Amateur college athletics died in private many years ago with the advent of “bag men” who  secretly paid high school athletes and their attendants to influence their college destinations. https://www.bannersociety.com/2014/4/10/20703758/bag-man-paying-college-football-players

SEC schools along with other football factories & basketball dynasties have perfected this clandestine practice over the past couple of decades as fans looked the other way and pretended that college athletics was about pristine amateur competition. 

Amateur college athletics died in public with the creation of the Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) rules where college athletes are paid to promote, partner with, or represent brands. With this program, college athletics as we know it is dead and will be replaced with a frenetic scramble to creatively pay athletes as much as possible during their minor league careers. The talent gap between the “willing” and “less willing” athletic programs will become an impassable chasm. The usual suspects will lure the best high school athletes with massive NIL offers. No blue chip high school athletes will attend college without a large payout awaiting their arrival. Late blooming athletes who blossom during their college careers at less-willing NIL universities will transfer at-will to play on a bigger stage for a bigger payout. The world of today’s NCAA “have” & “have not” college programs will seem like a socialist dream compared to what lies ahead.

I am not against college athletes getting paid for their talents. Colleges, networks, coaches, broadcasters, and sponsors have collectively been making billions on the talents of college athletes for decades. While the value of a free college education is substantial and noteworthy, it pales in comparison to the profits generated from D1 athletics. While we are being honest, let’s not kid ourselves that most big-time college athletes are graduating with meaningful or even cursory educations, so the education value for athletes, while a loss of their own making, does very little to address the financial imbalance in college athletics today. 

The notion that college athletes should get compensated beyond their educations for the product they produce seems not only reasonable, but also fair. The profit-pie for NCAA athletics is big enough that the players largely responsible for producing it should get a small slice. What bugs me is the NIL opens the floodgates for colleges to dangle dollar signs in front of 17 and 18 year old kids. The biggest NIL payout offers will rule the day recruiting high school athletes. What could possibly go wrong? 

I am afraid the financial downside is too steep for most universities to not be involved with NIL to some degree. The conversations with high school recruits have already shifted from selling a school, its coaches, & its program tradition to putting together NIL packages that will provide thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of dollars to athletes. All of this is making DIII athletics look a lot more appealing. I’m suddenly a lot more interested in going to watch Randolph Macon play Hamden-Sydney next year. 

Voters, Stupidity, & Election Results

Jonathan Gruber, a chief architect of the Obamacare fiasco, thinks that voters are stupid. I would contend that it is the politicians and their entourages that, while maybe not individually stupid, are collectively unwise and certainly do stupid things. 

I read an article about that warned against reading too much into big election swings and over-reading shifts in public sentiment about a particular party or ideology based on a given year’s election results. I disagree that big elections do not reflect big shifts in voter trends. The problem comes when one party makes a big gain in congress, the white house or both, the winning party almost always starts doing stupid things. 

In 1994 the republicans rode a wave of sentiment shift against Bill Clinton and the democrats to make historic gains and take control of both the House and Senate. What did they do with their voter mandate? They impeached a sitting president and shutdown the government over budget squabbles. The electorate predictably took away the levers of power. Similarly in 2006 and again in 2008 the democrats emphatically took over the reins of governement. And what did the newly empowered democrats do? They rammed a healthcare bill no one wanted down the throats of the American people. They enacted stifling regulations on the economy that muted the economic recovery. So what did the “stupid” voters do? They spanked the democrats in 2010 and again in 2014. Had the voters known in 2012 what they know now about the Affordable Care Act and IRS corruption, it is likely they would have punished the democrats then as well and we would have inaugurated President Romney. 

Many voters aren’t as informed as they should be. However, voters know stupid when they see it. They also know arrogance, corruption, and deception when they see it, and they have seen a lot of it over the past six years. 

Otis Wants Bread: Economic Patriotism & Spitting Vodka Through Your ...

Otis Wants Bread: Economic Patriotism & Spitting Vodka Through Your ...: The best part of an Obama administration is the never-ending stream pseudo-intellectual terms coined to shroud their ridiculous ideas in the...

Otis Wants Bread: Mid-Term Musings

Otis Wants Bread: Mid-Term Musings: A few hours before we start to see election returns from the mid-term elections and a few things rattle around in my head: I'll believ...

Mid-Term Musings

A few hours before we start to see election returns from the mid-term elections and a few things rattle around in my head:

I'll believe it when I see it - I've seen the polls and I've seen the Washington Post, CNN, and New York Times all rate the probability of the republicans taking the senate at somewhere between 70% to 98%. I recall polls all showing a tight race between Obama and Romney in 2012 too. The democrats still have a lead in demographics and analytics which is what won the 2012 race for them when by all historic measures, Obama's first term was a dismal failure and he should have been trounced. Maybe the republicans will take the senate. Maybe this will be a wave election like 2010. However, the republicans have yet to prove they understand big data and social media. The republicans also have great aim when shooting themselves in the foot. I'll believe a big night for the GOP when I see it and not until then.

Don't say stupid stuff - If the GOP takes the Senate, I wonder what Mitch McConnell will have to say. Hopefully he won't say something stupid like he did in the 2010 mid-terms when instead of making comments about using the republican congressional momentum to work for the benefit of the American public, McConnell instead stated that the GOP would work to make Obama a 1-term president. How did that work out? The stupidity of that remark confounds me to this day.

Win, serve your time, then go home - I'd vote for almost any candidate who is committed to enacting term limits on congress.

Gerrymandering, it's been here all along - It is funny how democrats and their friends in the media have suddenly discovered gerrymandering as if it was something the republicans just authored and just started doing. Democrats gerrymander as do republicans. It only makes the news however, when it hurts the democrats.

Crime pays - If Scott Walker loses, it will be a crime...literally a crime, just like when Ted Stevens had his senate seat in Alaska taken from him in 2008. The democrats play hardball, there is no question about it - laws and ethics be damned.

Eric Holder on the scene - Eric Holder announced that DOJ was sending people to monitor polling stations for the mid-terms. I wonder if he is sending the thugs from the New Black Panther Party who stood by with clubs as people went to vote in Pennsylvania in 2008? Maybe Louis Lerner will be there harassing conservatives because there is not a smidgeon of corruption in the IRS and Holder's DOJ is doing everything they can to prove it...no matter what the evidence says.

Obama, we have a problem... - The republicans can be as maddening as the democrats, but for different reasons. I hope they take the senate, if for no other reason, to show Obama just how badly his policies have failed the American people and that we need a new direction. A little humility would go a long ways for Obama. It's a shame he's not the leader her thinks he is.

Government Screws Itself...Again

The latest government-created and media-supported public outrage is the "inversion" process of re-incorporating a company overseas to reduce the liability for income earned abroad.

Is this an unusual tactic? Sure it is. Is it a risky public relations move? Thanks to the economically illiterate media and a public more interested in The Duggars than economics, yes inversion is a risky public relations move. Is there anything unethical or immoral about the process? Absolutely not. In fact, not minimizing tax burdens and paying more than required by law is irresponsible leadership on the part of any for-profit company. In the private sector, companies have been using the tax code to their best advantage for decades. Just in case anyone is unaware, companies keep two sets of books for recording their performance - one for Wall Street and one for the IRS...which is perfectly legal and good business. Firms want as much revenue and profit as possible to report to WallStreet and a little as possible to report to the IRS. Depreciation is a great example of this reality at work. In the financial books reported to Wall Street, assets are generally depreciated using a 5-year straight line method, meaning the "cost" recognized by the company in using up the asset is fixed each year at 1/5th of the purchase price and is tallied as "expense" for that year. In the IRS books, the company uses the Modified Accelerated Costs Recovery System (MACRS) established by the government to allow companies, for tax reporting purposes, to depreciate the same asset faster in the first 3 years of its life. Therefore the company can increase their "costs" and reduce their tax liability...and also will have incentive to replace the asset with new assets sooner rather than later.

Does this sound convoluted? It is, but we are just getting started. The 2013 US Tax Code was over 73,000 pages long. Therefore businesses and individuals have to comply with 73,000 pages of regulations. However, there are also goodies and incentives in the Tax Code as the government tries to manipulate and incent specific behavior it deems laudable. Often old incentives and manipulations overlap with others or become outdated and are expanded rather than replaced...and we end up with 73,000 pages of tax code.

Whether we like it or not, the tax code is the law of the land. It is the rules of the road for business. Businesses don't write tax code, they pay lobbyists to plead their interests to congress, and then after the code is published every year, they figure out how to leverage the new rules to their best advantage. Guess what? Inversion is to the best advantage of many corporations and they are and should be inverting as quickly as they possibly can. They don't write the rules, they have to live with them, so if the government is telling them to invert through the rules of the tax road, then companies will restructure themselves and reformulate overseas. None of this happens without a perverse, over reaching, and exhausting tax code.

The delightful irony is government officials sternly wagging their fingers at tele-prompters scolding US companies for doing something the government has essentially directed them to do through tax policy. Obama and his leftwing friends had two years with a veto-proof majority in congress. If incentives for inversion were such bad tax policy, they should have fixed it. They didn't, or more likely government was outsmarted once again by the private sector. The very likely reality is that there was no plan to incent inversion, rather inversion is a side effect of some other attempt to manipulate behavior through the tax code. I love it when government smarties with Ivy League diplomas hanging in their offices come up with their newest social do-gooder scheme only to have it blow up in their faces when a highly motivated, very efficient, and ruthlessly effective private sector finds unimagined ways to implement the new rules to their advantage dreaming up outcomes that are completely foreign and contrary to the ivory-towered bureaucrats...leaving them both bewildered and seething that they have been foiled again by the market economy and the private sector.

Inversion is here to stay as it should be until the rules and incentives are changed. The best solution for the country and the economy would be to scrap the whole shit house full of 73,000 pages of tax regulations and implement a flat or value added tax from which no one or no corporation escapes, but under which we could all fill out our tax returns in 10 minutes on New Year's Day while watch bowl games. However, this would deprive the Ivy-League, meddling, do-gooders of something to, so I assume we will top 80,000 pages of tax regulations soon and more and more companies will re-incorporate overseas.

The Administration of "Hard Work"

How many times have you heard this from the current administration? (and to be fair this has been part of past administrations as well) "We are working day and night.....I will not rest until....we are working around the clock...." I have heard it a lot in the past 5 years. In fact, every time something goes haywire in the Obama administration, we can be sure that we will soon hear Obama telling us how hard he and everyone in his administration are working.

I worked with a systems engineer early in my career. She was brilliant, personable, and effective. In the years I had the privilege of working with her, I am not sure if she ever worked a 40 hour week. I can tell you with certainty that she never worked a 50 or 60 hour week. Guess what? I couldn't have cared less. Our customers loved her, she never missed a deadline, and she ran projects like a finely tuned swiss watch. There was nothing asked of her that she did not deliver in spades. Did it matter to me that she could get all of this done in 30 hours a week, making time for her tennis team or playing the piano? Nope. As many good executives have noted, we should never confuse hard work with results. We all appreciate hard work, but we expect and reward results, no matter how much or how little time it takes to deliver them.

President Obama's lack of private sector experience is no more evident in his value of "working hard" over results. I couldn't care less how hard anyone in the administration was working while the Obamacare systems crashed and burned. I'd have traded some of that hard work for good results any day. Obama told us how hard he and his administration have been working on 1) the economy 2) winning the war on man-made disasters caused by...well, we aren't allowed to say 3) the budget shortfalls, etc. The problem is, the results in all of these areas suck. They are terrible.

If anyone in the private sector worked hard on these problems and delivered the results of this administration, they would have been fired. I would feel better if they told me that they stayed out all night drinking and playing cards. At least there would be an excuse for such bad results and I wouldn't feel so bad firing them - and at least they had fun while delivering bad results. The problem with government is that no one gets fired. Ever, no matter how bad the results. All that matters is that they are working hard....outcomes be damned.

Opportunity Missed

Some enterprising young journalists are missing the opportunity of a lifetime. I think the standard for modern journalistic excellence and social relevance is the work of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Their initial work investigating a break-in at DNC headquarters uncovered corruption and a massive cover-up that led to the downfall of an American president. This was journalistic gold. It made the careers of two relatively unknown writers.

It is odd to me that no journalist today realizes that the current IRS scandal is a career, riches, and fame waiting to happen for someone willing to look hard enough and ask the right questions. A simple timeline of known events and admissions certainly rises to the initial scandal that held the national and world media for years as the trail of the Watergate scandal led higher and higher. We know that IRS singled out and targeted organizations based solely on their political views that ran contrary to the Obama administration. This is government overreach at its worst. It violates everything we expect from our government and runs counter to everything intended by the founders in the constitution. We know that the IRS exposed this activity by planting a question in a press conference. We know that the person who ran the unit responsible for tax exempt organizations stated that she had done nothing wrong, before pleading the 5th before congress....twice. We know that emails of Louis Lerner are either lost or not lost or that they exist in backup files that DoJ insists are to difficult to find. We know that laws were broken if emails were not backed up and archived. We know that Louis Lerner's blackberry was wiped clean right after congressional hearings began. We know that the head of the IRS visited the White House many times in the run up to the 2012 elections. Can you believe no one sees the abject corruption and disregard for the law in these facts or is at least curious enough to look for the truth about who knew what and when. One thing is certian, Louis Lerner's emails are damning of someone in the IRS or the administration, otherwise we would not have seen the biggest display of organized obfuscation and obstruction since the Nixon administration.

 This is the biggest opportunity in the journalism field since Watergate. Yet the media, outside of Fox News, sits on its hands. Maybe they are too vested in Obama. Maybe they know this could lead to the White House and don't want to know what really happened. Maybe they agree with Louis Lerner and detest Tea Party and Patriot groups. It is either odd, sad, or disheartening that the media is giving our government a pass on this massive scandal.

The problem with all of this is that the media has an important role in the recipe for our republic. When they are too lazy to look into obvious and rampant corruption or too timid to look into government over reach or so ideologically aligned with an administration, we are all in trouble. I detest hypotheticals, but....can you imagine the media frenzy if this had happened under the Bush or Reagan administrations? Yeah, pretty sure we'd be at the bottom of this already.

Economic Patriotism & Spitting Vodka Through Your Nose

The best part of an Obama administration is the never-ending stream pseudo-intellectual terms coined to shroud their ridiculous ideas in the cloak of credibility. The newest one is "Economic Patriotism." This one should win some sort of prize.

If I didn't know the source, I might think that economic patriotism meant acting in a way to drive the best possible economic outcomes. Fostering optimal growth, low unemployment, prosperity for all those willing and able to work for it. That sounds like economic patriotism to me. I think we should all drink to "economic patriotism"...as long as we are drinking Kentucky bourbon and not Russian Vodka.

However, president Obama and his team aren't all that interested in economic growth, low unemployment, and prosperity for all and they have 5+ years of economic results to prove it. When President Obama suggests that Americans support economic patriotism, he means that corporations should pay more taxes than required by law. Why would they do that? It doesn't seem very economically patriotic to me. Why does making 95 cents a share for my stockholders, when I could have made 97 cents, make me economically patriotic? If I am following the tax code, which by the way the Obama administration had two years of unfettered opportunity to write, why would I pay more taxes than required? The answer is I wouldn't and companies aren't, so the president is trying to shame them into paying more into wasteful government coffers by declaring that firms using the tax code to their advantage are being economically unpatriotic. It is delicious irony that the administration that has no shame is using it to alter the behavior of corporations that actually create jobs, wealth, and prosperity.

One a personal note...after the Obama tax increases kicked in last year and I had to write a big stinking check to those scalawags at the IRS, I didn't feel all that fucking patriotic.

Economic patriotism is a charade straight from the faculty lounge and not the faculty lounge of the business school. A corporation that does not use the tax code and all the other rules of the road set by Washington to its advantage in the marketplace isn't a corporation very long...it's a bankruptcy filing and a class action law suit. The most impressive part of this latest missive from the president is that he can say it with a straight face and all the indignation of a guy who just got bumped from first class to coach.

CEO's must have a good laugh behind closed doors when the president gets on his high horse and declaratively lectures us on things that he doesn't understand and that make no sense outside the Obama circle of sycophants. I wonder if Vladimir Putin spits Stolichnaya through his nose laughing when he reads the shit Obama dreams-up.

Trey Gowdy - "You 'da Man!"

It's no secret that there aren't many heroes serving in an elected or appointed capacity in Washington, DC. I am a big fan of term limits and think that throwing the bums out is almost always a good idea. Serving (and I use that term in its most generous interpretation) in the congress was never intended to be a career. Yet many come and few leave until they have had their fill...literally, filling their bank accounts and their egos with cash and perks the rest of the nation rarely knows.

As is always the case, there are exceptions to the rule. I think Trey Gowdy might be an exception to the aforementioned rules. I am impressed with his intellect, with his tenacity, and with his forthrightness. He strikes me as a person who gets things done, who doesn't suffer fools lightly, and who places doing the right thing over the politics of Washington.

He has been impressive in his public statements and in hearings about the terrorist travesty in Benghazi and he has been a singular ray of clarity in hearings with career bureaucrat John Koskinen when probing the abject scandal of the IRS turning on citizens based on their political point of view. Gowdy doesn't tolerate the usual Washington tap dance of dodging and obfuscation when asking direct questions. Gowdy expects straight answers and when he doesn't get them he probes deeper until he gets the information requested or forces his questionee into a position of providing obvious falsehoods and misdirection. Gowdy is good. He is very smart. I believe he is up there doing the people's work, not the party's work.

The leftwing media (which is most of the media) is starting to realize that Gowdy is a force on the Hill and have begun their attacks. Gowdy is everything they detest. He is from South Carolina. He didn't go to a swanky prep school or college in the northeast. He got is law degree from an SEC school not an Ivy League school. He is not "one of them", not in the club of sophisticates who revel in the chatter of the theoretical in the faculty lounge.

I hope Trey Gowdy is as good as he appears to be. I hope his star rises on the national stage because we need smart, motivated leaders who are not afraid to break glass and who know how to get things done. His real test will come when the republicans screw up (and we know they will). Will Gowdy be as tough and as relentless digging for the truth when the target has as "R" by their name or was appointed by a republican president? A lot of potentially great leaders have been tripped up by the party line. I hope Trey Gowdy doesn't join that club, but rather starts another, where leaders have the courage to do what is right, party ramifications be damned.

What Does the Truth Look Like?

There is not much bi-partisan agreement in Washington and beyond these days. However, I think there is a topic that would unify democrats, republicans, and libertarians. The unifier for all Americans is a thirst for the truth, to have their leaders shoot straight with them, and treat them like adults, not mindless minions blindly following drivel that passes for news.

Ask a question, any question...and see what you get. maddening blather intended to deflect and obfuscate. All parties are guilty of this and all do it more now than ever. One of a thousand examples over the past month:

Q: "Is the southern border secure?"

A: "There are more resources now on the southern boarder than ever before..."

Sorry, but the level of resources on the southern border wasn't the question...the question was is the border secure? I don care if we have 10 border patrol officers on the border or 10 million, are they getting the job done and is the border secure? The answer, BTW, is an obvious "No".

Why can't our leaders just tell us that the border is not secure or that its security is not up to levels required for national security and the well being of those trying to cross illegally and here is our plan to secure the border which we will have done on this date? That's how things work outside of the beltway, in the real world where results, not effort, are what matter.

There are multiple examples of this garbage on a daily basis coming from both democrats and republicans. I believe that a party could gain a significant advantage with the American public, building trust and winning votes as a result, by leveling with us. Tell us the truth. We don't expect perfection in performance, but we do expect honesty and forthrightness in communications. We can't get it these days from anyone in government. Maybe this is why the time might be right for a guy like Chris Christy. I think everyone is clear where they stand with double C. I may not agree or like his commentary, but I would vote for him for having the courage to speak the truth.

Long on Shortcomings

It is painfully clear after almost 6 years that President Obama is long on shortcomings.

Before we sell him short however, let's recognize his strengths. He is good at obfuscation. He is good at dividing America for political gain. He is good at blaming others when things go wrong. He is good at making promises he cannot keep and ultimatums he cannot enforce.

However, stating this in the most generous terms possible, where Obama does not shine is leadership. If he were as good at leadership as he is at making snarky comments about Americans with whom he disagrees, he would have an immigration deal, the Obamacare rollout would not have been an epic failure, the border would not be a humanitarian disaster, and the VA would not be such a mess.

People trust good leaders. Good leaders earn trust through sustained performance over time. Ask yourself one question... would you trust team Obama to lead the roll out your next big project or negotiate your next big deal? I wouldn't either, and neither would anyone else, hence the problem.

When Something is Worse than Nothing

Is there anything more universally appealing than helping disadvantaged kids? Is there anyone so heartless that if asked would they support reforms, programs, investments, that help kids born to difficult and challenging circumstances that they would answer "No"? I suppose somewhere there is, but no one I know. No matter what side of the political isle one sits or straddles, helping kids rise out of a tough circumstance is laudable, moral, and simply the right thing to do.

Now comes the punch to the stomach. If we really want to help poor kids, I think we should scuttle the Head Start program. Born in 1965 as part of the Great Society, the Head Start was intended to be a poverty fighting tool working to ready low income kids for kindergarten. Head Start has been reauthorized and expanded over the years. Over 20 million kids have participated in Head Start programs. The unfortunate reality for Head Start is that it doesn't work. Studies for decades have proved this point. Most recently a 2010 HHS study clearly showed that the impact of Head Start on the achievement of its participants is fleeting at best. This is only one of many studies over decades that have consistently shown that Head Start has no meaningful impact on the achievement of disadvantaged kids. Yet we continue to spend billions.

Now comes the unfortunate reality of politics today. How would you like to run for office with a plank of your platform to defund Head Start? Can you imagine the outrage? I can only imagine the insults that would be hurled your way. No campaign for office could suceed by promising to defund Head Start. It makes me cringe just thinking about the media outcries and vilification that would ensue. But ending Head Start is exactly what we should do...just not right now.

Here's my gripe: we spend billions in federal money to help kids who desperately need help, and we get no results, we don't help the kids in any substantive or sustainable way. So we all feel better about ourselves because we fund Head Start to help disadvantaged kids, but at the end of the day, the kids we want to help are no better off than when we started. This is tragic, not in the wasted funds but in the outcomes for the kids.

What to do? I am a big believer that if you raise an issue or have a gripe, you need to have a suggestion to fix the problem. I don't know how we solve this problem. I know that we spend billions annually to help kids who really need it, and they get no help. The opportunity cost of these misallocated funds is huge in terms of wasted funds, but staggering and tragic in terms of lives that are not advanced and kids continuing to go wanting. I think that's why we don't defund Head Start right now, but rather we set a date at which time we defund Head Start - two years, three years down the road so we have a hard deadline, and then we start working on alternative uses for the Head Start funds that actually might help the kids to which they are directed. We can't do any worse than we are doing today as studies show that any gains for Head Start kids are gone by the end of first grade. The down side is pretty flat on this one. Give the families vouchers for regional schools and programs, hold the funds for vouchers for college as a carrot to get through school...I don't know the answer, but I know what we are doing today is a double whammy against the kids we are trying to help. They kids get no help and the pressure is off the rest of us to solve the problem because Head Start is fully funded.

BTW, let's not just pick on Head Start. There are a multitude of ineffective federal programs that cross the idealogical spectrum that need to go through this same process. Teen pregnancy prevention programs, smoking cessation programs etc, none of which solve their intended problems, but we keep shoveling cash out the door, feeling better all the while that we are doing "something".

I hate the cliche, "something is better than nothing." I think we can prove that incorrect with Head Start and other well-meaning federal programs. "Something" is worse than nothing when "something" delivers no results, wastes scarce funds, and take the pressure off finding an actual solution. I think we can do better than "something".

The President from the Faculty Lounge

What happens when the lofty ideas of the faculty lounge are turned loose into the semi-free market? You get a trainwreck. This most recent trainwreck is called Obamacare. It is shocking to me how many people seem to be surprised that the rollout of the Obamacare has been a disaster. Even more baffling is the surprise of people who are just figuring out that this was a terrible implementation of a respectable and decent societal objective.

Despite what Obama, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Chuck Schumer, and the other democrat propagandists say, republicans and libertarians to not want people to lack for the basic necessities of life. A social safety net for those who are down on their luck, made a couple of bad choices, or were born into circumstance that was less than positive is a good thing, a moral thing, and a decent thing. However, there are many means to provide a social safety net and central planning from the federal government, as we are seeing to the dismay of many, is probably the worst way to provide most any social service beyond the military, the supreme judiciary, and interstate highways.

What the faculty loungers like Obama and his inner circle of government loyalists fail to realize is that they might be the smartest folks in the room when they are in the classroom or the faculty lounge, but when they get into the real world where people and organizations have to compete to survive, where tenure equates to the coming two weeks for your next paycheck, meeting next month's payroll,  or making next quarter's earnings report, there are thousands, maybe millions of people as smart or smarter than they are. When grandiose central plans, created by a select few of like-minded minions with swanky diplomas are released into the wild, they set the rules of of the road, the limits of the game, and millions of smart, motivated people who don't have tenure or fat government pensions start figuring out how to work the new rules of the game to their advantage...how to win playing by the new rules.

Therefore, it is shocking that the Ivy Leaguers who wrote Obamacare were caught off guard when thousands of companies started limiting employee hours to under 30/week to avoid the costs of hiring or holding full time employees as dictated by Obamacare. What did the central planners think was going to happen? Companies are in business to make money, to win, to succeed in a brutally efficient market place. If there is a way to avoid costs that is not only legal, but rational, then guess what is going to happen? A room full of faculty lounge smarties and government lackeys will never outsmart a market of motivated entrepreneurs. Never. So there will always be unintended consequences as a result of the most well intended plan which will doom it to absolute failure - 100% of the time, given enough time. Obamacare is the most recent and public display of this reality. The ridiculously complex system intended to provide the sick, the poor, and the uninsured with healthcare had no chance to work. Ever. Obamacare proposed to cover 30M uninsured Americans, eliminate lifetime limits on insurance policies, and save the average household $ 2500...all at the same time? On paper and over a latte in the faculty lounge, I have no doubt that this makes perfect sense. However, in the world of rational consumers and smart business leaders, at best it is a bad joke, at worst it is a total failure with lasting negative ramifications on both healthcare and the economy.

It is clear from his statements and actions that Obama thinks he is the smartest guy in the room. Based on what we have seen from his administration on policy, I hate to break the news to him, but I'm not sure he's even the smartest guy in the faculty lounge, but I have no doubt he thinks he is.

One Party Rule...and What a Party!

I suspect that John Boehner and Barack Obama genuinely dislike each other. I also image that Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell hold real animus towards each other. It is hard to find much to like about Nancy Pelosi and I expect that she and Eric Cantor justifiably hold each other in high disregard

All of these people sit on different sides of the isle and hold differing views of what is best for America, but you know what? They are all living it up at the same party. They publicly banter, they put on grand shows of disdain for each other to convince the media and their constituents that they are fighting for our best interests, but as Michael Corleone said in The Godfather Part II, they are all part of the same hypocrisy. They are living the fat life inside the beltway, enjoying unimaginable perks and benefits while they build their net worth. While Harry Reid is certainly most dislikeable and likely corrupt, I only single him out as an example because I just recently read this troubling fact. When Harry Reid was elected to Senate, his net worth was roughly $ 1.3M. After 4 terms and counting in the Senate, Lord Harry’s net worth now exceeds $ 10M. Really? How did that happen? I wonder who his investment advisor is? Let’s face it, we all know what Senator Reid makes in salary every year, so his net worth has not growth exponentially because his is maxing out his 401K…and all of this is before Harry leaves the Senate and really cashes in as a lobbyist on K Street where the real wealth is earned after political life ends.

Do you know why democrats and most republicans hate Ted Cruz? It’s not because he is standing firm in opposition to funding the train wreck of Obamacare. It’s because he is threatening to end the party, close the bar, and stop refilling the trough at which all of our senators and representatives feed. He is talking common sense to people who lost theirs many elections ago. The fiscal path we are on as a country is one that eventually ends in collapse. It might be next year, it might be next decade, but the end of the play is the same…everyone gets financially slaughtered. However, our leaders in the house and senate are stuffing cash in their pockets as fast as they can, building their net worth, living high on the hog. Ted Cruz is threatening to knock over the apple cart, so everyone on the Hill hates him.

I don’t agree with Ted Cruz on social policies and as the darling of the “value voters” I am a bit leery of Senator Cruz. However, I would like to shake his hand and thank him for showing us the courage that used to abound in Washington and throughout the nation many decades ago, before the objective of government became handing out as much to as possible to as many as possible whether they are large, profitable corporations or truly deserving needy folks down on their luck. Ted Cruz wants to reign in an out of control spending binge in Washington and endure the bumpy ride now before the world drowns in a sea of debt and worthless currency. His colleagues on the Hill don’t like it because it threatens the life they have all come to love and to which they feel entitled. I am sure the party in DC is a great one. It is clearly a profitable one, but it is also one that we can no longer afford.

Thanks Ted Cruz for taking a stand. I am sure you got scratched off the invitation list for many swanky DC Christmas Parties this week. Good Job.

The Joke Where No One Laughs

The joke where no one laughs, the comedy that's not funny is taking place inside the beltway and is being played in prime time by the national media.

Apparently, a "cut" of $ 54B of planned expenditures is going to cost is 2.4M jobs and a point of GDP. It is going to render the military incapable of defending the country. Food inspection will cease threatening our food supply. The FAA is going to close towers snarling air travel. Head-Start (which should have been cut decades ago) will be defunded, Federal free-lunch programs will be sacked, and apparently education will grind to a halt. Wow! Who knew the ferderal government could do so much with a paltry $ 54B. I wonder what they do with the rest of the $ 3.75T they spend?

Here is the reality. In 2007, federal spending was $ 2.7T. In 2013, federal spending will top $ 3.8T. The US population in 2007 was 301 million souls. In 2013 the US population is estimated to be 313 million. So, the population has grown by 4% and budget spending has grown by 40%. That's the problem, and it's no joke. Led by the president and his croanies, the beltway gang has spent us into oblivion. The angst over cutting $ 54B of planned spending would be laughable were it not so over-blown and pathetic.

Unfortunately, absent dramatic change (and increasing taxes on achievement again is not part of the solution) the end of the comedy turns tragic. Absent considerable spending changes, the US economy will collapse. It's going to be a trainwreck. The only question is when. Is it next year, 5 years, or 15 years? I don't know the answer to "when" the collapse will happen, but there is no question about the outcome given our current course and speed.

I know how much Obama worries about his legacy. It is unforunate for all of us that his legacy is going to be the president who dismantled and crushed the greatest economic engine, the greatest creator of wealth the world has ever known. I wonder if they will teach this in federal pre-K?

Rush Limbaugh - Republican Anachronism

When he hit the airwaves in 1988, Rush Limbaugh served a great purpose. He was a national counterbalance to the left leaning media. He gave voice to millions who did not see the world through the liberal lens of Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and The New York Times. He gave voice to conservative America that had been scuttled aside by flower power of the 1960s and the post-Vietnam disco chaos of the 1970’s. Conservatives were always there, just muted. Rush Limbaugh brought conservative opinion to the forefront of our daily conversation and smacked liberal orthodoxy in the mouth. That’s good. It’s good for free speech, it’s good for healthy debate, and it’s good for America.


I wonder however, if he has become an anachronism. He certainly stands for many things that republicans, conservatives, and libertarians like – small government, free markets, individual freedom, and individual responsibility. That’s all good. However, there is a lot of broken glass around his commentary and as a de facto leader for republicans, he hurts their cause and he hurts it a lot.

I don’t think Rush Limbaugh is a racist. However walking fine lines and using verbal nuance that would make president Clinton proud, Rush Limbaugh presents racist comments that have their origins in the orthodoxy of the left. Rush brought “Barack the magic negro”, an obscure term coined by liberal LA Times commentator David Ehrenstein, to the forefront of the national conversation. Rush was very careful to make sure it was clear he was not author of the phrase nor a supporter of its meaning (whatever it may be). He lambasted the term during his commentary, but that doesn’t matter. Rush brought it up, he magnified it while deriding it – keeping himself technically clear from the term while making commentary about it. What effect do you think this had on the average Joe who doesn’t listen to Rush Limbaugh? Do you think they know the context of Limbaugh’s commentary? Nope. They heard that racist bastard Rush Limbaugh taking another swipe at a black man who was now president of the United States.

Additionally, I don’t think Rush Limbaugh hates women, but his ridiculous rant against the equally ridiculous Sandra Fluke added considerable gas to the democrat fire that republicans are waging a “War on Women”. Come on, how stupid is the very notion of a war on women? As ludicrous it may be, Rush fanned the flames of the fire with his rants against a silly person with a silly agenda who should have spent her life in blissful obscurity. Almost comically, Sandra Fluke was paraded in front of a mostly yawning crowd at the DNC to state her position that republicans hate her and all other women because they want to take away women’s access to healthcare….uh, okay. Can you believe this became a national discussion? Republicans can thank Rush for that.

No one has better aim when shooting themselves in the foot than republicans. Just in case though, the democrats might want to make sure the Rush gets a physical every year and starts an exercise program. No one does more to pummel the reputation of the republican party than Rush Limbaugh. Rush served a great purpose over the years, but like gas, that time has passed. So too the time has come to unplug the golden microphone of the EIB.

A Return to Sanity

It was another weekend of a dozen or more calls from the Romeny, Obama, Allen, and Kaine campaigns as well as seemingly incessant TV and radio commercials. I cannot wait until this election season is over. After listening to the various pre-recorded messages and actually speaking with a live Obama campaign caller, I wish I could air my own two minute message.


I hate being labeled. I am not a republican or a democrat. I guess that makes me independent by default, but I really don’t like that description either. If I had to fit into a descriptive category, I think I would call myself a pragmatist.

I am interested in results, getting things done, fixing problems. I don’t care which party is in power, I don’t care who gets credit for getting the country on the right track, I just know we need to get there, sooner rather than later, because we are undeniably on a path to financial oblivion.

The great thing about our election process is that we have a range of options and a choice in the direction of the country. I think the choices are as distinct this year as they have been in a while.

Let’s start with the Tea Party right. Here is why I have a hard time embracing their message and why I won’t affix their label to my philosophy. I hear their calls for lower taxes and less intrusive government. So far so good. Let’s spark the economy by keeping capital in the free market and getting overzealous bureaucrats out of our lives. Less government is good. So far I like these folks. Okay, now let’s say that Susan and Jennifer or John and Jake want to get married, legally joined….whatever we want to call it. Wait just a minute! That can’t happen! We want a federal law banning same sex marriage. What? I thought we wanted less obtrusive government and we wanted freedom as granted in the constitution? What about the pursuit of happiness? I can understand and respect someone’s position against gay marriage, but I am not sure that means that the Tea Party gets to tell everyone else what to do. Isn’t that what they say they can’t stand from liberals? Which is it, because to be intellectually honest , righty rights, you can’t have this both ways. Either we want small, less intrusive government or we don’t. We can’t want small freedom producing government some of the time, and big overbearing government mandates when we don’t like what freedom presents. While I support many of the ideas of this group, I can’t accept the inconsistency on this and a host of other issues where the calls for freedom are contradicted by the lens of the Tea Party. I certainly can’t prove this, but if God is Love, then I assume that He loves the gay community just as much as He loves me. If that is true, then why are we spinning our wheels on this issue? I can see why folks get so upset with the Tea Party, they get close to getting things right and then veer off into the ditch on a host of social issues.

When a new president gets elected, whether it is my candidate or not, I wipe the slate clean. I forget all the campaign rhetoric and hyperbole and give him or her (someday I am sure) a chance to prove that they are a leader, that they can get things done, and that they have a vision for our country that will optimize the opportunity for all. When Obama took office, the economy was a mess. The financial markets had collapsed in 2008, the housing market had crashed, and unemployment had spiked to levels not seen in decades. It was a big problem that required insightful direction, executive leadership, and unifying ideas. Right off the bat, in the midst of an economic crisis Obama cashed all of his chips in on health care reform. Really? Healthcare reform? The economic foundation of this nation is crumbling and we have a year-long fight over healthcare reform? Someone should have recommended to Obama that he read “Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance” by Lou Gerstner. When Gerstner took the helm at IBM, they were hemorrhaging cash. They were bleeding to death. You know what Gerstner did first? He didn’t overhaul the benefits program to add more costs to the system. He stopped the bleeding, conserved cash and focused on revenue generation. This would have been a better use of the first two years of the Obama administration’s time. So Obama flunked the insightful direction test immediately. I had a great conversation with the Obama campaign when they called. A nice young kid, clearly very committed to his candidate and armed with all the talking points he could remember engaged me in a fun exchange. He asked why I was not supporting Obama. I said that if I boiled it down to one item it was his failure of leadership. The caller tried to bat that back over the net to me stating that congress (really just the house) had stymied the president and made it their sole objective to obstruct his agenda. He stated that not one republican had voted for any of Obama’s key legislative initiatives. He was right, and this is Obama’s biggest failure as a leader. He is the president. The fact that he could not garner a single republican vote for key legislation is a massive failure of leadership. Clinton got republican votes. Reagan, Bush I and Bush II all got opposition party support for key initiatives, but Obama got none. The party out of power is always playing defense. They don’t have the bully pulpit. They are not setting the agenda. Their sole job is to not get steam rolled, to try to stay relevant, to keep a healthy opposition point of view alive. Theirs is a hand of weakness. What did Obama think they would do? It is his job to bring them into the tent, to be the adult in the room, and to extend the olive branch. Obama liked to cite ‘Team of Rivals’ in the early days of his administration. He could have learned a lot from Lincoln, had he bothered to do some homework. After 4 years of war and hundreds of thousands of casualties, Lincoln did not seek revenge on the South. He let them up easy, he was their advocate in an effort reunify the nation. What did Obama do? He called republicans “the enemy”. Last week he said that voting against republicans was the best way to get revenge. Revenge? The president wants to get revenge? On who? I am guessing he probably wants to get revenge against me. This is why I cannot support Barack Obama to lead this nation. He is not a leader he is is a democrat, and a Chicago democrat that. He apparently thinks I am the enemy and he wants to exact revenge against me. That's a shame, I thought we were on the same team, but I guess not.

That leaves me voting for Romney. Is he the perfect candidate? Nope, but the only candidate that would agree 100% with everything I believe is me, and I am not on the ballot. I believe Mitt Romney is a leader. He brings executive experience to the table. He doesn’t need this job, he wants this job. I will hold him as accountable as any other president if he wins. He has a tough job ahead. There is guaranteed good news on the horizon however. After Tuesday, my phone will stop ringing and we can return to sanity.

Remember?

Remember the chant from Bush-hating left wingers? "Bush lied, Americans died!" No one could ever support the veracity of the claim but it was effective in its message and was a rally cry heard over and over again. It was on display recently from the unwashed, trespassing, squatters in the Occupy Movement.

I have tried to keep an low profile during this election season and have tried to keep what rattles around in my head to myself. However, the president and his adminstraton's handling of the Benghazi murders is over the top, beyond compare, and the straw that broke my silence.

Summed up in one phrase..." Four Americans died, then Obama lied" Its hard to refute the facts on this one. The administration had live video, real time emails, live calls for help, and did nothing but watch brave Americans die. Then they fabricated some cock and bull story about an inflammatory video no one had ever heard of to cover their callous incompetence.

Why did the Obama administration watch four Americans die in real time while they chose to ignore calls for help? These four Americans died because the Obama campaign could not have an Al Qaeda attack this close to the election. It did not square with the narrative of the campaign. So the administration watched as four brave souls perished and concocted a bullshit story for the press to lap up and sell to the American voting public. That was the plan. The four dead in Lybia were casualties of the 2012 presidential election.

Then to make matters worse, while trying to create moving campaign optics at the ceremony when the slain heroes arrived back on American soil, idiot vice president Joe Biden asks a grieving family if their son "always had balls the size of cue balls?" Really? That's the best thing he could think of to say? Had I been there, receiving the remains of my fallen son and been asked that question, I would have said loud enough for all to hear " have you always had had shit for brains?" but Charles Woods has far more class and restraint than me. He is the father of an American hero who deserves a lot more respect and honesty than he got from team Obama.

That's it for me. In the same week when Obama calls his opponent a "bullshitter" in an on the record interview, they are shoveling their  bullshit to the American public...and sleep like babies while four American heroes are at eternal rest for the sake of the Obama campaign. I am no republican, I have no illusion that Mitt Romney is a flawless candidate for president. Obama has taken the office of president to new lows. I will vote " not Barack Obama" on November 6th.Email during the Benghazi Raid

Stupid is as Stupid Does....

I always liked that line from Forrest Gump, but honestly I was not 100% sure I could put its meaning into different words. Kind of like the supreme court in discussing the definition of pornography, it is hard to define, but they know it when they see it. I think we know " stupid is as stupid does" when we see it and rep Todd Akin has put it on full display.

A declaration of a politician's statement as one the dumbest of all time is a big claim, a very steep mountain to climb. Joe Biden and his boss have given us some top ten material in recent months, but even their ridiculously moronic statements like the "private sector is doing fine, we gonna put y'all in chains, and you didn't build that" pale in comparison to the idiocy of Todd Akin stating that women's body can naturally fend off pregnancy in a legitimate rape. Wow! That sets a new bar for stupidity, which is a tall, tall order given the competition. I don't even want to get into what he means by legitimate rape, but let's just say this comment sets a new low in modern political discourse.

Where Akin doubles down on his stupidity, where he really becomes " stupid is as stupid does" incarnate, is his decision to stay in the race for the Missouri senate seat. Really? After that comment which has guaranteed a landslide win for his opponent, the inept and vulnerable Claire McCaskill. But no, Akin has declared that he is "not a quitter". Really? Not a quitter? How about an ego maniacal moron? Akin is going to stay in a race that he has zero chance to win so he can show us all he is not a quitter, just dumb. He will be a drag on the national ticket, although the chances that the democrats overplay this hand is high and getting higher, but not to worry, Todd Akin is no quitter.

I heard a recent interview with Akin where he went into his stump speech about why he is a better choice for Missouri and how his conservative value best represent the values of Missouri residents. Blah, blah, blah. It was pathetic, What's worse is that Akin is oblivious to the reality that no one cares about his stump speech any more. His stump speech, his values, his promises for conservative leadership, none of this matters. His opponent's record doesn't matter any more. All that matters in the outcome of this election is the incredibly stupid statement he made and how rep Akin cannot find the courage to exist the race.

Akin represents all that is bad with our politics. Politics is not about we the citizens. No, politics unfortunately is about the egos and the blind unbridled aspirations of the individual candidates. Politics is about the money the flows to support the inflated and self congratulating individuals who occupy our governments. 

If candidate Akin is too obtuse or too blind to see the massive writing on the wall, then he deserves to lose. In the end the citizens of Missouri lose because they will be stuck with Claire McCaskill for another six years....and we all lose because as Akin has shown, stupid is as stupid does, and we know this when we see it. Well done Todd. Good luck with that race of yours. You should expect Senator McCaskill to send you a big country ham and a nice bottle of wine for Christmas this year, just to say "thanks". The rest of the nation wishes you a lump of coal, for a myriad of reasons.