Day 116

The conservatives and the remaining Republicans held the CPAC meeting this week. This group is the one who have to “get it,” the president’s mea culpa not withstanding. Democrats pay lip service to bipartisanship, but their strength is delivering government goodies to people who are convinced that they need them. When all money spent is a stimulus of some kind, what does a little pork matter?

The Republican message and the conservative message have comingled and parted ways a number of times through the years. Right now, there is an attempt by conservatives to take back the Republican party. That message will be defined largely by its messengers.

Modern conservatism began in 1964 with Barry Goldwater. Apparently, Kennedy and Goldwater had agreed to a series of debates, Lincoln/Douglass style, to compare Goldwater’s libertarian ideals with Kennedy’s belief in using government to better society. After Kennedy’s assassination, LBJ dropped that quick. By all accounts, he was quick to punish his enemies and won by claiming Goldwater would blow up the world. After winning a term, he let thousands of American soldiers die in a war that was ultimately considered a loss.

When Nixon came along, his liberal stance was in vogue. His disgrace was followed by mediocre presidents Ford and Carter. Ronald Reagan took up the mantle of conservatism yet again, but married with a social policy stressing old fashioned principles. This is, more or less, where conservatism is today.

Maybe this is why Republicans are held to a higher standard. Clinton, for all his bible (mis)quoting and sermonesque speechifying, was given a pass for cheating on his wife. Questions swirled around Bush for months about his supposed drug use, while Obama smoking cigarettes and pot, drinking  and snorting cocaine just made him cool.

Is it possible for the Republicans to pull off a 1994 type of congressional victory in 2010? Not as easily. There was a mostly Democrat banking scandal along with a general diminishing of Democratic numbers at the time. Republicans need either a message or a messenger, preferably both. They need it soon. The next election is 20 months away.

Day 115

Tea party day. After Rick Santelli’s moving speech about paying for people who lost their own money, a number of cities held demonstrations reenacting the Boston Tea Party. The irony is that we are saddled with debt, not taxes. Instead of paying for this impossible level of spending now, the debtor in chief is saving the bill for a time after he’s dead from lung cancer.

Day 114

The deficit is poised to reach TWO. TRILLION. DOLLARS. That would be approximately 12% of GDP for one year alone. That would double the debt blowing Reagan budget in 1983, only 6% of GDP.

And there’s pork. Unfortunately, that pork is owned by Democrats and Republicans. This administration is the benchmark for fiscal irresponsibility. The only counter to that is sane economic policy and appropriate spending. Only 3 Republicans failed the first test. How many will fail the nest?

Day 113

During a debate between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy, television viewers found that Kennedy had winning qualities. However, people who listened to the debate on radio believed Nixon made the most effective points.

The text of Gov. Jindal’s speech was a coherent message of the value of personal responsibility and the important yet limited role of government. The text of President Obama’s speech was a series of hackneyed platitudes and triangulation. But visually, Obama was exciting while Jindal was performing the speech as if by rote.

The dichotomy of perception versus reality is at the heart of what’s happening. Most people don’t like what the government is doing, but they like the president. But Wall Street looks at cold hard numbers, and they don’t like what they see in front of them.

Even though he has been compared to Reagan, Obama is very much his opposite. Where Reagan believed in specific ideas and plans, Obama believes in concepts like bipartisanship, hope and change, basically doing what the other guy wants to avoid the blame. Reagan believed in the fundamental uniqueness of America and the rugged individualism of its people. Obama believes America is just another country in the world and that the government has to help people and then take back from those people if they eventually succeed. And while Reagan could work a teleprompter, his ability to converse with the press and be ready with snappy remarks was truly amazing. Obama has frequently been unable to talk his way out of a paper bag without the words in front of him, to the point where his staff wants to install a screen at his podium to feed him answers at press conferences.

Obama has yet to give a speech from the Oval Office. His mojo works better on crowds where Nancy Pelosi can jump up in orgasmic glee and clap her hands like a newly minted cheerleader. Obama tried to talk at a desk during his network infomercial last October. It was universally panned.

Day 112

That was a good speech tonight. I mean Bobby Jindal. I didn’t watch the other guy. Just for laughs, I put it on MSNBC. Matthews, Olbermann and Maddow who are a Democrat who was going to run against Arlen Specter, a frequent poster to the Daily Kos and an Air America host, respectively, are the unbiased anchors for the network now.

After claiming that the government should have kept the boat owners from rescuing people during Katrina, they then proceeded to mock the Republicans plans for the country. Matthews was in rare spin form tonight.

1. He asked if anyone has seen the Republican health care plan. Maybe not, but we haven’t seen Obama’s either because of his secret health care meetings. Did he ask the same question of the Obama plan? No.

2. He claimed that Bush and Cheney were oil men incapable of reducing oil consumption and that Jindal made a bad case for reducing dependence on foreign oil. See that? Matthews used a rhetorical trick of claiming that the Republicans are not for reduction of foreign oil imports when, in fact, he was arguing that Republicans are against lowered consumption. The fact is, if the Obama administration seeks to ban drilling, we will buy more foreign oil at higher prices. Under Jindal’s vision, we would drill for more domestic oil. More domestic oil means less tankers with lower carbon footprints. More domestic oil means more money staying in America. More oil money in America means more money to fund alternative fuels instead of phoney baloney deficit spending “investments.”

Yeah, TV’s Lardball is an easy target, but so is the None and Matthews doesn’t go after his saggy ass.

Day 111

Stock market down 250 points to 7115. That’s 2500 points since Election Day. It looks like we’ll hit the 50% drop point since the Dow’s all time high in the much maligned Bush Administration. In fact, the stock market is at the point right at the beginning of the Clinton era upturn driven by the Internet economy.

Which also means that Obama has driven the business community lower than during 2 Bush terms and 1 Clinton term. Good job. Please resign now.

Day 110

Maybe I should pull apart an administration talking point every day. They’re so frequent and idiotic. Since Rush Limbaugh bashing week is over, Robert “Gibberish” Gibbs has found a new enemy. Rick Santelli touched a nerve this week with the idea that people who carelessly got a mortgage they couldn’t possibly pay are getting more government money to keep it. The talking points message this week is that we’re all in this together. If one person loses their home due to foreclosure, the price of your home will go down.

Bull. First of all, your home is a usable asset. True, if you want to refinance, home value is a factor. But if you were prudent when you got your mortgage, refinancing is just a way for the bank to take your short term cash to lessen some of your long term debt. Might as well just throw that $1000 refi fee into a payment to draw down the principal. If you paid off your mortgage, lower property values mean lower property taxes.

Next, there is no process in place to weed out people who lied on their mortgage applications and got a mortgage because it was cheaper than rent. In fact, the plan favors people whose income is far below their mortgage liability. This leads me to Ed Rendell’s stupid statement that bankruptcy courts refinance principal and interest rates on second homes, so we should do the same on first homes. The problem is that a bank will do a refi on a second home because it’s a second home. The first home is collateral. What collateral does someone who has no money use for a mortgage?

Finally, I’m getting a little damn sick of the idea that we’re all in this together. That’s socialism. And when you argue that if someone’s house is foreclosed, it will lower your home value, that’s terrorism. Maybe the president should threaten to blow up the houses of tax cheats and people who don’t chip in. Scratch the tax cheat thing. Most of his cabinet would probably wind up homeless.

Day 109

Commenter gagirl mentioned a post on Pundita whose title is kind of long to post here. It deals with the concept of Britain’s “red tories” and localism, among other things.

This is something I’ve thought about for a while myself. Capitalism that is insufficiently regulated is indistinguishable from Communism. If you let a Wal-Mart buy up all the other stores that sell clothes or baked goods or medicine or furniture, you’ve basically reduced yourself to the same kind of breadline dynamic of 1980s Russia. In fact, Wal-Mart and other large chains are now trying to sell their store brand of product to the exclusion of the name brand. Less choice = more profit.

In the last generation or two, companies have developed voluntary retirement plans so they can be off the hook for providing a pension. When times are tough, everyone loses money in their 401K (or whatever other IRA). Before that, a company may have had to make good on a pension regardless of the economy. I’m not a fan of the union pension thing, but something else.

Three months ago, I proposed that the UAW use its billions of dollars in retirement funds to buy a stake in the auto companies they work for. They could do all the things they claim would save the company. In fact, stock is so cheap right now for GM, they could get a controlling interest.That’s grass roots capitalism.

I was a big proponent of municipal utility co-ops in my area. With a co-op, your bill payments go toward maintaining the power plant, paying the employees and buying the fuel. This cuts costs in half, since there’s no board of directors or stock holders to answer to. It’s not anymore socialist than paying one utility company for your electricity.

The most revolutionary business model I can think of is employee owned. Like everyone else, I am convinced the executives at my company are lacking in judgement. If instead of a few people making all the choices, what if dozens of employee representitives  had a voice? Would the employees vote themselves huge wages and drag the company down? I doubt it, and plenty of CEOs have done it themselves without employee intervention.

The key to this kind of business model is the awareness of the cogs in the machine. Like politics, the tendency of people to be sheep and not engage in their lives is the enemy of enlightened self-interest.

Day 108

Looks like the Dow is going lower than at any point during the entire Bush Administration. Lot of confidence there, I bet.

I’ve been getting a whiff of capitalism bashing this week amidst the fact that the None’s glorious machinations have been for naught. The chief complaint seems to be that the Republican tax-cutters for the rich were all for the TARP bailout to the banks but don’t want the people who “need” money to get it for their mortgages.

This is where theory and practice part ways. The Republican Party is a political organization. Originally, they voted AGAINST the bailout in large numbers. But being a political party, just enough of them were bribed with pork to pass it. Did it work? No. Will the bank mortgage bailout? No!

The plan is to pay banks off (funny that, more bank money) to refinance mortgages for people who pay more than 31% of their income in mortgage payments. Is there an income cap? Not that I’ve heard. Is there a house value cap? Again, no idea.

My choice for the new Treasury Secretary, Rick Santelli has an idea. Extend unemployment benefits during a time when unemployment is high. Find rental properties for people unable to make huge mortgage payments.

As a free market type, I’d say let the banks fail. Banks that go under will be bought by other banks at a discount. Bonuses will be left unpaid. And when these huge mortgages go bust because of skinflint banks, they’ll have to sell them at a loss, like the growing housing market in California, where home prices are back down to reasonable levels.

Day 107

CNBC’s Rick Santelli may be looking for a new job. On the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, he made a point about the housing plan that rewards takers and punishes achievers. Besides getting a round of applause from the pre-trading working stiff at the Exchange, he made an important point. Why should someone who can’t afford a $500,000 house be given an subsidized payment schedule? Maybe they should have to trade that home for someone else’s $250,000 who can afford the payments on a $500,000 home.

Just remember, Rick. If CNBC doesn’t like your Derivative Boston Tea Party idea and cans you, FOX Business Network might take a look.