“If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these [Goldman Sachs] meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.” — Greg Smith in resigning as a Goldman Sachs Executive Director via The New York Times oped page today.
The growing question is not how does one stop Mitt Romney’s inexorable march to the Republican nomination, but how does one stop Rick Santorum — if he can put it together.
The former Pennsylvania senator looked like a winner to me on stage last night in Louisiana, not because he had just won the Alabama and Mississippi primaries — a northerner defeating a former Georgia congressman and the well-funded establishment candidate — but because he stood squarely on his feet on stage. He now knows who he is as a candidate, and when that happens, everyone can see it. Everything just clicks. Romney still has not reached that point, and no political consultant on earth can imbue it in him.
There is also something electrifying about an underdog. In blow outs where my teams are winning, I have privately rooted for the losing team to come back. It’s part of the human spirit, I think, to watch an aspirant begin to thrive. Mr. Santorum may be about to bottle that electricity — if he can keep it together. He is the David to Mitt Romney’s Goliath.
Rick Santorum does not work off a script. That’s extremely dangerous. He’s to the social right of a lot of Republicans. And he has a tendency to look and sound angry. Any one of those factors can eventually sink him. But he knows who he is as a candidate. That is worth Mitt Romney’s campaign warchest and more. He is that little boy looking at his grandfather’s fingers in a casket. (If you haven’t watched Santorum’s Iowa speech, it’s worth hitting that link.)
If Newt Gingrich drops out, Rick Santorum could put it together — if he can keep it together.
If Newt Gingrich wins tonight in Alabama and Mississippi it will be a dog bites man story. But he loses — even if he gets second in one of the races — I’d expect him to begin his exit strategy. I have been wrong a couple of times on the former Georgia congressman exiting the race, but if he can’t carry southern states likes Mississippi and Alabama, what’s he doing in this race?
Still time to get in on the sweepstakes. I’d do it soon, though.
An Afghan Woman Being Stoned to Death by the Taliban
A U.S. serviceman with a traumatic brain injury cracked this week in Afghanistan and tragically killed civilians. A single apology is in order, and those families should be helped in every way possible.
But all we are hearing these days out of the U.S. State Department and from our President are endless apologies – we are sorry for everything. We should knock it off. It’s riling our enemies and putting U.S. troops in further danger.
American soldiers are in Afghanistan for a reason. The Taliban, after subjugating Afghani women to Sixth-Century social conditions, allowed and encouraged Islamic terrorists to launch a deadly attack on American cities. More than 3,000 American civilians died as a result. Funny, I don’t remember hearing the Taliban apologize for that.
After a Koran was accidently burned, six U.S. servicemen were murdered. Where’s that apology? And how many more American flags or effigies of our president can possibly be torched? Flag factories in Kabul must be working around the clock.
Now the Taliban is threatening to behead U.S. servicemen. Um, what exactly have they been trying to do for the past 10 years?
The problem in Afghanistan is that we announced our withdrawal, and civilians and weak-kneed government officials are expecting the Taliban to sweep back into power once we’re gone. Whether that will happen is anybody’s guess, but until that day, the U.S. needs to stand unapologetically strong. Any other stance smells like blood in the water. It is being perceived as weakness.
from thedailymail
Danny Hakim of The New York Times pens an outstanding piece today about a cancer methodically eating away at America. The cost of public employee pensions is not the sexiest issue — the screaming bone fractures normally get the headlines — but it is one of the most significant challenges facing the country, with tremendous long-term implications on how we operate as a nation. Voters on both sides of the aisle need to care about this. It threatens to erase the social safety net American liberals have been weaving since FDR, including the inability to apply for social security card, and it is the nightmare scenario conservatives have long warned about.
The cost of public employee pensions is crushing municipalities, one by one. And the process is just beginning. Here is Mr. Hakim on that:
“Even as there are glimmers of a national economic recovery, cities and counties increasingly find themselves in the middle of a financial crisis. The problems are spreading as municipalities face a toxic mix of stresses that has been brewing for years, including soaring pension, Medicaid and retiree health care costs. And many have exhausted creative accounting maneuvers and one-time spending cuts or revenue-raisers to bail themselves out.
“The problem has national echoes: Stockton, Calif., a city of almost 300,000, is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. Jefferson County, Ala., made the biggest Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing in history in November and stopped paying its bondholders. In Rhode Island, the city of Central Falls declared bankruptcy last year, and the mayor of Providence, the state capital, has said his city is at risk as its money runs out.
“New York City’s annual pension contributions have increased to $8 billion from $1.5 billion over the past decade.”
Get this: In New York City today, more of the annual budget goes to pay for services long ago rendered than to current needs. More tax dollars are going to fill yesterday’s pothole than today’s. That’s mind boggling.
As this continues, as the pension payments increase, all else will suffer. Significant local tax increases are unrealistic — New York is already bleeding jobs because of our high tax rates — so services will have to be cut. Deeply. Even ones universally considered essential.
What’s worse is that government pension funds use accounting tricks to underestimate the problem. So it grows quietly worse each year.
The need for sensible pension reforms will never show up high in the polls. War, contraception, millionaire’s taxes, and jobs!, jobs!, jobs! will always poll higher. But the debt is what will get us in the end, no matter which side of the aisle we are on.
A friend and client running in a special election for the New York State Assembly next week captured in a single sentence exactly why businesses, small and large, have been fleeing the Empire State. The candidate, Rich Wager, had just finished a tour of Columbia and Dutchess County farms when we sat down to coffee. Here’s what he said:
“When New York State contacts your business, you know you’re in trouble for something.”
Exactly. It is never good news when a letter from the state comes in the mail or an inspector walks through your doors.
And it’s not just the state. It’s the cities, too. And the counties and the towns and the villages. Somewhere along the way, government in New York began treating private sector businesses as adversaries, as targets for a never-ending game of “gotcha.” They declared war on their own tax base.
This week we saw in the New York Post, a New York City Health Department inspector throwing out $10,000 worth of sushi-grade tuna at a Manhattan restaurant because the sushi-chef handled with his hands — as all sushi chefs do. The inspector poured bleach on the fish to make sure it could not be saved. I’m surprised he didn’t then stomp on it. The owner complained; I’d have pressed chopsticks through the inspector’s eyes.
Weeks before, a Staten Island restaurant owner — this blog declared him “New Yorker of the Week” — shuttered the doors to his businesses out of protest. He would rather have no business than suffer the harassment and indignities of the health inspectors. There went another handful of jobs.
Last month, a Papa John’s pizza owner in New York’s Capital Region was fined $5,500 for not providing each of his employees with five tee shirts, one for every day of the week. The inspector wasn’t responding to a complaint; he discovered the transgression during a routine interrogation.
New York State was just ranked as having the second worst business climate in the country. Is it any wonder why? Why would anyone want to open a business in a state that tries to trip you up at every turn? Do the grinding bureaucrats in state and city government know that other cities and states actually try to help businesses grow?
Not all states, of course. Take California. Coca Cola and Pepsi, products that have been around for more than 100 years, now have to alter the chemical composition of their caramel coloring — or be banned from selling their colas in the Golden State. This, while California hands out I.O.U.s to its vendors.
Maybe this is good news for all those “hicks” in middle America. In time, they can land all the jobs and businesses that we geniuses on the “progressive” coasts chase away.
“When New York State contacts your business, you know you’re in trouble for something.”
That’s a keeper.
Nicholas Kristof files his latest defense of Keynesian economics from Athens, which is published in today’s New York Times. He is beginning to sound like — hold your ears — Paul Krugman.
Mr. Kristoff argues in the very same space that Greek society is structurally broken and corrupt, and that its government should pour massive amounts of borrowed cash into that broken urn to stimulate the nation’s economy. He cites as an example of this working in the Greek isles an action undertaken by Pericles in the 5th Century BC. As irresistible as it must be to weave Pericles into a piece — see, I’ve done it now, too — I’m not sure Mr. Kristoff is talking apples and apples.
“Republicans are right to see in Greece some perils of an overgenerous government: The state sector was bloated, early retirements and pensions were sometimes absurd, and rigid labor markets undermined Greece’s competitiveness,” Mr. Kristof concedes. “But the problem was not a welfare state — Greece has much less of a safety net than northern Europe. Rather, it was corruption, inefficiency and a system in which laws are optional.”
I wonder how borrowing billions more Euro, when you are about to default on your existing debt payments, to pour into a corrupt system is in any way a good idea.
Mr. Kristof interviews one young man who had been educated at Cambridge and had traveled the world before losing his job: “It might end up as a social revolution,” the man warned in discussing the current austerity plan.
Isn’t that the idea? Isn’t that what’s needed in Greece and elsewhere, sans violence — a mass social realization that nation’s cannot live continuously above their means?
That public works project Pericles put in place? It was the Parthenon. Would never get built today, no matter how much money one put in it. The Greek unions would bleed the project dry before a single stone was put in place. And that’s where Pericles was dealing with oranges where Papademos is dealing with apples — there were no socialist trade unions in 5th Century Greece.
If Newt Gingrich were to drop out of the presidential race, Rick Santorum would have a legitimate shot at the Republican nomination for President. I don’t think the same goes for Newt Gingrich if Rick Santorum dropped out, but it doesn’t matter what I think. Mr. Gingrich thinks he would end up on top if Mr. Santorum stepped aside. Each thinks his path to the White House is blocked by the other, so, naturally, they are beginning to attack each other.
A grand game of chicken to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney is going on between these two men for the highest possible stakes. That begs the question, who will blink first?
Just for fun, I say it will be Newt Gingrich. In fact, I will wager that he will drop out of the race on Thursday, April 5th. That’s my guess, April 5th at 12 noon.
The prize is a chicken dinner from Omaha Steaks pictured here. This is no ordinary chicken dinner incidentally. It is, Omaha Steaks boasts, a “Delicate Herb Roasted Chicken like you expect to find in a fine bistro.” And that’s not all. This this “fully cooked half chicken is boneless, except for the wing. Add in Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Green Beans and you’ve got a perfectly balanced dinner with an elegant presentation.” Full retail value of this extraordinary poultry offer? $39.99!
If you want in, simply post your guess for who drops out first in the comment section below. Please include the name of the withdrawing candidate and the date and time of his withdrawal. The closest guess wins the prize — shipping included!
Oh, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul don’t count. This is between Messrs. Santorum and Gingrich.
Who’s in?
“No one writing a political science textbook would ever recommend running a campaign the way Santorum does–on gut instinct and without ever delivering a speech that is written down. What he loses in crispness by this approach he gains in sincerity.” — Rich Lowry, 02-08-12
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