Follow the money

The market closed down 770 points today, on the news that the House rejected the bail-out plan -- although it was down 300 even before the vote. I’m guessing investors fear two things: 1] that this problem dwarfs even a $700 billion slush-fund’s capacity to solve it and 2] our political leaders are too inept to act in time to stop significant damage occurring to the economy from a credit freeze.

The complexity of the situation is overwhelming. No one knows how big the problem is. No one knows if this plan will fix it. No one knows what shoe will drop next – or on whom.
One thing we know for sure, however, is that the problem was known to be on its way and growing for a long time. (One observer has called it the world’s slowest moving train wreck.)

Another thing we know for sure is that members of Congress in both parties are scrambling to be the most outraged at the “corporate greed” that caused this mess. They’re working on CEO salary caps and can’t wait to hold hearings so they can wag their fingers and scold a few fat-cats for the cameras. It’ll look great on the local news back home.

But not only did Congress and the Executive branch do nothing to stop it, they were like the sweepers in a curling match, sweeping their brooms along the ice to make a nice smooth path for the stones being tossed by their Wall Street contributors.

Barry Ritholtz, who publishes a blog read by in-the-know financial-types, published an opinion piece in this week's Barron’s that lays out the path of destruction in simple, clear language in his essay "Uncle Sam the Enabler."

(Before any of your knees jerk, or fingers point to one party, you might be interested to know that Goldman Sachs, the biggest political contributor among financial institutions, has given more to Democrats than Republicans in each of the last ten national campaigns, and by increasingly large margins. See: http://www.opensecrets.org/) There is plenty of blame to go around here.

Oh, the photo. Benjamin Disraeli: “What we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.”

RIP Paul Newman

“Cool Hand Luke” came out the year I graduated from high school and forever defined what it meant to be cool for me. And he was cool at every stage in life, from “Hud” and “The Hustler,” through “Absence of Malice” (one of my all-time favorite movies) and “Nobody’s Fool.” In between he was Butch and the brains of “The Sting.” He may have been ever cooler in real life; a long marriage to a very cool woman, the inventor of a successful line of consumer products that benefited disadvantaged children, a beer drinker, and a for-real race car driver – not some celebrity poser. And of course, he was a Buckeye, and an American original. I’ll miss him.

McCain and Obama talk to a tie

It’s late, so I’ll just make a couple of very broad observations to get the conversation started. I thought the debate was very close. I suspect that who you liked going in is the guy you liked 90 minutes later. That was probably good news for Obama since foreign policy is McCain’s strength.
Neither man seems to really know much about economics, and that portion of the debate was superficial, with both candidates playing it safe.

Once it moved to foreign policy they both gained confidence, and my overwhelming impression was that both men displayed sophisticated knowledge and had nuanced positions on all the major issues. Again, who you liked going in was probably the winner in your mind on these topics, but perhaps I’m wrong. Tell us what you think.

Would you lend this man $2300?

This would be your share of the $700 B he wants to use to buy back the bad investments his life-long pals on Wall Street made in mortgage backed securities and other investments they really didn’t understand, beyond recognizing an opportunity for making a easy buck. By-the-way, your spouse and each of your children owe $2300 also. Actually, scratch that; you and I won’t pay anything; we don’t have the $700B so we’re borrowing it. Only your kids, and their kids, will get stuck with the tab. Nice legacy.

I’ve been wanting to write about this for days but who knows what to say? It’s changing minute-by-minute, and the whole thing is unbelievable. Not only is no one taking the blame, the people responsible – financial executives, Congress, and the regulatory agencies – are basically saying, “who could have foreseen such a situation?” Well, I did, for one. Not that I have any expertise or a crystal ball, but the major business books and economic pundits have been warning about something like this happening for years. There were even funny emails in broad distribution about the housing bubble; my favorite was the roller coaster view of housing prices.

So now the guys who got us into this mess want to help us out. It’s not so much a loan as extortion: “Lend us the money – now, without oversight, debate, or controls, no promise of success or payback (but with immunity from future liabilities) – or we’ll have our friends bring down such a financial shit storm on your heads you’ll wish you had.”

Fortunately, it looks like Congress has actually grown a pair since they were last asked to consider anything of importance, and may demand a different approach in which we the people at least get some equity in the firms we’re bailing out. I’m guessing some variation of the plan Senator Dodd put forth will be the final word.

Unfortunately, first we’ll have to listen to a week or two of Congressional hearings in which, Captain Renault-like, they express, “shock!” at the discovery that there was gambling going on below Canal Street.

Call me Hamlet

Well I guess I’m just Hamlet, unsure and uncomfortable with my choices. I’ve already changed my mind a couple of times (in my mind if not in print), and I may switch a couple more times before November. This condition puts me in awe of the total confidence and certainty so many of you have for your man Obama.

At best, I’m at about the 60% level for McCain – down from higher levels, after the Palin pick and as the tone of his campaign degenerated, although I understand the political conditions that made him think they were necessary.

But you! You are impressively certain. No point conceded and no doubt shown. I sincerely hope that if I’m still writing this blog a year or two from now that you’ll all be saying, “I told you so,” as President Obama delivers on the vision you’re buying.

That said, I’m a little surprised at the amount of grief I’ve taken for daring to even raise the question of who is the better man for these times. (It came more in private emails than in blog comments, but they were stinging none-the-less.)

I ask these questions because Presidents tend to surprise us. It was the conservative, Texan, military man Eisenhower who sent the Army to Little Rock to integrate the schools. It was the liberal icon Kennedy who first sent troops to Viet Nam and who invaded Cuba. LBJ voted with the worst southern racists in the Senate for decades before pushing the most comprehensive civil rights laws ever through Congress. The communist-baiter Nixon opened relations with China. The liberal, master politician Clinton blew health care reform through political ham-handedness, and then made welfare reform the most notable achievement of his eight years in office. And anyone knowledgeable on the topics will tell you that the hated George W. Bush has done more than any other world leader to solve the crisis in Darfur and of AIDS in Africa.

So just eight years after we first elected a man with a political career too short to have generated a record that revealed much about him, it seems to me a worthwhile exercise to ask these questions about a man who walks but leaves few footprints.

OK but…

I asked and you answered. Thank you for your responses to the question of “why Barack?” which I read several times. They ranged over many issues, but especially leadership. We can continue to debate the candidates for another 45 days or so, but I’m bothered by a nagging question I just can’t resolve. Perhaps you can help me with it.

Right or wrong, when it comes to the world of work (and the Presidency is a job after all) I divide the leaders I’ve worked for into two groups: those who get things done and those who talk a good game. And I suspect we could all agree that there are a lot more of the latter than the former.

I just can’t shake this impression that Obama is a talker, not a doer. I don’t denigrate his role as a community organizer, but he himself has said he left the field for law school because he could not get anything important done. I don’t dismiss the value of being a law professor, or a published author either, but those are essentially solitary pursuits in which one talks (or writes) but bears no direct responsibility for results.

I start really questioning his record when he enters politics; the 130 “present” votes in the Illinois Senate trouble me, but more troubling is his role as a US Senator. Not one hearing of the Afghanistan subcommittee that he chairs? A country where we have 30,000 troops? I find that hard to understand. There are a bunch of emails floating around that list his legislative achievements, but I think we all know these lists are not meaningful. The Senate leadership in both parties dole out “co-sponsorship” credits to all so everyone can say they did something.

A man with Obama’s ambitions should have dared something bigger – an alternative energy bill, a healthcare reform act – something that demonstrates vision and daring. But he seems very undaring to me. Careful to a fault. More afraid to fail or disappoint than to challenge the powers that be.

I don’t want to run the guy down; I may vote for him in the end – it really depends on the debates. But this nagging feeling that the man is an articulate, ambitious, poser just will not leave me. What say the rest of you?

Your turn

I’ve offered all the reasons I have in support of Senator McCain, and Lord knows we’ve heard plenty of objections to his candidacy in response. Now it’s time to hear the rationale for Senator Obama, and you, fellow bloggers, should be the ones to supply it. It’s not that I can’t think of any myself, it just that propaganda is best brewed by true believers, as many of you seem to be.

I went back and reviewed many old posts and found plenty of arguments against John McCain, but nearly nothing supporting the Obama agenda. What is it about Barack Obama that makes you think he should be the next President of the United States?

I plan to make this the only post this week, so take your time and formulate an answer you really like, and use all the space you want. (Although I can tell you for a fact that your fellow bloggers’ interest level drops sharply after about 300 words.)

The bottom line

It comes down to this for me. There are several big problems we need to address immediately: ending the war intelligently, implementing an effective energy policy for the 21st Century, making heath care affordable and available to more people, and putting the Federal budget, including Social Security and Medicare, into proper balance.

There are several more issues that are important but, to me, less urgent; among them are education reform, immigration reform, and improving America’s international imagine. All the other issues of the campaign are just distractions that are generally not solvable by the President anyway.

It is also important to remember that we are not electing a King. If we were, I’d be more likely to vote for Senator Obama. His ideas, are good, his leadership skills are polished, and he’s young and energetic. The King would command and everyone would have to obey.

But we aren’t electing a King. We’re electing a President who will have limited powers to implement his own ideas, all of which will have to be negotiated to completion with a Parliament of Whores (to borrow a phrase) comprised of 535 people who are only interested in what’s in it for them.

The only thing guaranteed in our system is that the best ideas will not win. What will win – if anything -- will be negotiated compromises. Nothing major has even been attempted in years. Bill Clinton’s attempt at health care reform was the last, and it was for many people a noble idea. But it was too radical for many others, and it was badly mismanaged on the political front.

So what we need is a highly pragmatic person who will look at ideas and know when to say, “it ain’t perfect, but it is a meaningful step in the right direction and we can get it passed.” And the person saying that must have the political skills and experience to be able to achieve the goal of getting to that point. It must be someone with great credibility in Congress, who has the trust of members of the opposite party that can only come from direct knowledge.

Great ideas are wonderful, but only if they are implemented. There is only one person running who has a record of non-partisan legislative success, Senator John McCain.

OK, fire away. I can take another volley.

A brief digression for “Liar of the Week”

From today’s New York Times front page:

"Representative Charles B. Rangel said on Wednesday that “cultural and language barriers” had hindered him from understanding the finances of his Dominican Republic beach house, and vowed to repay several thousand dollars in federal taxes he owes after failing to report $75,000 in rental income from the villa.

At a Capitol Hill news conference, during which he was by turns remorseful and combative, the congressman said that he had not been aware of the income and unpaid taxes in part because he had trouble getting detailed financial statements from the resort’s managers in the Dominican Republic.

“Every time I thought I was getting somewhere, they’d start speaking Spanish,” Mr. Rangel said.

The explanation was greeted with skepticism and surprise by some people in his district, where Spanish is the primary language in nearly half the households and even Mr. Rangel’s own Congressional Web site can be instantly translated to Spanish with just two clicks of a computer mouse."

Congressman Rangel is the Chairman of the House Ways and Means committee and a lawyer. Earlier this year it was discovered that he held leases on three rent controlled apartments in his New York City residence in violation of New York law. You can read the whole story here.

Bipartisan redux

Well, I knew I was outnumbered on my own blog, but I didn’t realize how badly until this last post. But I’m going to plow ahead regardless, and comment on your responses to just how much baggage the Republican party adds to Sen. McCain’s load.

A frequent argument made was that, “the McCain of 2000 wouldn’t vote for the McCain of 2008.” As McCain, himself has said many times in response to this argument, “Yeah, but I lost in 2000.” The fact is that in America in 2008, a moderate Republican can’t get elected without the support of the conservative wing of the party. That leaves the nominee with two choices: Either alienate the right, as McCain did in 2000, or throw them some rhetorical bones as he is doing now. I wish it weren’t necessary but it is.

It is also argued that a McCain Presidency means a right-wing Supreme Court. This will come as a big surprise to Chief Justice Robert Bork. Oh, wait a minute, he’s not on the court, is he? That’s right, the Democratic Senate rejected his nomination in 1987, and the 65-or-so Democratic Senators we’re likely to have in 2009 should be formidable enough to keep us all safe from the fascists and religious fanatics many of you seem to expect McCain to nominate.

The President may be the most important person in the U.S., but he is not a King an Emperor or a magician. He needs the consent of Congress and/or the support of the people to do anything. The fact that the Congress is likely to be overwhelmingly Democratic come January is another reason I favor McCain. I think it is dangerous to have two branches controlled by the same party. GWB did the most harm when he had a GOP Congress behind him.

Many of you just don’t believe McCain is independent of the Republican party. I sited a number of examples in the 9/6 post, but let me add two more, including this McCain quote: "I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history." Can anyone name any example of any politician in the last hundred years who spoke so harshly of a senior official in his own party?

Or can you name one who has had a former Vice Presidential nominee of the opposition party site him, on national television, as a rare example of a national politician who puts country ahead of party?

Is he too partisan? Well, I still question these figures, but the same sources that say McCain voted with the GOP line 90% of the time say Obama voted the Democratic line 97% of the time. McCain has a history of bipartisanship, and he has promised to do more of it as President:

“Again and again, I've worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed. That's how I will govern as President. I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again. I have that record and the scars to prove it. …I will ask Democrats and Independents to serve with me. And my administration will set a new standard for transparency and accountability.”

Help me out here

As many of you know, or could guess, if the election were held tomorrow I’d be voting for John McCain. However I wouldn’t be pulling the lever with 100% conviction; like most people, I suspect, I have my doubts and questions about my man, and I see the appeal of the other guy.

I long ago gave up the idea of anything I say here changing anybody else’s mind, but I’m open to having my own reality altered. So here’s what I’d like to do now. Over the next few days I plan to lay out, in brief fashion, the factors and arguments that led me to where I stand today. Your job is to shoot holes in each (or to agree if you feel that way).

But please – try to stay on point. Let’s not let this drift into a wide-ranging argument. If I say I don’t like Obama because he has big feet, don’t say, “oh yeah, well McCain has hemorrhoids;” tell me why big feet are good, or why they don’t matter.

Here is factor Number 1.
I fully appreciate why many of you would not vote for any Republican for President. In fact, had Giuliani, Romney, Huckabee or Thompson won the GOP nomination I’d likely be voting for Obama. But the fact that McCain is running on that ticket matters very little to me.

First of all, the national parties are nearly meaningless today. Ever since the “reforms” of the ‘60s and ‘70s the parties are loose coalitions of people with similar (but not identical) views who vote together most of the time and watch each others’ backs when it is convenient. Most of the time, however, they are independent loose cannons.

Second, John McCain is despised by most of the Republican elite. He voted against them countless times in the Senate, drove the campaign reform bus, advocated immigration reforms that infuriated most of the party, was the key guy behind nailing Jack Abramoff, which deeply embarrassed the GOP, and he nearly picked Joe Lieberman, a New England Democrat without a home, as his running mate. Finally, he stood on the podium the other night and lambasted the current administration for failing the American public the past eight years. Some Republican.

In short, I’m voting for the man, and not the party, in full confidence that the party will wilt under the force of John McCain with an electoral mandate. Conversely, if I thought Barack Obama was one-in-the-same as the Democratic party he’d have no shot at getting my vote. I don’t want Nancy Pelosi running things any more than you (or I) want the religious right running things.

So, tell me I’m wrong.

John McCain's speech

"My friends, if you find faults with our country, make it a better one.

If you're disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them.

Enlist in our armed forces.

Become a teacher.

Enter the ministry.

Run for public office.

Feed a hungry child.

Teach an illiterate adult to read.

Comfort the afflicted.

Defend the rights of the oppressed.

Our country will be the better and you will be the happier because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.

I'm going to fight for my cause every day as your president.

I'm going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God as I thank him: that I'm an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on Earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach.

Fight with me.

Fight for what's right for our country.

Fight for the ideals and character of a free people.

Fight for our children's future.

Fight for justice and opportunity for all.

Stand up to defend our country from its enemies.

Stand up for each other; for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America.

Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight.

Nothing is inevitable here.

We're Americans, and we never give up.

We never quit.

We never hide from history. We make history.

Thank you, and God bless you and God bless America."

Sarah Barracuda

Well, anyone out there who is writing Sarah Palin off as a light-weight and wants to see Sen. Obama in the White House better buckle their chin strap and put on a cup, because whatever you think of her politics, she is no worse than the second best communicator out of the four people running, and she’s going to be number one for a lot of people.

Obama is all cool, Palin is all passion. Barack is Harvard and Columbia; Sarah is home town folk. The Senator holds himself a little above the fray – the Governor body checks. She certainly played no defense last night. Plus, she can tell a joke. (The difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom? Lipstick.)

You want to know how to make her a genuine America hero? Keep calling her and her family “white trash.” Keep denigrating her experience as a Governor and Mayor. Keep sniggering about how Alaska is really North Alabama. Keep patronizing her as just a PTA president on steroids. Keep comparing her to Dan Quayle. Continue to withhold any props for her successes in a man’s world because her views aren’t consistent with feminist dogma.

Keep doing all those things and she’ll be the most popular woman in America by November 4th and the difference in the election.

Here are some of the better barracudaisms from last night’s speech. You can watch the speech here.

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“Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.
And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves.
I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.
We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.”

=========
“We've all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers. And there is much to like and admire about our opponent.
But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform - not even in the state senate.
This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign.”

=========
“A leader who's not looking for a fight, but is not afraid of one either. Harry Reid, the Majority Leader of the current do-nothing Senate, not long ago summed up his feelings about our nominee.
He said, quote, "I can't stand John McCain." Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps no accolade we hear this week is better proof that we've chosen the right man. Clearly what the Majority Leader was driving at is that he can't stand up to John McCain. That is only one more reason to take the maverick of the Senate and put him in the White House. My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of "personal discovery." This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer.”

=========
"And though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, "fighting for you," let us face the matter squarely.
There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you ... in places where winning means survival and defeat means death ... and that man is John McCain."

Obamapromises

I thought Obama’s acceptance speech was very good, and holding it outdoors (a la FDR in ’32) was brilliant. There’s nothing like 75,000 crazed supporters to whip up some enthusiasm for your ideas.

It’s the ideas themselves that concern me. Not that I think they are bad ideas – I don’t – but it’s hard to see how he plans to pay for all this stuff. In my view the mounting national debt is both our biggest security and our biggest economic concern, and it looks like a President Obama plans to spend first and worry about that later.

Here, in his own words the other night, are the things he plans to do that will have an obvious direct, or indirect, cost to the US economy:

“I will start giving them (tax breaks) to companies that create good jobs right here in America. "

"I'll eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow. "

"I will cut taxes -- cut taxes -- for 95 percent of all working families."

"I will …invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. "

"I'll help our auto companies re-tool… "

"I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. "

"And I'll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy -- wind power, and solar power, and the next generation of biofuels… "

"I'll invest in early childhood education. "

"I'll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries, and give them more support."

"Now -- now is the time to finally keep the promise of affordable, accessible health care for every single American. "

"If you have health care -- if you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don't, you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves."

"Now is the time to help families with paid sick days and better family leave, because nobody in America should have to choose between keeping their job and caring for a sick child or an ailing parent. "

"Now is the time to change our bankruptcy laws, … and the time to protect Social Security for future generations. "

"And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day's work, because I want my daughters to have the exact same opportunities as your sons.”

Also in his own words, here is how he plans to pay for all those items:

“…I'll pay for every dime: by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don't help America grow. "

"I will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas… "

"But I will also go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less, because we cannot meet 21st-century challenges with a 20th-century bureaucracy.”

There is no way to make those two columns come even close to balancing. You can read the full speech here.

Our man in Denver

Black Panther GaGa spent the week in Denver with the Dems and got some pretty good photos considering that he had no official credentials as the Daily Blank's man on the scene. See the link to the right under "My Blog List."

Thank God the Tiki bar is open

Thank God the tiki bar's still open
Thank God the tiki touch still shines
Thank God the tiki bar's still open
Come on in and open up your mind

-- John Hiatt

This was the theme song of my vacation even before I got to see John Hiatt and his band, The Ageless Beauties, at the other ageless beauty, the Calvin Theater in Northampton, Massachusetts. They were great. He played all my favorites, plus stuff from his new CD. I never knew until this concert that he wrote Thing Called Love – the huge Bonnie Raitt hit.

It was a pretty mellow week but I managed to keep up with politics a bit. I was going to open my comments by asking if Anita Bryant was unwilling to serve or perhaps dead, but I see you hard core lefties couldn’t even wait for a new post to start tearing up poor Governor Palin – the harpie scourge of motherhood and State Police everywhere. (Plus I’m sure Hankster is upset that I capitalized God in the lyrics above.) You guys have at her; we’ve had a lot worse in the VP job. At least she’s not a plagiarist.

I’d rather write about the Dem convention, which I thought was very well done. They are starting to learn that presentation matters. If Al Gore had spoken that well and that directly to the electorate in 2000 he would have won in a landslide. Shakespeare was wrong; first we should kill all the political consultants.

You had to watch PBS to see my favorite part of the week. The networks feel that if there is going to be any theatrics involved they’ll provide it – thank you very much – so they now only show the “major” speeches, while PBS just let’s the cameras roll. (I also think David Brooks and Mark Shields offer the most interesting commentary.)

Anyway, I think only PBS showed the six “real people” the Dems selected to precede Jobama’s acceptance speech with 3-5 minute endorsements. They were direct, well-spoken, and smartly chosen to represent larger groups to which many people might relate. One was Barney Smith, an ex-factory worker from Indiana who looks like the living embodiment of Elmer Fudd, and who told the audience, “America needs a President who will put Barney Smith ahead of Smith Barney!” Brilliant! You can see him on YouTube.

Well, there is more to come including on-the-scene photos from Denver taken by our local Daily Blank correspondent BlkPnthrGaGa. I’ll figure out the best way to post them later this afternoon.