Tag Archives: Politics

Political Paralysis

I went to Washington DC this week to pick up an award for my work on Advertising and Piracy from the Global Intellectual Property Center, which is a part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The irony will not escape many long time readers of this blog, as I have been critical of the Chamber, especially around the issues of transparency in corporate campaign finance. But I believe strongly that our country is committing financial and cultural suicide when it comes to protecting the rights of artists, so you take your allies where you can get them. I couldn’t resist in my acceptance speech noting the irony.

I want to finish with one thought. As I said this is primarily an issue of transparency and I’m glad the Chamber is for transparency in the advertising business. At the risk of biting the hand that has fed me well today, I would ask that the Chamber also support transparency in corporate donations to politicians.  Once again, thank you very much for your support.

When it was all over a man who works for Homeland Security on IP issues thanked me for my work and then we got into a discussion about his job. It turns out he hasn’t had a permanent boss in four years, because the Senate held up the appointment of Obama’s first nominee and now the vetting process for a second nominee is taking months because of an excess of caution. The story seemed so indicative of the mood in Washington I felt in the two days I was there. Everyone seems resigned to paralysis being the new normal. The Republican minority sees it’s task as just gumming up the works to make sure Obama can’t accomplish anything. And the Democrats sometimes display a kind of Stockholm Syndrome: knowing they are being held hostage, they display cordiality towards their captors.

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Meanwhile the news media continues to hunt for disaster stories that will increase the citizens sense of fear and dependency. This little item from the Wall Street Journal, showing a dramatic improvement in the deficit went unnoticed and uncommented on Capitol Hill or other organs of the MSM. It is almost impossible to create an optimistic narrative in Washington, so the best option for me is to return my focus to the Golden State. In California, progressives control both the legislature and the executive branch. Remarkable changes are beginning to happen. The state’s finances are coming into balance after the recent tax rise and money is being spent improving our infrastructure and supporting education. The very idea that Los Angeles could be come a walkable community with a great public transportation system seemed impossible five years ago and yet in a year I will be able to ride the light rail from Santa Monica to USC.

Los-Angeles-Transit-Map

 

I figure if California can once again assume its role as the architect of America’s future, then many states will follow. If we work on the pillars of the new strategy that Patrick Doherty and Mark Mykleby have been advocating: affordable college, walkable cities, low carbon transportation, regenerative agriculture and resource productivity, we will forge an example for both the nation and the world. Let’s ignore Washington and get on with our own optimistic future.

Good News in the Bad News

wind-turbine-manufacture

The markets got a bit spooked today by the unexpected drop in GDP for the final quarter of 2012. But buried in the numbers are signs of a positive transition from a war to a peace economy.

The drop in gross domestic product was driven by a plunge in military spending, as well as fewer exports and a steep slowdown in the buildup of inventories by businesses…Despite the overall contraction, there was underlying data in the report suggesting the economy is not on the brink of a recession or an extended slump. Residential investment jumped 15.3 percent, a sign that the housing sector continues to recover, for one. Similarly, investment in equipment and software by businesses rose 12.4 percent, an indicator that companies are still spending.

I continue to be very optimistic about the direction of American policy as we emerge from our eight year Interregnum. Imagine if the 11 million undocumented workers emerged from the underground (cash) economy and started paying taxes. What would that do to the actuarial calculations of Social Security and Medicare? Imagine if Lockheed Martin started to manufacture wind turbines instead of fighter jets.

The greatest task of the next ten years will be Economic Conversion, the process of converting from a military economy to a civilian/peace economy. The economist Seymour Melman, who did the most important work on this subject, noted that the task ahead of us will not be easy.

“The problem of conversion from military to civilian work is fundamentally different now from the problem that existed after World War II. At that time, the issue was reconversion; the firms could and did go back to doing the work they had been involved in before the war. They could literally draw the olds sets of blueprints and tools from the shelf and go to work on the old products. At the present time, the bulk of military production is concentrated in industries, firms, or plants that have been specialized for this work, and frequently have no prior history of civilian work”

A larger part of the problem will be that the Military Industrial complex is situated deeply in the Red States, particularly Texas and the Deep South. Alex Bowles has pointed out to me that this could create even more Anti-Obama anger. Any attempt to pacify the South with some sort of Government aid to ease the Conversion, will be met with resistance.

The upshot is the mollifying the GOP will be easier said than done. Their response to the last election (“We’ll just rig the next one”) makes their contempt for both outsiders and democracy explicit. They are becoming, in a very real sense, un-American in that the overarching ideal of Government of, by, and for the people is becoming the focal point for organized rage directed at both the government and the people.
As Alex points out, even the Republicans most ardent anti-tax corporate benefactors will not be comfortable with the right wing pitchfork brigade. Fox’s firing of Sarah Palin is just one sign of the corporate pull back from what Bobby Jindal calls “the stupid party”.
As many of you know, I have had an open battle with some of the Libertarians who commented on this blog, including John Papola. But I must confess I found myself agreeing with the central argument (but not some of the details) of this piece he wrote for Forbes entitled “Think consumption is the engine of the economy, think again”.
Increased investment drives economic growth, while retrenched investment leads to recession and reduced employment–and it always has. Those who blame our stagnation on a lack of consumer demand rely on a toxic brew of dubious data and dangerous theory.
As I have argued for years, if our whole aim of the recovery is just to build “mall fever” again, so people hock their homes and their lives to buying the latest flat screen–then we’re screwed. As I wrote in 2009,
It seems to me that the American public has already made a shift to a culture in which spending at the mall will be a lot less important and yet the politicians are acting like their job is to restore the status quo ante–a world the public no longer cares about. Larry Summers talks about getting the big banks lending again, but what business wants to borrow when there is so much excess capacity? There are too many damn malls. Too many car dealerships. What person in their right mind would start a new retail clothing business today?
Papola points out that GDP is a terrible way to gauge the health of an economy and Rick Turner has been saying the same thing for years. This transition from a consumption and debt economy to a savings and investment economy is going to be painful, but when we emerge from this Economic Conversion we will be a much healthier society.

 

Obama’s Second Term

I must say I am looking forward to the President’s second Inaugural Address on Monday. In my lifetime there have only been two second term Democratic presidencies and Bill Clinton began his second term with the shadow of the Whitewater and Trooper gate  allegations hanging over him. He had already begun his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, and so the events that led to his impeachment were already in motion. Barack Obama on the other hand begins his second term with a much bigger mandate (51% of the popular vote to Clinton’s 49%) and no threat of scandal.

Equally important, the Republican Party is in complete disarray, as can be seen by their cave in today on the debt ceiling. David Brooks wrote an unintentionally humorous column today complaining that Obama is being too tough on the Republicans at the very moment of their meltdown. After laying out how he would hope Obama might propose some small bore initiatives that Eric Cantor could agree on, Brooks then states he doesn’t think that is going to happen, unintentionally laying out a perfect strategy for the Democrats..

It’s more likely that today’s majority party is going to adopt a different strategy, which you might call Kill the Wounded. It’s more likely that today’s Democrats are going to tell themselves something like this:

“We live at a unique moment. Our opponents, the Republicans, are divided, confused and bleeding. This is not the time to allow them to rebuild their reputation with a series of modest accomplishments. This is the time to kick them when they are down, to win back the House and end the current version of the Republican Party. Continue reading

Time for a Change

“Then someone came and told us to run down the hallway. There were police at every door. There were lots of people crying and screaming.The officers led children past the carnage. “They said ‘Close your eyes, hold hands.’”

How many times do we have to repeat this scene before we tell the ideologues who run the NRA that they no longer have a veto on gun legislation? Even the rank and file of the NRA believe in background checks to keep criminals and the mentally ill from getting access to firearms. But Wayne LaPierre and his minions want to protect the right of gun show dealers to sell to anyone with no background checks needed. This has to stop. Congress needs to pass a bill with the following pieces, now.

  • No gun show loopholes for background checks
  • Ban assault rifles
  • Ban large magazines for semi automatics

This is at least a start. Continue reading

Subsidies and Collective Action Problems

The New York Times is running an amazing series of articles about how corporate America has played city and state governments like a fiddle to extract generous subsidies for locating plants in their areas.

A Times investigation has examined and tallied thousands of local incentives granted nationwide and has found that states, counties and cities are giving up more than $80 billion each year to companies. The beneficiaries come from virtually every corner of the corporate world, encompassing oil and coal conglomerates, technology and entertainment companies, banks and big-box retail chains.

Game theory names this a collective action problem. Continue reading

The Tell

Chris Christie is a smart politician. His full scale embrace of President Obama in the last three days was not done without consideration for the political value going forward. My guess is that Christie has seen enough internal Republican polling to understand that Obama will probably win on next Tuesday. He doesn’t want to be too closely associated with a loser like Mitt Romney. But more importantly he is thinking about 2016. Romney was losing badly until he did his frantic pivot to the center in the first debate. It must be clear to Republicans that a “severe conservative” cannot win a Presidential campaign. Given that Paul Ryan has made it clear that he would like to run for President, that leaves Christie as the centrist candidate in the party. Embracing a Democratic President in bi-partisan ardor, cements that position for 2016.

I think Christie is probably right about Romney losing. The ever dependable Nate Silver has raised Obama’s chance of victory to 79%, the highest it has been since just before the first debate.

Mr. Obama continues to hold the lead in the vast majority of polls in Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin, the states that represent his path of least resistance toward winning the Electoral College. This was particularly apparent on Wednesday, a day when there were a remarkable number of polls, 27, released in the battleground states.

Christie’s apostasy has of course unleashed a fury on the far right. My sense is that if Romney loses the Republican circular firing squad will be out in force. El Rushbo will say Romney lost because he softened his conservative message in the closing weeks, ignoring the clear polling that the moderation was the only thing that got him close.

The closing days are going to be interesting, but I am beginning to feel pretty confident of an Obama victory.

 

Mitt Romney, Peacenik

When months ago Mitt Romney’s spokesman suggested he could Etch a Sketch his way back to the political center, I expected the Convention to be the venue for this makeover. But that was not to be, as a hall full of Tea Party fanatics would have actively booed a moderate acceptance speech from Romney. So they waited until the debates which had an additional benefit of catching Obama flat-footed in responding to Moderate Mitt.

The third debate last night was the most amazing part of the Etch a Sketch strategy. Since the beginning of the campaign, Romney has surrounded himself with George Bush’s most aggressive Neocon foreign policy experts, like John Bolton and Dan Senor. I would have given a lot to watch John Bolton observing Romney twist and sweat himself last night into the ultimate peacenik in his closing statement, “I want to see peace. I want to see growing peace in this country. It’s our objective.” But of course, just like all of Romney’s instant transformations, this one is not credible.

I’m convinced the Kumbaya routine from Romney comes from his pollsters who are telling him that America is tired of fighting wars in the Mideast and Romney’s bellicose rhetoric towards Iran is scaring voters. Obama needs to drive this home just the way LBJ used the famous daisy bomb ad to scare voters about Goldwater’s finger on the nuclear trigger. Obama already has an ad that makes this point. He should put it up nationally this week.

 

Obama by a Knockout

George Will said on ABC that last night’s debate was the best he has seen in his lifetime and I agree. He also said Obama won–and I agree. Determined to erase the memory of his poor performance two weeks ago, the President turned the first question of the night (on jobs) into a good right jab to Romney’s chin–”when Governor Romney said we should let Detroit go Bankrupt”–and never let up for the rest of the night.

The coup de grace came in the final exchange. Just like in a great prize fight I could see in slow motion that Romney had left himself open to a knockout when he began his final statement by saying, “I care about 100% of the people.” I said to the people in the room I was watching with ,”here comes the 47%”, and Obama did not disappoint.

I believe Governor Romney is a good man. Loves his family, cares about his faith. But I also believe that when he said behind closed doors that 47 percent of the country considered themselves victims who refuse personal responsibility, think about who he was talking about.

Folks on Social Security who’ve worked all their lives. Veterans who’ve sacrificed for this country. Students who are out there trying to hopefully advance their own dreams, but also this country’s dreams. Soldiers who are overseas fighting for us right now. People who are working hard every day, paying payroll tax, gas taxes, but don’t make enough income.

And I want to fight for them. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last four years. Because if they succeed, I believe the country succeeds.

When my grandfather fought in World War II and he came back and he got a G.I. Bill and that allowed him to go to college, that wasn’t a handout. That was something that advanced the entire country. And I want to make sure that the next generation has those same opportunities. That’s why I’m asking for your vote and that’s why I’m asking for another four years.

That was the closing line of the debate. Romney was on the canvas. The Governor had tried to work the ref all night, but in the end he was outclassed. This was the comparison I had been waiting for. This is still going to be a very tight race, but I’m pretty sure Obama has stopped Romney’s move up. The instant polls all showed Obama winning the night, but Karl Rove and company are about to unleash a tsunami of advertising in the swing states. My guess is that the number of undecideds (who are these people?) is very small, so that November 6 will be all about enthusiasm and turnout. In that game, Obama just fired up his troops.

Obama’s Debate Challenge

President Obama was caught off guard in the first debate by Mitt Romney’s pivot to the center and his embrace of the Compassionate Conservative position. That Obama allowed Romney to blur their differences on healthcare, social security and even taxes was distressing for Democrats and clearly has shaken up the race. Tonight the President has an opportunity to draw a bright line between his foreign policy and that advocated by Romney. Failing to do that would probably lead to Obama’s defeat in November.

Two weeks ago Mitt Romney’s Foreign Policy Director Alex Wong told reporters that a President Romney would ensure “the restoration of a strategy that served us well for 70 years.” Here is what that 70-year strategy looks like in terms of money spent. That much of the world has been free riding on our blood and treasure is the issue of the moment.

 Romney assumes that the aggressive military strategy of the George Bush administration still enjoys the support of the American public. He surrounds himself with Bush Neocons like Dan Senor and John Bolton who recently stated that America should “not grant any validity to international law” because it will be “used by those who want to constrict the United States.” But the country has turned away from the preemptive war strategies of the Bush era. The Libertarian wing of the Republican party (estimated to represent almost 24% of the voting public by a recent Reason-Rupe Poll) is staunchly anti-war, calling for a pullback of American forces stationed abroad. Even the Republican Realists like former National Security Director Brent Scowcroft have acknowledged that, “the decision (by Bush 43) to …..try to deal with those problems (terrorism and the empowerment of non-state actors) as a unilateral nation-state using traditional military power, is what brought America to the point of crisis.”

President Eisenhower warned the country in his Farewell Address that, “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.” But he would have been shocked to see how far that power has been extended. A view of our current budget priorities tells the tale.

What is really remarkable is that Congress has already passed laws (the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the Sequester) that reverse the 70-year policy of continuous increases in the Military budget. For the Pentagon, the Sequester would mean about $50 billion a year in less defense spending from fiscal year 2013 to FY2021, on top of the roughly $450 billion in reduced defense outlays from the Budget Control Act according to the Congressional Budget Office. And while the Corporate Welfare crowd like Senator Lindsay Graham vow “that I will fight this with every ounce of my being”, he is on the losing side of the political argument. As an April 2012 ABC News Washington Post Poll found “two-thirds of Americans now say the War in Afghanistan has not been worth fighting.”

As Gary Wills pointed out in an important essay, President Obama came in to office trapped by the facts on the ground of the National Security State–what Wills calls “the Entangled Giant.”

The permanent emergency that has melded World War II with the cold war and the cold war with the “war on terror”—all these make a vast and intricate structure that may not yield to effort at dismantling it. Sixty-eight straight years of war emergency powers (1941–2009) have made the abnormal normal, and constitutional diminishment the settled order…

Here is the irony. Reagan and the neoconservatives managed to convince their followers that the only thing the government knew how to do well was fight wars. All the rest–building the Interstate Highway System or the Internet, running Social Security and Medicare—the government must be incompetent. But it is the financing of the National Security State that prevents us from providing a world-class universal health care and K-College education system. Nothing else. And what is Mitt Romney offering us? A return to Reaganomics, with higher military budgets and lower taxes on the wealthy, leading to endless deficits. The tragedy of Ike’s warning is that both Democrats and Republicans alike have embraced the Military Keynesian model, which Romney used in his convention speech: “we can’t cut the military budget and sacrifice all those good defense industry jobs”. Even Bill Clinton, presiding after the fall of the Soviet Union, never delivered a peace dividend because his own draft record left him too vulnerable to take on the Pentagon. Now Obama has a once in a lifetime chance to do some nation building at home instead of in the Middle East. He must seize the opportunity or become a one term President.

Why Biden Won

Two of the big research themes of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab converged in last night’s VP Debate: Social Sentiment Analytics and Transmedia Storytelling. The analytics part is fairly straightforward. For the last year in association with the Signals Analysis and Interpretation Lab, we have been recording the real time sentiment on Twitter of the Presidential Candidates. This is a huge corpus of data and during last week’s Presidential debate we were analyzing about 1400 tweets per second. Last night Joe Biden seemed to overwhelm Paul Ryan both in volume and in positive sentiment on our real time dashboard.

Which leads me to the second part of our work, Transmedia Storytelling. As our Chief Advisor Henry Jenkins has taught us, Transmedia is the art of telling a single story across multiple platforms, with each piece adding to the total narrative. The story cannot be told in a single commercial or a single debate as each piece adds to the transmedia narrative. Last night Joe Biden helped clarify the Democratic narrative that had been so muddied in the first debate by Mitt Romney’s desperate dash to the center.Two elements of the Democratic difference were hammered home relentlessly.

Clashing in a feisty, hard-edged debate, Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday night repeatedly accused challenger Paul D. Ryan and his running mate, Mitt Romney, of favoring the rich at the expense of middle-class Americans and engaging in loose talk that could lead the country to another war.

Ryan tried to put Biden on the defensive over Libya, but it didn’t work.

BIDEN: I will be very specific. Number one, the — this lecture on embassy security — the congressman here cut embassy security in his budget by $300 million below what we asked for, number one. So much for the embassy security piece. Number two, Governor Romney, before he knew the facts, before he even knew that our ambassador was killed, he was out making a political statement which was panned by the media around the world. And this talk about this — this weakness. I — I don’t understand what my friend’s talking about here. We — this is a president who’s gone out and done everything he has said he was going to do. This is a guy who’s repaired our alliances so the rest of the world follows us again.

On Tuesday Obama will have an opportunity to press this theme. Romney has surrounded himself with Bush era Neocons like John Bolton and Dan Senor, who clearly would like nothing more than to start another war in Iran (and maybe one is Syria as well). I’ll have more to say on that subject on Monday, but for now it is safe to say that Biden got the Democratic Transmedia story back on track.