Un-Liberaled Woman

So I was talking with my friend about getting a Kindle. She was raving about hers and giving me the 411 on why it’s so great. Now was it coincidence that after my discussion last night that I read on the release of Kindle 2.0 and all of its awesomeness??? Hmmm….

I hate to say that while I am very intrigued there is just something to me about reading a book while physically holding it. I usually am the first to jump on a tech innovation but for some reason I cannot get myself to buy the Kindle. Maybe it’s the too thin feature of it…Maybe it’s how I cannot NOT know how much further I have to go when reading…Or maybe that it’s loving the feeling I get when physically looking at all the books I’ve read up on my bookshelf. Who knows. Perhaps someday but just not today. I’ll stick to my old books and pages, leaving the whippersnappers to their Kindles.

Buy American! Protect America! That’s all I keep hearing lately. If you don’t support the porkulus w/o question then you’re not supporting America. Good grief – what the @#$# is that smell??? Oh, right it’s bullshit.

Supposedly, supporting bailouts is now the only way (outside of paying taxes) to make you patriotic. Which is interesting because I guess being patriotic also means supporting other economies before your own failing economy according to GM’s latest business development plan (via Bob Park’s Black & Right). I know – WTF??? On one hand can you really blame GM? They’ve got a bottom line to support to keep their business running so that they can pay back that bailout loan.  But at the same time, I don’t think American tax dollars should be used to support other countries’ economies on the premise the tax dollars would be used to help America’s economy. And to think, there are many liberals out there criticizing those who question govt. spending. How dare they! I mean because if you did you could potentially avoid situations like this and that would be ooooh so bad to have informed citizens, huh.

Gee, I wonder what would happen if the UAW would just get out of the way and quit burdening GM 1) with staying in the same crappy plants, 2) forcing them to pay the average $40 wage among UAW members, 3) blocking GM from leaving Detroit so that they can move to more competitive markets (which happen to be right-to-work states) in other U.S. states. Let’s keep U.S. jobs here but in order to do that we need labor unions to recognize the flexibility they need to bring to the negotiation table. Too often the union leaders just rely on govt. to pass legislation that puts a gun to a company’s head, where in the company is trying to keep product prices low (to compete with foreign automakers), employ U.S. workers, and still generate a profit to keep operations running. Are you starting to see where the UAW leaders (and their liberal political support) are potentially creating a hostile and unstable work situation for the very members they are representing? Eventually GM will probably only do the bare minimum work here in the U.S. they need to satisfy the UAW and then will ship all other operations overseas. That’s not a promising scenario and not helping union members stay employed.

Govt. should be mediating the UAW and GM to make sure we can keep jobs in the U.S. but also make it plausible for this company to be competitive, deliver efficiently to customer demand, and produce profit to maintain/grow their operations. If we don’t we’ll either see GM eventually move most of its operations outside the U.S. OR we’ll see it go down into the ground – and then where will those UAW members be employed?

Just for a little fun from a fellow blogger at the Daily Koan.  A few months back the Howard Stern show took audio clips from one of Dolly Parton’s audio books. Needless to say it was some hilarious stuff. Ms. Parton couldn’t take the joke though. It was okay for her to say this stuff in her audio book to make the money but not okay for a shock jock radio station to use it to gain laughs from their audience.  But last I heard she was threatening to sue or something dumb like that. Because you know, anything can be fixed through a lawsuit.

Anysue, this link has some audio clips from our current President saying some phrases that are well, just a bit off the cuff. Enjoy!

My friend from grad school always said that phrase to express her frustration/sarcasm to situations where things were so clear yet somehow were still messed up.  You know, kind of like the cabinet confirmation/appointments of the “most ethical and transparent administration EVA!” Bob Parks at Black & Right has the toon of the day to express this point most effectively:

Good grief – it only took two weeks!But in the Senate Republicans’ defense they only got this bill late last week and the earliest they could have been on the media about porkulus was this weekend. I think the House Republicans should have been screaming from the Capitol’s rooftop about this more but they also have to compete with Barry for coverage. So they could have been trying but ultimately not given the spotlight because the preacher voice was scheduled to make it’s return.

But at least McCain (R-AZ) and Pence (R-IN) are starting to be more vocal in their opposition (via HotAir.com) with logical debate points. On a side note, where was THIS McCain on the campaign trail? I would have liked to seen more of this, but I think he was fighting such a huge uphill battle as is. McCain did warn us in the debates about Obama’s spending habits with example after example of Obama’s history with proposed pork projects. Obama retorted back that he’s a “pay as you go” legislature. Heh.

In the first clip I love how Pence shuts down the commentary on the economist “supporting” the porkulus. Turns out economists are able to change their mind or that some liberal-biased media were trying to skew context to illustrate support where there is none. Is it me or I thought the campaigning/advocacy ended months ago. Honestly, when are the media going to get back to objective, investigative journalism? Or should we start calling Medill School of Journalism at Northwesterm Medill School of PR???

And McCain brings up a good point about what are we going to do when the bill comes due. Passing this down the line to the next generation doesn’t make us a very responsible nation. It’s like how the older generation of politicians put funding of the failed Social Security system on my generation and I don’t know one person my age who speaks favorably about that topic.

So what will our children and grandchildren think of our generation down the line knowing we purposely put them in a corner forcing them to pay off $1 trillion debt we didn’t need???  If it’s to create jobs, I don’t see justifying paying $600,000 – $200,000 per job created, the estimate on the ROI of job creation through this porkulus. That doesn’t make sense even from a business standpoint.  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if this boondoggle extravaganza actually passes.

Well, here’s 10 more important reasons that will open your eyes for reconsidering it then. Via FreedomWorks.  Many economists are opposed to this “stimulus” plan, there is still no explanation which (or whose) taxes will pay when the bill is due, and exactly how many jobs are projected to be created as a direct result in 2009, 2010, 2011, etc.  I think a lot of people are just looking at the immediate picture and not what will happen down the line. This makes for an inaccurate outlook when it comes to economic planning. What do we think is going to happen when the bill comes due for this – it’s either we pay a lot more in taxes OR the Fed starts printing more money which then leads to inflation. Either way the money isn’t coming from a magical tree which will help our problems disappear. I say tackle the issue now through reduced govt. spending and dramatic temporary tax cuts on income and corporate taxes through the end of 2009. Remember, spending $1 trillion via the govt. means that’s $1 trillion we have to take out of the economy at some point to pay for it.

Also, TryingtoGrok had Tom Coburn hitting the nail on the head with some of this frivolous spending.

We are going to spend $448 million to build the Department of Homeland Security a new building. We have $1.3 trillion worth of empty buildings right now, and because it has been blocked in Congress we can’t sell them, we can’t raze them, we can’t do anything, but we are going to spend money on a new building here in Washington. We are going to spend another $248 million for new furniture for that building; a quarter of a billion dollars for new furniture. What about the furniture the Department of Homeland Security has now? These are tough times. Should we be buying new furniture? How about using what we have? That is what a family would do. They would use what they have. They wouldn’t go out and spend $248 million on furniture.

Bottom line – this porkulus plan is going to cost an average of $10,000 from each household in America. Do you have an extra $10,000 you’d like to just hand over to the govt. and never see any of the benefit of it? I find it hard to believe if any people would be happy with that scenario. And if you need a lesson in how govt. spending doesn’t cure economic woes, then take a look at Japan in the 1990s.

The recession that happened in 2001/2002 was helped by the 2003 Bush tax cuts, the roaring US economy in the late 90s was helped in part to the driving interest of dotcom stocks but also the 1997 Tax Reform bill. I don’t think tax cuts are the only answer but at least we should have temporary ones put in place to give immediate and direct relief to families as well as business to help them keep employees or create new jobs. Not spending $500 million on the National Endowment for the Arts or HIV testing.  If we’re going to have to spend money under this administration let’s make it about funding more manufacturing, infrastructure and technology. 95% of that bill should go toward those initatives – not just 5%!

Is history already starting to look favorable on Pres. Bush from some of his critics?

Not all of the news out there is just about the incoming president. Some people are using this time to reflect on where we’ve been the last eight years and what Pres. Bush did good as well as bad. And SURPRISE, not everyone is throwing stones, snickers, boos and jeers. Remember, we are all human and have imperfections. Presidents make some mistakes that are big, some that are small but none which are intentional. I don’t think any President takes the office with the goal to do harm to this nation, or turn its citizens against each other, or put them in a unfavorable light to the rest of the world. Despite President Bush’s mistakes, there were some successes. To deny this would be a skewed perspective – or what many conservatives call is Bush Derangement Syndrome. While I don’t think most of President Bush’s critics suffer from BDS, I do think that he got the brunt end of the stick more often than he deserved. Perspective is everything sometimes and it will be interesting to see how people judge President Bush in 10, 20, even 50 years. If Iraq & Afghanistan become self-preserving, capitalistic & democratic economies – President Bush should be given the credit he deserves. If they don’t I’m sure many of my friends when we are in our 70s will mock him without hesitation – and they will be justified. But remember it was President Truman who left office with a 20% rating and an environment much like the one we have now. It was President Lincoln who died with half of the country hating him so much so that one of his critics assassinated him for it. Now they are seen as a couple of our greatest presidents. I’m not saying that President Bush will be looked at as a great president, but to say he is one of the worst is to say so with tunnel vision (and ignore the entire Carter administration IMO).

To me, his best moments :

• The creation of Homeland Security
• Cleaning up Carter’s mess by leading the war against terrorism in Iraq & Afghanistan (this doesn’t make me pro-war BTW)
• The Bush tax cuts
• His rejection of the pathetic Kyoto global warming treaty (not because of global warming, but because of it’s exception to China & India)
• His support of Israel’s statehood
• Appointing a diverse cabinet (I’m a fan of Condi Rice!)
• Appointments of Roberts & Alito
• Support of faith-based programs
• Supporting the surge in Iraq even though it was the extremely unpopular thing to do at the time.

Now, I’m not 100% President Bush fan.  I leave out Katrina because I blame the govts. of LA and New Orleans more than the federal govt.(this is just my opinion, you may think I’m wrong – but honestly deal with it, my opinion on this isn’t changing). And everyone, including Mayor Ray Nagin seemed to get their act together the second time around – therefore they should be given credit for that.  His downfalls to me were:

• His communication skills (this is key when you are president and if he had done a better job at this I don’t think people would be harping on him as much as they do)
• Supporting No Child Left Behind (created by Ted Kennedy; just giving credit that this is not “a failed Republican” policy as many people incorrectly attribute it as)
• Supporting the $700++ billion bailout
• His low support/funding for science education programs.

I think how another blogger quoted Teddy Roosevelt is the most appropriate I’ve seen in the past few days to show the gratitude we feel for President Bush’s service:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Leaders are put in positions of leadership to make the hard decisions, not win popularity contests. To deny President Bush’s leadership ability because he made decisions you don’t agree with doesn’t make him any less of the leader that he truly was. He recognized time and time again that the decisions made under his administration may not have been the popular ones at the time, but that they were hard decisions to make in order to protect the people of the land he was sworn in to protect as President. To that I say THANK YOU, President Bush. Here are some people that can more eloquently express this point. In fact, I’ve included both liberals and conservatives to illustrate that even those who were strong Bush critics can see there were some good years and decisions made by our outgoing president.

Liberal Reflections:
http://www.clareified.com/2009/01/18/farewell-to-president-george-w-bush/
http://www.slate.com/id/2209133/?from=rss

Conservative links:
http://jameshudnall.com/blog.php/site/comments/farewell-bush/
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/20/goodbye-mr-bush/
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1232292908169
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/bruce-anderson/bruce-anderson-history-will-vindicate-george-bush-1419292.html

And to those critics who say Obama’s administration has brought a new era of “change,” and were move to tears by the words in his inauguration speech, I offer this little video demonstrating how little then they paid attention to what President Bush had been saying to the American people the last 7 years.

I love watching these clips to show how a). brilliant Peter Schiff is and b). to see how sound I am in my not trusting Barack Obama when he says “the best economists around.”  This video just shows you even the “best economists around” are not only WRONG but DEAD WRONG!

Here’s Peter’s latest interview on Yahoo! Finance where he discusses the current proposal to get us out of this mess – the Porkulus.  Also with the article is a great video interview where he explains how pertinent for our economic policy to focus on freeing up capital and saving.

The problem, he says, is the government is trying to perpetuate a “phony economy” based on borrowing and spending. With the U.S. consumer tapped out, the government is “now taking on the mantle” of consumer of last resort, he continues, predicting the bond bubble will soon burst – if it hasn’t already – ultimately leading to a collapse of the dollar and an “inflationary depression worse than anything any of us have ever seen.”

If nothing else, Schiff is an nonpartisan critic of American policymakers, comparing President Bush to Herbert Hoover and President Obama to FDR, and neither in a favorable way.

The reason I listen to someone like Schiff is because if you see in the video he’s stuck to his guns for nearly 3 years even while everyone else in the room was demanding he was wrong and some even laughing at him. Well, look who has the last laugh I guess. This is why I think the most humble/confident guy, not the loudest or arrogant,  is usually the right guy. Why because he’s done his homework and he gives it to you straight. He’s not looking to sound super-smart or to get that zinger sound-bite. He’s just presenting it like “here are the facts, folks. It may not be pretty but it is what it is so we’ve got to own up to it and deal.”

But I think govt. is too busy looking at reality to understand we’ve just got to accept that we’re not going to get out of this right away and that spending like we have been the last decade is not the answer. It’s the American way though. I think Americans are too scared to go through “tough” times – you know times where they have to save their paycheck, not spend their entire income, take out multiple lines of credit to stay above water and keep debt at bay.  So instead of owning up to it and chinning up to go through a more fiscally responsible time, they vote in politicians who’s policy is “having a financial crisis – we’ll here’s the solution, let’s take more money out of the economy (or borrow an insane amount of debt that we’ll have to pay back for years and years through higher taxes) and spend even 10x the amount of money.”

If you were a credit counselor and you had a client that was to the point of suicide because they couldn’t get a hold of their finances. To the point that what they made didn’t even cover the interest, let alone the principle, of their credit/debt lines. What would you advise them to do? Spend more? Yeah right.

It’s time for Americans to realize that we’re in a recession. It’s time to focus on saving  and paying down our debt. It’s time for the govt. to start giving temporary income tax cuts to taxpayers so that they have a chance to save that money. It’s time to give business temporary tax cuts to reinvest in their businesses or so that they don’t have to layoff more workers. The current porkulus does not equal production and will only make things 1,000x worse down the line. Buckle up I think it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Do that dance, do that dance. The “apologize-please-don’t-take-away-the-$$$” dance is a favorite of mine among celebrities.  I feel like a James Brown song should be playing right now.  du-du-du-du-dunuh! Oooooooooow!

Here’s the latest “sorry” celebrity (via HotAir.com). Michael Phelps I think is holding back smirking while the report gives him the platform to answer questions about whether he’s sorry or not. You can tell he’s not really sorry and probably doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. While I agree with him, I do get why he’s apologizing: M-O-N-E-Y! While most of his sponsors have stuck with him he just lost a big one Kellogg. So now he’s got to do his mea culpa to make sure the others stick around and to protect future endorsement earnings.

This is exactly what I did my thesis on in graduate school (How News Coverage Affects Celebrity Endorsements and the Company Image). The findings showed that among young adults 18-35, if the company’s celebrity endorser received negative “scandal” coverage a company could see a 25% drop in favorable perceptions of the endorsing company. So I get it from the standpoint of the company dropping endorsers who are involved in scandal. Bad publicity is not necessarily good publicity. If you were running a business would you want to risk 25% of customers not interested in your company/products? On the flip side I found that positive PR coverage of the celebrity produced around a 15% increase in favorable perceptions of the endorsing company.

I also cross-compared on the awareness/likeability factors of the celebrity prior to the news coverage exposure among my participants. The more a person had an invested interest in the celebrity the less damage was done to their favorable perception of the endorsing company once exposed to negative news coverage. I think this goes to the theory about how the more people invest in learning celebrity/pop culture the more inclined they are to put such celebrities in a realm of association or friendship. People feel they “know” the celebrity and thus are willing to overlook scandalous behavior as they would do for someone they have a personal relationship/friendship with.

Thought I would post this out there because it’s always interesting to see how stuff you devoted 12-months of studying to actually play out in real-life.

Michelle Malkin’s got a hilarious video up and the preacher voice is back for an ABC (Always! Be! Closing!) session on the porkulus bill. I think one commenter on the board answered Obama’s question with the perfect amount of sarcasm:

Obama: We are not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that for the last eight years have doubled the national debt.”

Fred 5676:  You mean OUT OF CONTROL SPENDING??  Yeah, let’s do some more of that.

No joke. Tax cuts would help give families and business immediate (key word here: IMMEDIATE) relief. What if a temporary income tax break of say 50% were enacted next week. And that tax break was only for a set time (end of 2009) so that it would truly serve its purpose in helping out in an emergency economic situation. Let’s look at my paycheck. I paid about $300 in just income taxes every paycheck. If I got a 50% break that means I’d have $150 more every week. I would turn around and either spend that money (which would increase the economy), invest that money in a banking account (which would increase the economy) or pay down some of my debt (which would help the economy with reducing debt). How then can you sit there arguing that tax breaks don’t provide economic growth. Honestly, WTF, Barry????  It’s not tax breaks that got us into this mess so quit trying to pin up all your problems on the Bush administration’s tax policies.

If you’re going to blame the last eight years on anything it’s spending! And you don’t seem to be opposed to that. In fact you seem to put on the earmuffs anytime somebody brings up questioning $1 trillion dollars in frivolous spending. Just because you now talk in a preacher’s voice doesn’t make the argument any more convincing.

And the other thing, I can’t stand it when politicians talk about the “best economists” out there. Just because you only surround yourself with Keynesian nutjob-economy theorists who tell you whatever you want to hear all the time (and nothing but) DOESN’T make them the best economists around.  The Keynesian-theory has been discredited by years of analysis. What makes me laugh the most is that its biggest supporters are critics of supply-side economics because they say “trick-down economics” don’t work. Ummm, riddle me this – what the FUCK do you think govt. spending is then – are you saying that’s NOT a form of trickle down?  Don’t be fooled. The Keynesian economics that Obama is peddling is taking money out of the economy (or from your pocket either by taxes or by your employer collecting taxes from your paycheck) and then using that revenue pool to then distribute money how they see fit – money from the top getting dispersed downward. If it was really a bottom-up policy you’d want to give the people at the bottom (taxpayers) directly more money in their pocket first, not take money from them and trickle it down through pork projects to your party’s biggest industry supporters/contributors. So, how do you implement a bottom-up impact immediately…drum roooooooooooll: a tax cut. Not a tax credit. A TAX CUT.

There’s a book I’m reading by Henry Hazlitt called Economics in One Lesson. It’s a great book. It doesn’t even talk about political parties. It just breaks things down to the simplest formula when it comes to economic policy. Perhaps I should send Barry my copy - I think he needs it more than me. Hazlitt states that good economists look looks beyond the immediate effect. Bad economists look just at the immediate effect. So when Barry is just preeeeachin’ away about the immediate affect, and refuses to answer questions about tax increases, lack of capital, and the weak prospectus of job creation as a result of the porkulus I think that would qualify his “best economists around” as bad economists according to Hazlitt. Hazlitt’s book is fascinating and a real eye-opener. If you’ve never heard of the broken window fallacy, click here for an excerpt- it’ll put in reality how the govt.’s “job creation” isn’t really creation of production at all. Hazlitt’s book helps break it down how truly govt. spending or “public works” actually mean taxes and taxes discourage production as well as capital growth. Here’s one excerpt from the book that I think rings true to this situation of crazy govt. spending (ie, using more taxpayer money):

It (they group proposing govt. spending programs) sees the people into whose hands the capital is put; it forgets those who would otherwise have it. It sees the project to which capital is granted; it forgets the projects from which capital is thereby withheld. It sees the immediate benefit to only one group; it overlooks the losses to the other group, and the net loss to the community as a whole.

If you don’t have time to read Hazlitt’s book, in the meantime the Cato Institute also breaks it down so that a teenager could understand it.  Watch it:

Ultimately, I’m loving this. It’s meltdown, finger wagging, and preacher-voicin’-mania this week.