For want of another hobby, I am in the habit of emailing myself bits of things I read from time to time. Once I get enough of these bits, I try to weave them into a semi-humorous narrative. And then sometimes I do this...
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When last I set out to blog it looked as if Newt Gingrich had thoroughly defeated Mitt in the last debate and would go on to win… in Iowa. Or that the somewhat lacking in (whatever it may be) presidential bid of the front runner would somehow be derailed. Then Mitt cruised in New Hampshire. Obviously, I was wrong and the well funded blow dry moderate from central casting was a shoe in to be the Republican Candidate. After tonight, with Newt having again surged back from the dead, I could explain my silence on the subject by simply stating that I was right the first time. But I am not going to do that.
Unless the Republican Party just wants to punt this one (and it might*1), I highly doubt that Newt will get the go. His conduct in the South Carolina primary was nothing short of disgraceful. He played to the louts in the room. As it turns out the louts outnumbered the normal people. You have to wonder who these people are who have handed Newt such a resurrection. Could they be:
The same dumb people who don't remember what happened 4 years ago, 8 years ago and 12 years ago; that's who TV anymore. The TV watching people are voters and they are breeders. They eat fast food, get their flu shots, drink the floride-ladden swill called tap water and they believe what they're told by authorities after having proper response to authority pounded into their heads for 12 years in the gulags called public schools.
Wow. That sounds like me. (*2) But I don’t think I would vote for Newt. Or Mitt. Per this bit of common wisdom, these guys shouldn’t have gotten this far:
Daters whose names matched those previously rated by teachers as belonging to "quarrelsome" students were also discriminated against, revealing a definite trend about character assumptions...[R]esearchers concluded that an "unfortunate" first name may certainly inhibit relationship formation, and may even increase one's likelihood to be smoker.
"Negative names evoke negative interpersonal reactions, which in turn influence people's life outcomes for the worse," the study said. The trend across all sub-experiments, which drew on 11,813 adults, indicated those with "unfortunate" first names were generally more likely to smoke, be less educated and have lower self-esteem than those whose names were attractive.
So that means Newton and Willard Milton never date, never breed, never go onto fame and riches. Perhaps they would have been better off with common South Carolina first names like Bubba and Octis? Would someone please inform them of this. And it seems poor Mitt may have other problems:
And, according to the WSJ, Romney also may have made use of offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands to further avoid paying his taxes. Romney's company, Bain Capital, made liberal use of offshore vehicles and one way to avoid paying the UBIT tax referenced above is to claim that Romney was not investing in a private equity fund, but rather in an off-shore corporation that itself invested in the private equity fund. ABC News reports that Bain Capital has set up over 138 secretive offshore funds in the Cayman Islands.
Romney has reported recently that his actual effective tax rate is around 15% per year. Robert Reich, as reported in the Huffington Post, suggests that Romney and his private equity funds most likely made ample use of the carried interest rule that allows hedge funds, LBO funds and private equity funds to compensate their managers at capital gains rates rather than ordinary income rates, an advantage only available to wealthy Wall Street insiders.
But Romney was not happy paying 15% per year. By bastardizing the intent of IRA legislation meant to help working Americans save for retirement, Romney has succeeded in shielding $20 million to $100 million of his staggering personal wealth from all taxes to date, an effective tax rate of 0%.
Mitt Romney with all his tax dodging schemes has as much chance of being elected president in this tough economic climate as a draft dodger would have had during the Vietnam War.
I wouldn’t quite go that far. I still think Romney would have a chance if he campaigned as what he is: a mildly technocratic moderate. Of course this would make him Obama without the tan, which is essentially all reasonable Republicans can hope for. From what I can tell (from his words if not his record) Romney is running as a champion of Freewheeling Capitalism. Unless Romney is suggesting a “hair of the dog that bit us” cure this would be an odd thing to champion, given what has happened to our economy. If these tea leaves are right, the worst may just be around the corner:
That raises some tricky questions about the global economic system. How can you ensure a fair trading system if some companies enjoy the support, overt or covert, of a national government? How can you prevent governments from using companies as instruments of military power? And how can you prevent legitimate worries about fairness from shading into xenophobia and protectionism? Some of the biggest trade rows in recent years—for example, over the China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s attempt to buy America’s Unocal in 2005, and over Dubai Ports’ purchase of several American ports—have involved state-owned enterprises. There are likely to be many more in the future.
The rise of state capitalism is also undoing many of the assumptions about the effects of globalisation. Kenichi Ohmae said the nation state was finished. Thomas Friedman argued that governments had to don the golden straitjacket of market discipline. Naomi Klein pointed out that the world’s biggest companies were bigger than many countries. And Francis Fukuyama asserted that history had ended with the triumph of democratic capitalism. Now across much of the world the state is trumping the market and autocracy is triumphing over democracy.
Of course, the musings of amateurs should be taken with a grain of salt. These ‘think piece’ writers get paid by the word and their rent is due every month. Like Cramer on Mad Money, being wrong about things yesterday in no way impairs one’s need to make predictions tomorrow. They are a lot like pulp writers in that regard: come up with dreck that sells. If I want the future predicted, I’ll take my advice from a certified genius, like Thomas Edison, here making his predictions about life in 2011 to the Miami Herald circa 1911:
We are already on the verge of discovering the secret of transmuting metals, which are all substantially the same in matter, though combined in different proportions. Before long it will be an easy matter to convert a truck load of iron bars into as many bars of virgin gold. In the magical days to come there is no reason why our great liners should not be of solid gold from stem to stern; why we should not ride in golden taxicabs, or substituted gold for steel in our drawing room suites. Only steel will be the more durable, and thus the cheaper in the long run.
***(*1) I honestly do think the Republicans are out to punt this one. Demographics are destiny and the party has no future as a lily white bastion of the ultra religious and the ultra well to do. Or at least not a future as a majority party. The religion of the Republican Party has to be "Conservatism" or some sort or at least "More Moderate" if it is going to have any traction at all. Where does it really get them to unseat the first elected black President? Answer: Not really anywhere, if you intend to broaden the party's base. Everything said. Obama is a "Less Moderate" and hardly a liberal or a socialist. In the end, however, offering folks "social democracy" beats offering people nothing--which is what the Republicans have been serving.
(*2) I am always on the look out for statements slamming the common man. And it's not because I agree with them. I just find them humorous in a meant to be ego-maniacal but really self-hating sort of way. As the old flim-flam man Herbert W. Armstrong used to say "God loves evil men. He does not love what they do. And if you don't think you're one of them, then you're full of it."
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Speaking of prognosticators, I have some new information from that famous one man spam machine Bruce Porteous. I basically started my blogging career thanks to Bruce. He's been predicting the end of the world... for a while. I have his latest and hope to be doing a point for point break down of Bruce and his genre of doom for you some time in the future. (He is essentially a follower of Herbert W. Armstrong, another doom and gloomer.) I also have some new information about our pal Anthony Norvell that someone was nice enough to email me. The entire revised Norvell piece should be up on our website relatively soon.
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As we can see from the above, our pals at Google still don't have the typography down for this interweb blogging thingy they have given me for free. Not that I am really complaining. I'm old enough to still be amazed that the thing works at all.
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