Here we go again

Here we go again?

By JT Seravat

"Read my lips, no new taxes," was the now infamous line written by Peggy Noonan for President George H. Bush in 1988 which he delivered during his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention. A campaign promise he broke once in office. The reason given for the change was the necessity to reduce the national deficit.

"I think that it would be irresponsible for any president of the United States ever not to respond to changing circumstances," said President Bill Clinton in 1993, a year after his election and two years after his campaign promise to lower middle class taxes, although never making a definitive "read my lips..." statement to do so.

Here we go again?

The New York Times in an article, by Jackie Calmes and Jeff Zeleny, "Obama Vows Swift Action on Vast Economic Stimulus" report that, "In light of the downturn, Mr. Obama is also said to be reconsidering a key campaign pledge: his proposal to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. According to several people familiar with the discussions, he might instead let those tax cuts expire as scheduled in 2011, effectively delaying any tax increase while he gives his stimulus plan a chance to work."

As President-elect Obama appoints cabinet members from the center and center-right of the Democratic Party, he risks, early on, alienating progressives, who, in some cases, figuratively, awoke from the dead to participate and hope once more.

On Nov. 6, 2008 John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO said, "Barack Obama brings new hope to America’s working families, and our increased majority in the U.S. Senate means we can translate that hope into reality."

Will Mr. Sweeney hopes have been realized when he looks back in January of 2009?

In his 1985 book, "Presidents and Promises: From Campaign Pledge to Presidential Performance." Jeff Fishel, he concludes the Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan kept on average just 66 percent of their campaign promises.

Will we once again have "reasons" why the newest President-elect cannot keep a fundamental promise almost two months before he takes office?

And will mainstream and progressive democrats stay-the -course and hope for the best or will they interpret the "reasons" for Mr. Obama's change as nothing more than the same old "excuses" they have heard before.

Like the reasoning of President Bill Clinton's chief poll taker, Stanley Greenberg, who told the New York Times in February 1993 after Clinton proposed a tax increase on the middle class, after promising tax cuts during the campaign.

"Voters never believed in the middle-class tax cut, because they have never seen anyone get a tax cut. They always believed their taxes would go up whether Bill Clinton became President or George Bush was President."

© 2008 Seravat Writers Group LLC

Enter the Palinites

Enter the Palinites

By JT Seravat

I love seeing a Sarah Palin quote in writing. It makes me realize that I wasn’t losing my hearing or going insane when I listened to her actually say it.

"My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars...Never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

But, not to worry; to paraphrase an old self-help book, You’re OK, She’s NUTS.

No one will bother to count whether more words or air time will, when all is said and done (if it ever ends), have been given to Republican vice presidential candidate Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin than to any previous candidate for that office.

The Republican ticket’s loss means, hopefully, that Palin will someday be only a footnote. Her name will be resurrected, as her candidacy resurrected former vice president Dan Quayle, if and when another Palin-type is nominated for one of the two highest offices in the United States.

But, hell, picking on Sarah Palin is as easy as Daytona police officers making public intoxication arrests during Spring Break.

Perhaps there is something much more valuable that we can learn from Sarah Palin than how to laugh really hard and still keep breathing.

People considered for and hired for jobs without, say, less than the intellectual skills necessary, are dangerous to the world.

Sarah Palin clearly does not know her limitations, and perhaps a weekend with “Dirty Harry” to teach her some boundaries wouldn’t be a bad idea.

But, once again, picking on Palin – however irresistible – misses the point.

Although there are indications that she may have sought out the job indirectly, it was John McCain and other intelligent people in his campaign who hired her.

No one could have reasonably argued at the time (or now) that she was qualified or ready to be a “heartbeat” or a “coherent sentence” away from becoming president.

So why hire her?

She was charismatic, good looking, energetic, could repeat a few talking points with parrot-like precision, was accomplished socially and had good taste in clothes.

This is the Sarah Palin Era.

An era in which men and women who possess these qualities alone are hired to do some of our most important work.

Journalism, politics, business and other fields hire these people. Their bosses praise them. For, in the short term, these Palinites bring them the illusion of making more money or attaining more power.

In the long term, when they are hired for positions that affect their communities, states or countries, they damage those communities, states and countries and their reputations.

They are hired because they work for lower wages, their appearances will increase ratings, their salesmanship skills allow them to sell $500,000 houses to people who can’t possibly afford them, or their persuasive personalities allow them to convince others that slightly illegal manipulation of financial markets for their company’s short-term profit is a good thing.

Of course, these people are not new in this country. They’ve been around for decades – some would argue a lot longer than that.

The style-over-substance people — hell, some have even been elected president, twice.

But if we as a society have reached a point that smart people like John McCain thought it was good strategy to hire Sarah Palin to be the vice presidential candidate, that could be a problem.

If the trend continues and, some day, a Sarah Palin-type gets elected president, the 2008 financial upheaval on Wall Street and Main Street will look like a simple historical fender-bender compared with the disasters to come.

“I don’t not, you think, well, you know it could might be, if the time and when it was possible, indeed, that a hockey puck hit, well, ok, you betcha…the good ole U.S of A.”

Beware the future when Palinites rule the world.

First published November 17, 2008

© 2008 Seravat Writers Group LLC

No floods in Fallujah

No floods in Fallujah

By JT Seravat

"Shirley, damn it, you're out of peanuts, again."

"Oh shut up JT and read you're damn paper," said Shirley, my beloved bartender.

“Well, we are really sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, but the U.S. government can’t afford to give you a grant of $32,407 to clean out and rebuild your flooded home here in Iowa because we are spending that amount every 10 seconds on our war in Iraq,” said a Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman, who refused to give his name to the Johnsons.

Quotes like this are why I shouldn't read newspapers.

See, I hate to point out that residents who have lost everything in several Midwestern states cannot have the help of their own government to rebuild their lives because their government is too busy trying to rebuild the electrical grid in Iraq – the same grid that our government destroyed in the invasion and the same one that, after we do rebuild, insurgents attack and destroy over and over again, but I will.

The Johnsons, like those of us here at the bar, use common sense when looking at problems like flooding.

This is disturbing to neoconservatives and the current administration.

“Joe and his wife don’t understand the larger global ramifications of our government’s policies,” said one of those “neocons,” who refused to be identified due to fear of reprisals from reasonable Americans.

To help us better understand the “larger global ramifications,” we contacted former bar patron Tom Claulewis, now third-grade math teacher at Jefferson Elementary School in Clinton, Illinois.

We presented the former barstooler, now teacher, with the numbers involved and asked him to come up with a formula that could explain the larger economic problems and a possible solution.

We told Claulewis that the United States is spending approximately $100 million a month on rebuilding the infrastructure, or roughly $1 billion a year, resulting in a yearly budget deficit, with other government expenses of $244 billion.

The Iraqis, mainly through the sale of oil, have recently been able to build up a surplus of $76 billion, which is deposited in U.S. banks.

Now, we admit we had to speculate on the interest rate one would get for $76 billion in the bank. Frank, a welder at the end of the bar, advised us that his mother has $15,000 in the bank and she gets a 4.8 percent annual interest on her money.

We’re assuming that if you have $75,000,085,000 more than Frank’s mother in your local bank, you are most likely to get a higher interest rate, let’s say, 10 percent.

We turned the info over to math teacher Claulewis, who, by the way, finished second in the 1997 Math Teacher of the Year competition in Illinois, and let him get to work.

After five minutes at the blackboard, Claulewis called back with an answer for us.

“It would seem to me that the most economical method to solve this problem would be for the Iraqis to use some of the $760 million they earn in interest each year to rebuild their own country and have the United States use our money to help Americans,” he reported.

We sent Claulewis’ findings to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolton and Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

We received a joint press release from the State, Treasury departments and the White House.
We quote it below in its entirety; because since, after reading it 14 times we couldn't understand it we couldn't paraphrase it.

“Your government appreciates the input of groups and individuals, including America’s teachers and the less fortunate unemployed writers who spend most of their days on bar stools. The capital augmenting relative to the gamma distribution formula as a part of the Americanist bias and the use of asymptotic variance in math teacher Tom Claulewis’ formulations are interesting and in need of further study."

“Therefore, an independent advisory committee is being formed that will bring together some of the leading mathematicians, sociologists, economists and university professors from other fields who are in need of paid government advisory positions to study this complex problem.”

“The Secretaries of State and Treasury have agreed to ask this special advisory committee to report back no later than May 2018, at which time careful consideration will be given to the findings of said committee.”

“The President has personally through his 'Assistant Junior Aide for Passing Messages to other Assistants' advised me to thank you for you patriotic interest in this nation’s future.”

The release was signed by Edmund D. Egdum, Junior Undersecretary for Public Response, Office of Inquiries, State Department, United States of America.

Two plus two equals four. Three plus three equals six. Four plus four equals eight…

First published June 16, 2008

© 2008 Seravat Writers Group LLC

Crude

Crude

By JT Seravat

“Hey, Shirley, I’ll have a draft, a shot of Jack Daniels and a barrel of Texas Light Crude.”

“There you go, JT. That’ll be $142.85, or do you want me to start you a tab, darling?”

“Shirley, you’ve got to be kidding. I don't mind paying $140. for a barrel of Texas Light Crude, but $2.85 for a shot and a beer — that's outrageous. Did you guys raise your prices again?”

OK, here it is, a few possible solutions to the high price of oil, which I’ll be forwarding to the White House.

First, invade Venezuela, win the peace and give the country to the top ten brokerage firms and hedge funds that drive the price of oil up every day. I think owning their own country with the agreement they not raise the price of oil tomorrow by another $4.50 due to a rumor that the cashier at the Exxon station in Piscataway, N.J., has not gone to the bathroom in two days is a fair deal.

Second, surround the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) with New York City cops and a few SWAT teams. Bring in an FBI hostage negotiator to find out what the speculation traders really want and agree to their demands if they promise not to trade oil again. As 50 guys in $12,000 suits leave on a bus to the airport, each holding a Hermes carbon fiber briefcase with $500, million in diamonds in it and a Heidi Klum look-alike on his arm, we can be confident that oil prices will come down tomorrow. Oh, and we can all wave goodbye as they fly off on their very own Gulfstream G650.

Lastly, leaders of national organizations whose members are affected by the high price of oil and gas, including AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, Air Transport Association of America President James C. May, National Retail Federation Chief Economist Rosiland Wells, Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association President Jim Johnston, National Federation of Independent Business President Todd Stottlemyer and American Hotel and Lodging Association President Joseph A. McInerney, should go to Washington, D.C., and demand that controls be put on speculation trading in all commodities, including oil and gas.

Well, Shirley, my bartender, liked the first two ideas — she thought they were funny.

She didn’t like the last one, although she did wonder out loud why those groups wouldn’t do just what I suggested and force people in power to do something so she wouldn’t have to pay $4.22 a gallon for gas.

I was sorry to have to explain to her that it wasn’t that simple.

See, we live under a free market capitalistic society, and the government can’t go around regulating these speculators if they want to drive up the price of oil and gasoline.

You can’t have government passing laws to stop some poor commodity trader sitting on the 30th floor of The Holdemup Brothers firm’s commodity trading desk from driving up the price of oil to $300 a barrel if that’s what the market will bear; it’s un-American.

Shirley said if that was true that it was un-American to pass such a law, how come they could pass a law to arrest Frank last week for stealing a carton of cigarettes from the Pic-n-Save and sentence him to 60 days in county jail?

Good question.

First published June 29, 2008

© 2008 Seravat Writers Group LLC

Coming Soon

A View from the Bar Stool
© 2008 Seravat Writers Group LLC