The Senescent Man

This from Commentary's Jennifer Rubin:

Perhaps the most intriguing and least easy to categorize speech at CPAC came from Newt Gingrich. It was the most partisan of assaults and the least pro-Republican in advocacy. It was the most raucous and the most sober. And it was not clear whether it was the opening of a presidential campaign, a political movement, or just a graduate course on political science.

First a word about tone and presentation. It is an art to give a speech to a large room packed with supporters and not talk in “speech” voice with awkward phrasing, trite lines and predictable timing. Gingrich has a well-modulated voice and the ability to deliver biting sarcasm without a sneer. He spoke in conversational language and in quiet tones and held the room in the palm of his hand.

But he didn’t start that way — entering from the back of a jammed room like a candidate, or perhaps the president entering the House of Representatives. Ah, I thought, this is the presidential campaign starter. But maybe not.

He was relentless in attacking the president, Nancy Pelosi (whom he teased mercilessly about popping up to applaud the president’s speech before he completed the applause lines) and the Obama administration. He began by excoriating Eric Holder for his comments that Americans were “cowards” and declared that he “welcomed the opportunity to have a dialogue with you about cowardice anytime and any place.” He then suggested Detroit where they could chat about failed government, failed bureaucracy and failed schools.  He declared that we “should be committed to liberating the people of Detroit.

But his sharpest criticism was reserved for liberals and the president. Reading from the New York Times, which declared that the new budget “sweeps away Reagan’s ideas,” he mused that the Times certainly hoped so and had suffered great disappointments –the Soviet Union disappears, private industry thrives, big government fails and they lost readership. He deadpanned :”It was great 25 years.”

His ire was mostly directed at the Obama budget, which he says is an effort to “create a European model.” And his language was harsh. ”The administration thinks we’re just plain dumb,” he said. ”A bill with 8,000 earmarks doesn’t count? I was looking for change I can believe in. I wonder how dumb they think we are, that they think we wouldn’t notice 8,000 earmarks.” And on tax policy he noted that Obama is “not going to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250, 000–unless they use electricity.” Or other fuels.

But the heart of a speech was call to make the  2010 and 2012 elections “the most consequential in U.S. history. ” He declared, “Every person who didn’t read the stimulus —  everyone of them deserves to be defeated.” But this was not a Republican call to arms per se — indeed, this is where it got interesting. In his vision, Obama is part of the “failed Bush-Obama” policies of big government, lots of bureaucracy and high taxes. That’s the political or intellectual exercise he is engaging in and asking others to engage in — Obama is the past ( already!) and part of the failure of big government.  Gingrich’s movement, by contrast, is the low tax, anti-bureaucracy, pro-jobs “American party.”

Unlike Ronald Reagan, Gingrich isn’t per se calling Democrats and Independents to join the Republican party. No, he’s is calling for a “tripartite” movement to oppose the failed Obama/Bush regime. A true third party? Or a stealth presidential campaign? It wasn’t clear.

Gingrich was in top form today. However, it is not altogether clear, other than throwing out the Democratic Congressional majority, what he is up to. And perhaps he hasn’t quite decided himself.

I think he has decided and knows just what he's doing.

Labels: 2012 Election, Age of Obama, Bailouts, Economic Cycles, The Panic of 2008

Today, for the seventh time in my career, I survived a corporate layoff (actually the 8th if you include the 1975 episode, but those were transfers to avoid layoffs). Today we went from a firm of 140 or so people to a firm of 105 people, plus or minus a couple. I will have another 10 percent pay cut (after the 10 percent pay cut I took last April), the three upper managers are taking another 15 percent pay cut after the 30 percent cut they took last April.

These cuts are deep. A couple of single moms are now gone. A couple of promising non-professional-level staff are gone. Our CFO will have to pick up her accountant's tools again. I will have to be more involved in projects and try to bill time, rather than being 100 percent overhead.

I have news for my senators and congressmen, for Pelosi and Reid, and for Barrack: The stimulus package you all are mindlessly shepherding through a glazed-over Congress is not going to work. It is pork, pure and simple. It is money for every failed plan from the last six decades.

What we need now is tax relief, not in 2009 but in 2008. Immediately Congress should pass a tax cut retroactive to January 1, 2008. Every tax bracket, every income level, corporate and personal. Cut rates, increment brackets. Index exemptions. That will put money back in people's hands in a jolt, and do more than all these programs.

How can this be done retroactively? Especially after all the tax packets for 2008 have been mailed? Easy: Clinton rammed a retroactive tax increase through Congress in 1993, so the precedent has been set. Just do it, and let the bloated bureaucrat bags at the IRS figure out how best to disseminate the information.

Labels: Bailouts, The Panic of 2008

I wish Congress would grow a spine and tell the big three automakers to get lost; that if their business isn't viable as currently structured, go to bankruptcy and restructure. Why should a dime of taxpayer money go to these three mis-managed companies?

What would happen if the big three had to declare bankruptcy? They would immediately have protection against creditors while they worked with a bankruptcy court judge to restructure. Part of that restructuring will be getting rid of the corporate fat; part will be cutting wages; and a big, big part will be cutting benefits to retirees. I think that, more than anything, is what is giving them trouble staying viable. The unions looked out for themselves so much, and used so much muscle against management, that the unions have made the company non-viable. Blame management for caving too easily; blame the unions for taking such a short term approach to salary plus benefits.

Let them fail. I see no consequences of enough significance that tax money would be needed to prevent those consequences from happening.

Again, it seems Americans cannot take economic pain anymore.

Labels: Bailouts