Week in Review Part IV: Random Musings

Thomas Friedman / New York Times…on Barack Obama’s foreign policy.

“(While) Obama has been deft at implementing Bush’s antiterrorism policy, he has been less successful with his own foreign policy. His Arab-Israeli diplomacy has been a mess. His hopes of engaging Iran foundered on the rocks of, well, Iran. He’s made little effort to pull together a multilateral coalition to buttress the Arab Awakening, in places like Egypt, to handle the post-revolution challenges. His ill-considered decision to double down on Afghanistan could prove fatal. He is in a war of words with Pakistan. His global climate policy is an invisible embarrassment. And the coolly calculating Chinese and Russians, while occasionally throwing him a bone, pursue their interests with scant regard to Obama’s preferences.”

--In a New York Times/CBS News poll, 89 percent of Americans say they distrust government to do the right thing, but 74 percent say the country is on the wrong track and 84 percent disapprove of Congress. President Obama’s approval rating is 46 percent.

Among Republican primary voters in the above survey, it’s Herman Cain with 25 percent, Mitt Romney 21 percent, New Gingrich 10 percent, Ron Paul 8 percent, and Rick Perry a pathetic 6 percent. Regarding the Texas governor, he is going to skip some of the upcoming debates after his poor early performances. How he thinks this will help him I’ll never know.

--Income inequality continues to rise as an issue. Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats, 2/3s of independents and just over 1/3 of all Republicans say that the distribution of wealth in the country should be more equitable, even as a majority of Republicans said they think it is fair, according to the New York Times/CBS poll.

It’s largely about the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office study that revealed the top 1% of households saw their after-tax incomes grow by 275% from 1979 to 2007, or more than quadruple the growth of the rest of the top 20% of the population during that period.

“Meanwhile, income for the 60% of households that make up the middle of the income scale increased by slightly less than 40%, the study found. The poor – the 20% of the population with the lowest incomes – saw just an 18% increase.” [Jim Puzzanghea / Los Angeles Times]

--Nevada backed off and will now hold its caucuses on Feb. 4 after pressure from New Hampshire and the Republican National Committee.
So, assuming New Hampshire goes for Jan. 10, as expected,  it’s…

Iowa: Jan 3
New Hampshire: Jan. 10
South Carolina: Jan. 21
Florida: Jan. 31
Nevada: Feb. 4
Nevada remains the first state in the West to vote.

So what did your editor immediately do upon hearing the Nevada news? I booked a flight to Manchester, N.H., first week in January, that’s what I did. And seeing as how a simple Radisson in downtown Manchester was suddenly displaying a $400 rate when it would normally be about $100, I scooped up a decent alternative right at the airport for far cheaper. Anyway, I’ll be on the ground, hitting a few of those last frantic speeches, with the goal of catching Romney and Cain at a minimum. It was in 2004 that I saw John Edwards and John Kerry in New Hampshire, plus two or three others, including Joe Lieberman, and it’s a lot of fun, as long as the weather cooperates. [Richard L., send me a note if you’re still in the area.]

--John Podhoretz / New York Post

“Memo to the Republican field: You’re running for president. Of the United States. Of America. Start acting like it.

“Stop proposing nonsense tax plans that won’t work. Stop making ridiculous attention-getting ads that might be minimally acceptable if you were running for county supervisor in Oklahoma. Stop saying you’re going to build a U.S.-Mexico border fence you know perfectly well you’re not going to build.

“Give the GOP electorate and the American people some credit. This country is in terrible shape.   They know it. You know it. They want solutions. You’re providing comedy.

“This is a serious time. It requires serious leaders. Where’s the gravity?

“The reason that many on the Right have spent the year hunting somewhere, anywhere, for better candidates to challenge President Obama is becoming ever more plain with each passing day.

“Herman Cain now leads in at least one major poll. He released his first TV commercial on Monday. In it, his campaign manager talks about how different the campaign is, then lights up a cigarette and exhales the smoke in a curlicue. Next comes a shot of Cain smiling devilishly.

“It’s impossible not to like Cain. But this ad is a humiliating embarrassment. This is his moment, and rather than rising to it, he’s behaving as though even he can’t imagine he’ll one day sit in the Oval Office. He discards positions when they are inconvenient, and speaks dismissively of the notion that a presidential candidate ought to know something about foreign policy.

“These are not the actions of a serious man. Good October poll data or not, if he doesn’t take himself seriously, few will once voting commences.”
And Podhoretz goes on to talk about Rick Perry and his flat tax proposal that isn’t really flat because you can pick and choose.

“So there will be two parallel tax systems. But this doesn’t simplify matters at all, since there are already two parallel tax systems (one is called the Alternative Minimum Tax). …

“Perry’s refusal to pick and choose with his non-flat, optional ‘flat tax’ constitutes an act of egregious cynicism. He wants the credit for proposing something bold while denying that any such boldness will have palpable consequences as well as benefits.

“Yet a truly flat tax will necessarily raise taxes on middle-income earners and lower them on those making more money. Rather than acknowledge this and do the hard work of explaining why and how a flat tax will work to create the economic growth that will get us out of this morass, Perry simply wishes the hard work away.”

--This is really too much…the fact the Occupy Wall Street crowd in Manhattan is sitting on over $500,000 in cash from donors. Members of the “finance committee” are like Al Pacino in “Scarface.” [“The biggest problem I have is what to do with all the…”]  So OWS has endless meetings to decide how to distribute it.

But then you have the dirtballs in London who have been occupying an area outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, a major tourist destination. City officials allowed the group to close the cathedral down for a week, a longer period than during the Blitz, for crying out loud, as reported by the London Times’ Fay Schlesinger. Even when it reopens this weekend, the upper parts will be closed because London’s Fire Brigade would be blocked from using ladder trucks. If I was a tourist there today, I’d be going ballistic. Plus, the Times of London has taken infrared camera shots to prove that most of the protesters don’t sleep in their tents at night, they just go home! Like try 9 out of ten! Sweep ‘em into the Thames.

By the way, I seem to be in a minority over my opinion towards the Occupy Wall Street group. 43% of those surveyed for a CBS/New York Times poll agree with OWS’s goals, while 27% said they disagree. Aside from a communist/class warfare agenda, however, what are the group’s goals, pray tell?

Here’s one issue I’ll grant OWS, however, the cost of college. New figures show that average in-state tuition and fees at four-year public colleges rose an additional $631 this fall, or 8.3 percent, compared with a year ago. Including room and board, the average price for a state school is now more than $17,000 a year, though many families pay far less because of a large increase in federal grants and tax credits.

Nonetheless, President Obama unveiled a plan to deal with the student loan issue and give 1.6 million some relief on their payments. The plan isn’t new; it’s just accelerating a program already passed by Congress that reduces the maximum required payment on student loans from 15 percent of discretionary income annually to 10 percent. Like the White House’s plans on the housing front, the impact will be minimal and is hardly about job creation.

But the president also said something incredibly stupid in his speech addressing student loans at a school in Denver, that being graduates will have more money to spend on things “like buying homes.”

What bank these days is going to give a mortgage to a person with a large student loan balance? Maybe they did in the bubble days, but not now. The College Board reports, after all, that roughly 56 percent of 2009-2010 bachelor’s degree recipients at public four-years graduated with debt, averaging about $22,000. Total student loans outstanding are slated to exceed $1 trillion this year, which in future years could be a significant drag on economic growth. And, no, President Obama, a slight reduction in the amount owed will not lead to a surge in home-buying.

I knew the student loan issue was going to be a White House topic this week and thus held off last time on a comment by Rich Lowry in an op-ed for the New York Post from Oct. 14, as it would be more appropriate today.

“College students and recent graduates are overrepresented (on the “We Are the 99 Percent” Web page). Their complaint comes down to too much debt, and too few job opportunities to get out from under it. There’s the guy with the master’s from Harvard who owes $60,000 and lives off temp jobs. There’s the woman who is paying her $50,000 in debt and the $20,000 in debt for her 22-year-old daughter. There’s the graduate with a master’s from ‘a major U.S. university’ who is unemployed and $92,000 in hock. And on and on.

“The representatives of these debt-burdened grads shouldn’t be at Zucotti Park, but at the American Association of University Professors or some other arm of the academic complex that gouges students. College tuition has been increasing at a rapid clip. Does anyone believe that higher ed is getting constantly better? It’s an inflationary spiral, partly driven by a federal student-loan program that feeds the maw of the beast regardless of quality of outcomes.

“Another running theme is the high cost of health care and the lack of insurance. One man writes of his job ‘that pays 15 percent less than it did five years ago’ even as ‘health insurance costs are up over 175 percent.’….

“(Downward mobility) is a dismaying constant….

“The puerile ideology of Occupy Wall Street is irrelevant to all of this. Goldman Sachs could be dissolved tomorrow and the wealth of the 1 percent confiscated, and it wouldn’t make college or health care cheaper, or create one new job. If the ‘revolution’ yearned for by the protesters is insipid, there’s no doubt that the moment calls for bold economic reforms and a rethinking of health care and higher education.

“President Obama’s misbegotten contribution is a health-care law that won’t control costs and will insure more people only while making the current system more unsustainable.

“Republicans often don’t even bother to try to connect their program to the troubles of workers down the income scale. The leading establishment Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, wants to cut their capital-gains taxes. The leading Tea Party presidential candidate, Herman Cain, wants to raise their taxes.

“If nothing else, ‘We are the 99 Percent’ is a reminder that the suffering is real.”

--Shootings are way up in New York City thanks to Occupy Wall Street. How is that, you may ask? Because “When OWS marches, as many as 3,000 cops a day could be called on to keep the peace. That’s about 10 percent of the total force.

“ ‘The city is going crazy with demonstrations and protests, and I’m lucky if I can get four cars out there,’ said Deputy Inspector Ted Bernstein, commander of the 13th precinct in Chelsea.” [Brad Hamilton / New York Post]

--Robert Samuelson / Washington Post

“Clinton and Bush won’t apologize and atone (for their failure to tackle entitlements). They won’t play truth squad. But the fact that my fantasy seems so outlandish offers a sobering commentary on our politics.

“There’s no culture of moral accountability. There’s no sense that political leaders, retired from office seeking, should come clean with the public. The essential nature of the country’s budget problem – the dominance of spending on retirement benefits and uncontrolled health costs – was no secret to either Clinton or Bush. It would be healthy for the country if they confessed that their dodging of unpopular choices helped create today’s mess.

“Their silence contributes to continued public confusion and political stalemate. Polls consistently show that Americans want budget deficits closed but dislike the policies that would close them: higher taxes on much of the public; cuts in retirement benefits; reductions in other government programs. On both left and right, myths persist of painless solutions: ‘eliminating waste’ or ‘taxing millionaires.’

“It’s true, as Democrats charge, that Republican rigidity on taxes obstructs agreement. But that’s not the only obstacle. Democrats’ intransigent defense of Social Security and Medicare reflects the programs’ utility as a partisan vote-getter. Republicans ‘have launched an all-out war on Medicare and Social Security’ says a new fundraising mailer from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Why sacrifice this pitch even if it’s untrue?

“Congress’ ‘supercommittee’ – charged with reducing budget deficits – is reportedly floundering. Small wonder. Our political system prefers rhetorical fairy tales to unpleasant budget realities.”

--So last week I mentioned that about the only two politicians I want to listen to these days are Republican Congressman Paul Ryan and Senator Tom Coburn, who speak the truth about the problems facing our nation. In her Wall Street Journal op-ed this weekend, Peggy Noonan writes the following:

“People are increasingly fearing the divisions within, even the potential coming apart of, our country. Rich/poor, black/white, young/old, red/blue: The things that divide us are not new, yet there’s a sense now that the glue that held us together for more than two centuries has thinned and cracked with age. That it was allowed to thin and crack, that the modern era wore it out.

“What was the glue? A love of country based on a shared knowledge of how and why it began; a broad feeling among our citizens that there was something providential in our beginnings; a gratitude that left us with a sense that we should comport ourselves in a way unlike the other nations of the world, that more was expected of us, and not unjustly – ‘To whom much is given much is expected’; a general understanding that we were something new in history, a nation founded on ideals and aspirations – liberty, equality – and not mere grunting tribal wants….

“Where is the president in all this? He doesn’t seem to be as worried about his country’s continuance as his own. He’s out campaigning and talking of our problems, but he seems oddly oblivious to or detached from America’s deeper fears. And so he feels free to exploit divisions. It’s all the rich versus the rest, and there are a lot more of the latter….

“Which gets us to Rep. Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan receives much praise, but I don’t think his role in the current moment has been fully recognized. He is doing something unique in national politics. He thinks. He studies. He reads. Then he comes forward to speak, calmly and at some length, about what he believes to be true. He defines a problem and offers solutions, often providing the intellectual and philosophical rationale behind them. Conservatives naturally like him – they agree with him – but liberals and journalists inclined to disagree with him take him seriously and treat him with respect….

“The president, (Ryan said in a highly publicized speech at the Heritage Foundation), has made a shift in his appeal to the electorate. ‘Instead of appealing to the hope and optimism that were hallmarks of his first campaign, he has launched his second campaign by preying on the emotions of fear, envy and resentment.’”

--In a study reported in The Lancet, a daily dose of aspirin should be given to people at high risk of colon cancer. Newcastle University Prof. Sir John Burn, who led the study, said the evidence “seems overwhelmingly strong.”

--I loved George Will’s piece on noise in airports, like the recorded voice that says: “The moving sidewalk is coming to an end. Please look down.”
Will: “Well, yes. Pretty much everything does come to an end, doesn’t it?...Passing through a U.S. airport is an immersion in a merciless river of words.

 They are intended to be helpful, but clearly they flow from an assumption that increasingly animates our government in its transactions with us. The assumption is that we are all infants or imbeciles in need of constant, kindly supervision and nudging, lest we allow ourselves to be flung off a moving walkway and over the edge of the world….

“At Kansas City’s airport, a recurring announcement tells travelers: ‘Designated smoking areas are located outside, away from doors.’ That means the designated smoking areas are pretty much the entire Midwest and everything contiguous to it – all of Creation that is ‘away from’ this airport’s doors….
“The drizzle of superfluous words continues on the plane, beginning with ‘this is a no-smoking flight’ – please tell us something we don’t already know: Smoking on planes has been banned for more than a decade – and ending with the admonition that deplaning passengers should ‘make sure you have all your belongings.’ Shoes? Check.  Trousers?   Check….

“More and more public spaces are like airports, places where we are assaulted by instructions, advice, warnings and unwanted information. Almost none of this noise is necessary for people mature enough to be allowed to walk around the block, let alone fly around the country. This is the way the world will end, not with a bang but with an environmental blitzkrieg of blather.”

--Further evidence that as a species we can really suck. Headline from the Star-Ledger (New Jersey) this week.
“Linden man dies after being hit by driver on cell phone.”

The poor fellow was in a crosswalk, which is how I’ve always felt I’ll go one day.

--What a heartbreaking loss for the Texas Rangers and their fans. But congratulations to St. Louis for a spectacular run going back to August. Baseball fans around the country will be talking about Game 6 all winter at their favorite watering holes, just replaying those last incredible innings.
--The United Nations’ population division projects the world will reach 7 billion on October 31…Only about 3.4 billion of us deserve to be here. Happy Halloween!

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Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.

God bless America.
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Gold closed at $1744…up $100 on the week
Oil, $93.57…highest close since 7/29

Returns for the week 10/24-10/28

Dow Jones +3.6% [12231]
S&P 500 +3.8% [1285]
S&P MidCap +5.7%
Russell 2000 +6.8%
Nasdaq +3.8%

Returns for the period 1/1/11-10/28/11

Dow Jones +5.6%
S&P 500 +2.2%
S&P MidCap +0.4%
Russell 2000 -2.9%
Nasdaq +3.2%

Bulls 40.0
Bears 37.9 [Source: Chartcraft / Investors Intelligence]

Have a great week. I’m off to Charleston, S.C., weather permitting, for five days of great food, drink and some American history. Ted and Kelly, I’ll have a cold one at the Noisy Oyster for you.