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Obama flunks Negotiation 101

Monday, March 7, 2011

This is all you need to read to understand why the Republicans have been running the country for the past two years. Obama on the budget issue:

“My administration has already put forward specific cuts that meet congressional Republicans halfway. And I’m prepared to do more,” said Obama.

Yep. Start by “meeting them half way” and then tell them you are prepared to cave even more. That’s a truly effective negotiating technique. In similar circumstances, Clinton made them look like idiots. I won’t characterize the way Republicans have made Obama look.

Addendum: I suppose it will be argued by some that Obama is scoring political points by making himself look good in contrast to the Republicans. He may be. He certainly looks like a lock to win the election in 2012, despite his failure to deal effectively with the economy. But his success and our success are two different things. If the best Democratic strategy is to win every other election by allowing the Republicans, in alternate election cycles, to get everything they want and, in the process, reminding the short memoried public why they voted them out the last time, with the Democrats getting nothing while they’re in the majority, then electoral success gains us nothing but odd election cycles in which the Republican takeover of Washington is somewhat slowed. Obama is already more of a Republican than Bill Clinton ever was, and we are going to have 5 more years of him meeting the Republicans half way, with that halfway point constantly shifting in a rightward direction. That’s success we can’t believe in.


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Good Idea

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Something for Jepsen to consider:

“Guilford County [North Carolina] Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen wants an investigation into a service used by major mortgage companies who may have made false statements to avoid fees that cost the county $1.3 million in lost revenue.

He wants to sue for the money At first blush, the legal theory seems to make sense. When you or I convey an interest in real property, it is not valid unless properly recorded, with fees paid. Banks, being laws unto themselves, apparently thought they could avoid all that. A class action approach on behalf of all the towns would appear to make sense. They could certainly use the money, and what better source could be found?

I am, by the way, one of the few lawyers out there who has gotten a judgment against MERS. It’s a long story, but I successfully defended a foreclosure and got the judge to order MERS to pay my fees. It’s a shadowy company, actually. It took us forever to figure out where they were incorporated, etc., so that we could collect. I’ve never been good about going after money, but at the time we had an associate who took such things as a personal challenge. She collected every dime.

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Sixteen days and counting

Saturday, March 5, 2011

We all know, ” for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty“, and we can now all rejoice that those 28 days have now blessedly departed. Tis true, the snows have not yet fully melted, and we’ve had trouble stringing two sunny days together, not to mention two days above freezing, but small signs of hope have appeared to give us faith that our February bred depression will soon be over. A few days ago, our yard played host to a convention of many hundreds of migrating blackbirds, who chattered among themselves as loudly and nonsensically as a Republican convention of similar size might do. Today, as you can see below, these daffodils, these happy few, this band of brothers, pushed their heads through the frozen soil to announce to the world that better days lie ahead, that we have not “clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast” for naught, and we will soon have sunshine, baseball, and barbecues, though, alas, we will still have Republicans.

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Friday Night Music

Friday, March 4, 2011

This shows how behind the times I am. I had never heard of Corrine Bailey Rae before I saw her perform with Herbie Hancock at the White House. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t at the White House. I was in front of my Ipad, watching the PBS app. This is from an event honoring Paul McCartney for winning the Gershwin award, so it was an evening of McCartney authored songs, tailor made for a geezer like me.

Anyway, I thought this performance was great, and I’ve meant to put it up for weeks, but one thing and another, what with rebellions in Wisconsin, et. al., I’ve had to put it off.

Corrine Bailey Rae and Herbie Hancock performing Blackbird:


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Having it both ways with the unions

Friday, March 4, 2011

This is the second time I’ve read that Malloy claims that he won in November because of the unions, and that the race was as close as it was because of the unions. It’s a clever formulation. Sure, the unions helped push him to victory by busting their asses, but they only needed to bust their asses because of the resentment so many voters felt toward those very unions. Or toward state workers. Or toward people who weren’t them making money, or getting benefits. Or something.

I can buy into the first assertion: he wouldn’t have won without the unions busting their asses. But is there any empirical support for the latter half of his assertion? Malloy’s was the only state wide race that was at all close. Are we to believe that anti-union resentment was focused on the governor’s race, to the exclusion of the other races? Which of the other Democrats was anti-union? Is there any hard evidence that anyone motivated by anti-union animus, as opposed to a generalized sense of misdirected tea party style grievance, would have voted for Malloy but for his support for the unions, or their support for him? My general sense, though I could be seriously misinformed, is that anti-union people, particularly people who make their decisions based on anti-union animus, tend to be hard core Republicans, who wouldn’t vote for Democrats under any circumstances.

Maybe there is polling that supports Malloy’s assertion, but I’m guessing this is something he simply came up with in order to justify his partial (he’s no Scott Walker, and I’m not implying that he is) demonization of state workers. Sure, he says, you helped me, but I’m going to have to stick it to you, and by the way, it’s really your fault.

But, of course, it’s not their fault, or only in a very small way. It’s not their fault that the state chose not to adequately fund their pensions. It’s not their fault that the right wing has been able to spread the myth that they are overpaid, particularly given the typical refusal of Democratic politicians to refute that myth. Maybe it’s their fault for failing to protest that inadequate funding or for not demanding more than lip service from people like Malloy, but those failings didn’t likely lose Malloy many votes.

As Jonathan Pelto has been pointing out on his blog, Malloy seems to be setting up these workers to be the scapegoats when his budgetary “fuzzy math” gets exposed. Blaming the unions for the close election, when, given the margins the other Democrats got, he maybe should be blaming himself, looks to be part of that scapegoating process.


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A proud record

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Great article at The Big Picture about McKinsey & Co, the firm for which Rajat Gupta worked. Gupta, was recently sued by the SEC for insider trading.

It’s the classic modern success story. Massive success through massive failure.

McKinsey is a global consulting company, which has managed to make huge amounts of money while achieving the following:

• Advocating side pockets and off balance sheet accounting to Enron, it became known as “the firm that built Enron” (Guardian, BusinessWeek)

• Argued that NY was losing Derivative business to London, and should more aggressively pursue derivative underwriting (Investment Dealers’ Digest)

• General Electric lost over $1 billion after following McKinsey’s advice in 2007 — just before the financial crisis hit. (The Ledger)

• Advising AT&T (Bell Labs invented cellphones) that there wasn’t much future to mobile phones (WaPo)

• Allstate reduced legitimate Auto claims payouts in a McK&Co strategem (Bloomberg, CNN NLB)

• Swissair went into bankruptcy after implementing a McKinsey strategy (BusinessWeek)

• British railway company Railtrack was advised to “reduce spending on infrastructure” — leading to a number of fatal accidents, and a subsequent collapse of Railtrack. (Property Week, the Independent)

It’s rather obvious that these folks shouldn’t be sued. With a sterling record of failure like that, they should be put in charge of the U.S. economy.


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Untitled

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

At the beginning of the year I posted a number of (mostly political) predictions, among which was this one:

The Ipad will be updated, and I will find a reason why I absolutely need one, but Lon Seidman will get one first.

Well, the Ipad 2 was announced today. I was disappointed to hear that the only improvement over the Ipad I have now is faster processor speed and two cameras I will never use. On the other hand, how can I resist the attraction of increased processor speed and two cameras I’ll never use? I’m being torn apart here. This was, after all, one of only two prediction I made in which I have any ability to influence the actual outcome. It may be my only chance to get one right1 .

As I see it I have three choices:

1. Buy the new Ipad as soon as I decently can, and enjoy the benefits of increased processor speed, two cameras I won’t use, and the satisfaction of knowing that I correctly predicted the future.

2. Wait for the already rumored IPad 3, which is probably coming this September. If the rumors are correct, then I still have the chance of making my prediction come true, and I’ll get an Ipad with faster processor speed, two cameras I won’t use, and some additional features I don’t need, but, for some weird reason, want anyway.

3. Wait to see what Lon thinks, and I hereby invite him to give us his take on the new Ipad, available on February 11th, assuming he’s not going with option two.

On the other hand, if I really want to help Obama stimulate the economy, I could go with options one and two, but that risks a nasty divorce.

  1. Not quite true. I have already finished all the Doctor Whos, unless you count the “Classic” series.?


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Suppressing fiction in Canada

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Via Reader Supported News we get sad news. It seems those notoriously “polite” Canadians have made Rupert Murdoch feel unwelcome. They have a law there that “requires that ‘a licenser may not broadcast … any false or misleading news'” How rude. Well, naturally, Fox knows when it’s not wanted and it’s not in Canada.

Now, current right wing Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants to make Canada a comfortable place for Rupert, and, in a move that tells you everything you need to know about how the right gets and keeps power, has tried to do the right thing by repealing this onerous law, but the Canadians won’t have it, so we’ll have Fox all to ourselves.

We can be proud of the fact that here in America it’s perfectly okay for the media to lie and deceive. In fact, it’s constitutionally protected, as Fox itself has proven:

On February 14 [2010], a Florida Appeals court ruled there is absolutely nothing illegal about lying, concealing or distorting information by a major press organization. The court reversed the $425,000 jury verdict in favor of journalist Jane Akre who charged she was pressured by Fox Television management and lawyers to air what she knew and documented to be false information. The ruling basically declares it is technically not against any law, rule, or regulation to deliberately lie or distort the news on a television broadcast.

…

The attorneys for Fox, owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch, argued the First Amendment gives broadcasters the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on the public airwaves.

What a great country! Fox was right, of course. It does have a First Amendment right to lie and deceive, and like the good Americans they are, they rightly feel an obligation to exercise their First Amendment rights to the fullest, with America itself the hapless beneficiary.

Fox is too good for Canada and so are Rush, Sean, Glenn, and all the other right wingers that are kept off the chilly air up North by Canada’s insistence on journalistic standards on the public airwaves. Thank goodness we don’t have to worry about that here.


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I stand corrected, and other random notes

Monday, February 28, 2011

A while back I said that the New York Times “sent its reporters into Wisconsin with orders to find some union members that would trash talk the public employees”. I was wrong. Turns out, as Keith Olbermann points out (yes, Keith now has a blog), that the Times was fully satisfied to settle for someone who merely said, or possibly implied, that he was a union member, even though he …well, he wasn’t. But not to worry, the Times has made it all okay by correcting its front page article in a tiny correction that does not even hint at the fact that the correction undermines the entire premise of the article. Inquiring minds want to know: How did the Times get hooked up with that particular guy?

Meanwhile, Paul Krugman also takes notice of the media’s strange inability to notice the folks on the streets when they’re not deluded right wingers.

But of course, the media has more important things to think about, like the Oscars. I don’t normally read about such stuff, but I did glance at the article in the Day and realized that even when reporting on such trivialities, the media is attracted to trivialities. Does that make them meta-trivialities?

Case in point: It seems, apparently, that Janet Jackson had it all wrong. No need to take your clothes off to get some publicity. Just use a certain four letter word at the Oscars and you guarantee yourself lots of ink, from a press corp that apparently is totally titillated by someone using the most overused word in America. Interestingly, while we here in America are protected from actually hearing the word that is not for the faint of heart (so we can obsess about it being spoken), people in the rest of the world hear it un-bleeped, survive and apparently go about their business.


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Wouldn’t this be wonderful

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Roger Ailes to be Indicted.

I’ll believe it when I see it. I think IOKYAR runs too strong in this country.


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