The Myth About Democrat Voter Suppression In the 2012 Elections

The Supreme Court’s hearing of challenges to the Voting Rights Act may result in a tightening of voting requirements. In anticipation, Democrats are preemptively pushing to make voting and voter registration easier in the court of public opinion. They complain that long lines on Election Day cost “Democrats hundreds of thousands of voters in November.” President Obama is expected to call for further loosening of voter requirements in his State of the Union address.

Democratic media and talking points do not disclose that 2012 wait times were slightly shorter than in 2008, there were no significant differences in wait times by party identification, voters were satisfied with the voting process, and expressed considerable support for voter IDs. The 2012 election was much the same as 2008 but without the same Democrat gnashing of teeth over voter suppression.

go to forbes.com

The Tea Party Already Saved Taxpayers $300 Billion (Maybe a Half Trillion)

A “counterfactual” is an analysis of “what would have happened if.” President Obama’s claim that “the stimulus added as many as 3.3 million jobs” is the most famous example of this genre. 

Counterfactual analysis of the effects of the 2010 election on federal spending can be executed, unlike the jobs-saved analysis, on a more solid foundation with nothing more than a pocket calculator. The procedure is simple: First, we find what the Obama administration intended to spend in 2011 and 2012 on the eve of the November 2010 election (and not knowing that an electoral disaster lay in store). Second, we compare these figures with what was actually spent in 2011 and what is likely to be spent in 2012.  For example, if the administration planned to spend $3 trillion in 2011 but actually spent $2.5 trillion after the Republicans gained the House, the “counterfactual saving” for 2011 is $.5 trillion.

According to my arithmetic, the unanticipated Republican November 2010 sweep of the House with victories of fiscally-conservative freshmen saved or will save taxpayers at least $300 billion dollars for the two-year period 2011 and 2012 alone – a figure that may understate the saving by another two hundred billion.

go to Forbes.com

Medvedev is “Dizzy From Success”?

Most older Russians know the meaning and context of “dizzy from success.” As collectivization and war against the peasants threatened to get out of hand in 1930, Stalin published his “Dizzy From Success” article in Pravda. In this piece, he criticized local leaders for excesses, which he claimed he did not intend. Encouraged peasants reduced their resistance and began to leave the collective farm. Shortly thereafter Stalin ordered a resumption of terror in the countryside.

In Krasnodar at a campaign rally, Medvedev warned party activists that if they come to  feel superior and complacent: “You get what the classic called 'dizzy with success.'" It is strange, to say the least, to refer to Stalin as “the classic.” Either Dmitry Medvedev is ignorant of Russian history or has decided to take a page from Stalin’s playbook. Let’s hope the answer is ignorance.

Cuban Missiles, Three Mile Island, and Default: An Odd Combination

Advancing age offers unusual perspectives. The frenzied countdown to “default on the full faith and credit of the United States” reminded me of  two events of long ago.

I remember October 20, 1962 as President Kennedy informed the American public of missiles in Cuba. We college students spent the next few days not knowing whether we would be alive the next day.

Then I remembered Three Mile Island in 1979 – our first brush with a nuclear accident. Again the whole nation sat glued to the television not knowing whether we would lose the entire Northeast.

It is remarkable, to say the least, that the American people are glued to cable news and the internet worrying  that our economy, as we know it, might end with the default of the U.S. government on its debt.

Although many political commentators decry the evil Tea Party, “disgusting” Washington politics, and congressional stalemate, I am heartened that we had, perhaps for a brief period of time, the attention of the American people, who might actually tell Washington that the days of “business as usual” are over. Maybe the time is ripe for a serious national dialog leading up to the 2012 elections.

How Russia is Ruled: Inights from the BP Failure

The failure of BP’s venture with Rosneft provides tantalizing hints about how Russia is governed and its 2012 Election. BP joins with Shell, Exxon, and other major international energy companies in chalking up yet another failure in Russia’s lawless investment climate. BP should have known better after losing management control of its TNK-BP venture to its Russian AAR partners. But this time, BP felt it had the right people on its side.

When BP signed with the Russian state oil company, Rosneft, to develop offshore arctic reserves, I expected this would prove to be yet another misadventure. But BP thought this deal would be different. It was negotiated with Putin’s right-hand man (Igor Sechin) and blessed by Putin himself at the signing ceremony. There was the small matter of an exclusivity agreement with BP’s billionaire-Russian partners in its TNK-BP venture, but BP thought that matter would be “taken care of” by the Russian side (a la Khodorkovsky?). Surely the Russian state would back a deal that could rejuvenate Russia’s lagging energy production and fill state coffers.

The oligarchs behind AAR -- Mikhail Fridman of Alfa Group, Len Blavatnik of Access Industries, and  Viktor Vekselberg of  Renova--  proved too formidable for BP. They also brought to the table an unusual weapon for Russian companies – a legal position that carried weight in international courts.  

Putin did not take care of the Russian side. The AAR partners took BP to court outside of Russia and won an injunction that quashed the whole deal. Fridman, Veksleberg, and Blavatnik did offer BP a “deal” early on  -- that they take half of BP’s half in the arctic venture with Rosneft.  BP first boycotted the meeting called to vote on this proposal and then vetoed it outright.

My first take was that “the Russian side” had set BP up from the very beginning. AAR, Sechin and Putin had agreed to squeeze BP’s share of the deal down to a quarter, leaving one half for Rosneft and  one quarter for the three billionaires. Maybe one quarter would be enough for a BP teetering in its recovery from its Gulf  oil spill disaster.

I was wrong. It appears there is no “Russian side.” The deal is dead. Sechin is mad  at the three billionaires and is threatening them. Rosneft has to find another partner, but what major oil company would get involved in such a mess now? BP is not out of the woods. Rosneft could sue it for damages resulting from the failed deal. This is clearly a deal gone bad for all parties. There are no winners – only losers.

BP’s saga gives us insights into how Putin’s Russia is run. Instead of  well-defined hierarchical relationships, the Russian system of governance is  comprised of swirling forces, competing against each other. Equilibrium is never reached. There are never any final victories over competitors. According to this interpretation, Russia is far from a “KGB state” of former KGB officials and allied oligarchs, who obey the “Master” Putin. Putin is the most important player, but one of many.

China’s Red Campaign: Back to Mao?

In 2012, the Chinese Communist Party chooses a new Politburo. This once-in-a-decade event will set China’s course through 2025. The new Politburo must decide whether the Communist Party will continue as the dominant force in politics and society, or will China evolve towards some kind of pluralism.

China’s successes over the past three decades should give “liberals” a strong claim to a solid Politburo majority. Under a continuing “liberal” majority, private enterprise will outgrow state enterprise, China will deepen its integration into the world economy, the party will explore pluralism, at least at the local level, and Maoist philosophy will become a remnant of the past.

The “Red Campaign” offers a quite different path: The party reasserts its central role, rejects Western or universal values in favor of “red culture, enacts statist policies to replace free-wheeling capitalism, and crushes challenges with a powerful security apparatus. 

The pilgrimages of top party leaders to Chingqoing party boss Bo Xilai are much in the news. New Leftist Bo, a favorite to take one of the Politburo seats, proposes to apply his brand of patriotic TV programming, red singing shows, extra-judicial crackdowns on crime and dissent, and government spending on worker housing to all of China. Bo’s “Red Campaign” has clearly struck a responsive chord.

Why this nostalgia for the Mao era despite its horrors and China’s enormous economic successes? President Obama would have few 2012 election jitters with such an economic record. The New Leftists are, in effect, proposing dramatic changes to what the rest of the world views as a most successful policy.

Let me suggest possible explanations:

1). China’s communist party faces irrelevance under the current course. As the state enterprise share shrinks below one fifth, all pretense of China as a socialist market economy disappears. The private sector will be clearly exposed as the engine of growth, not the “wise leadership” of the Communist Party, as is currently claimed.

A market economy integrated into a global economy does not leave room for party domination. Markets replace plans and administrative allocation, and state influence is exercised through macro policy and regulation, as it is elsewhere.

To avoid redundancy in the economic sphere, the party must reestablish a statist economy based on party direction of a dominant state sector, as proposed by the Red Campaign.

2) China’s “New Left” believes that the Chinese people associate the market economy with the corruption of party officials and their Princeling offspring. They offer a  “pure” party and a statist economy as a cure.

China’s communist party finds itself in much the same position as Boris Yeltsin’s “democrats” in the 1990s.  The Soviet Communist Party was no longer around to take the fall for corruption and unpaid pensions, so democracy and capitalism got the blame.

In China, the party is still very much around to be blamed for theft, corruption, illegal land grabs, unemployment, and the Princeling Mercedes Benzes that run over workers on the streets

The Red Campaign offers a simple solution:  A return to the days of a pure party motivated not by money but by ideology. The party of Mao made disastrous mistakes, but al least it did not steal.  Although the mass starvation of 1958-1960 and the Cultural Revolution of 1965-1968 left dark shadows on millions of Chinese families, the New Left counts on such memories dimming.

Many Russians feel nostalgia for the “old days” when the party kept order, they had their jobs, and party theft was limited.  For Russians, the Stalin terror and famine lay almost a half century back. The Chinese New Left hopes to play on similar nostalgia, especially now that Mao’s excesses lie more than thirty years in the past.

China in 2012 confronts the same choice as Gorbachev in 1989, but under quite different circumstances. Gorbachev in 1989 was firefighting the crisis of the collapsing command economy. The Chinese Politburo in 2012 will face a non-crisis. Even with slowing growth, China will still be among the world’s fastest growing economies and an envy of the world.

Confronted with his crisis, Gorbachev chose to end party dominance of the economy and weaken the party’s central apparatus.  His Politburo hardliners timidly acceded at first.  Their amateurish coup, launched to save the party, came too late.

If China’s 2012 Politburo attempts to implement the Red Campaign, it will discover the genie of private enterprise cannot be put back in the bottle. They can restore the dominance of state companies only through extreme favoritism and even repression of the private sector. The New Left will find themselves like a King Canute trying to hold back the sea. They cannot mount enough political power to revert back to the economic statism of earlier years.

Gorbachev did not understand that the reforms he launched would inevitably end the Soviet economic and political system. Had he understood, he would have followed the course of his predecessors. The Chinese New Left apparently sees the handwriting on the wall. They see 2012 as their last chance to save the party as they want it to be.   

The Red Campaign’s Allure: China Chooses Its Course

In 2012, the Chinese Communist Party chooses a new Politburo. This once-in-a-decade event will set China’s course through 2025. The new Politburo must decide whether the Communist Party will continue as the dominant force in politics and society, or will China evolve towards some kind of pluralism.

China’s successes over the past three decades should give “liberals” a strong claim to a solid Politburo majority. Under a continuing “liberal” majority, private enterprise will outgrow state enterprise, China will deepen its integration into the world economy, the party will explore pluralism, at least at the local level, and Maoist philosophy will become a remnant of the past.

The “Red Campaign” offers a quite different path: The party reasserts its central role, rejects Western or universal values in favor of “red culture, enacts statist policies to replace free-wheeling capitalism, and crushes challenges with a powerful security apparatus. 

The pilgrimages of top party leaders to Chingqoing party boss Bo Xilai are much in the news. New Leftist Bo, a favorite to take one of the Politburo seats, proposes to apply his brand of patriotic TV programming, red singing shows, extra-judicial crackdowns on crime and dissent, and government spending on worker housing to all of China. Bo’s “Red Campaign” has clearly struck a responsive chord.

Why this nostalgia for the Mao era despite its horrors and China’s enormous economic successes? President Obama would have few 2012 election jitters with such an economic record. The New Leftists are, in effect, proposing dramatic changes to what the rest of the world views as a most successful policy.

Let me suggest possible explanations:

1). China’s communist party faces irrelevance under the current course. As the state enterprise share shrinks below one fifth, all pretense of China as a socialist market economy disappears. The private sector will be clearly exposed as the engine of growth, not the “wise leadership” of the Communist Party, as is currently claimed.

A market economy integrated into a global economy does not leave room for party domination. Markets replace plans and administrative allocation, and state influence is exercised through macro policy and regulation, as it is elsewhere.

To avoid redundancy in the economic sphere, the party must reestablish a statist economy based on party direction of a dominant state sector, as proposed by the Red Campaign.

2) China’s “New Left” believes that the Chinese people associate the market economy with the corruption of party officials and their Princeling offspring. They offer a  “pure” party and a statist economy as a cure.

China’s communist party finds itself in much the same position as Boris Yeltsin’s “democrats” in the 1990s.  The Soviet Communist Party was no longer around to take the fall for corruption and unpaid pensions, so democracy and capitalism got the blame.

In China, the party is still very much around to be blamed for theft, corruption, illegal land grabs, unemployment, and the Princeling Mercedes Benzes that run over workers on the streets

The Red Campaign offers a simple solution:  A return to the days of a pure party motivated not by money but by ideology. The party of Mao made disastrous mistakes, but al least it did not steal.  Although the mass starvation of 1958-1960 and the Cultural Revolution of 1965-1968 left dark shadows on millions of Chinese families, the New Left counts on such memories dimming.

Many Russians feel nostalgia for the “old days” when the party kept order, they had their jobs, and party theft was limited.  For Russians, the Stalin terror and famine lay almost a half century back. The Chinese New Left hopes to play on similar nostalgia, especially now that Mao’s excesses lie more than thirty years in the past.

China in 2012 confronts the same choice as Gorbachev in 1989, but under quite different circumstances. Gorbachev in 1989 was firefighting the crisis of the collapsing command economy. The Chinese Politburo in 2012 will face a non-crisis. Even with slowing growth, China will still be among the world’s fastest growing economies and an envy of the world.

Confronted with his crisis, Gorbachev chose to end party dominance of the economy and weaken the party’s central apparatus.  His Politburo hardliners timidly acceded at first.  Their amateurish coup, launched to save the party, came too late.

If China’s 2012 Politburo attempts to implement the Red Campaign, it will discover the genie of private enterprise cannot be put back in the bottle. They can restore the dominance of state companies only through extreme favoritism and even repression of the private sector. The New Left will find themselves like a King Canute trying to hold back the sea. They cannot mount enough political power to revert back to the economic statism of earlier years.

Gorbachev did not understand that the reforms he launched would inevitably end the Soviet economic and political system. Had he understood, he would have followed the course of his predecessors. The Chinese New Left apparently sees the handwriting on the wall. They see 2012 as their last chance to save the party as they want it to be.   

The 2012 Election Hinges on Whether Voters Believe in the Free Lunch (The Parable of the Good King and His Wise Men)

Most of us understand that free time-share vacations and free dinners with investment advisers mean harassment, telephone calls at night, and worse. We know: “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” Yet, the “Free Lunch” scam prospers because benefits are clear, the costs are hidden.

The 2012 election may depend on whether voters understand that free lunches are not free. The Democrats version of Medicare “guarantees essential medical services” to senior citizens. The government, not they, pays out of payroll taxes. Medical care, they claim, is a free lunch. The benefits are alluring; the costs are hidden. Like the “free” time-share vacation, senior citizens will understand only when it is too late.

Let me offer a parable to illustrate the Medicare free lunch:

Once upon a time in a faraway kingdom, there lived a good king. Three quarters of his people are young, work, and pay taxes. One quarter is old and no longer work. The kingdom has two royal physicians. The good king decrees that the elderly have a “right” to medical care. He orders his two royal physicians to treat them for free and pays them from the taxes on the young.

The king’s healthy young subjects see the royal physicians once a year. They pay out of their own pocket. The older subjects come ten times a year. They come more partly because they have more illnesses, but also because someone else pays their bill. The average number of visits per year of young and old combined is 3.5.

Time passes in the kingdom. There are fewer babies, and the old people live longer. Now half are young, and half old. The two groups now visit the royal physicians an average of 5.5 times per year – an almost 60 percent increase. Worse, with only half his subjects working, the king collects less in taxes.

The good king tells his royal physicians that they must work 60 percent more, but he must pay them less. After all, he has guaranteed his older subjects free medical care. The royal physicians do not take this news well. Their wives are complaining. They are overworked and poorer. They leave refusing to work more for less.

The agitated good king seeks advice from his Committee of Wise Men. Their answer: “It is simple. We’ll decide who, among the old, deserves treatment. We’ll get the average number of visits back to where it was in the old days.” The king approves, and the Wise Men use wise rules to decide who can see the royal physicians.

Now the elderly come to the good king to complain: The wise men are denying them their rights to medical care. So many good people have died because the wise men did not permit them to see the royal physicians.

The good king weeps. He calls in his royal physicians and orders them to work more for less. Instead of complaining, they should raise their productivity. They are already well paid. They can afford to work for less.

The royal physicians return to work full of resentment against the good king. They unlock their door only for young patients. They open the door for old patients only if they bring live chickens or silver coins. They post signs welcoming foreign visitors passing through the land.

The good king is outraged when he sees lines of old people standing at the locked doors of the royal physicians. He sends the royal constable to threaten arrest unless they follow his orders.

In the night, the frightened physicians pack their bags and leave the kingdom forever.

The king convenes a meeting with his wise men. Surely we can train new physicians quickly, perhaps even five royal physicians? They answer: No one wants to be a royal physician. They can earn more as a butcher or a baker.

And everyone lives unhappily ever after.