What’s Wrong Today:

Everyone is concerned about the economy and how to add new jobs. If you follow the current state of play between the parties, you know that:

• President Obama is casting about for a plan that a) will pass both houses of Congress and b) can add some jobs.
• An article of faith for most business executives and most Republicans is that the only solution is tax breaks for businesses and their executives (the “job creators”).
• The Keynesians argue for substantial and immediate stimulus (“government spending”) to create jobs as a bridge until our economy’s momentum takes over and drives us out of the doldrums. 

Should it be the government or the private sector that drives? We all want the answer to be the private sector, since down deep, we are all capitalists. We like the job creator image. We hear that America’s corporations are sitting on piles of cash that they are dying to unleash to create new jobs if only the government would get out of the way, and maybe provide a few tax breaks, too.

The statistics are compelling: The Wall Street Journal said recently that the S&P 500 corporations “collectively have $963 billion in cash, a sum equal to twice the annual output of the state of Ohio”. The New York Times reported that “519 American multinational corporations had $1.375 trillion outside of the United States”. The idea was that it would be repatriated if the Obama administration changed our tax policy to lower the tax rate on foreign dividends.

Consider these awesome numbers:

• Apple has $41 billion offshore
• Microsoft has $42 billion
• Cisco has $39 billion of which 90% is offshore
• Google has $40 billion in cash of which 43% is offshore

It’s child’s play right? Lighten up on the taxes these guys pay, and the jobs will roll on home too. Deregulate ‘em, and here come the jobs. 

So What’s Wrong?

Don’t count on significant domestic job creation from multinationals. The latest data show that multinationals cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States and added 2.4 million overseas between 2000 and 2009. Remember,  we currently have 13.9 million unemployed. Despite that, President Obama, lawmakers and business lobbyists have all touted the country’s biggest companies as critical to creating jobs.

But we don’t know which of these guys can create domestic employment, since most do not voluntarily break down their offshore vs. onshore jobs. Without details on which companies are contributing to job growth and which are not, Congress is flying blind as they try to pick a plan to jump-start the hiring of American workers.

You know we should be speaking to firms that actually do create jobs in the US and not to those who are simply lobbying for a better deal.

Firms that do not put their number of U.S. workers in their annual reports include:

• IBM
• P & G
• Hewlett Packard
• Apple
• Pfizer

The latter two are part of a coalition of companies pushing for Congress to give them a tax break on money they have parked overseas, saying that any money brought back to this country would spur hiring.

No law requires companies to reveal publicly where their employees are based. Some companies choose to include the breakdown of jobs here and abroad in their SEC filings for the benefit of shareholders. But they are required by law to report the numbers to the Commerce Department which compiles a yearly report on total employment by U.S. multinationals.

Politicians have always been willing allies of the Multinationals. The companies have long realized political donations and financial support brings loyalty. Politicians are not fighting over which policy will bring jobs to your home town, but over how best to keep their own jobs in Washington. We as citizens must pay close attention to what our elected representative are doing; where their money is coming from; and what effect it has upon their voting.

To do anything else is simply Wrong.

What’s Wrong Today:

OK, the wild ride in stock markets around the world is beginning to get to us. Fear is creeping into our thinking. The news about the European economic situation is bad and we hear that Merkel and Sarkozy have differing views of both what steps will fix the problem, and when they should be implemented. How almost – well, Red and Blue of them! While here in the colonies, President Obama and the Republicans won’t work on any real solutions, preferring to kick the ball ahead, trying to buy just a little more time to see if they can sell their political bases on some variant of the entrenched position.

So, our confidence in our political leadership erodes, as does our belief that our banks and large corporations have our back. Our thought that we are part of a growing economy begins to die; our understanding of what is really happening clouds over; our anger rises.

And our savings, 401ks and pension plans get free tickets to a scary ride on the equity roller coaster.

So, What’s Wrong?

We have run out of time. The competing dialectics have hardened into trench warfare. We can’t even agree on the definition of the problem:

• Too much debt?
• Too little economic growth?
• Too much social safety net/defense?
• Too much/little stimulus?
• Too little certainty that the way forward will be agreed by our political ignorati?

The average family may be ahead of the politicians. They know that the answer is cut what you can and earn more. Take another job if you have to. That’s what people who don’t live on dividends and capital gains instinctively do when faced with this problem. And they know that the trickle down approach will not work, since there is no time to try it again and because, net-net, it hasn’t given them a blessed thing in the past.

Look, we survived 1987 and we probably will come out of this (eventually) with the Dow and the S&P back to where they were in Q2 2011, when we thought we were on the way back to prosperity.

Time Gentlemen, no more trench warfare, we need a direction and a plan. It will take moral courage. We need to suppress our debating gene for a year or two and speak to our businesses and our global partners with one voice.

Can it be done? Geez, I hope so.

What’s Wrong Today:  

We are WAAY off track!

In 200 years of running our government, we accumulated about $1 trillion of federal debt. Now, almost 25 years later, the debt is at nearly $15 trillion, mostly accumulated during 20 years of Republican Administrations: Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2. During the Bush 2 period, which started with a surplus, Mr. Greenspan advised Congress that budget surpluses and paying down the debt too quickly could be bad. Inflation, you know.

So Congress passed the Bush tax cuts, 9/11 happened, followed by the Afghan and Iraq wars. The surplus was quickly replaced by deficits and the hope of eliminating the federal debt went down the drain.

So, what did we get for that additional $13 trillion of deficit spending?

• Best education system in the world?   No!
• Best infrastructure in the world?    No!
• Best health care system in the world?    No!

We got 10 years of war. We got transfers of vast wealth to a few. We got a bubble that collapsed and led to this great depression recession, along with erosion of American prestige and influence throughout the world.

So What’s Wrong?  Now we hear that there will be no money for our cops, our firefighters, our nurses, our teachers. Next we will hear that our Social Security checks are smaller and Medicare will cover less than it does today. And today, you saw your 401k fall on the floor again.

Our politicians consider themselves blameless, they say that it’s the other side that is wrong and at fault. It is a time of fixed ideologies, one in which few are willing to move outside their little bubble and act in a thoughtful way about a collective future.

Democracies cannot run this way. But, we are not alone in this. Consider what is going on in Britain: Violence by the young poor. But they are not poor in their knowledge of technology:

“Youths used text messages, instant messaging on BlackBerry phones and social media platforms such as Twitter to coordinate attacks and stay ahead of the police.”

This is frightening. No matter where we live or how secure we may feel, we’re all just a few tweets away from a socially networked wave of violence and destruction–and if the looters or Wall Street don’t destroy your livelihood, then the crumbling economy will.

As Dean Vernon Wormer said to Flounder in “Animal House”:  “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

Yet, we are doing just that, and its just so wrong.

Many people in the US find it very hard to believe that officialdom in Pakistan didn’t know that UBL was living in Pakistan. We have all heard the logic, “they must have known…if they didn’t know, they are incompetent.”  Some think that the incompetence explanation is preferred by the Pakistani government since it would be far more painful to admit the alternative: that Pakistan’s secret service, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), or the Pakistani military or certain elements within either or both, in fact harbored UBL. In fact, Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former president said that it was incompetence this morning on NPR, while the current president, Asif Zardari, has avoided the subject.  

Despite the spin, Pakistani complicity is a logical explanation. Consider the following: Would UBL have risked hiding in plain sight in Abbotabad, where, according to the Economist,(Banyan) residents say that local police regularly swept the area around the UBL compound roughly once a week, checking residents’ IDs and sometimes looking inside homes?

It is hard to believe that UBL’s house could have escaped scrutiny for long. So, we are back to the questions:

• Did the police stop at UBL’s house? If not, why not?
  
• Did the police know who lived there?  If yes, did they care? If no, who did they think lived there?
• Wouldn’t’t a prolonged stay at a specially built, high-walled compound with many of his family require an external support network? 

The fact that UBL had only two guards in the compound suggests he trusted others for security. So shouldn’t’t we conclude UBL must have had help from someone in the government?

Indeed, some of Al Qaeda’s other high value targets were captured in urban cities in Pakistan: Khalid Sheikh Mohammad from Rawalpindi, Ramzi Binalshibh from Karachi and Laith al Libi from Mardan. Also captured from Abbotabad last month was the Indonesian Umar Patek, implicated in the Bali bombings.

Either way, Pakistan, the military and the ISI all look humiliated. The Government may be digging for a plausible explanation of its inability to track down Bin Laden in Abbotabad not just to provide to an already-suspicious Obama administration but also to its own citizens who want to know how the Americans managed to fly helicopters from Afghanistan undetected by Pakistani radars and then to carry out a raid when Pakistan’s stated policy is that no foreign forces would be allowed to carry out a land operation in-country. Again, the only logical explanation is that there was some knowledge of the operation at the top of the government.

For Pakistan, the near-term domestic implications are two-fold: a threat from Al Qaeda and the Taliban to avenge UBL’s death. This poses a formidable challenge to the government and the security and military apparatus. Another daunting task is to cope with a more assertive United States:  Pakistan lost the opportunity provided by the arrest of US spy Raymond Davis on murder charges. The deal for his freedom was that the US would reduce the CIA’s footprint by cutting down its Special Operations forces in-country.

It is doubtful that we will be cutting back the CIA station now.

Strategically, Pakistan has tried to walk two paths simultaneously.  They have funded militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir while allying with the US and our anti-terror nation building.  For that, they receive more than $3B in annual aid from the US.

That strategy will no longer work.  Pakistan can continue its clandestine funding of militant networks, leveraging discontent in Afghanistan and Kashmir only if Islamabad gives up its alliance with the US.

In that case, the US is likely to align more closely with India, leaving Pakistan to move to openly support the militants in Afghanistan and align more closely with China. 

Would that be Wrong for America?  Discuss….

Whats Wrong Today:

Millions of words have been written. Hyperbole is piled upon hot steaming piles of exaggeration, but nothing touches the Sacramento Bee headline of 5/2/2011:

“Bin Laden went out a coward, U.S. says”

When you read the story, he didn’t have a gun in his hand when he was killed, which is the opposite of what was originally reported. Words matter. The press calling UBL a coward panders to the coarsest side of our spirit. Headline writers and editors of The BEE, why do you need to cheapen the story and paint the mission as if it was a video game? No gun does not equal coward except maybe in Hollywood. This headline is not who we are as a people. It tells us we can minimize UBL because he wasn’t a warrior.

I’m glad he’s gone and it doesn’t matter to me how it went down. It does matter how we frame our thinking about our enemies. Calling our #1 enemy in the GWOT a coward may appeal to some of the Couch Patriots out there who have never worn the uniform and it may make some of us feel better about ourselves, but it reveals that the press (at least the Sacramento Bee) underestimates the enemy and reveals us as unsophisticated, arrogant and clueless about the mission undertaken by our SEAL team.

Imagine the impact if this headline was repeated broadly around the world: jihadists would be thinking, (“that won’t be the way I go out”).

Some read that UBL wasn’t armed and questioned if the SEAL team did the right thing. They think we should have captured him alive and held a show trial. We all know that UBL admitted to planning and executing the 9/11 attacks. He was videoed saying he did it while sitting on a rug at his hideout without requiring any enhanced interrogation techniques. These people imply that the world would be better off had he been captured alive. I disagree. The SEAL team acted correctly. UBL is now out of the terror equation. Our satisfaction at his death is not enhanced by thinking he was or wasn’t a coward in the eyes of the Sacramento Bee.

So What’s Wrong?

We should care that the media reported that UBL had a gun and then that he didn’t have a gun. We should care that they reported that he hid behind his wife and then that he hadn’t. There was precisely one source for the facts in this instance, our military, as told to us by our government. Was the difference Fog of War, or manipulation of the facts? We’ll probably never get the real scoop on everything that went down and everyone who was responsible.

We know only two facts: UBL is dead and was buried at sea. And that may be enough.

 We also know that the Sacramento Bee did not add to the facts, just to the hyperbole. No one in the government called UBL a coward. Didn’t see that reported anywhere else, either. So we can conclude that the Bee it is run by adolescent minds that need to grow up and get a world view. Pandering headlines like theirs coarsen our spirit and weaken our nation.

What’s Wrong Today:

If the NRA , its lobbyists, the Members of Congress and citizens who believe as they do have their way, everyone will carry a loaded gun. They might be concealed weapons; they could be automatic weapons.

Then:

• The Police would be outgunned
• The National Guard would be outgunned
• The Armed Services would be outgunned

Do you think that this makes us safer?   (Discuss)….

Wrong! This makes us Mexico, Iraq, or Afghanistan

Whose interest is served by this outcome? It isn’t yours and mine.

What’s Wrong Today

The Wrongologist woke up this am to hear that the Obama administration is sending $25 million of “non-lethal” goods to the Libyan rebels. And France, England and Italy are sending military advisors to help the rebels with logistics, organization. We apparently have also had CIA advisors on the ground in-country for a few weeks. Does this sound familiar to anyone other than The Wrongologist?  

In March, I said we should back the President’s play unless and until we saw mission creep that fundamentally changed the original intent to protect innocent civilians from death at the hand of its own government. The original intent was flawed. The Obama administration indicated from the start that it wanted Gaddafi out of power and thus created confusion about the purpose and end state of the mission from day one as well.

Today we can say that the rebels will not win a civil war simply with NATO air cover. They need modern arms, ammo, training and infrastructure support. Many of us were concerned about arming the rebels with modern weapons because we didn’t know who or what groups we would be supporting. (Didn’t we learn THAT in Afghanistan?) Now, the ground war is at best a stalemate, devolving to a war of attrition which is likely to be won by Gaddafi.

The strategic response Western Europe is now embracing is Regime Change by Proxy. Not Humanitarian support, not “No Fly Zone”, not assist the rebels with advisors, it is regime change with no boots on the ground or Regime Change by Proxy. The Obama administration has attempted to distinguish between helping the rebels and Regime Change by Proxy, but it is a distinction without a difference.

And the mission morphs at the expense of the moral high ground President Obama articulated a month ago.

So What’s Wrong?

We won’t get to an End State called Regime Change without civil war. We are likely to see as many die in civil war as would die at Gaddafi’s hands without our help. So, now an end state the American peoplee didn’t support may destroy the goal we did support. That’s simply wrong.

The Wrongologist said in March that the Obama doctrine is:  What Would the French Do? Bernard Henri Levi, a French philosopher admired by the Wrongologist for his writings on US affairs and culture, has been the key intellectual force behind France’s commitment to Libya. It has been reported that before the UN Resolution got any traction, Levy phoned President Sarkozy from Benghazi to tell him that French flags were flying everywhere. Levy told Sarkozy that if he allowed a bloodbath in Libya, the blood would stain the French flag. That really affected Sarkozy and moved him to unilaterally grant diplomatic recognition to the Libyan rebels and formally receive their representatives at the Elysée (a meeting also attended by Bernard-Henri Levy).

Levy has now said that Regime Change is the only answer to the current stalemate. This idea is gaining support in other European capitals (but not in Bonn). In the past, President Obama has said that the US should be against Regime Change as an instrument of US policy. He was right in saying that.

What about actively supporting Regime Change in Libya is in our National Interest? It would be simply wrong for the US to embrace Regime Change by Proxy in Libya now.

There is plenty that’s wrong today:  We could speak about Libya, Japan’s nuclear meltdown or, that Eric Kantor has shorted US Treasury notes, but the Wrongologist wants to report on the House passing funding for school vouchers in the DC schools last month.  The House passed two bills; one funds the DC school voucher system for the next 5 years at $20M/year. The second allocates $7500 per student for private or parochial school tuition.  They became law because House Speaker John Boehner put his weight behind them. These D.C. Opportunity Scholarships seek to give poor kids the wherewithal to attend private school.

What happened to separation of church and state?

Thomas Jefferson first articulated the notion that we should keep distance between organized religion and the government. In a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802, he wrote that he contemplates “with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

The Constitution does not explicitly prohibit the government from providing funds to religious schools, but the Founding Fathers made it clear that the government should stay on one side of the “wall of separation,” and organized religious activities should remain on the other.

So what’s wrong?

Federally funded scholarships should not be used for parochial school tuition, but that is exactly where they are going:

 

According to the Catholic Standard, in 2008, 879 of 1,700 (52%) of the D.C. students enrolled in the voucher program went to Catholic schools.  The U.S. Department of Education reported that 80 percent of the voucher students attended religious schools in 2009

Boehner’s a good Catholic, he attended Catholic schools in Cincinnati, and has raised funds for D.C.’s Catholic schools. These bills are religious subsidies, plain and simple. 

(Full disclosure:  the Wrongologist graduated from a Catholic university)

Catholic schools may provide a strong education and give poor kids a way out. The truth is that D.C.’s Catholic Church has limited financial resources; it can only finance a few schools.

So the DC Archdiocese turned seven into charter schools and now turns to Boehner for financial help.  

Follow the money….When John Boehner attended Archbishop Moeller High in Cincinnati; his parents split the cost with the local parish. When his brothers attended, Boehner helped fund them. That’s the American way, where congregations and families helped their own get a religious education.

Now he is using your money to help fund Catholic students and that’s wrong.  Also, Republicans say that our budget deficit requires that we cut funds for public education at a time when municipalities are struggling to meet the needs of their public schools. So, he’s not just going against the Constitution, he’s funding  the wrong schools.   

What’s wrong today:

Yesterday the Wrongologist said that the US and NATO had really created a No Drive Zone, not a No Fly Zone in Libya since we were providing tactical air support to the rebel forces. Despite that, I said that we should back President Obama’s play unless and until we saw mission creep that would put us in another Middle Eastern quagmire.  It took 24 hours for us to start sliding down the slippery slope: The NYT tells us today     (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/world/africa/30diplo.html)  that our government is considering arming the ragtag bunch of 20-somethings that we call the rebels. The administration is seriously considering this because (1) we never simply had a humanitarian objective, we wanted Gaddifi gone,  (2) air support isn’t enough to get him out of Libya and (3) the French are pressuring Obama to agree to arm the rebels.

So here’s what’s wrong: nobody in our government knows any of the following: 

• Who we are arming?
• Will arming them be conclusive in an effort to oust Gaddifi?
• What will all the guns be used for once the revolution ends?

In fact, in an unintentionally hilarious comment, Gene A. Cretz, the American ambassador to Libya, is quoted by the NYT as saying that he was impressed by the democratic instincts of the opposition leaders and that he did not believe that they were dominated by extremists. But he said that there was no way to know if they were “100 percent kosher, so to speak”. (Emphasis by the Wrongologist) He might as well question their freshness.

And the French are pressuring us?  Last week, I heard the Obama doctrine described as: “What would the French do…?” I laughed. But it is no longer a laughing matter, it is the correct description of the Obama Doctrine.

And it is so wrong.

What’s Wrong Today:

The Obama Doctrine was unveiled on TV last night.  It was a workman-like job of outlining a rationale for spending more of our debt capacity on a third simultaneous adventure in the Middle East. The Wrongologist understands the President’s rationale and agrees with our actions to date, even though our previous efforts to save Muslim lives (Bosnia, Iraq,  Afghanistan) have not given the US an improved standing in the Arab world .

 

Turning over combat operations to NATO is a distinction without a difference:  Most of the military hardware is ours and the command and control apparatus is ours too. So what do we mean when we say we are now stepping back to a limited role? I suspect we are still in the driver’s seat, making most tactical decisions on a real-time basis. And I will bet you that all the big decisions will not be made by some combo sandwich of France, Turkey and the UK.

 

So here is what’s wrong: We are not enforcing a No Fly Zone, we are enforcing a No Drive Zone:  NATO planes have not simply kept the Libyan air force grounded and its anti-aircraft capabilities suppressed (what President Obama said we signed up for).  NATO has strafed Gaddafi’s troops and knocked out  tanks and other vehicles moving on the road to Benghazi. So the No Fly Zone instantly morphed into a No Drive Zone. It isn’t hard for a No Drive Zone to extend to close air support  for rebel irregulars. It isn’t far from that to air dropping weapons and ammunition to the valiant patriots or to parachuting in a few military advisors.

 

It is far from inconceivable that if air support doesn’t force Gaddafi out (after all, this guy has killed Americans), we will ratchet up our commitment to the anti-Gaddafi forces. That might bring about more deaths in a civil war backed by our coalition than could die if Gaddafi puts down the rebellion with extreme prejudice.

 

We have seen all of this in the past, and it isn’t hard to envision that it could happen again.

 

Americans also know about protecting the quarterback:  Our guy went about the decision to engage in Libya in a risk-adverse manner:  He lined up support in the Arab-speaking world, he got most of Europe to sign on, (Germany, please call us back) and got Russia and China not to veto UN Resolution 1973. He said the right things about how this one decision does not justify the US entering other nations under a cloak of concern about massacres. So Liberals, don’t be stupid and try to take down Obama just because he promised us he would not get involved in unnecessary wars. You may think this one is unnecessary. But that is a judgment call, and your President disagrees with you.

 

Let’s say for today, that we are going to back Obama’s play unless mission creep pollutes what was said last night.