Missing the podium
Sunday brought a merciful end to the 21st Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver and concluded our quadrennial reminder of just why most of these sports languish in obscurity.
It was an Olympics bookended by the continuing tragedy in Haiti and an new one in Chile while suffering one of its own when Georgian athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed in practice for the luge event. That accident forced last-minute changes to the track and an overall shortening of the course as men began competition from the women’s starting post and the women moved down to the juniors’ position.
While NBC is getting better viewership ratings for the Vancouver Olympics than they did in the 2006 event held in Turin, Italy, there is serious discussion around the television world that the peacock network may relinquish the grip it’s had on the games since 2000 after their coverage contract expires with the London Summer Olympics in 2012. It’s estimated that NBC will lose $200 million on this year’s coverage, with the main gripe from viewers being the network’s usual practice of tape-delaying popular events for showing during prime time – in the Pacific time zone where Vancouver lies it could mean the results are known up to 12 hours before they’re actually broadcast.
Meanwhile, while the United States led the pack in total medals won, there seemed to be a shortage of the sportsmanship for which the Olympics is known. A long-running feud between American speed skater Apolo Ohno and his South Korean opponents boiled over with accusations and counter-charges of cheating and blocking in a sport which is supposed to exhibit speed and grace, not resemble an all-out last-lap scrum at a NASCAR race.
Topping that was the wild celebration of the Canadian women’s hockey team after they dispatched the United States in the final. Although they waited until after the medal ceremony and the arena was cleared, the beer-swilling, cigar-smoking on-ice party lasted nearly an hour as the Canadian ladies savored the victory in a sport they consider their own. The Canadian men were more subdued in victory.
Nor could the specter of politics escape this edition of the Olympics. No doubt it paled in comparison with the massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, but American figure skater Johnny Weir became the target of radical animal rights groups and had his safety threatened because his skating outfit featured natural fur. He relented this time but still “loves wearing dead animals” as part of his on-ice costumes.
Believers in anthropogenic global warming also had a field day with this Olympics, pointing out with glee that snow had to be trucked in before the events began because a month-long warm spell had melted the bounty of a snowy December. Meanwhile, regions like the mid-Atlantic only lacked the hills for good skiing competition since they had the several feet of fresh powder required for a base.
All in all, Vancouver was the red-headed stepchild of Olympic Games, combining tragedy, a huge gaffe in its opening ceremony, and a lack of truly compelling storylines into a bland stew of overly hyped events which dragged on for two weeks before coming to an end just in time for the ratings period to expire.
In 2014 it will be Sochi’s turn as the city along the Black Sea has its turn in the Winter Games spotlight, and the Russians are happily spending upwards of $60 billion (at current exchange rates) over an eight-year period to play host. Good thing it’s their money.
Michael Swartz, an architect and writer who lives in rural Maryland, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
This cleared right after my last LFS article was published here on March 1st. It was featured (among other places) in the Epoch Times, which also ran my “Green Police” op-ed a few days earlier.
Count on a nosy government
Since 1790, every 10 years the federal government has come around to count every American in an effort to determine proportional representation. This is dictated by Article I, Section 2 of our Constitution and it’s one of the rare instances the Constitution has been rigidly followed throughout our 230-plus year history.
In March, most households will receive a fairly short form intended to provide the information the government needs to determine these Congressional districts. (Others get a longer form which asks a number of questions about living situation, income, and other personal items.) In either case, though, respondents are asked about much more than the number of people living in their dwelling.
Consider the 10-question short form most Americans will receive. While Question 1 seeks the essential information about how many occupy the subject’s residence, other questions on the short form ask about home ownership, gender, and race.
More importantly, the government database being created also has name, age, date of birth, and telephone number. While the Census Bureau vows that the information collected will be kept secure, one has to wonder just how private this information will remain in an age of hackers and identity theft. Remember, none of this information is truly necessary to achieve the mandated purpose of determining population numbers for proportional representation.
In truth, the Census facts and figures have grown to meet purposes far beyond the intentions of the Founding Fathers, just as the size and scope of the government they created has. According to the Census Bureau, the status of living arrangements is asked because the answers are, “used to administer housing programs and to inform planning decisions.” Similarly, the age and date of birth are used for, “forecasting the number of people eligible for Social Security or Medicare services,” and the gender question is asked because, “many federal programs must differentiate between males and females for funding, implementing, and evaluating their programs.”
But even the obvious reason for the decennial count has fallen prey to overt discrimination on the part of bureaucrats in Washington, for it’s not Question 1 which determines the proper number of representatives to Congress per state, but Question 9.
And what is Question 9? It asks the race of each person in the household, yet,”state governments use the data to determine congressional, state, and local voting districts.” So much for the colorblind society those in power claim they wish to create. Instead, these numbers are used to create monolithic voting districts which forever doom minorities to second-class status.
The Census Bureau website claims that the count is necessary because, “(e)ach question helps to determine how more than $400 billion will be allocated to communities across the country.” Their radio spots talk about the need to respond because otherwise we’d not know if a school grew enough for new classrooms or if a town needed a traffic signal. They conveniently forget, though, that there’s other less intrusive measures to come up with the appropriate figures. As always, it becomes a question of following the money.
It’s been said many times in several variants that, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” We see the results of pitting groups against one another – a weakening of freedom and an erosion of liberty.
In response, we should call on our leaders to return the Census to the noble purpose for which it was intended and not continue using it as the wedge it’s become. While it’s not advisable to ignore the Census, we should think twice about just what information we share with Washington.
Michael Swartz, an architect and writer who lives in rural Maryland, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
Yes, I’m serious – when the form comes I’m only answering Question 1 (and Lord help the person responsible if they send me the American Community Survey.) This cleared LFS back on February 18 and was featured in at least one small paper up in Minnesota.
Republicans divided
At a time when the political winds should be at their back the Republican Party may be ill-poised to make the electoral gains conventional wisdom and history dictate they should at this fall’s midterm elections.
Nowhere was this more evident than at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, better known by the acronym CPAC. One case in point: Rep. Ron Paul, who showed outstanding fund raising ability but few votes in the 2008 Presidential campaign, won 31% of the vote in a straw poll of preference for the 2012 Presidential nomination. The 76 year old Texas Congressman beat out such luminaries and former candidates as Mitt Romney (who had won the previous three CPAC straw polls), Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee.
Huckabee was also critical of CPAC, an event he skipped for the first time in several years, noting that the gathering had taken a more libertarian turn and focused less on conservative social issues. He also pointed out that the numerous TEA Parties had taken some of the luster off CPAC – however, over 10,000 participants registered for the event, making its 37th edition the largest ever.
There’s no question the TEA Party movement, which began with rallies about a year ago and became popularized by a nationally televised rant from CNBC correspondent Rick Santelli, has affected the GOP over the last year. While these newly-minted political advocates helped secure Chris Christie’s and Bob McDonnell’s victories in their respective New Jersey and Virginia races for governor and financially put Scott Brown in a position to be elected to the Senate, they also created a rift in the New York 23rd Congressional District race, allowing a Democrat to win there for the first time in over a century. Certainly this movement has caused GOP Chair Michael Steele no shortage of headaches during the first half of his two-year tenure.
Of course, Democrats have taken notice and are attempting to use this rift to their advantage. In Nevada, embattled Senator Harry Reid received some help as a group billing itself as the Tea Party placed a candidate on the November ballot. Organizers of the actual TEA Party movement in Nevada claim they know nothing about candidate Jon Ashjian or the ten people who are listed as the Tea Party’s slate of officers. Yet the group obtained the required 250 signatures and filed the requisite paperwork under the Tea Party moniker. Reid needs the third-party assistance as recent polls show he trails two of the leading GOP contenders, Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian, by double-digits.
With a mindset of fiscal conservatism and dislike of President Obama’s agenda, those who comprise the TEA Party movement seem like the Holy Grail of supporters for the Republican Party. But many in the GOP establishment dislike the libertarian streak present among TEA Party participants while social conservatives like Huckabee fret their pet issues will continue to get short shrift. And TEA Party protesters themselves dislike many Congressional Republicans who supported unpopular Bush-era policies and entitlements, dismissing them as “Democrat-lite.”
Perhaps herding cats would be an easier task, but to win in November the Republicans will have to walk the tightrope of appeasing their existing base while integrating the TEA Partiers by appealing to their fiscal side. But TEA Partiers don’t mind the Republicans being the “party of no” because they fear the effect of President Obama’s statist policies, so standing firm in opposition and not heeding the siren song of “bipartisanship” with the unpopular Obama agenda may be the key to turning over Congress this fall.
Michael Swartz, an architect and writer who lives in rural Maryland, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
With a personnel change at LFS, apparently they are holding on to these for far less time. This cleared on Tuesday – tomorrow you get last week’s op-ed.
Art imitating life – or vice versa?
When a company devotes millions of dollars to the production and airing of a Super Bowl ad, they are at the mercy of several factors – one of those being an exciting game if you happen to have a spot airing in the fourth quarter.
We all know that the game itself came down to a late interception returned for a touchdown to secure the New Orleans Saints’ victory; fortunately for Audi this occurred after their commercial aired. For all the pregame talk about the pro-life ad sponsored by Focus on the Family and featuring the mother of Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, the “green police” commercial sponsored by Audi may have the most lasting impact.
The ad opens with an innocuous transaction at a grocery store where the cashier cheerfully asks, “Will that be paper or plastic?” When the hapless customer answers “plastic” he’s rudely greeted by an officer from the “green police” who advises the customer, “you picked the wrong day to mess with the ecosystem, plastic boy!” From there, numerous people run afoul of the law for having batteries in the trash, throwing away an orange rind (a “compost infraction”), possession of incandescent light bulbs and plastic water bottles, and having the temperature of their hot tub too high. The only escapee is the one driving the sponsor’s diesel-powered car at the “eco checkpoint.” Even the classic rock band Cheap Trick redid their 1970’s song “Dream Police” into “Green Police” for the spot.
Great humor works because it has an element of truth in it, and this commercial reflects a number of moves already made by government. Indeed, traditional incandescent light bulbs will be going away after next year due to government edict and several regions of the globe ban the use of plastic grocery bags. Nanny staters constantly proclaim society needs to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
So far, though, America hasn’t gotten to the point where we have the government snooping through our garbage for contraband non-recyclable material or uniformed officers breaking into our backyards to check the temperature of the hot tub. But the spot is believable because we now can’t dismiss the possibility given the cap and trade legislation slowly seeping its way through Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency’s willingness to take advantage of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling allowing them to regulate carbon dioxide to promulgate new restrictions on commerce and daily life, all in the name of combating so-called manmade climate change.
It’s this climate fear that Audi plays to with their ad, on both sides. For those who believe they should do more to save the planet, the car is sold as an eco-friendly mode of transportation. On the other hand, those who are skeptical about our impact on the climate but believe the way of the future may well be reflected in the commercial might be persuaded to buy one simply to be left alone.
Obviously Audi is attempting to sell cars with this Super Bowl ad just as other sponsors pushed online services, beer, or snack food. While the vast majority of these ads were written and produced to be humorous in some sly way or another, the Audi spot will have a longer-lasting impact for its product because this humor made the consumer think.
Many found it funny only because it stretched what we believe into something of a tall tale. It’s when the tall tale becomes reality that the spot loses its humor, and in the coming decade we may see the Audi ad as prophetic of how society evolved.
Michael Swartz, an architect and writer who lives in rural Maryland, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
My latest LFS column to be released cleared on February 12.
An annual ritual we can do without
This is the time of year most Americans receive their W-2 and 1099 forms, putting into motion the annual process of calculating the maximum amount they can get back from Uncle Sam.
Before April 15, many Americans will devote hours attempting to make sense of the tax laws for that elusive refund while others simply throw up their hands and hire a tax professional to handle their returns. It’s an industry which fetchingly promises their customers the largest tax refund they can get – if only Americans got an actual return on investment when that check arrived from the Department of the Treasury. Few people who receive tax refunds realize they’re simply being paid back the interest-free loan they gave to the federal bureaucracy the previous year.
Over the last decade or so, a few thinkers have attempted to convince Americans there’s a better way. Steve Forbes based two unsuccessful Presidential campaigns in 1996 and 2000 on the concept of a single-rate flat tax with few deductions, while Rep. John Linder of Georgia has spent the past decade introducing a consumption-based solution dubbed the FairTax to each new session of Congress.
While both methods are long on merits and could easily be adjusted to rates assuring sufficient funds for necessary government programs, there’s one element missing from these alternatives which prevents them from getting traction inside the Beltway or in any state capital.
America’s complex tax code allows Washington to control behavior through reward or punishment. In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama noted, “We cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families…We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college.”
Most readers would nod their head in agreement because these are behaviors which tend to lead to productive lives. But if you become too productive by earning too much money, suddenly you’re a target. And a favorite weapon of Washington insiders is pegging these tax breaks to income, phasing them out if your family’s take-home pay starts to creep over a certain threshold considered “fair” by those in charge. President Obama campaigned on “sharing the wealth,” and if you happen to be someone who makes over $250,000 he considers your wealth his to share.
Yet figures compiled by the Heritage Foundation tell a different tale, noting that the top fifth of income earners saw their share of taxation increase from 81.2% in 2000 to 86.3% in 2006 – on only 55.7% of total income. Even under the Bush tax cuts panned by Democrats as “tax cuts for the rich” the high income earners as a whole shared far more than they made. While either of the proposed alternative methods of taxation would still come down harder on those who make large salaries, they wouldn’t tend to single producers out for punishment.
This fairer, flatter approach to taxation, though, flies in the face of a governmental philosophy that exists to redistribute wealth and thousands of lobbyists who make their living pitching new regulations and tax code designed to benefit those who stroke their checks at the expense of business competitors or political opponents. These are the people who are perfectly happy to maintain a complicated, unfair system where its sheer complexity bullies taxpayers into not taking every allowable deduction and where errant filers are guilty until proven innocent.
It’s a system long overdue for fundamental change, and soon we’ll have the opportunity to elect politicians with the spine to undertake it.
Michael Swartz, an architect and writer who lives in rural Maryland, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
This effort for Liberty Features cleared February 4th.
How one man killed Obamacare
As most of America has presumably learned, Republican Scott Brown was elected to take over the “Kennedy seat” in the Senate, dispatching Democrat opponent Martha Coakley handily in Massachusetts’ recent special election. Thus ended Democrats’ filibuster-proof 60-vote majority in the Senate and prospects for ramming Obamacare through on a strictly party-line vote.
Yet had the House and Senate concurred earlier on a health care reform bill agreeable to both Brown’s election wouldn’t have mattered nearly as much. Instead, each body designed legislation to pass their own side and in the end the differences were irreconcilable. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally threw in the towel, saying the one chance Obamacare had – passing the Senate bill as it was in the House – couldn’t draw the required 218 votes. A main sticking point was that the Senate bill lacked the prohibition on the federal government paying directly for abortions. That provision allowed the House to pass their bill with just two votes to spare and gave it the barest bipartisan fig leaf as GOP Rep. Joseph Cao of Louisiana was the lone Republican in favor.
Undeniably, part of Brown’s appeal was the prospect of killing Obamacare by being the 41st Republican vote and denying Democrats their supermajority. In the election’s aftermath, petulant Democrats threw losing candidate Martha Coakley under the bus for running a terrible, gaffe-prone campaign and openly spoke about changing the filibuster rules to allow Democrats to maintain their hammerlock, perhaps needing just 55 votes instead of 60. Decades ago, a compromise measure lowered the limit from a 2/3 majority of 67 Senators to the current 3/5 majority.
Cooler heads prevailed, though, and now the consensus on health care reform is to deliver it in a piecemeal fashion by removing some of the most objectionable portions and focusing on areas where broad agreement exists, such as eliminating the right to deny coverage for preexisting conditions. But gone will be the ability for Democrats to fashion closed-door deals such as the one exempting union workers from a tax on so-called “Cadillac” health insurance plans.
While Republicans were pleased about picking up a Massachusetts seat for the first time in nearly 40 years, the prospects of becoming the majority party in the Senate this fall are fairly slim. Of the 36 Senate seats up for consideration (there are special elections to fill unexpired terms in Delaware and New York), 18 of the seats are Republican and 18 are held by Democrats. To even things out, the GOP would have to sweep the seats they’re defending and win half the available Democratic seats – a tall order to be sure. The prevailing conventional wisdom at the moment pegs GOP gains of 2 to 4 seats, which would leave them still significantly in the minority.
But an enhanced Republican presence in the Senate would curb the radically statist agenda thus far presented by President Obama, creating a similar effect to the 1994 midterm election which tempered President Clinton’s ambitious plans for health care reform. In order to win his own reelection, President Clinton tacked to the center and the strategy paid off in 1996.
Given what Obama has proposed and already enacted, though, moving to the center may be a little much to expect out of him. The 2012 Presidential election will likely see Obama run for a second term against two opponents: the Republican nominee and a “do-nothing” Congress which thwarted much of his ambitious agenda to remake America.
For that, we can thank Scott Brown and Massachusetts voters who hoped for a better change.
Michael Swartz, an architect and writer who lives in rural Maryland, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
This latest effort for LFS cleared back on January 27th.
Look for the union payoff
A final step in the closed-door negotiations among Democrats trying to pull together a health-care bill from the versions which passed the House and Senate was the disposition of a tax on Cadillac health plans. Employers generally provide these high-dollar health benefits to two classes of help: corporate executives and union workers.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average cost for a health insurance plan covering a family is $13,375. The 40 percent tax on Cadillac benefits is slated for adoption once premiums reach about $8,900 for individuals or $24,000 for families – but union negotiators managed to get a carve-out on the tax for an additional five years after the 2013 effective date, purportedly to allow benefits negotiated in current contracts to expire. Others benefiting from exceptions will be residents of certain states where premiums are highest and those in some high-risk occupations. A large percentage of these beneficiaries are union workers as well.
One part of the equation gets little explanation, however. Few seem to be asking what it is that makes a Cadillac plan so costly? To have a plan be significantly more expensive than average it usually requires one or both of two factors to be in play.
In the case of union labor, some of the additional cost comes from the overall group skewing towards older and sicker workers or, more precisely, the coverage of retirees in these plans. With union-dominated heavy industries losing workers as a percentage of the overall labor force, fewer younger laborers are picking up the slack for their more elderly counterparts.
But a larger share of the insurance cost comes from the much more generous benefits afforded to the workers who are enrolled in union-sponsored plans. Employers in union shops haven’t succeeded nearly as well in passing their health care costs on to workers, so they bear a disproportionate burden compared to their nonunion competition. The automotive industry is a prime example, with the toll of providing health care for workers and retirees placing Detroit at a disadvantage of up to $2,000 against automakers not saddled with this sort of overhead cost.
Conversely, with the health care carve-out union workers win twice – once by maintaining these gold-plated plans for several more years at little cost to them and again by skirting the taxes other workers with similar health insurance plans (mostly in the ranks of management) will have to pay for their coverage once collection starts in 2013.
Over the last decade or so unions have eschewed large wage increases, trading them away in order to keep their generous health benefits. With the advent of Obamacare and the prospect of the 40 percent surtax on Cadillac health care plans, those labor leaders who invested heavily in making an Obama presidency a reality threatened to withhold support for the compromise bill if their concerns weren’t addressed. Their millions in political contributions indeed gave them a seat at the table.
But taking away from one corner means a cut on another side if negotiators want to maintain the prospect of reform being budget-neutral, so there has to be some other compromise on costs to make up for the loss of up to $150 billion in revenue over the first decade the bill is enacted. Look for that shortfall to be made up by some group not invited to the confab considering the final health care bill deep within the bowels of the White House. That would be the American people.
Michael Swartz, an architect and editor of Monoblogue, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
This op-ed for LFS cleared on January 22nd. Little did I know when I wrote it that health care would soon be dead.
Fox (hearts) Palin – but will it help her in 2012?
On Monday it was announced that Fox News inked former Alaska Governor and Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin to a multi-year contract as a contributor to the news network. While her on-air duties were not specifically spelled out, it’s expected that she’ll provide expert analysis to the network’s election-night coverage and host an upcoming Fox News program called “Real American Stories,” which the network bills as, “a series exploring inspirational real-life tales of overcoming adversity throughout the American landscape.”
Straddling a border between politics and media is nothing new, although more often than not the line has been crossed the other way – Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger are but two examples of those who made their name in media before trying their luck in politics, while Senator and former presidential candidate Fred Thompson has managed a successful career in both arenas. Former CNN host and anchor Lou Dobbs is among those considering a similar move into the political scene after years in media.
But more and more that border is being traversed in the opposite direction.
Before Palin joined Fox News, one of the network’s brightest new stars was former Presidential contender and fellow governor Mike Huckabee. While his 2012 Presidential hopes may have been snuffed out by the recent murder of four police officers in Washington state by Maurice Clemmons, a convicted felon Huckabee helped to free from prison by commuting his sentence while serving as governor, when he was signed by Fox Governor Huckabee was still considered by many as a favorite for the 2012 GOP nod along with Sarah Palin and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
Obviously in Huckabee’s instance, the Clemmons incident didn’t stem from anything he said as a Fox News employee. But given the propensity of the remainder of media to judge Sarah Palin by unrealistically high double standards, anything Palin says on the Fox network can and will be used against her in the court of public opinion.
Perhaps the best approach Fox can take with Palin heeds the old show business saying, “always leave ‘em wanting more.” One criticism leveled at President Obama is that he is always on television, the very definition of a media hog. Contrary to belief inside the White House, this overexposure is hurting his approval and credibility.
After Ronald Reagan left office as Governor of California, he had the opportunity to write and deliver a brief radio commentary each weekday for several years leading up to his 1980 campaign. These short essays kept him just close enough to the fray to be remembered but didn’t make him seem overexposed by being in the media for hours on end.
By that same token, if Governor Palin has the opportunity to judiciously dole out her appearances instead of being a nightly staple on Fox News it will enhance her political chances in the long run. With fewer opportunities for critics to jump on any misstatement she makes, Palin won’t be making the news so much as she’ll be delivering her message. And since her message of conservative principles is currently popular with the largest segment of the American people, exerting as much control of it as possible is in her best interest politically should she desire to return to that arena.
At the moment Palin’s approval ratings are comparable to those of the current Oval Office occupant. If she’s shrewd about the opportunity presented to her, Sarah Palin could create the message of her 2012 campaign and have the luxury of controlling it too.
Michael Swartz, an architect and editor of monoblogue, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
Hey, I like the tagline and link. This effort for LFS cleared on January 15th and was picked up by the Palos Heights (IL) Reporter on January 21st.
Clawing back for funds
It’s a new year and the economy can’t improve soon enough for cash-strapped cities, counties, and states across the country. With receipts from income taxes falling due to high unemployment, property tax dollars declining thanks to shrinking home values, and sales tax revenue flat despite increasing rates in many areas, state and local governments are searching hard for money to pay their bills.
When times were better, corporations shrewdly pitted cities and states against one another in a search for the best tax breaks. Local government was willing to give these large employers a break on some of their tax burden and help out with needed infrastructure in order to draw these companies and the employment they promised to provide to local communities. It was a win-win situation for both as companies had a willing partner in local government while politicians pointed with pride to the jobs they brought home to their districts.
Eventually the good times had to come to an end, however, and both employers and government struggle with trying to make ends meet. Yet those employers who took advantage of tax breaks to improve their bottom line have found difficulty meeting the numerical employee targets set by their agreements with local entities. Adding to their problem is having more and more local and state governing bodies use the “clawback” provision in their contracts with these corporations to cancel the tax breaks they gave away to attract the company in the first place.
Obviously a deal is a deal and local politicians rarely let the chance to add money to their coffers slip by, but perhaps in this case they are being a little hasty.
There are two categories of employers who have taken advantage of sweetheart deals with government to settle into a community. Some have never lived up to the employment promises made in their contracts for an assortment of reasons, but most were maintaining their employment numbers until economic conditions forced their hand, resulting in layoffs. Those companies are the ones who government should work with in order to find a suitable compromise measure instead of exacting a full penalty to a struggling company.
While economic conditions are difficult here, there are still hundreds of entities competing for large employers domestically, not to mention the siren song attraction of other nations who can woo manufacturers with the promises of cheaper labor costs and fewer regulations.
Certainly some companies who have never kept their word on employment numbers and feel pressured by local government to comply with their contracts to the letter may opt to bolt for greener pastures, but eventually that reputation will catch up to them and local politicians may be gunshy about believing the promises these scofflaws make. The ones who made the effort but decide to pull the plug because local authorities won’t work with them to find a sound middle ground for the time being would be the ones missed the most when they’re gone.
Unlike the popular perception created by Hollywood and the media, most employers attempt to be good citizens and improve the local cities, counties, and school districts in which they’re located. They give of their time through encouraging employee volunteerism and their money via charitable efforts as they strive to improve the places they call home. Shaking them down for a few dollars more may help the government’s bottom line, but that funding could come at some much larger expense if relationships become strained over a temporary setback.
Michael Swartz is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
Another in my continuing LFS series, this cleared back on January 6th.
2009: The year of Obama
Given the fact that the weeks leading up to Christmas and New Year’s Day are typically a dead zone for newsworthy items, it’s probable that whatever headlines aren’t made by the continuing battle over health care in Washington and feel-good holiday stories will be dedicated to a continuing series of year-end wrap-ups. The editorial page is seldom different, so this column takes a look at the year’s accomplishments of our nation’s most prominent news figure, President Barack Obama. (You were expecting Tiger Woods?)
When the President makes his State of the Union speech next month it’s likely he’ll point to the passage of his health care plan as his major victory. Most odd about this, though, is that he never actually had a health care reform plan, instead leaving Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic leaders in charge of crafting the bill which made it through the House while Harry Reid and assorted Democratic minions in the Senate came up with a completely separate proposal. By splitting the duty of health care reform, not only did the plan have to deal with constantly shifting aspects like the in-again, out-again “public option” but it also lost the “transparency” Obama promised when he took office.
Transparency was the least of the Obama’s problems, though. He had a raft of economic issues to address, most of which he adroitly blamed on his predecessor and “the last eight years.” And for putting up $787 billion in a stimulus program, the promise was that unemployment wouldn’t rise past 8 percent. Perhaps it’s because a large chunk of stimulus money went to propping up various state budgets instead of the “shovel ready” jobs originally slated for funding, but unemployment eventually jumped to 10.2 percent in October before easing slightly to a round 10 percent in November. The stimulus has been so successful that Newsweek glowing predicted high unemployment to be the “new norm.”
Yet unemployment isn’t such a problem at businesses the President deems “too big to fail.” By expertly revamping the concept of paying creditors in a bankruptcy, General Motors and Chrysler went from publicly-owned businesses to enterprises bailed out by government funding and turned over in large part to the United Auto Workers. In response, sales at Ford have been the lone bright spot for Detroit.
But the auto industry in general was aided by $3 billion spent on the “Cash for Clunkers” program, which paid Americans to buy over 700,000 new cars. Never mind that new car sales plummeted immediately after the program ended and having the old clunkers rendered unusable all but destroyed the used car and parts markets – the program is still considered a success.
Perhaps the biggest triumph of Obama’s year, though, was avoidance of a foreign policy mistake. In fact, not only did Obama not have “an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test (his) mettle,” as Vice-President Biden warned, but based on a scant few months in office he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Perhaps it was a tribute to Obama’s charisma that he received the prize despite ramping up a war in Afghanistan by sending over 30,000 more troops, but it’s more likely that his deliberation in taking months to decide on that number was the factor that sealed the deal.
Or maybe he bowed to the right people. Whatever the reason, it’s certain that President Obama can consider this year a success; after all, he gave himself a B-plus.
And to think – America has three more years to see if he can get to an A.
Michael Swartz is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
This op-ed cleared on December 23rd and was featured in the Walterboro (SC) Press and Standard December 31st. Had they done it a couple days earlier I could have bought the paper on my way back from Florida!
High unemployment: the new norm?
In a recent edition of Newsweek, one article suggests, “Joblessness is Here to Stay,” and posits that, “flat is the new up” when it comes to employment figures. All in all, the article comes through as a manual on how to lower economic expectations.
Aside from the fact that the magazine itself may be the next venerable employer to shave jobs – as both circulation and advertising revenue continue to be in a free fall for Newsweek and its other weekly news magazine cousins – this points out a trend in economic reporting which also underlines why fewer and fewer people trust the old media for their information.
Over the last few months, bad economic news has become “unexpected,” as in “jobless claims unexpectedly increased to 500,000 for the week,” or, “wholesale prices unexpectedly jumped 4/10 of a percent, surprising analysts who expected a slight decline.” You get the picture.
It seemed like the shoe was on the other foot just a year or so ago, when the rosier economic numbers we experienced then always seemed to confound the so-called experts who expected declines. (If your local meteorologist’s weather forecasts were as poor as the performance some of these economists had put in recently, you’d be forced to keep an umbrella handy at all times just to be on the safe side.)
Newsweek could be correct in its assertion this time, though, and the high unemployment rate may be here for a number of years. The question not being asked, however, is how we got here in the first place and why was it a surprise?
Over the last few years, we have seen one bubble after another collapse in on itself, much as a house of cards falls down when one card is misplaced or disturbed. The burst of the housing bubble begat the fall of a number of banks and financial institutions, which, in turn, battered the market for consumer credit. Homeowners found themselves both under water on their mortgage based on the disappearance of the home’s equity value they had borrowed against and quite possibly out of a job as companies shed workers to maintain some semblance of a decent bottom line. Those newly jobless could no longer maintain their previous standard of living, even if they were drawing unemployment checks.
The idea of lowering expectations, though, provides cover for not properly addressing the conditions which led to the problem in the first place. President Obama’s recent “jobs summit” pointed this out quite well as the invitation list left out many in the private sector who have great ideas on how to create jobs but haven’t stood foursquare behind the idea of government intervention to jumpstart the economy.
We continually hear about how the unemployment numbers are the worst in a quarter-century, but we rarely hear about how these numbers eventually declined to the 5% rate (or less) we enjoyed as recently as May 2008.
Ronald Reagan chose to resurrect the horrible economy he inherited from Jimmy Carter through a broad-based tax cut. It’s also worth recalling that, like today, Reagan labored under a highly partisan Democratic House who refused to cut social program and entitlement spending.
But, since the only tax cuts President Obama seems to favor are those narrowly targeted for specific behaviors, it’s quite possible that Newsweek is simply making this prediction because they know the results of Obama’s policies will speak for themselves. And they’re right this time – if Obama continues on his course, don’t expect a real recovery anytime soon.
Michael Swartz is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
My latest LFS piece originally cleared December 17.
TEA Partiers to GOP: Can you hear us now?
An interesting poll came out this week and the result probably made Michael Steele and his Republican National Committee cohorts inside the Beltway lose some sleep.
With a question patterned after the generic Congressional ballots Rasmussen surveys from time to time, it was found that 36% of voters would vote for a Democrat and 18% of voters would support a Republican. But 23% would go with a third option, an option that Rasmussen pollsters characterized as imagining the TEA Party coalition as its own political party.
The surprise was apparent because in recent months the GOP had pulled ahead of Democrats in two-way generic Congressional polling just as President Obama has also seen his support tumbling. It looked like the path was clear for a GOP resurgence in 2010.
But this schism in the GOP manifested itself in the NY-23 Congressional race, where GOP selection Dede Scozzafava and Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman split 51.3% of the vote, allowing Democrat Bill Owens a win by plurality.
On a more national scale, history suggests that America splits on the right side of the political spectrum more often than on the left, although recent elections have seen a third-party nominee upset the apple cart once on both sides. By running as part of a significant third party, Ross Perot in 1992 and Ralph Nader in 2000 changed the course of those elections and helped place the eventual winner in office.
While some in the GOP have reached out to the once disaffected and now motivated electorate comprising much of the TEA Party movement, those voters recall the GOP was in control of Washington from 2000 to 2006 and made a lot of questionable moves such as creating a new prescription drug entitlement in Medicare Part D, placing the federal government in further control of local school districts with the No Child Left Behind legislation, and backing down on Social Security reform. All the while federal spending increased, leaving tax cuts and national security after the terrorist attacks on 9-11 the only satisfactory item on the checklist of most fiscal and social conservatives.
With the Rasmussen polling result in hand, those among the TEA Partiers who believe a third party is the way to go gained some fresh ammunition – or so they thought. But even the Rasmussen pollsters warned that an actual third party on the ballot would stand little chance of achieving the results suggested by the poll.
Instead, the better approach may be one that some TEA Party organizers and participants detest, and that’s becoming involved in the existing two-party political apparatus.
It’s apparent to some in the Republican Party grassroots that more attention should be paid to the activists demanding a return to Reagan-era conservatism. Witness the resolution to be debated at the upcoming RNC Winter Meeting which demands candidates who expect help from the national party to be supportive of at least eight points of a ten-point platform which stresses both fiscal and social conservative values along with a strong national defense.
But it’s up to GOP candidates to attract the 23 percent who would otherwise prefer a third-party alternative. With the TEA Party votes and campaign support, the GOP stands a chance of taking back Congress. Without that vote, they are doomed.
Many orators throughout our history have noted that, “united we stand, divided we fall.” Adding the TEA Party coalition to the Republican column can mean victory, but the Republicans need to give these voters a reason to come out and support them.
Michael Swartz is a Liberty Features Syndicate writer.
In my continuing series of op-eds I pen for LFS, this one cleared on December 11.
Please note that the opinions expressed on monoblogue are not necessarily those of the Wicomico County Republican Party Central Committee, of which I'm a member. (But they probably should be.)
News from the loony left:
