The Wrongologist

What’s Wrong Today:

Today’s New
York Times reports that The recent economic crisis left the median American
family in 2010 with no more wealth than in the early 1990s, erasing almost two
decades of accumulated prosperity, the Federal Reserve said Monday.

A hypothetical family richer than half the
nation’s families and poorer than the other half had a net worth of $77,300 in
2010, compared with $126,400 in 2007, the Fed said. The crash of housing prices
directly accounted for three-quarters of the loss.

The 2008 Great Recession and its now-prolonged
aftermath requires us to re-examine
some particularly bad ideas that have become the dominant free-market
paradigm.

So, What’s Wrong?

The Wrongologist contends today’s version of
business’ big ideas no longer function
in a manner that makes all stakeholders better off. Let’s remember that
the stakeholders include the shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers and
the communities in which the firm operates.

Here
are three Big and Wrong ideas that need to be modified or else just go away, if
we are to get back on a track to balanced growth:

#1) “Markets must be free “
– free-marketers contend that regulation should be avoided because it restricts
economic growth and market freedom.

The Talking Heads tell us that markets
produce the most efficient and just outcomes if they are free from regulation.
That makes them “efficient” because businesses and the individuals
who run them know best how to utilize their resources. Unfettered markets are
“just” because they reward individuals according to their
productivity.

Following this advice, the US deregulated
businesses, reduced taxes and welfare, and adopted freer trade. The result has largely been the opposite
of what was promised: We
have experienced rising income inequality and slower growth, both of which were
masked until recently by increasing credit expansion and increased
productivity.

With a few exceptions, all of today’s rich
countries, including Britain and the U.S., reached that status through
protectionism, subsidies, and other policies that they and their IMF, WTO, and
World Bank now advise developing nations not to adopt.

Free-market proponents usually respond that
the U.S. succeeded despite, not because of, protectionism. The problem with
that is the number of other nations paralleling the early growth strategy of
the U.S. and Britain (Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Singapore,
Sweden, Taiwan), and the fact that apparent exceptions (Hong Kong, Switzerland,
The Netherlands) did so by ignoring foreign patents (oops, that’s a free-market
‘no-no’).

Regulatory oversight of our substantially
free market hasn’t materially affected our economic development and confusion
about the regulatory environment is not stopping corporations from investing. Lack
of consistent demand is holding them back.

#2) “Companies must maximize return
to shareholders”. Today,
shareholders are the most mobile of corporate stakeholders. For
example, high frequency trading represents 70+% of trading by volume. They
often hold ownership for fractions of a second. These high frequency
shareholders ONLY want corporate strategies that maximize short-term profits
and dividends. They are in bed with professional managers who now own large
chunks of equity in public firms. Coupled with the growing trend of lesser, or
no, voting rights for stock ownership by the public, professional managers have
a free hand to get wealthy without responsibility for the longer term corporate
performance. Here are some of the wrong tools they use:

 •  Increased share
buybacks. Buybacks accounted for less than 5% of
corporate profits until the early 1980s. They were 90% in 2007, and 280% in
2008. One economist estimated that had
GM not spent $20.4 billion on buybacks between 1986 and 2002, it could
have prevented bankruptcy in 2009.

 •  Offshoring and
Outsourcing are also driven by short-term profit
perspectives in many cases. These have also brought large-scale layoffs. Over
the past five years, our top multinationals have created 5 million more jobs
off shore than they have in the US. Clearly, we see our interest in
full-employment undermined by corporate outsourcing goals.  

We
know that US Managers are overpriced – They make
substantially more today relative to their predecessors (about 10X what
managers made in the mid-1960s; (inflation would
have accounted for less than 7X).

Compared to counterparts in other rich
countries, US managers today make up
to 20X more.

We
should be asking: If American CEOs are worth so much, why are their companies losing
out to foreign competitors? Why aren’t they investing like their foreign
counterparts, instead of sitting on some $2 trillion in mostly cash assets? There are so many investment opportunities that could make them even more money; for example, investing in oil stocks could be a hugely successful move, as detailed on https://www.energyfunders.com/blog/whats-the-best-way-to-invest-in-oil/.

#3)”Making rich people richer makes
the rest of us richer.” Really? “Trickle-down” economics is
based on the belief that the poor maximize current consumption, while the rich
mostly invest and investment creates GDP growth.

However,
the highest-ever growth rates in personal income in the US occurred during the
years 1950-1973, despite increased taxation of the rich. This was also the case in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

During this period, per capita income grew
at 2-3%. Prior to that, it grew at 1-1.5%/year.

Since then, tax cuts for the rich and
financial deregulation have allowed greater paychecks for top managers and
financiers. Between 1979 and 2006, the top 0.1% increased their share of
national income from 3.5% to 11.6%.

The result? Investment as a ratio of
national output has fallen in all rich economies and the rate at which the
total economic pie expands, has decreased.

So, Trickle Down has to be deleted from our
“economic fix-it” tool bag.

Bottom-Line:
We
need different ideas to inform our effort to steer the ship of state to higher GDP growth and full employment. How about ending our love affair with unrestrained, free-market
capitalism and installing a better-regulated variety? 

• Let’s make financial risk taking less attractive. U.S. financial assets/GDP had exceeded 900% by the early
  2000’s.  They have averaged 4-12% return
  since deregulation, higher than most non-financial firms, which range between
  2-5%. This focus diverts attention from manufacturing and its potentially much
  larger employment. Methods of doing so are being discussed in business and
  political circles. They include taxing market transactions, indexing bankers’
  bonuses to the leverage used to produce profits, banning short-selling and
  derivatives, and limiting bank leverage

• How about tying executive performance to adequate returns for all STAKEHOLDERS
  rather than to maximum return to shareholders?

• How about recognizing that trickle down doesn’t work?

What would be wrong with trying a few different ideas?

What’s Wrong Today:

On
May 9, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill for
Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (H.R. 5326) that
drastically reduces funding for the Census Bureau and makes participation in
the American Community Survey voluntary.

According to the National
Association of Business Economics,(NABE) the legislation:

•
Terminates the American Community Survey
(ACS);

•
Cancels the 2012 Economic Census; and

•
Halts development of cost-saving measures for
the decennial census.

The vote was largely along party
lines.

So, What’s Wrong?

Well, how
much data do you need if the answer to all of our problems is lower taxes and
reduced regulation?

It’s
not that the House Republicans reach different conclusions based on the data.
It’s not even that they contest the accuracy of the data. They are fighting to prevent the data from even being “collected”.

Most
U.S. economic data comes from three federal agencies: the Census Bureau, the
BEA, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They have a combined budget of $1.6 billion,
less than 0.05 percent
of President Barack Obama’s
$3.7 trillion
proposed budget. Census
data are funneled to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), which shares its
conclusions with the president’s
Council of Economic Advisers, the Federal Reserve Board, and Congress.

How
are Economic Census data used?

• By the federal government as an
input to calculate elements of key economic indicators, such as economic growth
(GDP), prices, and productivity;

• By businesses in evaluating
whether to expand into new market geographies;

• By economic development
commissions in attracting new businesses to their areas; and

• By companies to benchmark
performance against industry averages (see Ford example below)

How
are ACS data used?

• By corporations to examine
workforce characteristics of neighborhoods to determine optimal locations for new
factories or sales centers;

• By homebuilders looking to
tailor new subdivisions to surrounding neighborhoods based on income, family
size and existing home values; and

• By governments in planning
resource allocation to meet the educational, safety and housing needs of their
citizens.

As
reported in The Economist,
the ACS conducts an annual poll of 3 million households each year. One outcome
of the last survey was research by the Department of Veterans Affairs and four
universities to determine geographic concentrations of veterans in the US. The
survey found that 300,000 vets live in Maricopa County Arizona and that
two-thirds are over 55. They also learned that poor, older vets are twice as
likely as non-veterans to be homeless.

This sort of
data helps target resources to those who need it most.

Daniel Webster (R-FL) led the effort to
kill the survey. He said: “what really promotes business…is liberty, not
demand for information”.

He complains that the ACS survey
is “random”, not “scientific”. This is from a guy with a degree in electrical
engineering from Georgia Tech.

Poor
Congress critter
Webster: real scientists agree
that randomized survey data are well, quite scientific.

This guy is clearly not
related to the great
Senator Daniel Webster who served in the Senate with such distinction in
the early 19th century.

The Economic Census happens every
five years. According to its funding request, the Economic Census needs funds
to cover the cost of mailing 4.6 million
forms to 3.1 million
businesses, as well as conducting about 500,000 reminder phone calls and
sending 4.2 million
follow-up packages. That idea was lost on the committee, which reduced funding in part because it says the bureau won’t start analyzing the
data until the end of fiscal year 2013.

Business
Week reported that a surprise to the GOP is that economists and business
leaders, including the US Chamber of Commerce, were against the House’s efforts
to cut funding to the agencies that gather economic data.

Some
of the biggest users of the data are the in-house economists at big companies. “We
are total data hogs,”
says Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, chief economist at Ford Motor (F). The most recent GDP estimate
released by the BEA showed that motor vehicle output made up half of the 2.2 percent
in GDP growth in the first quarter, giving Hughes-Cromwick a window into
consumer spending habits that directly affect Ford’s
revenue. Says Hughes-Cromwick: “It’s
crucial to keep up with changes … and you do that with good data.”

Conservatives
believe the Census Bureau does too much already. “They waste a share of their budget
on studies that no one actually uses,”
says Chris Edwards, an economist with the Cato Institute, who cited periodic
surveys on such items as the total hog count in the U.S. to prove his point. “A
lot of that could be done by the private sector.”

He might tell us why the private
sector has failed so miserably in producing survey data of remotely the
quality, consistency and usefulness (including for their own businesses) that
the federal agencies do,
after all, they are simply lazy bureaucrats who are not subject to market
discipline and all that good Galt stuff.

In
the movie, “Wag the Dog”, they fabricate a fake culture to go with
their fake war and they want to popularize an Albanian dish.

They ask, “who
knows anything about Albanian food?”

Answer: “Nobody”…

so,
Denis Leary says: “Good, then we can make up whatever we want.”

 

 

Taking
a cue from House Republicans, I disconnected the gas gauge and oil light on my
car since they waste valuable energy.

What’ s Wrong Today:

Two
congressmen are attempting to insert a provision in the National Defense
Authorization act that would allow
the Department of Defense to subject the US domestic public to government propaganda. The amendment is
sponsored by Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) and Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA).

The
amendment strikes the current ban on
domestic dissemination of propaganda material produced by the State
Department and the Pentagon that is contained in the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948
and the Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to
protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.

The
amendment would give sweeping powers to the State Department and Pentagon to
push television, radio, newspaper, and social media to the U.S. public.

Thornberry
and Smith, in a press release, warned that in the
Internet age, the current law “ties the hands of America’s diplomatic
officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively
communicate in a credible way.” They also state that the informational material used overseas to influence foreign
audiences is too good to not use at home, and those new techniques are
needed to help fight Al-Qaeda, a borderless enemy whose own propaganda reaches
Americans online.

So
What’s Wrong?

This is just one more log on a bonfire of
disappointment the Wrongologist sees with the current direction of our
government. There is no question that the government has used propaganda in the
US (see: reasons to invade Iraq, Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman), but they had to
be tricky and/or subtle to keep it within the law.

 The Pentagon spends some $4 billion
a year to sway public opinion. It was recently revealed by USA Today the DoD spent $202 million solely on information operations in Iraq
and Afghanistan last year. With this much money, the Pentagon becomes a
huge player in the domestic news industry immediately. 

There are issues for
each citizen to consider because it removes some protection for Americans:

·  There
will be no oversight of the people who will put out this information

·   There
will be limited checks and balances

·   No
one will know if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely
false

 

Professional reporters at major news
outlets are supposed to fill this need. Even if they have a bias, over time, it
becomes evident and readers can factor it in. But even these guys, when working
in good faith, can cover all sides and do research before laying out the logic
and judgment on what they see as the truth.

But the
MSM has evolved. In many cases we no longer see reporters, but stenographers. Most
of the reporting in the MSM is designed by producers and talking heads to
repeat the well-polished spin by politicos and partisans. In the worse case, reporters
rarely challenge or ask for proof statements.  

The unleashing of a domestic propaganda program by
our government, when coupled with the malaise in journalism, will push us away
from the MSM towards non-traditional sources for news that lack the resources
of the Pentagon. This makes us vulnerable to a possible lack of journalistic
integrity or editorial control (“who is your 2nd source for that?”) at
these internet news aggregators or blogging sources.

This is
dangerous. As Juan Cole reported over the
weekend regarding this amendment:

“Nothing speaks
more urgently to the creeping fascism of American politics than the assertion
by our representatives, who apparently have never read a book on Germany in
the 1930s-1940s or on the Soviet Union in the Stalin period, that
forbidding DoD and the State Department from subjecting us to government
propaganda “ties the hands of America’s diplomatic officials, military, and
others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way.”

(Emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Propaganda has many
meanings and applications, but with social media, it’s likely to go into some
very disturbing directions:

·   In December, the
Pentagon used software to monitor the Twitter debate over Bradley
Manning’s pre-trial hearing

·   Another program
developed by the Pentagon designed sock puppets (an online identity
used for purposes of deception) on social
media outlets

·   Last year, General
William Caldwell deployed an information operations team under his command that
had been trained in psychological operations to influence visiting American
politicians to Kabul

Last year, Wired
Magazine reported that the Defense Department is trying to seek out
“persuasion campaign structures and influence operations” developing across the
social sphere through its Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC)
program. SMISC is supposed to quickly flag rumors and emerging themes on social
media, figure out who’s behind it.

You can be sure this is the
direction the Pentagon will be most interested in pursuing. After all, they
don’t need traditional pro-war propaganda, they have the MSM for that.

The
upshot? The Department of Defense will be using the same tools on U.S. citizens
as they do on a hostile, foreign, population in Afghanistan.

No one
should want a law this significant, whatever the pros and cons, to pass without anyone noticing.

Where is the MSM on this one?

 “This country has come to feel the same when
Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.” –Will Rogers

What’s Wrong Today:

Recently, there here has been a
rash of statements across many segments of our society saying: “this is not who we
are”.


It is becoming an automatic
response from business, politics, military, and government officials after some
horrifying event occurs. Some suit steps to a microphone and states that
whatever happened, it is certainly “not who we are”.

So,
consider these dispatches from the front:

This
is not a reflection of who we are”
–Jeff Gearhart, Wall-Mart’s general counsel, on the
firm’s Mexico bribery

“This
is not who we are”

-Hillary Clinton on the US massacre of 16 Afghan
villagers

“This is not who we
are”
–General John Allen, commander of forces in
Afghanistan, on Koran burning

“This
is not who we are”
–Leon Panetta on troops posing with enemy body parts

“This
is not who we are”
–Hillary Clinton, also on troops posing with enemy body
parts

Spying by police “is not who we are”
–Newark Mayor Cory Booker, commenting on the NYPD
spying on Muslims in Newark, NJ

“using
pepper spray on peaceful protesters…is not who we are”
– UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, after the pepper
spraying of students

 

“the assertions made by [Jeff Smith] do not reflect our values,
our culture…at Goldman Sachs” (In
other words, this is not who we are)

-Lloyd Blankfein, CEO
of Goldman Sachs

So,
What’s Wrong?

If
these acts are “not who we are”, they sure
are who we are becoming. If they are not “who we are,” then why so many recent examples of bad behavior?

The transgressions
are always framed as “one bad apple in the barrel”. The “not who we are” phase has
moved up near the top in American PR usage. It is now just like your child’s: “it wasn’t me, it was him.”

In the
business world,
we are consumed by winning; coming in second is for losers. The pressure to
increase profits is unremitting. This has created a culture in the financial
services industry that tolerates making huge (hedged or unhedged) bets with the
capital of our banks. While at Walmart, bribery of foreign officials just
another arrow in the quiver.

In the military, the loathsome acts
by our warriors in Afghanistan may indicate what our military’s culture has
become. Or, these acts might just be a direct result of the constant pressure
of returning to the battlefield for a 4th or 5th
deployment in 10 years that is caused by our politicians’ inability to say “it’s
over”.

In law
enforcement,
local and federal agents are increasingly militarized. Their culture is
evolving from “protect and serve”, to enforcing order and protecting property.
They see the public, particularly protesters, as a kind of “enemy” to be
subdued. Protesters are likely to be perceived as threats to the authority of law
enforcement, so they are beaten, pepper-sprayed, spied upon and locked up.

Meanwhile, we participate in a public farce
perpetrated by the suits, based upon lip service to the morals and culture of
the recent past. And it plays out in an endless loop in our media.

It is time to stop pretending that we are
not accountable, the “who” can only be us.  If we are truly better than this,
if this is not who we are, then we had
better act quickly to change both who represents us, and the culture of our businesses
and institutions.

Ultimately,
we all share the blame for the actions of our government, our economy, our
culture. We need to hold all levels of business and government accountable for
any action that betrays America’s promise.

 

Walt Kelley had it right in “Pogo”
in 1970: “We have met the enemy
and he is us”.

What’s
Wrong Today:

President Obama made a surprise trip to
Kabul on Tuesday to sign a Strategic
Partnership Agreement (SPA) between the United States and Afghanistan
in a midnight ceremony meant to signify the beginning of the end of a war that
has lasted for more than a decade. Here he is in a helicopter with Ryan Crocker
on the way to meet Hamid Karzai:

The timing of the
trip, administration officials said, was dictated by the desire of both
presidents to sign the agreement before a NATO summit meeting in Chicago later
this month. But it also came just four days before two big campaign rallies that
serve as the symbolic kickoff of Mr. Obama’s re-election bid.

 

“The reason the Afghans have a new tomorrow
is because of you,” Mr. Obama said to several hundred troops assembled in a
cavernous hangar, against a backdrop of American flags and several armored vehicles.

 

The SPA is an executive order, not a treaty, since the President did
not take it to Congress. On the Afghan side, it also has the look and feel of an
executive order since it was not approved by the Afghanistan parliament.
Although the White House assures us that it has the force of law, it clearly
falls short of being a binding treaty.

So What’s Wrong?

1.  
How is it possible
that we can keep troops in Afghanistan for another 12 years without the agreement
of the American people?

Today,
there are about 88,000 US troops in Afghanistan. That will come down to 69,000
by September, and then most of those will leave by the end of 2013. The
document pledges that the US will have
no permanent bases in Afghanistan, but the issue won’t even come up
again for discussion for about a decade. Will Congress authorize this idea? Will
there be any discussion of this decision in the Congress?

2.  
Where will we find
the funding for Afghanistan’s domestic military to the tune of $4 Billion/year?

Well, we
know that Afghanistan cannot afford the enormous army being created for it, so
it will go on being supported by ‘strategic rent’ from outside powers or it
will collapse.

    3.  
How will this be
successful considering that our current strategy in Afghanistan is wobbly at best.
As a reminder, it consists of:

          a. Continuing
the counter-insurgency strategy, (COIN) which means we root out the Taliban while winning the hearts
and minds of the Afghans.

There is little reason to believe that COIN
is succeeding. See the Wrongologist’s prior posts, here,
here,
and
here.

The Afghanis’ hearts and minds have been
un-won by the toxic combo of night raids, peeing on corpses, burning Qur’ans,
etc., etc.

  b.
Training a capable new Afghanistan
National Army (ANA).

The ANA, now 187,000 strong, has an 86%
illiteracy rate. It is disproportionately Tajik (Dari Persian-speaking Sunnis are
not respected by the majority Pashtun) and has little or no buy-in from
Qandahar and Helmand provinces (Taliban strongholds).

Only one ANA military unit is assessed as
able to fight independently, (out of nearly 100). It is over-equipped, under-trained
and lacking in initiative and esprit de corps. That this army could defeat the
Taliban when the US and NATO depart is not at all a sure thing.

 c. Using
drone strikes to hit al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Pakistan.

We know
that the drone strikes have created a strong backlash in Pakistan. When the US
air force inadvertently hit 24 Pakistani troops in December, the Pakistani
parliament stopped NATO supply trucks from using the Pakistan route from
Karachi to the Khyber pass, marooning
thousands of tons of military equipment intended for the Afghanistan
National Army.

The
Pakistani Parliament is recommending against letting the US ship military goods
through Pakistan, and against allowing further drone strikes.

d.
Finding a way to replace Hamid Karzai
with someone else in 2012 who will be less corrupt but still compliant.

As Andrew
Cordesman said on May 1 in a Center
for Strategic and International Studies article:

“Every day seems to
widen the gap between the goals the United States is seeking to achieve in
Afghanistan and its ability to achieve them. Even apparent progress, like the
Strategic Framework Agreement between the United States and Afghanistan, seems
more a warning on the inability to define specific goals, milestones, and
resources—coupled with growing restraints on U.S. military action—than an
accomplishment.”

Cordesman
goes on to talk about the Taliban’s strategy:

“They [Taliban]
don’t need to initiate attacks on ISAF and U.S. forces; they only need to wait
and let them shrink. They can recover their “momentum” at the political level
by minimizing direct clashes with U.S. and ISAF forces, building up their
capabilities in their sanctuaries in Pakistan, and focusing on increasing their
influence in Afghanistan through intimidation and terrorism, attacks on Afghan
officers and officials….As in Vietnam, the insurgents can lose every major
tactical engagement and still win control in some Pashtun areas once U.S. and
ISAF forces are gone”.

The Wrongologist recommends Cordesman’s article; it is certainly worth a close read. He believes that our
present strategy will almost certainly fail to secure the south and the east of
Afghanistan.
He suggests we need to concentrate U.S., ISAF, and Afghan government resources
on the areas already largely under Afghan government control. He argues that instead of “clear, build,
and hold,” strategy, we need to “retain, secure, and support” the areas we
currently control.

Afghanistan is the war we should have won, but we
blew it ten years ago, and there are no do-over’s. While the President is drawing
the war down, he is not getting us out. It is not clear what the Pentagon’s
strategy is. What plan will we follow to secure a positive outcome?

Asking the nation to spend 12 more years fighting a
rear guard action needs to be explained in terms that the American people can
understand and accept.

That was not
a mission accomplished by the President’s speech to the nation on
Tuesday night.

What’s Wrong Today:

Over the past few days, Mitt Myth Romney has taken credit for GM being alive and Osama Bin Laden being dead.

On April 28, the Romney campaign turned facts on their heads regarding the auto bail-out. When asked whether Mitt’s skepticism about the auto industry bail out would hurt him in Michigan, Eric Fehrnstrom, key Romney operative said:

“His position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed…He said, ‘If you want to save the auto industry, just don’t write them a check. That will seal their doom. What they need to do is go through a managed bankruptcy process’….Consider that the….only economic success that President Obama has had, is because he followed Mitt Romney’s advice.”

Two days later, Mr. Romney went to work on the killing of Osama Bin Laden, saying, while answering press questions in Portsmouth NH:  

“Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order,”

Romney said that he would have sent in the Navy Seals, while recalling the former Democratic president who was derided by critics for weak leadership during the 1979-1980 Iran hostage crisis.

So, What’s Wrong?

Mr. Myth apparently is unaware that the media keeps records of what people in the public eye say.

First, the auto bail out: The Wrongologist has previously reported on what Romney actually said about the auto industry bailout. Here it is:

On February 12, 2012, Romney said:  “Three years ago, in the midst of an economic crisis, a newly elected President Barack Obama stepped in with a bailout for the auto industry. The indisputable good news is that Chrysler and General Motors are still in business. The equally indisputable bad news is that all the defects in President Obama’s management of the American economy are evident in what he did.”

/snip/

“The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.”

(Emphasis by the Wrongologist)

 Why didn’t Myth think of this before the Michigan primary, when he was being hammered both for his op-ed piece quoted above and the November 2008 piece in the NY Times, entitled, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”? 

Romney needs this new auto industry spin to play in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio in order to take the White House.

Second, getting Bin Laden: Romney’s position today is, of course “I would have gone after him. Even Jimmy Carter would have gone after him.”

Well, there you go again. Here is what Romney said in 2007 while running for the Republican nomination while speaking with AP reporter Liz Sidoti:

SIDOTI: Why haven’t we caught bin Laden in your opinion?

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: I think, I wouldn’t want to over-concentrate on Bin Laden. He’s one of many, many people who are involved in this global Jihadist effort. He’s by no means the only leader. It’s a very diverse group – Hamas, Hezbollah, AL-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood and of course different names throughout the world. It’s not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person. It is worth fashioning and executing an effective strategy to defeat global, violent Jihad and I have a plan for doing that.

(Emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Back then, Sen. John McCain was his rival for the nomination and stated at the time that Romney’s comments about the importance of catching Osama bin Laden reflect a “naiveté” about the war on terror. Here is what John McCain said:

“[I]t takes a degree of naiveté to think he’s [bin Laden is] not an element in the struggle against radical Islam…” 

In the Second presidential debate on foreign policy, Oct. 7, 2008, then-candidate Obama said:

 “If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaida. That has to be our biggest national security priority.”

Clearly, there has been no flip-flop by the President.

It’s fairly easy to see what Myth is trying to do and what he is thinking:

“What does this particular audience need to hear me say at this particular time?”

This is the only possible explanation that consistently accounts for everything Romney says today, much of which invalidates what he has said, even as recently as a few months ago.

Romney has no core beliefs; he is always a tabula rasa, the etch-a-sketch his staff talked about.< /font>

Finally, about the Carter comment: What has Romney been doing the past eight years? Certainly not trying to change the world like former President Carter, who is as decent a man as there is. While Republicans don’t want President Obama to take credit for getting bin Laden, they’ve never stopped snipping at President Carter for what he tried to do.

Myth’s comment is just plain catty. But then, this is the guy who insults the cookies when he’s the guest.