You’re very, very young.
And you’re very, very stupid.
Me, in my head, on any given day to most aspiring politicos, armchair economists, and about 25% of Tumblr users, in general.
In 1988, I invested most of the earnings from this lecture circuit acquiring the leasehold on Connecticut’s Stratford Inn. Hotels, inns and restaurants have always held a special fascination for me. The Stratford Inn promised the realization of a longtime dream to own a combination hotel, restaurant and public conference facility — complete with an experienced manager and staff.
In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business, especially during a recession of the kind that hit New England just as I was acquiring the inn’s 43-year leasehold. I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender.
Today we are much closer to a general acknowledgment that government must encourage business to expand and grow. Bill Clinton, Paul Tsongas, Bob Kerrey and others have, I believe, changed the debate of our party. We intuitively know that to create job opportunities we need entrepreneurs who will risk their capital against an expected payoff. Too often, however, public policy does not consider whether we are choking off those opportunities.
My own business perspective has been limited to that small hotel and restaurant in Stratford, Conn., with an especially difficult lease and a severe recession. But my business associates and I also lived with federal, state and local rules that were all passed with the objective of helping employees, protecting the environment, raising tax dollars for schools, protecting our customers from fire hazards, etc. While I never have doubted the worthiness of any of these goals, the concept that most often eludes legislators is: “Can we make consumers pay the higher prices for the increased operating costs that accompany public regulation and government reporting requirements with reams of red tape.” It is a simple concern that is nonetheless often ignored by legislators.
A Politician’s Dream Is a Businessman’s Nightmare: A 1992 column on the realities of running a business, by George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate, who passed away at the age of 90 in October.
Timely read.
People think they’ve voted for Obamacare, more lavish food stamps, higher minimum wage, greater Social Security/Disability payments, etc. The trouble is there’s NO. MONEY. for this. America has outspent the planet. The official Congressional Budget Office estimate of a Washington-sized government requires the rest of the planet to put a fifth of its GDP into buying U.S. Treasury debt. Now, and forever. That is NOT. GOING. TO. happen. At some point, some guy nobody’s ever heard of on the other side of the planet is going to decide that now is the time to yank the rug out from under the U.S. dollar, and the minute that happens, we’re Greece. And, if we don’t apply the brakes quick enough, we’re Zimbabwe. There’s nothing holding up the joint anymore except the U.S. dollar’s status as global reserve currency, which is basically a decades old legacy from when this was a functioning, commercial republic in which people did not loot the future…
Mark’s latest tome: After America: Get Ready for Armageddon [Amazon link]
Related:
It is now left to the international bond markets to bring discipline to American governance. In due course, they will.
$6B in 2012 campaign spending: What else could it buy?
One dubious distinction of the 2012 elections is that it’s the most expensive election season ever in history. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, total spending on all local, state and national elections could top $6 billion, $700 million more than in 2008.
Here are 12 other ways to have spent $6 billion:
• Provide lunch every day for a year for more than 11 million public school students. Each meal costs about $2.92.
• Reduce the annual federal deficit—now at $1.1 trillion—by just 0.5 percent.
• 250,000 new Priuses (or “Prii”) at the starting price of $24,000.
• 858 million six-packs of Budweiser beer at $6.99 each.
• 4 billion AA batteries to get through the next hurricane.
• 1.7 billion gallons of gas (currently at $3.46/gallon nationally), which could fill up 146 million Prii (and also help you get through the next hurricane).
• Four years of college tuition at Harvard for nearly 39,000 students.
• Minimum wage for a year for 397,877 people (or the entire population of Cleveland, Ohio).
• 27,051 new homes at the median home price of $221,800.
• Resurfacing of 120,000 miles of U.S. roads and highways. According to a report from U.S. Public Interest Research Groups, 150,000 miles of interstate highways needed repair in 2010.
• 60 Boeing 737 airplanes.
• 75 percent of what Americans spent on candy and costumes for Halloween this year ($8 billion).
Little Election Day fun!
Saw this in line at the elementary school where I voted in 2008.
Let’s play ‘choose the caption:’
“They may need to add a chapter if __________ wins.”
Cover image: Disaster! Catastrophes That Shook The World
Whistleblowers say State Department cut security in Libya over last six months (via The Daily Beast)
Smart power.
This just keeps getting worse and worse.
h/t Hot Air
About GPICT
George Will on ABC’s This Week, August 26, 2012: With most politicians, the problem is their inauthenticity. [Romney’s] problem is that he’s authentically what he is. He spent his formative years in the Middle West in the middle of the last century. He’s a child of the 1950’s. I speak as one myself, from both places in time and geography. He has the reticence of someone raised by the people who were raised by The Depression and The War. He has a low emotional metabolism. That’s who he is. He can’t turn to the country and say ‘I feel your pain’ because the pain isn’t his. It’s other people’s. What he can say is ‘I can fix your pain’ and that should be enough unless we’re electing a talk show host.
Very astute commentary.
Lapdance of Danger, Or Big Trouble In Steamy Tampa | Ricochet.com
Hilarious — and likely spot-on — advice for anyone attending either of the upcoming conventions.
This outing with the boys in the steamy tropical night of a late August in Tampa sounded so good on the front end. But this is where it gets sporty.
See, the minute you got out of the car, some folks in a van parked across the street got you on video.
Who cares who they work for? The media? BuzzFeed, prepping for a piece called, “18 GOP Well-Fed GOP Delegates Walking Into Seedy Strip Clubs?” The DNC? Talking Points Memo? MMFA? Some Democratic SuperPAC? OFA? It doesn’t matter. Hell, for all you know George Soros is sitting in the back wearing a mumu, muttering commands to them and smelling of Ben Gay and borscht.
But count on it. They will be there. We live in the era of the tracker, and the ultimate gotcha is guys, getting in trouble because millions of years of evolution coupled with our bad judgment about inappropriate women led you to this.
So yeah, they’re watching for guys in rental cars wearing RNC lanyards. They’re playing Spot-The-Delegate and every single face on that video is going to be peered at long and hard. And in the age of Facebook, Google Image Search and good old detective work, they’ll know who you are soon enough.
And inside? Whether it’s from the club making a deal with the same people (a known fact of Tampa strip club history) and providing their video feed, or just an enterprising Democratic intern on the Best Job Ever filming you with his tiny GoPro or phone camera, you and your friends will get captured in mid-lapdance. You will remember the fun differently the next morning.
Why? Because the next morning, as you reach for your vibrating phone on the nightstand, the hangover grinding through your head and your guts, it takes a moment to focus. You swing your feet to the floor, staring at the text message from your wife.
“Call me. You’re on YouTube.”
But please don’t put your life in the hands / Of a Rock ‘n Roll band / Who’ll throw it all away
Ahem, or a rock ‘n roll politician.
Oasis - Don’t Look Back In Anger
We make fun of San Francisco and San Francisco values, but I’m very concerned for the future because San Francisco is actually spreading out. The State of California, which is sinking beneath the waves, is literally at the state level controlled by San Franciscans. Our Governor Jerry Brown is from San Francisco, our Lieutenant Governor [Gavin] Newsom is from San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader of the House is from San Francisco, the Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is a real, I think — and from my perspective it worries me — a real up and comer…who is very left-wing is from San Francisco, both our Senators are from San Francisco, and this small area with very left-wing values, that are not reflected throughout the rest of the state [Ed. or the rest of the country, for that matter], is the political artery to California and often California is the political artery to the rest of the country. So, I think San Francisco, for all of the mocking that has been done about San Francisco values, in many ways I think a cultural coup d’état is going on and that it’s a very powerful city and a center of politics in this country.
— Author Wesley J. Smith
So, given California is the biggest shit-show in the Union, beyond effectively bankrupt, and going down faster than a high-speed boondoggle train, this should be about as damning a denunciation of the far-Left politics and ideology of “San Francisco” possible, no?
Related:
Pelosi’s the shortest-lived House majority in fifty-five years
