Raised by staunch Democrats through the 70s and 80s I was witness to how partisanship, run amok, ruins the party it loves.
When Ronald Reagan was elected, the party line was that he was going to destroy America as we knew it. As a young teenager beginning to think for himself, I remember coming to the realization that what I was hearing from Democrats during the Reagan years was "politics" - a word I was just beginning to understand. As the eighties progressed the political discourse from the Democrats got further and further from reality - from what was going on on the ground. In college, I realized that the era of political-correctness had taken the party away from the mainstream and the party was beginning to suffer. I saw campus protests on anything and everything. We were all victims, whether we knew it or not.
Bill Clinton's success in 1992 rested on his recognition of this problem for the Democrats, and the fact that he brought the party back toward the center.
Today, it's the Republicans who have this problem. The GOP has moved so far to the right that the gap between their political discourse and reality is substantial. It's obvious. And if I was a Republican, it would be embarrassing.
You see, Reagan was a centrist. The Democrats were wrong. It wasn't until George W. Bush's second term, capitalizing on the fears wrought by 9/11, that the move to the extreme right wing was complete. The christening of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter as key spokespeople for the GOP, however unofficial, marks this grim milestone.
When a party moves too far to the extreme, facts fly out the window and hyperbole, name-calling and invective dominate (I recently wrote a piece showng how conservatives are far more likely to sling pejorative terms). Hence, Limbaugh and Coulter's extreme views win the day.
Just look at #TCOT on Twitter (these are from just the last few minutes as of writing this):
"You must be a Liberal (and/or blind) if you think nØbama didn't bow to the Saudi King"
"RED Alert!! nØbama's pick to be the State Dept’s legal adviser favor's Sharia over Constitution ! "
"IMPEACH OBAMA NOW! IMPEACH OBAMA NOW! IMPEACH OBAMA NOW! "
"Take a look at where we are heading people -->Free Speech vs. Islam in Europe (It is either / Or ) "
(And if you really want to see the total extreme, goto the Yahoo! stock chat boards, which are anonymous, and search on "Obama" or "kill liberals". You will find more hate than you can shake a stick at.)
To the silent center these are non-issues. To a person who was just laid off, or just lost their healthcare, or doesn't have the skill they need to compete, these statements don't compute. And herein lies the problem for the Republicans. Just like I was turned off by the political mumbo jumbo from the Democrats in the Eighties, today's centrist Republicans and Democrats are turned off by the Limbaugh-Coulter crowd.
Perhaps the Republicans can turn things around faster than did the Democrats. Republicans are the party of conformity. The Democrats, non-conformity. Maybe centrist Republicans can wrest the message back from the extreme and get everyone to line up nicely. It will be a tough row to hoe, though. The Limbaugh-Coulter-Fox News Axis of Extremism has a powerful bully pulpit and they don't strike me as the types you can just roll right over.
Until the Republican dialogue returns to reality they risk further isolation from the mainstream center, which clearly favors the direction in which President Obama is pointing the United States. Indeed, the entire world is reacting positively to the message Mr. Obama carries. And the more Mr. Limbaugh and his crowd hopes for Obama to fail, the further he alienates the party he loves so much.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Guns & Politics - What We Must Learn from the Financial Crisis
The U.S. reaction to drug violence in Mexico has the gun-lobby paranoid. The NRA and its supporters are claiming the Obama administration is trying to use the issue to push through more restrictive gun control legislation. The gun-lobby, as you might expect, would much rather self-regulate, even when national security is involved.
Look, I'm not anti-gun. I've shot guns, been duck hunting and even earned the marksmanship merit badge in Boy Scouts. I don't have a problem with hunting or collecting guns, when done safely like it is so many times across the U.S. The problem arises when the gun-lobby endorses bad policies that place us at risk.
We can argue til the cows come home over the Second Amendment, but if we don't effectively address our own involvement in the growing problem of armed drug cartels in Mexico (both drug use AND supply of guns), then we place ourselves at risk of living next door to a failed, armed and violent narco-state whose largest market is us. In which direction do you think the violence is headed?
But when you listen to the gun-lobby you hear a different story.
Secretary of State Clinton's recent admission that firearms purchased in the U.S. and smuggled into Mexico fuel drug violence in that country was met with the usual hyperbole and denial by the guns-at-all-costs crowd. Former U.S. Rep., NRA supporter and 2008 Presidential candidate, Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., says Clinton is "part of Obama's plan to conduct a war on guns". Despite all of the evidence on the ATF website that form the basis for Clinton's admission , Tancredo claims that drug cartels use weapons purchased from Mexican army deserters. And to solve this problem, he says, we should militarize the border.
Sure, Tom. Whatever you say. Even the NRA admits that guns are smuggled across the border (but they say the real problem is drugs, not guns, so any new regulation on the sale of weapons is misplaced - and militarizing the border is the answer).
Militarizing the border is a huge, expensive government program that inefficiently addresses the symptoms of drugs and violence, but not the causes (and how does this possibly bolster our Second Amendment rights???). And to let the root causes of this major problem fester is irresponsible and dangerous.
Part of the immediate solution is to stop the flow of guns by placing reasonable but effective regulations on the more than 6000 gun dealers who have set up shop along the 2000 mile border. That's 3 dealers per mile, on average.
I think we can live free without gangland-style drug executions and a new Columbine every few months. It's not hard to see that the gun-lobby is more concerned about sales than they are about safety, or even the second amendment. C'mon. The argument to further militarize the government is antithetical to the aim of preventing potential tyranny by that same government.
So, I challenge the silent center, on both sides of the aisle, to speak up for our own safety and sane gun regulation, and for an effective policy that prevents U.S.-made weapons from fueling the growing problem of narco-violence along our southern border.
If we learn one thing from the current financial mess, it's that self-regulation, when left unchecked, results in disasterous self-inflicted wounds. When it comes to guns, we don't want to make that same mistake twice.
Look, I'm not anti-gun. I've shot guns, been duck hunting and even earned the marksmanship merit badge in Boy Scouts. I don't have a problem with hunting or collecting guns, when done safely like it is so many times across the U.S. The problem arises when the gun-lobby endorses bad policies that place us at risk.
We can argue til the cows come home over the Second Amendment, but if we don't effectively address our own involvement in the growing problem of armed drug cartels in Mexico (both drug use AND supply of guns), then we place ourselves at risk of living next door to a failed, armed and violent narco-state whose largest market is us. In which direction do you think the violence is headed?
But when you listen to the gun-lobby you hear a different story.
Secretary of State Clinton's recent admission that firearms purchased in the U.S. and smuggled into Mexico fuel drug violence in that country was met with the usual hyperbole and denial by the guns-at-all-costs crowd. Former U.S. Rep., NRA supporter and 2008 Presidential candidate, Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., says Clinton is "part of Obama's plan to conduct a war on guns". Despite all of the evidence on the ATF website that form the basis for Clinton's admission , Tancredo claims that drug cartels use weapons purchased from Mexican army deserters. And to solve this problem, he says, we should militarize the border.
Sure, Tom. Whatever you say. Even the NRA admits that guns are smuggled across the border (but they say the real problem is drugs, not guns, so any new regulation on the sale of weapons is misplaced - and militarizing the border is the answer).
Militarizing the border is a huge, expensive government program that inefficiently addresses the symptoms of drugs and violence, but not the causes (and how does this possibly bolster our Second Amendment rights???). And to let the root causes of this major problem fester is irresponsible and dangerous.
Part of the immediate solution is to stop the flow of guns by placing reasonable but effective regulations on the more than 6000 gun dealers who have set up shop along the 2000 mile border. That's 3 dealers per mile, on average.
I think we can live free without gangland-style drug executions and a new Columbine every few months. It's not hard to see that the gun-lobby is more concerned about sales than they are about safety, or even the second amendment. C'mon. The argument to further militarize the government is antithetical to the aim of preventing potential tyranny by that same government.
So, I challenge the silent center, on both sides of the aisle, to speak up for our own safety and sane gun regulation, and for an effective policy that prevents U.S.-made weapons from fueling the growing problem of narco-violence along our southern border.
If we learn one thing from the current financial mess, it's that self-regulation, when left unchecked, results in disasterous self-inflicted wounds. When it comes to guns, we don't want to make that same mistake twice.
Monday, March 23, 2009
The Party that cried "Socialism"
Republicans are crying "Socialism!" again. This time, it's because of limited oversight of executive pay in financial companies that would fail were it not for the support of the federal government. As I write this, Fox news is telling me the government wants to "tell companies how much money they can make". The TCOT Report is...wait! they took it down?...WAS running the misleading headline "Socialism Anyone? Pay Restrictions for All", which actually linked through to this Stephen Labaton piece in the NYTimes Politics section, on how the Obama administration is trying to deal with issues of executive pay in regulating an industry driven to insolvency by a culture of executive privilege and greed.
The reason the TCOT headline and the Fox News claim are misleading is that there just isn't any evidence the Obama administration is a proponent of socialism, in favor of dictating "how much money" businesses can make or how much executives should be paid. The administration does seem to be a proponent of responsibly managing the hundreds of billions of dollars that are flowing to private institutions from taxpayer coffers and, at the same time, fixing the regulatory system, whose function it is to help prevent the type of crisis we find ourselves in today.
The American People are now the largest shareholders in AIG, Citigroup, and others. We have assumed a great deal of risk associated with the bailout of these institutions and, as such, have not just a right, but a duty to influence the structure of the turnaround, which is essentially what we're buying.
Let's look at the New York Times article and see if the Socialist Wolf is hiding in there:
"One proposal could impose greater requirements on company boards to tie executive compensation more closely to corporate performance and to take other steps to ensure that compensation was aligned with the financial interest of the company."
This is capitalism, folks. Capitalism works best when compensation is tied to the success of the company. America's best companies operate this way. Does anyone want to argue that we should reward executives who fail? Isn't THAT Socialism?
The article goes on to discuss the need to overhaul regulation of "the shadow banking system that Wall Street firms use to package and trade mortgage-backed securities, the so-called toxic assets held by many banks and blamed for the credit crisis."
The aim of better regulation is reducing risk across the financial system. Clearly, the "shadow banking system" did not do a good job of self-regulation. And now these institutions are on the receiving end of a huge and ongoing public bailout.
Here's another passage from the Times article:
"During the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama repeatedly urged regulators to adopt new rules to give shareholders a greater voice in setting executive pay for all public companies."
If there is one term squarely associated with capitalism it is "shareholder value". Obama is urging support for shareholder rights, not the government's right to specifically dictate pay.
Instead of grappling with the hard details of the financial crisis left to President Obama, some Republicans are grappling to find fault in the other party's plan, sometimes fabricating mountains out of mice and painting administration policies with broad labels like "Socialist" and "liberal tax and spend", largely ignoring the facts on the ground.
So, once again, there is a lot of crying, but no wolf. Instead, Obama sounds like the kind of responsible capitalist that we need right now. The Socialism charge just doesn't hold water.
When the markets collapsed they turned desperately to the US government because the US government is central to both US and global capitalism - the biggest player in the world. So, to say that the government's involvement in a reasonable solution is "Socialism" is just ridiculous. Every good corporation reviews failure in risk management and modifies systems to prevent a reccurrence. The current financial crisis is due to a failure in risk management across the entire system, therefore new controls are necessary.
I, for one, will be on the lookout for the Socialist Wolf, but until he shows up let's focus on how "Americans" are going to work together to fix a broken system.
The reason the TCOT headline and the Fox News claim are misleading is that there just isn't any evidence the Obama administration is a proponent of socialism, in favor of dictating "how much money" businesses can make or how much executives should be paid. The administration does seem to be a proponent of responsibly managing the hundreds of billions of dollars that are flowing to private institutions from taxpayer coffers and, at the same time, fixing the regulatory system, whose function it is to help prevent the type of crisis we find ourselves in today.
The American People are now the largest shareholders in AIG, Citigroup, and others. We have assumed a great deal of risk associated with the bailout of these institutions and, as such, have not just a right, but a duty to influence the structure of the turnaround, which is essentially what we're buying.
Let's look at the New York Times article and see if the Socialist Wolf is hiding in there:
"One proposal could impose greater requirements on company boards to tie executive compensation more closely to corporate performance and to take other steps to ensure that compensation was aligned with the financial interest of the company."
This is capitalism, folks. Capitalism works best when compensation is tied to the success of the company. America's best companies operate this way. Does anyone want to argue that we should reward executives who fail? Isn't THAT Socialism?
The article goes on to discuss the need to overhaul regulation of "the shadow banking system that Wall Street firms use to package and trade mortgage-backed securities, the so-called toxic assets held by many banks and blamed for the credit crisis."
The aim of better regulation is reducing risk across the financial system. Clearly, the "shadow banking system" did not do a good job of self-regulation. And now these institutions are on the receiving end of a huge and ongoing public bailout.
Here's another passage from the Times article:
"During the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama repeatedly urged regulators to adopt new rules to give shareholders a greater voice in setting executive pay for all public companies."
If there is one term squarely associated with capitalism it is "shareholder value". Obama is urging support for shareholder rights, not the government's right to specifically dictate pay.
Instead of grappling with the hard details of the financial crisis left to President Obama, some Republicans are grappling to find fault in the other party's plan, sometimes fabricating mountains out of mice and painting administration policies with broad labels like "Socialist" and "liberal tax and spend", largely ignoring the facts on the ground.
So, once again, there is a lot of crying, but no wolf. Instead, Obama sounds like the kind of responsible capitalist that we need right now. The Socialism charge just doesn't hold water.
When the markets collapsed they turned desperately to the US government because the US government is central to both US and global capitalism - the biggest player in the world. So, to say that the government's involvement in a reasonable solution is "Socialism" is just ridiculous. Every good corporation reviews failure in risk management and modifies systems to prevent a reccurrence. The current financial crisis is due to a failure in risk management across the entire system, therefore new controls are necessary.
I, for one, will be on the lookout for the Socialist Wolf, but until he shows up let's focus on how "Americans" are going to work together to fix a broken system.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Survey Results: Why do you use Twitter?
Here are the results from the first Twitter survey, which simply crosses use(s) of Twitter by experience with Twitter. Special thanks to respondents and those who re-tweeted the link.
Summary: Why do you use Twitter?
Results are based on survey field dates 3-9-09 through 3-10-09.
N = 32 respondents (Max. for findings within this post. Poll is open.)
While the margin of error is likely to be +/- 20%, there are still directional findings to be taken from this simple poll.
Main Points
Respondents are fairly evenly distributed in terms of their experience with Twitter.
Click here for a larger view
Table: Twitter Use(s) by Experience and Total
Click here for a larger view
Take the next poll! Twitter is like a [your answer here]
Please leave your comments/links below. You can also email suggestions/comments to will.speck@gmail.com.
Thanks again for your input!
Summary: Why do you use Twitter?
Results are based on survey field dates 3-9-09 through 3-10-09.
N = 32 respondents (Max. for findings within this post. Poll is open.)
While the margin of error is likely to be +/- 20%, there are still directional findings to be taken from this simple poll.
Main Points
Respondents are fairly evenly distributed in terms of their experience with Twitter.
- While Twitter is primarily used to interact socially (74%) and communicate with friends (74%), an equal percentage of respondents say they use Twitter to find information/search (74%). Certainly Google is doing their own polling and is aware of this interesting finding.
- Fully 6 in 10 (61%) are using Twitter to get daily news. Newspapers and news organizations take note!
- Slightly over 4 in 10 (42%) interact politically on Twitter. I would like to see a comparable figure for Facebook. Anyone?
- Half (50%) market something. About one third (32%) market a blog. 16% market a commercial product/service and 16% market a non-profit/charitable organization.
- More than 1 in 10 (13%) uses Twitter for financial/stock information.
Click here for a larger view
Table: Twitter Use(s) by Experience and Total
Click here for a larger view
Take the next poll! Twitter is like a [your answer here]
Please leave your comments/links below. You can also email suggestions/comments to will.speck@gmail.com.
Thanks again for your input!
Friday, March 06, 2009
Liberal Swine & Right Wing Wackos
Despite President Obama's recent overtures, partisanship is alive and well in America. A few quick Google searches on key "terms" reveal (somewhat unscientifically) interesting insights. Oh, the pejorative!
Liberal swine 1,050
Conservative swine 195
Right wing whack job 1,080
Left wing whack job 355
Liberal scum 19,700
Conservative scum 1,160
Right wing scum 2,460
Left wing scum 2,580
Right wing swine 131
Left wing swine 235
Liberal media 1,550,000
Conservative media 196,000
Left wing media 83,100
Right wing media 259,000
So, it looks like conservatives are more likely to wield the pejorative, particularly favoring nastier terms, though liberals are clearly not saints.
Conservatives prefer "liberal" to "left wing", while liberals prefer "right wing" to "conservative".
Both sides favor "scum" vs. "swine", though conservatives are far more likely to sling one of the two terms.
Conservatives are more likely to harp about the left wing, or liberal "media" than are liberals to complain about conservative, or right wing "media".
On a related, and somewhat prescient, note, in "The Real Frank Zappa Book", the late musician and composer called the concept of a "liberal media bias" a "pitiful manipulation" cleverly put forth by the Reagan spin-doctors...."all in the name of balance and fairness, of course". [Emphasis by Zappa]
[NOTE: there is an ongoing discussion on Twitter on bipartisanship (#bipart). @martinschecter, @dmooney9, myself (@hankmehle) and others are currently exploring a more formal dialogue with "Top Conservatives on Twitter" (#tcot). Please add your voice to the discussion if you so choose.]
Your thoughtful comments are welcome.
Liberal swine 1,050
Conservative swine 195
Right wing whack job 1,080
Left wing whack job 355
Liberal scum 19,700
Conservative scum 1,160
Right wing scum 2,460
Left wing scum 2,580
Right wing swine 131
Left wing swine 235
Liberal media 1,550,000
Conservative media 196,000
Left wing media 83,100
Right wing media 259,000
So, it looks like conservatives are more likely to wield the pejorative, particularly favoring nastier terms, though liberals are clearly not saints.
Conservatives prefer "liberal" to "left wing", while liberals prefer "right wing" to "conservative".
Both sides favor "scum" vs. "swine", though conservatives are far more likely to sling one of the two terms.
Conservatives are more likely to harp about the left wing, or liberal "media" than are liberals to complain about conservative, or right wing "media".
On a related, and somewhat prescient, note, in "The Real Frank Zappa Book", the late musician and composer called the concept of a "liberal media bias" a "pitiful manipulation" cleverly put forth by the Reagan spin-doctors...."all in the name of balance and fairness, of course". [Emphasis by Zappa]
[NOTE: there is an ongoing discussion on Twitter on bipartisanship (#bipart). @martinschecter, @dmooney9, myself (@hankmehle) and others are currently exploring a more formal dialogue with "Top Conservatives on Twitter" (#tcot). Please add your voice to the discussion if you so choose.]
Your thoughtful comments are welcome.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
If hypocrisy was money, the recession would end today
Juiced up by Rick Santelli's myopic rant, conservatives are getting ready to throw "Tea Parties" to protest "all of this fiscal irresponsibility", referring to the huge Obama budget and its ensuing deficit.
What a joke.
It is true that the deficit is historically high, as a percentage of GDP, akin to deficits right after WWII. It is also true, that we are in an economic emergency equivalent to, or close to, that of the Great Depression. It is also true that Obama and his team are focused on solving the massive problems left to them, and are doing so in a manner so open it contrasts violently with the secrecy and Enron-like accounting practices that were hallmarks of the previous administration.
The big joke is that Santelli didn't rant during the 8 years of fiscal irresponsibility that brought this mess upon us, and I didn't hear him rant last October when it became absolutely clear that the deficit under the next president would reach these heights in order to avoid a total global catastrophe, thanks in large part to George W. Bush's "guns and butter" fiscal train wreck.
The joke is that these people are masquerading as patriots when they should be treated as traitors. These "patriots" continue to do the only thing they know how, stir up anger and division, during a time when level-headedness and cooperation are the call of duty.
Not funny in the least.
What a joke.
It is true that the deficit is historically high, as a percentage of GDP, akin to deficits right after WWII. It is also true, that we are in an economic emergency equivalent to, or close to, that of the Great Depression. It is also true that Obama and his team are focused on solving the massive problems left to them, and are doing so in a manner so open it contrasts violently with the secrecy and Enron-like accounting practices that were hallmarks of the previous administration.
The big joke is that Santelli didn't rant during the 8 years of fiscal irresponsibility that brought this mess upon us, and I didn't hear him rant last October when it became absolutely clear that the deficit under the next president would reach these heights in order to avoid a total global catastrophe, thanks in large part to George W. Bush's "guns and butter" fiscal train wreck.
The joke is that these people are masquerading as patriots when they should be treated as traitors. These "patriots" continue to do the only thing they know how, stir up anger and division, during a time when level-headedness and cooperation are the call of duty.
Not funny in the least.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
In Ponzi We Trust
Right after the Madoff scandal I wondered aloud, via Twitter, to Paul Kedrosky if all of Wall Street was a Ponzi scheme. He replied that the Madoff scandal would severly damage trust in US markets.
Today, a Citywire article quoting Bill Gross, famed bond-fund manager at Pimco, says he finds Ponzi-like schemes across the entire US economy.
It reminds me of a quote I heard on CNBC (I can't remember who said it) late last year when a guest analyst said "C'mon. The entire US economy is based on lending people money they can't afford to buy things they don't need".
Today, a Citywire article quoting Bill Gross, famed bond-fund manager at Pimco, says he finds Ponzi-like schemes across the entire US economy.
It reminds me of a quote I heard on CNBC (I can't remember who said it) late last year when a guest analyst said "C'mon. The entire US economy is based on lending people money they can't afford to buy things they don't need".
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