On the Contrary

I been thinking which is always a dangerous thing.  Every time some nut job goes off on a shooting spree, the national media goes berserk covering mindless speculation and rumor the rest of the day, and news that is important to our future gets totally pushed off the airwaves.  Since the Republicans certainly don’t want us discussing our real problems because they don’t have any solutions, could this not be some conservative plot to distract us from the real issues of the day?  They certainly have enough nut jobs and guns across the country to pull this off.  I can hear it now, “Today in podunk  city a crazed shooter shouting ‘Bring back my country,” shot and wounded x bystanders at Chunky Cheese.  In a related story Michelle Bachmann said this was a real measure of the unrest in this country over the loss of the election to the Democrats.”

I don’t mean to demean those who have been killed or injured in these senseless attacks, but these kinds of news stories are kind of like rubber necking at a car wreck scene.  There is very little to be learned except to see carnage, and when this distracts us from our primary task, in this case driving the car, it leads to us to rear end the car in front of us because we are not paying attention to where we are going.  You get the analogy.  I am sure the press doesn’t.  If it bleeds, it leads.  If it is outrageous, repeat it over and over.

Maine is another state I will never live in. Hopefully all gay and lesbians will boycott the state. This country has a lot of really backwards and frightened little people who occupy it. Glad they weren’t around for writing the Declaration of Independence when we said, “We hold these truths to be self evident…”.

I have taken President Obama to task in previous blogs for what I feel is his failure to lead once he got into office (Skating on the Thin Edge of Disillusionment).  It seemed that once he arrived in Washington he was overcome with the conventional wisdom of what was politically possible instead of the reason so many supported him, to overcome that conventional wisdom.  Well this morning Arianna Huffington wrote a delightful piece in the Huffington Post about David Plouffe’s new book, The Audacity to Win, making the point that he seems to have forgotten all the lessons that got him to the White House (The Audacity to Win vs. The Timidity of Governing).

I hope he reads this because from my seat he is becoming just more of the same without the courage to take really tough positions and push through real change.  I am not alone in these feelings as a recent article in the New York Times about how Iowa voters who voted for Obama back in the primary are losing faith (In Iowa, Second Thoughts on Obama).  I hope this shakes him out of his slumber and realizes this is not about eight years, but about changing the mindset of America.  The eight years is just a byproduct if he can really do this.  Right now he and his team seem to want to take victory laps for baby steps.

Today is an off-year election as if you didn’t know and have not been inundated by the media that seems to have nothing better to cover.  I won’t pretend to know the local politics of these elections, but the kind of statements we are hearing out of the press is to believe this is a predictor of all future elections.  “History tells us….”, “This election will foretell the future for the Democrats in 2010…”, are the common things they are all bloviating.  To me it is all nonsense as Republican pundits tell you it is a referendum on the Obama administration, and Democrats tell you it is meaningless.  Depending on the outcome of these election they will probably switch positions.  They all have their agendas.

What is telling is that Virginia might elect someone who thinks women are second-class citizens, and New Jersey would reject a governor who made some hard decisions about funding government.  Meanwhile Maine will attempt to deny rights to gays and lesbians also as second-class citizens.  I know it is not that simple, but it does demonstrate that the nation still lacks some kind of vision about where we are headed and are reacting to their fears and selfish interests.  Until we get a holistic narrative about what we are about and where we are headed, these elections just reflect the refusal of most voters to make hard decisions about sacrifice for the future or have a shared set of values.  So much can happen between now and 2010 that these elections are meaningless for predicting the future.

One last extraneous thought:  David Kwak, co-founder of the Baseline Scenario, wrote a really interesting piece titled, Do Smart, Hardworking People Deserve to Make More Money? He was responding to a posting about a story of a family that was down on their luck and struggling with high credit card bills, including plenty of fees.  Apparently the story triggered a wave of posts blaming the victim.  What was on display was the same thought process that blames a rape victim for their rape.  What is really going on is that as a defense mechanism, people like to think that they can control their lives.  This control gives them piece of mind and what is really subconsciously going on is “that would never happen to me because I would make better choices.”  If you really want to understand why some people are utterly devastated when something bad happens to them, it is because they feel a total loss of power and control.  The world doesn’t make sense to them anymore because they didn’t deserve it.

But what Mr. Kwak takes on is a fundamental conservative belief that success and prosperity are the result of discipline and hard work, ignoring the impact of chance.  It’s is that being in control thing.  Many people work hard and don’t prosper.  Some aren’t as smart as others through the chance of DNA combinations or opportunities good parenting brings.  So he asks a fundamental question in terms of a philosophy foreign to conservative thought:

“If you are willing to acknowledge that chance determines who you are to begin with, then it becomes obvious (to me at least) that public policy cannot simply seek to level the playing field, because that will just endorse a system that produces good outcomes for the lucky (the smart and hard-working) and bad outcomes for the unlucky. Instead, fairness dictates that policy should attempt to improve outcomes for the unlucky, even if that requires hurting outcomes for the lucky.”

If you understand this reasoning you are a Progressive and if you don’t, you are a conservative.  It is the classic insight into why conservatives lack empathy for their fellow Americans and judge self-worth in terms of wealth.  It is because they do not believe that chance had anything to do with it.  They deserve what they got and do not need to spend any time pondering the fate of others, because they don’t deserve to share in their bounty.

Remember that our conservative friends were totally against the stimulus bill.  Then they loaded it up with tax breaks saying that only creating private sector jobs would do any good.  Now they are saying it failed to create the number of jobs promised.  Apparently all those tax breaks weren’t all that effective.  What was effective were the jobs that were not lost in each of the states, especially teaching jobs due to stimulus money.  So let’s just think this through.  You know, apply logic instead of emotion and ideology.  Remember that except for three Republicans, the rest wanted to do nothing.  “Let them eat cake.”

First of all let’s look at cutting taxes to stimulate the economy.  If we were in a mild recession, this might not be a bad idea.  If people weren’t loosing their jobs, then giving business an incentive to hire or replace equipment might be an effective way to stimulate demand.  But in the current situation, there is no demand because the economy is shrinking* and people are losing their jobs.  Why would I hire someone or replace equipment for demand that does not exist?  In other words, in an extreme recession, why would I take the risk on expansion when there is no one to buy my increasing inventory?  I would venture that if you made the tax rate 0% right now, it would not have any impact except on Wall Street where they bet on derivatives, not create capital for new businesses.

Let’s just take little old me as an example.  When I get a consulting check, I sock 37% away for taxes that I have to pay quarterly.  37% is what I have computed over the years to make sure I don’t owe anything come April.  Now if you reduced my taxes from earnings to zero I would have a nice chunk of change I could spend, and so the theory goes, I would stimulate the economy with this spending.  The trouble with this simple minded conservative thinking is I would not spend it.  Times are tough and I am not sure when the next job is coming so I want as much money stashed away as possible as a pad for the future.  No stimulus there. This is generally what economists will tell will happen with tax cuts in a severe recession, but if the only thing you know how to say is tax cuts, then, well, you prescribe it no matter what.  It’s all you got.

So if demand is shrinking, and tax cuts are not going to stimulate private spending, what you have left is public spending.  Oh how conservatives hate this.  The usual complaint is two parts.  It increases the deficit and government jobs are not real jobs that sustain the economy.  So let’s take one at a time:  It is very true that this spending will raise deficits, but so will tax cuts.  Either way the effect is the same on the deficit and our treasury.  Oh but private jobs are self-sustaining while government jobs are dependent on continued spending.  Well, yes and no.

First of all there are no private jobs to be had and they are shrinking.  So the government has a couple of choices.  It wants to stimulate the economy by giving the economy money that will be spent.  That means you give it to people that will spend it, people on the margins.  That generally means you fund state programs.  That is why the job numbers created are teacher’s jobs that would have probably been cut.  You also fund help for indigent (social programs) and that money is also spent.  Is that stimulative?   Of course it is since those people spend money that fuels private sector jobs.  Without it, many more jobs in the private sector would have gone away just further shrinking the demand and the problem.  Same result is achieved with construction/infrastructure projects.  The benefit of this kind of spending is that not only do you at least keep the economy working, you get something for your money, either in your kid’s education (teachers jobs), or needed infrastructure improvements.

To the question of are these make-work jobs that are dependent on continued government spending, the answer is not really.  The government is trying to maintain the services and infrastructure improvements to stimulate the economy until the tax base can once again support these critical services.  The private sector is moribund.  There is no other option.  Well that’s not quite true.  You can follow the conservatives lead and just let the economy collapse and sooner, or more likely later, things will restore themselves.  The collateral damage is not their concern.

Their concern and bogeyman is the deficit.  Okay it is a concern.  But they don’t bat an eye about billions for Iraq and Afghanistan, they don’t see the defense industry as a government program, and they wouldn’t hesitate to cut education, health care, or whatever to support these giant programs.  I don’t think it means a hill of beans to have the strongest military in the world if our economy is a shambles.  Is the deficit something we should worry about?  Of course, but right now we have to get things moving or the deficit is going to get much worse than what this spending will cause.  Later on we will have the fight with conservatives once again to set reasonable tax rates to pay off the borrowing we need to do today.  It is called shared sacrifice which is totally alien to their mind set.  They are on the wrong side of almost every issue because their ideology has constipated their brains and of course the status quo (those that got rich in the existing climate) pays them not to think.

And yes we need another stimulus, as the first one was too small and not targeted to things that would fuel the economy with spending.  Thank you conservatives for that.  That includes some of those moron conservative Democrats that the press continues to falsely refer to as moderates.  This stimulus package or whatever they want to call it, ought to be more focused, to help those out of work (extending unemployment) and real investments in tomorrow. Forget about bipartisanship because the conservatives will try to keep anything from happening.  They will scare the rabble with the fear of deficits while setting the country up to bankrupt the poor.  Nothing ever changes and you would think sooner or later people would wake up to going nowhere.

*While the economy grew 3.5%, most of that was due to replacement of inventory, reduction of workforce , and longer work hours, while unemployment continued to increase.  Even the Stock Market has figured this out as it fell on the weak outlook.  Things are going to get worse, not better without a new stimulus plan.

If polls are to be believed, the majority of Americans want a public option so that they have choice in their health insurance choices. But the plans in Congress that have a public option will apply to less than 10% of the population. Now the Republicans and Conservative (NOT AS THEY ARE MISS LABELED MODERATE) Democrats oppose even this token and one has to ask why. Hopefully in the debates to come, more Americans will become aware that this very small public option is not enough and will demand more, while the forces of the status quo and industry sycophants start to get shunned. We will see who is awake in America.

Joe Lieberman has told the Democratic Party he will not support overide of a filabuster and will side with the Republicans on the Public Option. Strip him of any Chairmanships and power he has and throw him out of the caucus. He is a Republican and when the Democrats finally realize that he has always been a wolf in sheep’s clothing, they will be stronger for it.

Health care, the economy, and Afghanistan are those topics.  On health care, what is really wrong with the United States was on display in AARP meetings across the country.  AARP, that organization that represents those of us over 50, apparently, according to an article in the New York Times (A Heated Debate Is Dividing Generations in AARP) is trying to educate their members on why the public option is a good thing and sadly those that have Medicare don’t want to share it with others.  One member, Mr. Don Nichols, who is 85 and has had Medicare benefits for 20 years, responded that those who complain about insurance premiums becoming too expensive have only themselves to blame. “If they quit their smoking and drinking, they would be able to afford it,” Mr. Nichols responded out loud.  He would make a good Republican.  I got mine and screw you.  Note the blame thing also.  It tells you all you need to know about the upcoming debate.

On the economy, I listened to the financial gurus saying that if economic growth looks strong this next quarter, we may be out of the woods.  On what planet are these people living on?  When will we separate the stock market from the growing unemployment problem?   I really don’t think the economy is rocket science.  Ask yourself this:  What is it we make that we can sell to rest of the world that they want and will start the cash flowing again?  Right now that answer is nothing and the stuff we want is made somewhere else.  Until that changes, nothing else will.  Until we invest in ourselves with our government as a major partner, we are doomed to the backwater of the world economy.  Swoosh!  That was China going by us.

Then there is Afghanistan.  If you want to keep this discussion simple, then bottom line is we simply can’t afford it.  The money we are wasting trying to make the world safe for Afghans needs to be spent here at home to put us back on our feet after years and years of Republican market place neglect.  If you are looking for a more nuanced view, I suggest you read the interview that Rory Stewart gave to the Bill Moyers Journal. Mr. Stewart simply states that what we want to accomplish probably can’t be accomplished, that we have muddled objectives, and we have a mindset that failure is not an option, so we will throw more and more resources at the problem and set ourselves up for a full pull out in about five years when things are no better.  This is a gross oversimplification of his argument and I strongly urge you to read it.

Politically, he believes that President Obama has tied his own hands and will have to send more troops, but he should draw a line and say no more.  When the interviewer asked Mr. Stewart if he is listened to by say Secretary Clinton, who he has advised, here was his description which I think is truly insightful:

“They listen politely, but in the end, of course, basically the policy decision is made. What they would like is little advice on some small bit. I mean, the analogy that one of my colleagues used recently is this: it’s as though they come to you and they say, “We’re planning to drive our car off a cliff. Do we wear a seatbelt or not?” And we say, “Don’t drive your car off the cliff.” And they say, “No, no, no. That decision’s already made. The question is should we wear our seatbelts?” And you say, “Why by all means wear a seatbelt.” And they say, “Okay, we consulted with policy expert, Rory Stewart,” et cetera”.

His best advice goes like this:

“My advice to President Obama is, you’re going to have to increase troops now. It’s too late for you, because you’re going to be destroyed politically if you oppose your general on the ground on something like this. But let’s think now six months, a year down the line. We’re going to have to decrease again. We can’t keep these numbers indefinitely. Cap it. Don’t go up any further. That’s it. If the military come back in six months and say, “By the way, we’d like another 50,000, another 60,000.” No. Say, “This is all you’re going to get. And furthermore, this is all you’re going to get, and the numbers are going to decrease.” Force the military to work out what they’re going to do with less. This isn’t an ideological point. It’s just a fact. They’re going to have less in two years, three years, five years than they have today. So, let’s try to frame the policy that works out what we can do to protect the United States and help the Afghan people with fewer troops. And hopefully, that’ll mean we can have a long-term sustainable relationship, instead of this boom and bust, in and out, that I fear is coming.”

So how are these related?  They all show how we are in denial about our real status and we are unwilling to work together to solve our problems.  In health care we like to say we are the biggest, richest country in the world and we can do anything if we put our minds to it.  But in fact, as Mr. Nichols demonstrated, we are just selfish little people who are hanging on to what they have with all their might, denying the reality of how that hurts everyone else.  We still live in some dream world where if Wall Street is doing okay, then the jobs will just follow, denying the reality of the suffering out there.  And of course in Afghanistan, we still think we can do anything if we just send in a few more Marines as though we could afford to do that or it would work.  Like an addict, until we face the reality of how far we have fallen, we will not accept our limitations and start to get better.

Sorry for the break in my mindless ramblings. Once again I am in Burlingame working on a proposal. They did harvest the Syrah (with the Viognier) on Wednesday and it looks like the Grenache with the Counoise will go on Saturday. That leaves the Mourvedre and it still needs some hang time so that will be probably mid to late October. Production was down this year and I am trying to figure out whether it is my irrigation scheme or if this is just symptomatic of this growing season. For those of you who said they would vote for me, Jared and Alice, I am not crazy. One last quick thought before I get back to work: Last night was “happy hour” at the Hog Island Oyster Bar ($1/Oyster). I didn’t think I could eat 2 dozen, but I was wrong. One other suggestion. If you go to a wine bar and you can tell the staff just loves wine, ask them to pour you a glass of what they think is really interesting. I had a wonderful Sangivoese/Grenache blend last night.

A real analysis of Afghanistan is that it is a civil war.  The players are Afghans who want to move forward, and the Taliban who want to move backward, with pot stirring by Al Qaeda.  I want you to think hard here.  Vietnam was the same problem with those who wanted a free Vietnam (mostly different warlords who had control of different areas), and those who saw Ho Chi Minh as the national leader, with the Viet Cong stirring the pot.  And of course, they didn’t like us very much.  But here is the part I want you to focus on:  We had 500,000 troops in the country to pacify the country and we failed.  Ask yourself how could 500,000 Americans and the whole South Vietnam military  not defeat the North Vietnamese?  Hint:  The answer is not in military strategy.

It is that we poorly understood the real motivations of the culture and we tried to superimpose our ideas about their future on them.  I could go into some deep analysis of different cultures and their xenophobia, but think instead about trying to tell your teenager how to live his/her life.  Your advice is good and wise, and yet they totally reject it.  They reject it because it is their life and they have to find their own way.  It is critical to their own identity of who they are.  Do you see the analogy here?  We are making the same mistake in Afghanistan that we made in Vietnam.  Its their destiny and as much as we think we know the right path for them, they are going to have to work it out for themselves, as painful as that may be.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel.  Just a few more troops and we will pacify the countryside and then democracy will flourish.  We just need the right leader and things would be different.  These are the rationalizations of the Vietnam war and we are seeing it all over again. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal warned in a confidential assessment that he needed additional troops by next year or the conflict “will likely result in failure.”  I wonder if it occurred to him that even with more troops it will likely result in failure also?

General McChrystal, or those who support this war in the military, leaked this report because they didn’t like the fact that President Obama may actually be asking the right questions.  He has said that he will not commit more troops unless he thought we really had a plan that would work.  Apparently they haven’t convinced him yet.  What I see is a repeat of the military thinking that failed us so disastrously in Vietnam.  These guys are good Americans and they want to solve a problem.  But they have a one-dimensional view of the problem.  The only light at the end of tunnel is one that is held by Afghans, not Americans.

So what is the way forward?  Are Pakistan and Afghanistan intimately linked?  If Afghanistan becomes a Taliban stronghold will it be the home of terrorism?  Is it that simple?  I don’t think so.  We have an arrogance that makes us think we can control another country’s destiny.  We actually think we know what is best for them and we can control it.  Should I remind you again of the teenager analogy?  The last time we went down this road it cost 58,000 lives and now we recognize that there was no national strategic interest there.  We are only at 4000 and counting now.  Will it take another 54,000 before we get the message?  I hope not.

What is it about checking the polls before we do anything?  It has become the measure of what is possible.  How many people believe that global warming exists?  How many people support continued troop deployments in Afghanistan?  Is there strong support in the country for tough Wall Street Regulations?  What percentage of the voters thinks there should be a public option for health care?  What percentage thinks we should investigate torture?  It goes on and on and it tells us nothing about what we should do, only the challenge we face to convince people of the problem.

Leadership is about telling the people what they should do and then convincing them to follow.  We seem to have forgotten that.  Leadership is about finding what will really work to solve our problems and then convincing people to do it.  It would appear that we are getting buried in the conventional wisdom about what the voters will support, and everything else is getting buried as impractical.

Health care is the prime example.  Is it more important to know what the electorate wants or is it more important to figure out what will really provide 100% coverage and start to restructure our system to lower costs with better outcomes?  If the two aren’t aligned isn’t it the leaders job to show the voters what will work and convince them to support him?  If you believe that the Republicans will never vote for a public option, should you negotiate it away even if you think it is critical to your reform package?  Maybe if you really went out there and fought for the public option, there would be enough pressure on the Republicans to change some of their votes.  It’s called leadership.

I love the discussion that is going on right now whether the voters will stand for more troops in Afghanistan.  Wrong discussion.  The American voters will support a troop increase if they are convinced it is in our long-term interests.  So the discussion ought to be on what is our goal, what are the policy choices, what are our alternatives, and what does it cost.  Once you have a plan forward that you believe in, then the job is selling it.  It’s called leadership.

My real consternation is with this idea that health care needs to be bipartisan to work.  Actually it needs to have the right elements to work and if the Republicans continue to try to block things, then the President should lead for an effective policy, not one that is fatally flawed so we can include elements of failed philosophical ideas.  Sometimes the other side just doesn’t have any good ideas and it is just time to move on.  Now is that time.  Right now 66% of our population is “confused” about health care.  If that is not an indictment of failed leadership, nothing is.

For my own part, I take issue with most of the conventional wisdom of today about most of our policy issues.  The conventional wisdom is that we should not be too far to the left or right, but continue a middle of the road approach that most of the voters will be comfortable with.  But as I look at the challenges that face us, I am convinced that old go slow approaches are no longer operative.  In order to get back into the race, regain a leadership position in the world, and secure the financial security for our children, we need a totally different approach.  This means government has a major role in bringing about these changes because the market place has shown that its only interest is in the status quo of the moneymakers.  Not only do we need to convince the voters of this, but we need to convince these same people to make the necessary sacrifices in taxes and life choices, to secure our future.

David Brooks in his column on Monday said, “It means he (the President) has to align his proposals to the values of the political center: fiscal responsibility, individual choice and decentralized authority.” But the political center, by which he means right of center, and decentralized authority, is what is leading to our downfall.  It doesn’t mean we give up on market solutions, it just means that the market is not the be all and end all of policy solutions.  It is time to move in another direction and we need the leadership to show us that direction.  So far it has been sadly lacking.  If you think I am wrong, ask yourself why 66% of the nation is confused on health care.  This one is a no-brainer.