-in or click-in saying "Yes, that pay raise is fine by me.," we'd get more reasonable pay package.

However, trying to conjure up a government-mandated formula for how much CEOs make seems counter-productive. One of my general thoughts on government in the marketplace is that it is a good referee (judicial system), a mediocre coach (regulation, industrial policy) and a lousy player (government-owned businesses).

Good decision making is worth money. If billions are riding on a decision, it may well be worth tens of millions to have a good decision-maker. Yes, that means he'll make a gazillion times more than Joe Shoprat, but more is riding on the CEO's decision whether to launch a new product that Joe's decision to pull a defective item off the line. Both are important, but Joe's decision isn't going to make as big of a dent on the bottom line.

What often the problem is with executive pay is that mediocre decision making is getting overpaid. However, that's better left to stockholders than to Uncle Sam, and Uncle Sam is best left out of the loop, with the possible exception of making it a bit easier to keep mediocre CEOs accountable to their shareholders.

Racist? No, try a Hispanic homer.

I wanted to see the Sotomayor quote on her being a better judge because of her Latina background in context, and found it here; it's from a speech to a Latino legal group in 2001. Let's kick this paragraph around for a little bit, for the final sentence is what has gotten a lot of conservatives hot and bothered.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Is that racist? Or at least ethnocentric, since "Hispanic" is ethnic and not racial, despite the Latino activist group La Raza's name. Not in the way we normally use the word.

Let me try a thought experiment for a moment. We had a case in the news this week where a San Diego guy got busted (or at least threatened with a ticket) for having a Bible study in his house without a license. Let's say we had, say, Harriet Meiers, make this statement; "I would hope that a wise Christian woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a unchurched male who hasn't lived that life."

Would that statement be arrogantly Christianist (or whatever pejorative you want to slap in there)? Not really, since an evangelical Christian could tell the difference between an informal Bible study and a church service that someone from outside that church culture might not. Yes, that is a direct lift from the Sotomayor speech, changing Latina to Christian and white to unchurched.

Is she going to have experiences that you or I (I don't know of too many Hispanic members of the Peanut Gallery other than Ben Domenech, ex-Spudlet Marc Velasquez or my former Midland pastor Tim Ortiz) don't have? Yes. On the flip side, will we have experiences she hasn't had? Yes.

However, there are no shortage of judges with nicely-off European-descended parents with similar suburban or white-collar urban histories. Can they understand the plight of a poor minority kid? Yes, but it is a bit more foreign to them.

On the flip side, is that SD Bible study foreign to a lightly-observant Latina Catholic, where home Bible studies might not be a big part of their culture? That might be one case where a "wise Latina" would be at a disadvantage to an evangelical Anglo guy. She might be more fluent in the nuances of Santeria, but I'd be more fluent in finance and charismatic Christianity.

In an of herself, I don't see her as a better judge than, say, white-bread David Souter, to pick on a ideological peer. However, she will add an extra perspective to the court that, all else being equal, will help. She does come with a left-of-center slant that might make the court the worse for wear, but Sotomayor as a Latina is a plus; it's Sotomayor the liberal that worries me.

Racist? No more so than the dad in My Big Fat Greek Wedding who knew the Greeks invented everything. A Hispanic homer (small H, as in a hard-core fan of the team) might be a fairer description.

End of the Line for the Wichita End-of-the-Lineman

Here is a sad story; George Tiller, a lighting rod for pro-lifer bile for his late-term-abortion clinic in Wichita, was assassinated this morning... in church- "Tiller was shot during morning services at Reformation Lutheran Church while his wife was in the choir, his attorney Dan Monnat said." Tiller was an usher there as well. That brings to mind fellow Wichitian Dennis Rader, who was president of his Lutheran church before being caught as the BTK Killer.

Unlike Rader, Tiller was working within the law; sometimes just barely, as "partial-birth" abortion laws started to bump into his practice. He had been shot before and seen his clinic bombed, as well as being the target of numerous peaceful anti-abortion protests.

Tiller is, as Ricky Ricardo would say, going to have some 'splainin' to do at the Pearly Gates. One can only hope that enough of the Gospel rubbed off on him despite his grisly and misguided occupation to get him a pass through.

Suffering Fools Ungladly

Interesting piece in the Washington Times (apply grains of right-leaning salt) of a less-than-friendly attitude from the bench of Judge Sotamayor-

Lawyers who have argued cases before Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor call her "nasty," "angry" and a "terror on the bench," according to the current Almanac of the Federal Judiciary -- a kind of Zagat's guide to federal judges.

The withering evaluation of Judge Sotomayor's temperament stands in stark contrast to reviews of her peers on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Of the 21 judges evaluated, the same lawyers gave 18 positive to glowing reviews and two judges received mixed reviews. Judge Sotomayor was the only one to receive decidedly negative comments.

...

"She does not suffer fools gladly," said Kevin Russell, a partner for Howe & Russell P.C. who argued a case before Judge Sotomayor about respiratory ailments suffered by the men and women who cleaned up ground zero after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "I guess it is predictable that some of those fools would then complain about it."

...

Legal scholar Jeffrey Rosen documented concerns from 2nd Circuit law clerks and New York prosecutors in a piece he wrote for the New Republic earlier this month. In the piece, he quoted anonymous members of the New York legal community who described Judge Sotomayor as an intellectual lightweight and "kind of a bully on the bench."

Other than the "intellectual lightweight" part, might she be the left's answer to Antonin Scalia? He doesn't exactly suffer fools gladly either, and will give both rhetorical barrels to his colleagues if he thinks their arguments are full of it. No one accuses Scalia of being a lightweight (at least if they know any better and/or aren't well lubricated), but he isn't known as a shrinking violet on the bench.

They may have to institute a three-knockdown rule if those two lock horns; figuratively speaking of course, since I don't see Scalia hitting a lady.

Justice is Blind, and Heartless?

I've had a rough week (my students sometimes read, so I'll have to be a bit less transparent than I have been in the past), so I'm just now getting around to the issue of judge Sonia Sotomayor as the new Supreme Court nominee.

On one level, she's an affirmative action hire, a two-fer as a Hispanic female; however, unlike the last AA nominee, Clarance Thomas, she has a far better record as a judge on both the federal district and appellate levels. That's not to say that Thomas was unqualified, but he only had a year or two on the DC circuit and was rushed a smidge to fill the "black seat" being vacated by Thurgood Marshall.  Thus, you can't play the quota-hire card on Sotomayor, at least not with any honesty.

Sotomayor is left-of-center to be sure, a fair replacement for Souter on an ideological basis; not a total knee-jerk liberal, but enough of one to make conservatives justifiably uncomfortable. However, I haven't seen any red flags that would make moderates blanche enough to make a conservative filibuster hold up. The RINO Sisters of Maine will vote for her in all likelihood, and that gives 61 votes for cloture as long as all 59 Democratic and liberal independent senators are on hand; they can even let Ted Kennedy stay at home with his brain cancer recovery and still get 60. If Al Franken finally gets his MN seat approved, they can give an ailing Porkasaurus Rex a pass on showing up as well.

The final vote may go further into the 60s, as a few moderate or polite Republicans may vote for her to avoid looking nativist for voting down the first Hispanic SC justice.

A few points in the debate have bothered me to this point.

(1) Conservatives ragging on the virtue of empathy and/or compassion in a judge, harkening to the "justice is blind" meme. However, you don't always want a judge that will coldly apply the letter of the law without any mitigation. The same guys who are ragging on the empathy of Sotomayor or other liberal judges would rip a local judge for closing down a kid's lemonade stand on health code violations and/or the lack of a sales tax licence, or banning a backyard treehouse on building code violations.

Conservatives want empathy, but not empathy that goes against their favored classes (businesses, traditional religion, white guys).

(2) Sotomayor's faux pas for saying that appellate courts are where policy is made. As they say in Washington, a faux pas is an accidental telling of the truth; here's CNN's coverage of her 2005 Duke comments.

"All of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people with Court of Appeals experience. Because it is — Court of Appeals is where policy is made," she said. "And I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don't 'make law,' I know. [Laughter from audience] Okay, I know. I know. I'm not promoting it, and I'm not advocating it. I'm, you know. [More laughter] Having said that, the Court of Appeals is where, before the Supreme Court makes the final decision, the law is percolating. Its interpretation, its application."

American law is based, in large part, of the British tradition of common law, where the rulings of judges in the past make up the lion-share of law; where laws have not been clearly written, it is up to judicial precedent to fill in those gaps. So, she is right in that the appeals courts are making law in a very literal way.

What is at issue is how to make such interpretations and how much weight to pay past decisions, of how much a judge should stare at stare decisis.

(3) Saying that she's a better judge because she's a Latina comes over as "racist" to the white guy pundits. She's partly right, since she'll have a broader perspective than the average Anglo jurist. Applying the law requires understanding the circumstances where it is being applied, and there will be some advantage of having a minority member of a court to bring that perspective to bear on the deliberations.

Yes, you can get that perspective by interviewing people of a given ethnic group or by having staffers of that ethnic group put in their $0.02. However, a broader group is likely to give a more robust decision rather than a homogeneous group that lacks perspective.

One flip-side to that is that we often have a liberal false-diversity, where we have all the ethnic and life-style groups covered, but they all come from a hard-left academic hothouse, where the blacks, Anglos, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, gays, deaf, disabled and quilting aficionados are all liberal. However, that doesn't seem to be the problem with the current Supreme Court, which is fairly representative of modern political thought.

This may be a bit tacky, but given that she is a Puertorriqueña from New York, she might (at least rhetorically) be the niece of one of the Sharks from West Side Story. She was born in 1954, which would have made her a tyke when the Romeo and Juliet story got recast in post-WWII Nuevo York with the Puerto Rican Sharks and Anglo Jets gangs played the roles of the Montagues and Capulets; or should that be reversed, since Maria is Juliet and Juliet was a Capulet.

Anyway, while we could do far better, if we have to pick a left-of-center judge (that's what you get when you pick a left-of-center president, like it or not), Maria's niece isn't all that bad of a choice.

Which Souter Seat Suitor Will Suit Obama?

It's interesting that the week Arlen Specter switches parties, David Souter decides to hang up his Supreme Court gown at the end of the term.

We just about have a filibuster-free Senate, at least for judicial nominees. There are 57 Democrats and two liberal-friendly independents, and you can pretty much bank on the RINO Sisters of Maine going along with anything short of the Devil incarnate as a nominee. That's 61, 62 if Al Franken gets on board by the time the nomination is voted on.

This will likely be the first time in recent memory that we've had such a lopsided Senate and the specter of a filibuster didn't loom over a prospective nominee. Souter was a product of the modern judicial fights, as the elder president Bush wanted to avoid a nomination brawl and nominated a bland, moderate New Hampshire jurist. The joke at the time was that Souter avoided all water sports, so he didn't Row or Wade. Once on the bench, he set up shop on the liberal side of the court more often than not.

The next person in that spot will not likely to have that judicial hydrophobia; they're likely to be a loyal liberal who will bow at the altar of Roe v Wade. Here's CNN version of the short-list, with another George HW Bush nominee, 2nd circuit appleate judge Sonia Sotomayor, heading things up; she has Souteresque "moderate-liberal views" per CNN. The conventional wisdom, at least as NPR had it down on my way into work this morning, was that Obama would pick a woman to give Ruth Bader Ginsberg someone to go to the Little Girl's Room with; Sotomayor would be a two-bagger, being both a woman and the first Hispanic justice.

The sad-interesting thing is that while the right side of the Blogosphere will rant and rave over whoever Obama nominates, they're not in any position to do anything about it; there are 61 folks who won't listen to them unless Obama picks someone with horns and a tail.

Freddie's (Boss is) Dead

Here's a sobering story. Mortgage market-maker Freddie Mac's CFO, David Kellermann, apparently did himself in yesterday. Are you happy now, Senator Grassley?

To be fair to the senator, he was joking when he suggested that the AIG honchos commit hari kari, but a lot of people feel that way towards the financial big-shots. A lot of ill will is flowing towards folks who are often doing the best they can in a bad situation.

If you listen to talkers on both the right and left, there is little but bile pointed towards our financial system's leaders; it's not saying that the chattering classes caused Mr. Kellermann to commit suicide, but it surely didn't help. I know it wouldn't help my mood if I were getting ripped left and right in the media on a daily basis.

Now pundits will wonder if there is some massive problem that is about to hit the fan; what's just as likely is that he cracked under some exceedingly intense pressue.

Pray for his family, the Freddie Mac folks who will get extra scrutiny, and our financial system in general.

Commander Check-Off

It's Tax Day, which creates the proper hissing sound from the right side of the Peanut Gallery and groans in the rest. Hey, at least we have income to tax. I filed my forms yesterday, having my biggest tax bill ever thanks to my best income year of my life.

Kentucky has an interesting check-off system for political funding; unlike the federal system, which sends money into a kitty that presidential candidates of various parties (IIRC, third parties get funding if they pass a threshold percentage), the Kentucky system lets you designate $2 to either the Democrats or Republicans or neither.

I never saw that before, but a few other states have that system. Idaho, Iowa and New Mexico also allow taxpayers to designate a party rather than put the cash in a generic pot for state campaigns.

I had an interesting dilemma. Would I rather have Frankfort have an extra $2 to run whatever programs they might need help with (yes, $2 won't go to far, but you have to think you have company elsewhere in the Commonwealth to make a dent) or an extra $2 in the Kentucky GOP coffers to run attack ads against whoever is running against Jim Bunning next year? It may sound odd, but I think two bucks of government spending will do more good than two bucks worth of attack ads (or other political expenditure, but the attack ad is where the marginal dollars are likely to go), even if I support the side running the attack ads.

Here's a question for the Democrats (or center-left folks among my international readers); would you rather have $2 for your party to spend or $2 for the government to spend? Since you generally would like government to be able to do more, would diverting some of that cash into political campaigning be counterproductive?

For the Republicans in the crowd-if you disagree with me, why would you want to raise taxes (or cut spending) in order to fund GOP campaigns?

Serving the Customer or the State?

It's been almost two week since GM CEO Rick Wagoner got forced out by the Obama administration and I haven't put in my $0.02 yet. One meme that has made the rounds is to compare what Obama's doing to the early days of Mussolini; Fascism (the actual ideology, not the all-purpose slur on anyone more authoritarian than you'd like) has a private sector but has it subservient to the needs of the state. Peter Sean Bradley kicks it around here and Glenn Beck has been on the theme heavy on his TV show.

This is the first time that I can think of that a president has forced out a corporate CEO. That's moving in some very heady territory that should make everyone a bit nervous. My general view of government in the marketplace is that it is an good referee, a mediocre coach and a poor player. Here, Obama is playing uberCEO, a dangerous spot.

I think it is the right move, albeit one that has ramifications galore. GM needs a serious overhaul if it is going to survive, and a GM lifer like Wagoner is not the person to dispassionately amputate the unsavable sections; you'd not be in a great position as a doctor to saw off your mom's legs even if you knew it medically needed to be done. Obama at least realizes that some sort of GM 2.0 needs to be created that will create more cutting that Wagoner can easily deliver.

Is this getting GM to serve the state? Not quite yet; a government-shepherded Chapter 11 trip should actually help GM to meet it's goals as a business.

I remember the basic mantra of my undergraduate Marketing class; the company needs to serve the customer and make a profit. If you don't do both, you're not going to stay in business long. If you don't serve the customer, you won't get any business, and if you don't make a profit, you won't stay in business for too long.

GM is making a decent stab at serving the customer; they might not be the most innovative bunch, but they do make solid cars. For instance I have very few complaints about the Pontiac Vibe I bought two years ago except that the Pontiac nameplate might not make the cut in the overhaul of GM.

What they aren't doing is making a profit. They have a truckload of fixed costs that only either a bankruptcy filing or Soviet-era level government support of money-losing businesses can fix; the latter is out of the question even for the flotilla-of-drunken-sailors in charge of spending at present.

Once the bond market takes its lumps and the UAW gets a sustainable contract, a GM 2.0 can emerge that can make a profit and continue to, in their somewhat homely way, of serving the customer.

Business can serve the public at large best by serving their customers. That's how they roll best. Government is well advised to place as few of barriers as possible in their way of doing so, regulating only where the red tape and disruption is worth the hassle of protecting the customer or the public at large. Yes, they will make money, but that's how we know they're doing a good job; if they aren't doing a good job, they go under and the economy moves the people and resources to other things.

In general, business serves the public by serving the customer. They're ill-equipped to help the government or take orders from Washington; doing what Washington wants isn't a good business model. By providing good products at fair prices, they help their customers and the public at large.

Even the Obama people likely understand that. Our scuffle is most likely over which regulations and laws are worth the hassle; they're going to place a higher value on intervention that most of the Peanut Gallery will.

In the case of GM, it seems that they are heading on the right path of a tough-love restructuring that will get multiple pounds of flesh from workers, bond-holders and other stakeholders, getting GM back to a point where it can "serve the customer and make a profit."

Not My Cup of Tea

There are times where I feel like a man without a party right now. I have little interest in the Democratic party as presently constituted, for I agree with them on very few issues; the death penalty and immigration reform are about the only areas that I'm center-left on.

However, I don't quite fit in with the anger of the activist right, either. I don't do anger well; when I do get angry, I'm a 11 on a 1-10 scale and it isn't pretty. Thankfully, I calm down really quick and don't take it out on people. However, a steady diet of radio or TV anger is not good for my system.

I'm not a good Republican soldier in opposition.

Firstly, as the son of a public-school teacher growing up, and the grandson of a public junior high principal, I don't have that vitriolic hostility to government that seems to pervade a lot of conservative-to-libertarian thought. Leviathan was paying my dad's paycheck growing up and helped finance (with a lot of sweat equity) my grandpa's cottage that we hung out at during the summer. That combined with a recovering neoliberal's compassion for the little guy and I'm somewhat center-right rather than hard right on economics.

Secondly, the anger part seems a bit overblown. Case in point-the Tea Party movement on the right, having anti-big government and anti-Obama excesses protests around the country.

Not that anyone in the Peanut Gallery will need a history lesson on this (I think), but the Boston Tea Party was a terrorist act, dumping tea into Boston Harbor rather than have the revenue from it go to London. We don't look at it that way in history, since they were the "good guys", but there was not a lot of difference, outside of the righteousness of the cause, between those militant Bostonians and a Iraqi hard case blowing up a pipeline.

Is that the rhetorical level we are shooting for? Obama as King George? Washington as a colonial overlord? "Good conservatives" renting The Patriot as a refresher with a side serving of 1776 for some PG humor?

I live in Lexington; I'm not ready to relive 1775 right now and take up arms against Washington excesses. For now, count me in the Tory camp on that front, although I'm more than happy to vote for thoughtful politicians who know the limits of government; there are times where Bunning comes up well short on the thoughtful front, but he'd likely beat the alternative.

There's not much I can do other than possibly politely lobby Rep. Chandler, our Democratic rep in Congress. However, most of the marginal action seems to be in the Senate, where our two Republican senators are solidly in the No camp, almost regardless of what is coming down the pike. So, there isn't a lot of agitating that I can do from my Kentucky perch.

Scared

I'm having a delayed reaction from last night's press conference, and it isn't pretty. The word "clueless" comes to mind regarding the president and economics.

That's a bit harsh, because he isn't unknowledgeable about economics. However, that knowledge comes with a paradigm that government knows more than the market does. He has faith that clean energy, better education and health care reform will get us out of this economic funk; either that or he's one slick and sick puppy.

None of those goals is bad in and of themselves. In the very long term, we'll need to find alternatives to coal and oil and natural gas, but a short-term crash course might be penny wise and pound foolish. We need to keep improving our education system, but a large part of the problem lies outside of the school walls in the attitudes of communities about education, problems that are ill-suited for a Washington solution. Health care could use some reform, but we may need to resign ourselves to spending more on health care as we get it to do more things for us.

However, none of those is going to be a medium-term growth engine. It's going to be changes in attitudes, not more money from Washington or state capitals, that will turn the education system around; even so, that well-trained workforce will be years away from changing GDP and productivity numbers. Health care reform could be a societal good but an economic wash at best; the lower cost from any reform package will be offset by the added costs of reaching the uninsured. Renewable energy could be a economic winner, but industrial policy is not something that government is generally good at.

What seems to be poised to be doing the damage is not the spending, but the higher taxes that will be needed to fund it. I don't have a dog in the fight personally, as a disgustingly middle class college professor with negative net worth, but those high taxes will tend to discourage further investment.

Keynesian econ looks at business investment as a given, but it isn't. You tax stuff more, you get less of it. You subsidize stuff less, like charitable giving, you get less of it; Obama assumed that the rich won't stop giving to charities if they only get a 20% break rather than a full 30-some-percent break, but that flies in the face of basic human nature.

I'm normally positive about the future. I'm not that way right now, at least not for the next few years. We're going to be OK for the very long term, but we're in for a bumpy ride the next bit if Obama means what he said last night. His heart seems to be in the right place, which is scary, for he'll be earnestly pulling things in the wrong direction.

Creation Wars: Hiding a Bigger Issue?

A bit of a flap is happening north of the border, as science minster Gary Goodyear is under fire for not whole-heartedly backing evolutionary theory. Damian Penny has some bloggage on the issue from his secular-libertarian standpoint. The general gist, which we've seen south of the border as well, is that religious conservatives are anti-science if they don't buy into evolution.

One thing that crossed my mind this afternoon is that scientists might have a different reason to shout out any doubts on evolution is that it brings the prospect of a personal God into the mix. Whether a boss goes with a literal young earth creation stance or buys into Darwin hook, line and sinker is actually secondary; it is more of a marker of whether you're going to bring a tighter set of ethical standards to the mix that will give a researcher a bit less freedom to maneuver. Interestingly, it would most likely not be in the realm of evolutionary biological research.

I've yet to hear anyone state that theologically conservative folks in authority have vetoed research on the grounds that it's advancing evolutionary theory. A creationist would probably like to see more research, for it will (if they are right) find more holes in naturalistic evolutionary theory that only a Creator can fill. It may cast doubts on young-earth creationism, that things seemed to take longer than six literal days to do, but it should settle the issue eventually.

What I think (warning-very broad brush) scientists are more worried about with a creationist is that the creationist, by definition, will generally believe in a capital G God that has moral standards. That's going to make some research problematic, if it runs afoul of a naturalistic utilitarian paradigm. Embryonic stem cell research is one area that this shows up, but it also extends to various end-of-life issues, where utilitarians are quick to want to pull the plug on negative NPV projects people.

A creationist boss will have tighter ethical standards on research than on average, at least one that buys into the idea of a hands-on God. That, rather than the debate on how life got started and came to be in its present form, seems to be what worries the naturalistic side of the aisle.

At least that's what's floating through my head at present. Is there something to that idea?

Populist Reactionaries

I'm not sure what to do with this paragraph from William Kristol; I'm not the most rabid supply-sider in the Peanut Gallery by far, but Neocon Junior is joining the anti-AIG crowd in the worst pile-on since my last junior-high game of Smear the Queer.

Can capitalism survive the behavior of some capitalists? It's always been an open question. But if capitalism is to survive, shouldn't the Republican party, the party that defends democratic capitalism, be particularly vehement in denouncing its excesses? Isn't this a pretty spectacular one?

Yes, but you're not going to out demgogue a liberal on this issue. You need to be particularly smart, not just vehement. Bill Kristol getting jiggy with his inner Lou Dobbs is like me trying to do gansta rap; it doesn't work, sir.

And isn’t this a moment for the GOP to separate itself from the Bush administration as well as the Obama administration, who together have been responsible for an incompetent and improvident bailout? Figuring out the right policy going forward with respect to toxic assets and the rest is, of course, a major intellectual task. But being on the side of a healthy populist reaction to the AIG situation is at least a good political start.

"Healthy populist reaction." Think twice, blog once...take that lynching metaphor and slooowly walk away, Mark.

There is a faction on the right side of the aisle that majors in a hearty (if not always healthy) populism; they are generally blood rivals of Kristol's style of politics and geopolitics. It's more Pat Buchanan and Tom Tancredo that major in populism of that sort, folks that are an accident waiting to happen if in charge of the party, more so than Rush's free market myopia.

Is Kristol trying to come up with a neocon-paleocon fusion that tries to go up against the Cudgel for Growth crowd in the GOP? Either that, or he's had one dose too many of the WaPo Koolaid.

FIN 498-Derivatives for Executives

It's interesting that President Obama is more than willing to give bonus pay for high-performing teachers but dead set against giving such pay for high-performing finance folks.

"It's hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay," Obama said at the outset of an appearance to announce help for small businesses hurt by the deep recession.

"How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat," the president said.

Well, it might be understandable if you studied a bit. A Harvard JD has to have something on the ball. As I tell my students, there's a difference between dumb and ignorant. Dumb means you can't learn and ignorant means you've yet to learn; ignorance is curable.  

In some cases, the bonuses are built into the contract. For instance, you got paid more for The Audacity of Hope than guys who only sold a few copies because that was what was in the contract. If your publisher was in Chapter 11, they'd still be on the hook for those royalties.

In other cases, they are rewarding good work; you don't cancel performance bonuses if the team has a bad year. Let say that Derrick Rose from your Bulls is having a great rookie year on a mediocre club; if he had performance bonuses in his contract based on assists and points scored and games started, he'd still get those even though the Bulls would be back in the lottery if the season ended today.

Even bad firms can have good workers. It's easy to pick on derivatives since they scare the bejeebers out of most folks, especially if you work at making them scary. That's how modern finance rolls, with derivatives being used both to hedge stuff and take risks.

If you want to go back to the days of yore where prairie populists railed about big city banks, feel free. But don't plead ignorance unless you're trying to look dumber than you are; that works for some folks like Dubya, but you're not equipped to play that card.

"Everyone has the right to think about politics."

It isn't often that I'm going to agree with something Hugo Chavez says. This is one of them. Tiger right fielder Magglio Ordonez is a Chavez-supporter, who was getting ripped by anti-Chavez fans in Miami where Venezuela is through to the second round winner's bracket title game against a hot Puerto Rico team who mercied the US 11-1 yesterday.

"Everyone has the right to think about politics," Chavez said after reading an article about the incident from The Associated Press. "This is shameful.

"Viva Magglio, and all our patriots!" Chavez added.

Well, Chavez is half right. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, even if it's wrong. That doesn't mean that they're immune to criticism. I'm not a fan of booing players in the first place,  but I can see where someone who has been exiled to Miami to avoid the downsides of the Bolivarians would want to give Ordonez both rhetorical barrels.

Here's a question; are those ex-pat Venezuelans booing Ordonez/Chavez or Cuban-American hot-heads? There are a lot of Cubans in Little Havana who may well see Chavez as Fidel 2.0 and may be taking their long-standing dislike of Castro out on Chavez and his fans.

This article notes that there were 17,000 ex-pats in the Southeast eligable to vote in the 2004 presidential election. This piece on an 80K strong anti-Chavez rally in 2002 notes that was "staged by the mostly business- and professionally oriented Venezuelan community in South Florida." How much of that group are people who would naturally gravitate to the de facto capital of Latin America and how many have moved to steer clear of Chavez is a good question.

Carying things to the point of firing people for backing the wrong candidate (or wrong issue, as some CA Prop-8 backers have found) or terrorizing them is wrong, but booing someone for their politics is within the realm of political discourse. Booing them off the stage, as some leftists are want to do, is bad form, but expressing your displeasure is still everyone's right.

At least in the US, it is.

Galting the Ground

I just got done grading a capital budgeting assignment for my Executive MBA finance class and was thinking about our current economic downturn. One of the catch-phrases that's making its way around the Blogosphere in the early Obama era is "going Galt", as in Atlas Shrugged protagonist John Galt; in the book, Galt led a strike of high-achievers.

Our economic downturn might not be a coherent strike from the American rich but the effects of the first 50 days of the Obama administration effectively salting the ground for economic growth.

Picture if you will a stock capital budgeting problem; we figure out the future cash flows from the project, then figure out what those cash flows are worth today by discounting them back using our cost of raising funds. If the present value of those expected future cash flows are bigger than what we're investing, we have a positive Net Present Value and we do the project.

The Obama team has created a double whammy (at least) for such projects.

Firstly, he has set the groundwork for higher taxes, both by promising to raise taxes on the well-off (or at least to allow the planned sunsetting of Bush tax cuts); the high deficits caused by the massive stimulus package and other projects will mean that tax cuts of any magnitude are unlikely and other tax increases may be forthcoming to pay for the expanded national debt. That will reduce the yearly cash flows from the projects being considered, since Uncle Sam will be getting a bigger chunk of the profits.

Secondly, the added deficit will tend to raise interest rates and required returns on stocks in the long term. The econ-speak term for that is the "crowding out effect"; as Uncle Sam borrows more money, there's less investable money to go into stocks, bonds and consumer loans, thus driving up interest rates and required returns. That will increase the cost of capital which we discount those future cash flows back at, making them less valuable to the investor.

So, thanks to BO and his buddies on Capital Hill, we have diminished cash flows for future investments and a decreased value for what cash flows we do get to keep. Some projects that might have made sense six months ago don't anymore.

On top of that, businesses that made sense six months ago might not make sense today; as people look at higher taxes, higher costs of capital and a weaker economy (not factored into the calculus above), they might decide to pull the plug on a marginal business, seeing that things won't be getting better any time soon. Note that the big drop in unemployment happened in December, as we saw the massive stimulus package taking shape and seeing Obama lurch more to the left on economics that the business community thought.

Could it be just the lousy economy in general. In part, yes, but part of it might be businesses looking at what Washington was sending their way and not wanting to try to send good money after bad.

He is not Spock

The Spock in question is Dr. Benjamin, not our favorite Vulcan; well, some guys might be partial to the lady Vulcan crew member from Enterprise;-).

As I was pulling out of Krogers while running errands this afternoon, the analogy for where Dobson fits in the bigger picture as he steps aside as Focus on the Family boss came to mind, the anti-Spock. Spock's Baby and Child Care was the parenting Bible for many parents of Boomers, hitting the shelves as the first Boomers were hatched in 1946.

Dobson, on the other hand, became the counterpart for Christian Boomers who were looking for advice on how to offset what was widely seen as the laissez-fair approach of Spock; one of Dobson's popular titles is Dare to Discipline. Baby and Child Care wasn't as permissive as it's current reputation in conservative circles (Spock erred more on the nurturing side, more carrot and less stick, but not no stick), but Dobson filled a niche for a modern parenting guide that melded psychology and fairly old-school Biblical thought.

One interesting irony that came secondarily to me is that they are political opposites as well. Spock was a legit 60s liberal and anti-war activist who headed up a anti-war People's Party in 1972, which, per Spock's Wikipedia, had

...a platform that called for free medical care, the repeal of 'victimless crime' laws, including the legalization of abortion, homosexuality, and marijuana, a guaranteed minimum income for families and the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from foreign countries."

If that's the case, than you might call Dobson the Bearded Spock, a near perfect conservative counterpart. Had he pulled the trigger and backed the Constitution party more often (he did in 1996 when Bob Dole was too moderate for him), it would be even more perfect.

Much like Rush Limbaugh resonates with economic conservatives without leading them per se, Dobson resonates with evangelical conservatives without directly leading them. Both can light up switchboards if they tell their listeners to be heard on an issue, but they don't have a group of drones ready to march into battle at their command.

My beef with Dobson over the years is that he got a bit too strident and a bit too much in league with the conservative wing of the GOP to be a good witness. You don't get to show the love of Christ by getting into a pissing match with Ken Salazar over Senate judicial filibusters. What the public got to see in the last decade was an ornery guy who was ready to take his ball and go home if he didn't get his way in the GOP.

Who's the next Dobson? That's what the media would like to know. The bad news for the media is that there isn't a unified church to lead. There are influential people around, but none that easily come to mind that would be political leaders. As a non-minister, Dobson could talk politics without running afoul of election laws, whereas pastors have to pull their punches in the pulpit, able to discuss issues but not candidates.

You'd thus have to have a non-pastor that had a wide Christian following to be on the same level of Dobson. With the exception of a few singers or actors, that's a small sample set, since most of the headliners on Christian TV and radio are pastors and ministers who want to focus on ministry and not politics.

They'd also have to have a knowledge of the political system and an interest in discussing it regularly. That's going to write off most Christian celebs.

The media would like Rick Warren to be that new Mr. Evangelical, but he's rather apolitical; recall that he is a pastor and would lose a lot of his appeal if he became a Republican shill. What he might become is a conservative Oprah (at least pre-Obama), helping popularize things that he likes but not being an active campaigner. Warren's also too theologically moderate and politically centrist to have a lot of Dobson's following warm to him.

Warren is going to be a force to be reckoned with, but he'll be more of a post-modern Billy Graham than a James Dobson, not as a great revival evangelist (Luis Palau is Billy 2.0 on that front, not Franklin) but as the chaplain-in-chief.

However, Dobson isn't dead yet; he's still doing the FotF show and will still be his curmudgeonly self for a while longer. He may have jumped the shark a bit, but he's starting to show those negative derivatives from high up on the Y axis.

Conservative Spokesman... Not Leader

The White House wants to pick a fight with Rush Limbaugh, and Rush is happy to oblige; it's mutually beneficial. They gets a bombastic ideologue to look cool and collected against and Rush gets listeners. Polling seems to show that Rush turns off swing voters and the White House would like the subject to be them-versus-Rush.

One problem with anointing Rush the de facto head of the GOP; he's a conservative, not a Republican and he's more a thinker and talker than a leader. He reflects a good chunk of the Republican electorate but doesn't lead it.

If he lead it, we would of have had Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson heading up the ticket last fall; he has little love for John McCain and gave both barrels to Mike Huckabee when he joined the lead pack in the 2008 nomination race. Yet, McCain and Huckabee were the two leading candidates last go round, not Romney or Thompson.

Limbaugh is a hawkish libertarian, looking for as small a government as possible outside of a strong military and police force. He's not a big social conservative, having been through three marriages and veering off into PG-13 territory far too frequently; unfriendly critics will add a law-breaking pain-killer addict, but that's something that can happen to good people more than we'd like to admit.

Thus, he might speak for maybe 15% of the electorate who would like his package of small government, a strong military and, as Churchill put it, being a buttress of the Church, supporting it from the outside.

Quite a few of us who pull the R level most of the time aren't fully in love with that package; the status quo pre-Obama wasn't socialist and even the current overhaul leaves us more like Reagan's America than Sweden, but I do have to visit the Swedish Economist- "Den, we increase-a da spending to stim-u-late da aggra-gate Dee-mand, BORK BORK BORK." Also, we are supposed to pray for our leaders, not pray that they fall on their kiester.

We also might want something more compassionate than his hawkish immigration policy and want our leaders to be, where possible, more a pillar of the church than a butress.

He speaks for a part of the GOP, but not the party as a whole. Same goes for James Dobson, but that's another post.

Grasping at 2012 Straws

For what it's worth, they did a 2012 straw poll at the CPAC convention this weekend; Mitt Romney is once again the first choice of movement conservatives there, getting 20%, while Bobby Jindal nudged out Sarah Palin and Ron Paul for second (14-13-13).

Rounding out the rest of the results: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., received 10 percent, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee received 7 percent, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford received 4 percent, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani received 3 percent, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty received 2 percent and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist received 1 percent.

Note that this is a powwow of activist conservatives, not that of the party as a whole; John McCain couldn't get nominated to be dogcatcher with this crowd, but won the 2008 nomination. However, I don't see the centrists in the list, Pawlenty and Crist, getting any traction and Mark Sanford, beloved by many conservatives, will be hard pressed to get any traction with either Jindal or Palin in the race.

It appears that Huckabee's time has past, at least for now. With a couple of strong social conservatives in Palin and Jindal in the mix, it will be hard for Huckabee to expand his appeal outside the folks who voted for him in 2008; even there, you'd have quite a few Huckabee voters who would like Palin and Jindal better.

Both Palin and Jindal hold the prospect of reaching out to economic conservatives as well as social conservatives; Huckabee had little love from economic conservatives last go-round.

Ron Paul still has a following, but one that isn't going to translate into being in the hunt for a nomination. Interestingly, Paul's son Rand is looking to run for the US Senate in Kentucky if Jim Bunning opts to retire. I thought he might be named after libertarian heroine Ayn Rand, but his given first name is Randall.

So, the early going seems to have Romney, Jindal and Palin as folks likely to be on the ballot in 2012 if they are interested and do well in the next 30 months. We'll also likely see at least one moderate (by Republican standards) try and make a run, but without a back-story like John McCain, it will be hard for anyone on the left half of the party to get much traction.

Bobby and Sarah

I didn't get to watch last night's Obama speech, I was getting in the door from teaching when he was finishing up. I did read the transcript and didn't really see anything that struck me. Given his oratory, it probably sounded better than it read.

The one thing that did raise a red flag was his assertion that 90% of the jobs from the stimulus package would be in the private sector. True, but a lot of the "shovel-ready" jobs will be done by various contractors who will have to comply with federal regulations. The Davis-Bacon act comes to mind, that requires that contractors on federal projects pay "prevailing wages"; that often translates into "union wages" as applied by Uncle Sam, especially when Uncle Sam has a (D) behind his name.

I did, however, get to see Bobby Jindal's reply. If I were advising him, I'd have told him to not overdo the Katrina stories; the one with the sheriff telling the anal bureaucrats where to stick it could have better been used as a stump speech in 2011 or 2012. Other than that, I liked what I saw of him; it's the first time I saw him in an at-length speech.

It may well be a Red State-Blue State thing; the Fox News pundits didn't like it, but they tend to be the kind of metropolitan elites that didn't quite get Sarah Palin, either. I went to bed shortly thereafter, but I have read that the Frank Luntz focus groups liked the speech; Jindal might be better received in flyover country than the Beltway.

He's one of the folks oft mentioned for the 2012 nomination to try and make Obama's stay at 1600 Penn a four-year one.

He might be a fusion candidate that can appeal to those elite conservatives without alienating the social conservative base. He has a heavyweight academic resume, with a bachelors degree in biology from Ivy Leaguer Brown and an Oxford master's in political science; like a governor-turned-president to the north of him, he was a Rhodes Scholar. His devout Catholicism is helpful; centrists tend to turn their noses up less at Catholics than evangelicals like Palin, yet will play well with social conservatives.

He'll likely be on a ticket sometime in the 2012-2020 stretch. 2012 might be problematic, however. He'll have a 2011 reelection if he is interested in a second term, although he might pull a Mitt Romney and opt not to run for a second term. He also might not have a strong base to work from if Sarah Palin is interested in a presidential run and develops her own political persona in the next few years.

2016 would make more sense; he'd leave the governor's mansion in time to campaign in earnest (and plenty of other cities) for the winter 2016 primaries and be able to not spend the fall of 2015 on an election campaign for governor.

We're still three years out before the first 2012 primaries and two years before the Invisible Primary starts to kick into gear after the 2010 midterms. We don't know what politics will be like, how Obama is being viewed once the honeymoon is over, what the economy will be like, and who is going to throw their hats in the ring.

Palin's the 800-pound gorilla (with lipstick) in the room; if she has a solid 2009 and 2010 as governor and gets re-upped for a second term, she'll be the front-runner. If not, Mike Huckabee stands poised to pick up a lot of support among cultural conservatives. Mitt Romney might make another run and any number of governors might get the itch.

However, I'd be content with a Palin-Jindal or Jindal-Palin ticket, although I don't see her being second banana on a ticket two times in a row.

Asian Occasions

Two Commerce nominees had to drop out, so the third one has to be a Locke. If Gary Locke's nomination is shot down in the Senate, it will be a Chinese take-out.

Locke had been on a number of VP lists in years past as a goo-gooey governor of Washington state and the first Chinese-American to be a state governor. We'll see if he has any skeletons in his closet, whether his taxes are paid up and whether his post-governor work has any funky conflicts.

________

Speaking of things Asian, we had Bollywood take over Hollywood for the evening, as Slumdog Millionaire won the best picture Oscar and seven other chrome-dome statues, including awards for its Indian composer and sound-mixing. Frank Capra goes to the Subcontinent, or at least the Rosie Perez Jeopardy subplot from White Men Can't Jump brought front-and-center.

On top of that, one of the sons of the Indian diaspora, Bobby Jindal, is going to be giving the Republican reply to Obama's speech tomorrow night. He's on the short list for the 2012 presidential nomination; we could do far, far worse.

"Dr. Hayek, what milestone are we on?"

Here's an interesting statement-

In his weekly address, President Obama praised Congress for passing the $787 billion economic stimulus package Friday, saying its efforts "delivered a real and tangible progress for the American people."

Obama, who lobbied House and Senate members of both parties, said in his address released Saturday that the bill passage marks a "major milestone on our road to recovery."

The president might be a letter off from the truth. If the critics are right, this is a major millstone around the economy as opposed to a major milestone on the road to recovery.

While the various parts of the stim-ulus package might goose the economy in the short term, the added debt load and tax burden needed to pay for this bad boy (both now and in the future, as many items become permanent) may well slow the economy for years if not decades to come.

Or, if I can bring Hayek into the mix, it's a major milestone on the road to serfdom. I can recall one poster in the late-90s NRO protoblog GIGO who'd close posts on days when the left was winning with "Dr. Hayek, what milepost are we on?"

Indeed. Let's see if we can find an off ramp.... soon.

End of the Bromance

Here's a tacky question. Sen Gregg didn't know he had big differences with the President?

However, it has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census there are irresolvable conflicts for me. Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns. We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy.

Obviously the President requires a team that is fully supportive of all his initiatives.

Gregg isn't a fire-breathing conservative but he's no RINO; he has a lifetime ACU rating of 78. How is he going to interact with a guy who had a career rating of 8? With great difficulty.

I don't channel surf into MTV, so this Bill Simmons ESPN piece introduced me to a synonym for "man crush"-bromance; Simmons has it bad for Kevin Durant.

Did Gregg get caught with a man crush on Obama, only to have the original bromantic visions of bipartisanship with a dashing young president dashed by reality? I could see where someone could picture running the Commerce department in a non-partisan, pro-growth way even within a left-leaning administration; however, that assumes the best of the bromantic vision of Obama the bipartisan.

Right now, Obama's idea of bipartisanship as expressed in the stim-ulus package is bringing Arlan Specter and the RINO sisters on board to break a fillibuster and tell the House Republicans to take a flying [leap] at a rolling donut. That's about as bipartisan as a Southern Baptist-GARBC meeting is ecumenical.

Obama's bipartisanship is leting Republicans agree with him rather than reaching for a real compromise; however, they have the votes to run things on a essentially partisan basis, getting just enough moderate Republicans (2 or 3) to invoke cloture in the Senate and run stuff through the House on party lines, even allowing Blue Dogs like Heath Shuler to join Republicans in that rolling donut leap.

Obama must feel like Latka in Taxi after his arranged marraige to get him a work visa;"No honeymoon? No nik-nik?" No nik-nik (except from some quarters of the MSM), not even a good bromance from a willing Republican once the seamier side of things are seen.

$33/Paycheck

The stim-ulus package got through conference committee and actually lost weight; the tab is slated to be $790B. The second page of the WaPo piece had this interesting factoid-

["RINO" Senator Susan] Collins said the White House suggested the reduction to its "Make Work Pay" proposal as a way to reduce the overall size of the legislation. Obama had proposed a $1,000 tax break for families and $500 for individuals; the numbers were trimmed to $800 and $400, sums that would be distributed mainly through reduced payroll tax withholding.

OK. I get paid twice a month, on the 15th and the last business day of the month; the eagle flies tomorrow this month, for Sunday the 15th means that Friday the 13th is payday. If I'm getting $800 back "through reduced payroll tax withholding", I'll be getting $33.33 ($800/24) per paycheck.

Not a bad raise, but not something that's going to get you to say "Woo-hoo! Let's go to the mall and blow this money on something that will stimulate the economy." It would spring for a nice dinner out for Eileen and I and leave a bit over (yes, I'm cheap; my definition of a nice meal gets us out for about $15/head with beverage, tax and tip) but not really get me into spending mode.

Over the course of a year, that $800 could finance a new computer and basic new HDTV set (our current set is vintage mid-90s and due for retirement), but to do so, I'd have to put it on the store credit card and pay for it with my savings.

Nice, but not overly stimulating. Plus, that $800 tab is going to need to be paid back with interest down the line, or hit us with a yearly interest check indefinitely.

Porkzilla Lives!

I already have Porkasaurus Rex taken by Robert Byrd, so I need another sobriquet for the stim-ulus package. It survived a cloture vote 61-36; the Democrats even wheeled in Teddy Kennedy for his first vote of the new Congress. If you're of a left-of-center mindset and of a certain age, it might bring back the memory of Willis Reed limping out to play for the Knicks in their '70 title game.

That leaves very little wiggle room for the conference committee. Anything to the left of what passed the Senate won't survive cloture in a revote. If they can pry one vote away from the package the next time, each Senator can be deemed to have cast the decisive vote. That was used by the GOP back in 1994, when Clinton's FY94 budget got through by the slimmest of margins in both houses.

It looks like Gregg and Cornyn were the two non-votes; that only adds up to 99, but Norm Coleman's old seat is a non-entity at present until the recount mess is settled. That's an interesting move for Gregg, who's slated to become Commerce Secretary. He's distancing himself from his future boss without outright showing him up.

Specter and the Maine RINO Sisters were the three yes votes from the Republicans. OK, who gets to play Pat Toomey in 2010 and give Specter a challange in the primary? You can kinda forgive Snowe and Collins, for they're about the best right-of-center folks can hope for out of Maine, but PA will support someone more conservative than Specter.

We're Not Using Two Quarts Like Bush, We're Using Four Pints

Here's an interesting turn of phrase from the VPOTUS-

Biden told delegates at a security conference that the United States will work "preventively, not pre-emptively" whenever possible to avoid conflict, and will at the same time "vigorously defend" the nation's security.

Last year, preemptively taking up arms, like taking out Iran's nuke program would have been bad. Now, preventively doing so is just fine.

Preemptive-version 4 " marked by the seizing of the initiative : initiated by oneself <a preemptive attack>"

Preventive-: "something that prevents ; especially : something used to prevent disease."

Merely preventing something is OK, just as long as you don't take the initiative. However, if you don't want to move first in order to prevent an attack, preventive measures can only be passive. Given that Biden wants something vigorous, he might want to include some preemptive measures in the mix; it's hard to be vigorously passive.

Biden wants an active foreign policy, but not quite as belligerent as Bush. However, when you give the other guy the initiative, you lose quite a bit of your effectiveness. You become reactive rather proactive.

It will be interesting to see how the Obama team fleshes this out. So far, it seems that they're using four pints in their recipe because using two quarts like Bush did is a bad idea; the differences seem more semantic that real.