Obama always talks about "shovel ready" projects. He likes to tout shovel-ready jobs that he can fund with money the govenment borrows from abroad... or at least he always talks about the first part of that statement. I wonder if Obama ever used a shovel or understands a shovel's value in the market. I am sure he undertands the theory of the shovel and maybe even the physics of the shovel, but does know why we need shovels or know all of the things I can do with a shovel? Based on his speech yesterday about raising taxes yesterday, I don't think he knows anything about shovels other than that if he needs one, he should be able to come over and take mine.
I think Obama's speech yesterday was a complete capitulation to the economic doldrums we have seen since 2008. A campaign speech versus a policy speech, the subtext of Obama's speech was that you can't get more by earning it in our economy today. Instead, you can get more by taking from the mean guys...the millionaires and billionaires. The president told us that the way for us to get more for everyone is to take it from someone else. How is that going to work?How is that leadership?
The president snarked "it's not class warefare, it's math" Really? For someone who is supposed to be so smart, he doesn't seem to be very good at math. Beyond all the false comparisons in the "Buffett Rule" and his ommissions about double taxation of corporate taxes, how can he miss the simple math that the federal spending has far outpaced the capacity for even the most robust economy to support it? How did he miss that math? How can the president miss the math that job creation is essentially zero. What is the math behind creating jobs by taking money from one pocket and putting it in another? Did the president quanitfy the lost jobs and economic output in our domestic energy industry? Where is that math?
I think the only math problem the president has is that the math behind his proposals doesn't work.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
A Jobs Bill that Doesn't Cost a Dime...and will fill Govt Coffers
I don't have many rules in my staff meetings. However one rule I do have is that you can't gripe about something without an idea or suggestion to fix the problem. I don't like President Obama's jobs bill nor his plan to pay for it. I don't dislike it because I don't like Obama or because I favor rich fat cats. I don't like his plan because it won't work. It has not worked in the past and it won't work now. This position is not political or personal, it's just reality.
If I make this comment, it is now my obligation to propose an alternative that will work. None of this is new, nor is it brain surgery.
1) The Tax Code - scrap it in total and start over. Propose a new tax system that at its inception will be revenue neutral. Tax all income above the national poverty rate at a single rate - likely less than 20%. No deductions for mortgages, charitable contributions, child credits, nothing. Corporations pay the same rate...and they get a one time tax holiday to repatriate foreign earnings at 10%. 1% national sales tax that requires a 3/4 majority in congress to raise. Everyone pays at a lower rate and they can do their taxes on the back of a cocktail napkin.
2) Obama Care - Scrap it and start over. Everyone outside of the Obama administration, his cheerleaders in the mainstream media, and his storm troopers at Salon, MoveOn, etc knows that this is a bad plan. Using the media analogy of passing legislation is like making sausage, if we made sausage when passing Obamacare, then we made a bad batch of sausage and it is giving the American economy a stroke. Scrap this bad plan and start over. There are laudable ideas in the 2000 pages of Obamacare, great, use them and a starting point, but getting this boot off the neck of the economy will create millions of jobs.
3) Invest in domestic energy production - Our high energy prices equate to a surtax that we transfer to the OPEC nations every day. Drill offshore, drill in Alaska, mine oil sand and shale and we will drive our energy costs down. We will create real jobs - we won't have to make up fictional statistics about "saved" jobs, rather we will create real jobs in an industry sector that his been shackled by our government for years.
You know how much these ideas cost? Nothing.If Obama announced this as his new plan, markets would soar, energy prices would drop, unemployment would trend down. Let's not forget the other consequence of this plan...government revenues would soar. I am not an advocate of starving the government, but rather than doubling down on policies that have failed and spending money we don't have, why not give this a whirl. The results can't be any worse than the proposal on the table. If Obama proposed this, his second term would be secure. Heck, I'd probably vote for him if he could get this plan passed before the 2012 elections. Want to put the ball in the Republicans court and see if they bounce it off their knee out of bounds? Try this plan and see what those guys do. I know what I would do, I'd high-five my buddy Obama.
If I make this comment, it is now my obligation to propose an alternative that will work. None of this is new, nor is it brain surgery.
1) The Tax Code - scrap it in total and start over. Propose a new tax system that at its inception will be revenue neutral. Tax all income above the national poverty rate at a single rate - likely less than 20%. No deductions for mortgages, charitable contributions, child credits, nothing. Corporations pay the same rate...and they get a one time tax holiday to repatriate foreign earnings at 10%. 1% national sales tax that requires a 3/4 majority in congress to raise. Everyone pays at a lower rate and they can do their taxes on the back of a cocktail napkin.
2) Obama Care - Scrap it and start over. Everyone outside of the Obama administration, his cheerleaders in the mainstream media, and his storm troopers at Salon, MoveOn, etc knows that this is a bad plan. Using the media analogy of passing legislation is like making sausage, if we made sausage when passing Obamacare, then we made a bad batch of sausage and it is giving the American economy a stroke. Scrap this bad plan and start over. There are laudable ideas in the 2000 pages of Obamacare, great, use them and a starting point, but getting this boot off the neck of the economy will create millions of jobs.
3) Invest in domestic energy production - Our high energy prices equate to a surtax that we transfer to the OPEC nations every day. Drill offshore, drill in Alaska, mine oil sand and shale and we will drive our energy costs down. We will create real jobs - we won't have to make up fictional statistics about "saved" jobs, rather we will create real jobs in an industry sector that his been shackled by our government for years.
You know how much these ideas cost? Nothing.If Obama announced this as his new plan, markets would soar, energy prices would drop, unemployment would trend down. Let's not forget the other consequence of this plan...government revenues would soar. I am not an advocate of starving the government, but rather than doubling down on policies that have failed and spending money we don't have, why not give this a whirl. The results can't be any worse than the proposal on the table. If Obama proposed this, his second term would be secure. Heck, I'd probably vote for him if he could get this plan passed before the 2012 elections. Want to put the ball in the Republicans court and see if they bounce it off their knee out of bounds? Try this plan and see what those guys do. I know what I would do, I'd high-five my buddy Obama.
Friday, September 9, 2011
The Minimalist
I have never been what I would consider a minimalist. If the fit of my suit britches is any indication lately, I am anything but a minimalist. I have also never been a good distance runner. In fact I have never finished a distance race of any note in anything higher than the bottom 15% of finishers.
So what is the intersection between these two realities? I would like to run one last marathon before I hang up my distance running pursuits. I will be fifty when I make this last race attempt. Maybe the appeal of the alliteration is the appeal...a final and fifth finish at fifty has a nice ring to it. However, I am not built for distance running. Short stocky legs, thick build, a catcher's speed, distance running is not my natural state. If my survival in the wild depended on my speed, I would meet my Darwinian demise in short order.
After four marathons in the past 9 years, I am starting to ache. When I go for my sporadic runs of 4 or 5 miles today...I ache. My knees ache, my ankles ache, my left heel aches.
Over the past few months, I read articles about how barefoot running was the new craze for distance running. If you had aches and pains while running, the solution was minimalist running, natural barefoot running. I was a skeptic to say the least. Then I started to see articles about minimalist shoes that simulated the effect of barefoot running, delivering all its benefits while protecting your feet from rocks, pavement, etc. I was curious. Was this a way to get the benefits of barefoot running without the risk of gashing the bottoms of your feet or worrying about running on hot pavement?
I bought a pair of New Balance Minimus shoes last weekend. I have done three runs of roughly 3.5 miles in these "barefoot" shoes. While the jury is still out on whether or not they cure the aches and pains I had running in traditional shoes, there is no question that they created new and acute pains in my legs by using muscles I never knew I had in my calves and thighs. Apparently, running barefoot promotes an entirely new gate in one's running stride. It is almost like learning to run all over again. When I woke up in the morning after my first "barefoot run" I felt like I had run a full marathon...getting to the bathroom was a struggle, not because of exacerbation of the normal aches, but I had new and acute strains that were greatly amusing to my lovely wife who found the whole idea of minimus shoes and simulated barefoot running a little bit "out there".However, after 20+ years of marriage, she has learned to find the humor in my experiments.
I am not sure how this story will end. I am going to try to do 4 miles tomorrow morning in my barefoot shoes. It is my intent to run the 2012 Richmond Marathon in barefoot shoes. I am not a minimalist, nor a good runner. It is my hope that combining these two negatives will have a positive result. If you see me running in these ridiculous looking shoes, I expect to be heckled, so don't hold back, any humorous heckling will take my mind off my aching calves.
So what is the intersection between these two realities? I would like to run one last marathon before I hang up my distance running pursuits. I will be fifty when I make this last race attempt. Maybe the appeal of the alliteration is the appeal...a final and fifth finish at fifty has a nice ring to it. However, I am not built for distance running. Short stocky legs, thick build, a catcher's speed, distance running is not my natural state. If my survival in the wild depended on my speed, I would meet my Darwinian demise in short order.
After four marathons in the past 9 years, I am starting to ache. When I go for my sporadic runs of 4 or 5 miles today...I ache. My knees ache, my ankles ache, my left heel aches.
Over the past few months, I read articles about how barefoot running was the new craze for distance running. If you had aches and pains while running, the solution was minimalist running, natural barefoot running. I was a skeptic to say the least. Then I started to see articles about minimalist shoes that simulated the effect of barefoot running, delivering all its benefits while protecting your feet from rocks, pavement, etc. I was curious. Was this a way to get the benefits of barefoot running without the risk of gashing the bottoms of your feet or worrying about running on hot pavement?
I bought a pair of New Balance Minimus shoes last weekend. I have done three runs of roughly 3.5 miles in these "barefoot" shoes. While the jury is still out on whether or not they cure the aches and pains I had running in traditional shoes, there is no question that they created new and acute pains in my legs by using muscles I never knew I had in my calves and thighs. Apparently, running barefoot promotes an entirely new gate in one's running stride. It is almost like learning to run all over again. When I woke up in the morning after my first "barefoot run" I felt like I had run a full marathon...getting to the bathroom was a struggle, not because of exacerbation of the normal aches, but I had new and acute strains that were greatly amusing to my lovely wife who found the whole idea of minimus shoes and simulated barefoot running a little bit "out there".However, after 20+ years of marriage, she has learned to find the humor in my experiments.
I am not sure how this story will end. I am going to try to do 4 miles tomorrow morning in my barefoot shoes. It is my intent to run the 2012 Richmond Marathon in barefoot shoes. I am not a minimalist, nor a good runner. It is my hope that combining these two negatives will have a positive result. If you see me running in these ridiculous looking shoes, I expect to be heckled, so don't hold back, any humorous heckling will take my mind off my aching calves.
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