The Senescent Man

Yes, I hate to say it, but that's my prediction right now. If conditions in the county remain on election day as they are right now, Obama will win.

I base that on what I'm seeing and hearing on the political landscape right now, and how I interpret the overriding political nature of the Baby Boomers. I wrote about that before on this blog, calling them the Candy Store Generation (first one is here). In my mind they—or I guess I should say "we"—have screwed up much or most of what is good about the United States. It has gotten so bad that I look for a future generation, which I call the "Had Enough Generation", who will reject what the CSG did and right the ship of state.

I believe the 2010 mid-term elections was the first appearance of the Had Enoughs. I wasn't sure if they would show their head so soon, thinking it might not be Gen X or even Gen Y, but might be somewhere out in the future. But show up the Had Enoughs did, in large enough numbers to make partial changes in Congress and scare the daylights out of the political establishment on both sides of the aisle.

But, based simply on raw numbers, the Candy Store Generation still rules this country and determines who is elected. Where were they in 2010? It was just an off-year election. They were asleep, or stoned, or busy with whatever a privileged and spoiled people do. So the first appearance of the Had Enoughs had a minor victory. But in 2012, the Candy Store Generation will be out in force. Their gravy train is threatened by those who don't want to pay the freight. There are enough voters in the CSG that I believe they will carry the day for Obama. Regardless of what polls and approval ratings suggest now, the CSG is not going to vote for those who will grab them by their hair and yank their sorry faces out of the government feeding trough. The Had Enoughs will see a little bit of a smack down in 2012.

When will the Had Enoughs be large enough to overcome the Candy Store Generation? I’m not ready to make that prediction yet. But I don’t think it will be in 2014 or 2016. It will only be when the CSG shrinks to a small enough part of the voting public, and their leadership in elected positions gives way to a younger generation. In fact, I'm still not sure that Gen X will be the Had Enoughs. The Had Enoughs will come from every generation voting. Some will come from what Brokaw calls the Greatest Generation. A few Boomers will be among the Had Enoughs. Gen X will be well represented in the Had Enoughs, but possibly it will be Gen Y before the Had Enoughs are dominant enough to really turn things around.

Having said all this, I hope I’m wrong. I hope the Had Enoughs can make gains in 2012, rather than be set back. I'll have to revisit this after the elections, and see how close I came. Meanwhile, my neck is well stretched out.

Labels: 2012 Election, Candy Store Generation

I’ve been following this debt ceiling debate closer than I should. I watch the coverage on Fox News Channel till I get tired of that, then turn to MSNBC (mainly for laughs), till that makes my blood pressure go up, then to CNN, till I can’t stand any more. Then I turn to cable channel 46 or 30, and hope I catch a replay of an episode of Criminal Minds, and see what the BAU (Behavioral Analysis Unit) is up to.

But there's another wording for BAU: business as usual. I can't help but think that’s exactly what this debt ceiling increase deal is: business as usual. Increase our ability to borrow to fund cowboy poetry festivals across the nation for the next two years of so, make a few designated cuts, and delay all the difficult decisions until later.

Anyone care to predict what will happen when this new super-duper congressional committee comes up with its recommended cuts just before Thanksgiving? Congress won’t approve them by Christmas. These "automatic triggers" will go into effect, but when the many members of Congress realize exactly what that means, we will have a major battle over that. Maybe some spending cuts will come to the table for debate, but so will tax increases. "The wealthy don't pay their fare share" will come up as it always does, and proponents of that will not tell the American people that taxes fall heaviest on the poor and middle class, regardless of who writes the check to the government. Indeed, they don't recognize or accept that themselves.

This will become the main issue of the election of 2012 at the presidential and congressional levels. I suppose that’s a good thing. Once again social issues will take a back seat to economic issues. Those of "Tea Party" leanings will either be strengthened or, if the Democrats and the press can succeed at branding them radical obstructionists, lose ground. I can't see clearly enough to have a clue of what will happen to Tea Party strength in that election.

This all makes me wonder if what we are seeing now the first battle between the Had Enough Generation and The Candy Store Generation. The CSG are the Baby Boomers, those who had everything given to them on a platter by a once great generation who didn't want their children to go through the hardships they did. The HEG is someone who comes after the CSG and cleans up their mess. Possibly this is the first struggle between those two for supremacy. If so, the HEG has shown up quicker than I expected it to.

But we've still got a lot of the CSG in the Congress. Just how stupid are these people? I hate to keep coming back to the Nevada Cowboy Poetry Festival, but Harry "The Gray" Reid brought it up, saying how awful it would be to de-fund them. Now Reid is not technically a member of the CSG. Born in 1939, seven years before the official start of the Boomers, he theoretically belongs to what Brokaw called "The Greatest Generation". But clearly there is a transitional group, born late in one generation but who didn't participate with the older ones in their struggles. That's Reid. That's Pelosi. They are older Boomers at heart, leaders of one wing of the CSG.

They think it is perfectly acceptable to borrow $35,000 from the People's Republic of China to fund a poetry festival, and expect their children to pay the interest on that money for perhaps twenty years and then have their grandchildren pay the bill itself sometime after that. As I said before, this is beyond ridiculous; it's moronic.

But I don't see anything yet that is going really make a dent in this out of control spending. The committee that's part of the deal probably won't work. The battle will continue. And the election of 2012 will let us know if the Had Enoughs have arrived or not. My guess is they are beginning to show, but that the Candy Store Generation will still have sufficient power to continue to make a mess of everything up until 2014. That’s when we might see the HEG make enough of a move to really change things.

Until then, it's BAU with the CSG. Let's hope they don’t run us over a cliff in these last three years. We're very close right now.

Labels: Candy Store Generation

Here I am at home listening to much of the same Christmas music I enjoy each season, some wonderfully orchestral, some more vocal and even pop.  For instance, I really enjoy Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra singing the old carols.  They unabashedly sing about “Christ the King,” “born to give us second birth,…” from a time when it was considered normal operating procedure to sing Christmas carols with all glory of their original lyrics.

The other night on his regular evening program, Bill O’Reilly opined as to whether or not it was offensive to some when “flash mobs” gather in shopping malls across the country to sing Handel’s Alleluia Chorus from his exquisite Oratorio “Messiah” because the words might be offensive to some, presumably “some” are people who shop and celebrate small “c” Christmas and prefer to evacuate all meaning of its origin and significance, who have made it just another secular day off from work. 

My first reaction to Bill’s question was consternation because it caused me to wonder why this question should even be asked in the first place?  But even if he didn’t, and I know what he was likely driving at – that people who are offended as such were “pinheads” in his vernacular – the question in these times nonetheless is begged every day.

There is a working dynamic here.  It is not just the usual offense that the gospel represents to the unchurched.  I fear we are entering a new age where everything and anything that directly or indirectly makes reference of the true and original nature and meaning of Christmas will be, little by little, extricated from the public square as arcane, dogmatic, irrelevant and biased against those who prefer never to hear a word on the True Light and Hope of the world, which all of this music in effect points to.

When we fully enter that post-postmodern age where everything is completely devoid of all meaning and all reference to this wonderful message of hope, how shall we then live?  What then of our world?  Our society? Dear Virginia, yes there may be a Santa Claus, but as for hope?  Well, I’m sorry Virginia, there is no hope for you beyond this world. There was no Savior who came to remove the dross from this fallen earth to pave a path to a new world, and hence these is only today, so live for today, “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die” and it all ends, and sooner than later. 

What would be next to remove from public view? Any classical literature the makes veiled references to redemption.  Goodnight Les Miserables.  Farewell to Milton, Adios “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

What then of our coming new and hopeless age? When we are on our respective deathbeds, and become more supple to that last chance at hope, there will be no redemptive literature to reflect upon, no lyrics to ponder, no music to listen to that gives consideration to a coming New and durable life without flaw, in the full light of the Dayspring, the Beautiful Rose of Sharon, whose Kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ. Alleluia.

Labels: Age of Obama, Candy Store Generation, First Amendment

Or should I say it the other way around?  As the nation went, at least, RI did not give an iota. 

We end up with the most liberal option of Governor choices.  We keep our General Assembly – mostly liberal Democrats – intact.  RI – Dist 1, which was formerly Patrick' Kennedy’s seat goes to liberal Democrat David Cicilline instead of worthy Republican John Loughlin.  RI – Dist 2, as I expected remained with James Langevin over Mark Zacaria, though Zacaria made the cogent arguments being offered around the country of the run away US House in every debate, but he ended up doing it to no avail – because he was making his points in RI to Rhode Islanders.

My first reaction was “it' truly is time to leave the state.” Former Cranston Mayor Steven Laffey presciently predicted a Lincoln Chafee victory due several factors: the split votes for “Moderate, Democrat and Republican candidates, and that the unions would get their machine out in full force to make certain their liberal Democratic votes made it to the polls.  And they won the day completely in RI. 

The rest of the nation moved very deliberately in the right direction, while RI remains stuck where it has been, and with some of the highest taxes and highest unemployment in the nation.  Even Michigan moved seats to Republicans to get out of their mess, but no, not RI.

But there were signs of a silver lining out there:

(1) There is a remnant of Tea Party oriented activists still intact, and ready to prepare for 2012 – which is good.

(2) The fact that Congress has moved very deliberately to the right while the President is not yielding or triangulating to the middle will mean that the RI delegation will be somewhat thwarted from their liberal agenda, and may not be all that popular in 2 years.  Remember Reagan took the state in 1984, and a solid Republican presidential candidate could yield something similar.

(3) There were some good lessons learned in running in the 4 way Governor race, and the dropping of the Republican nominated Lt. Governor. I thought to myself the other day, soon after his “shove it” comment, what if Frank Caprio said he was going to drop out of the race, and ask his supporters to vote for Republican John Robitaille? Imagine not only what that would have looked like in the national media spotlight, but what that would have done to the outcome.  Chafee would be toast instead of Governor Elect. 

(4) The excellent idea that was“CleanSlateRI.  Though it seemed to end up having little impact on the outcome, the concept is a good one that should be developed further and more robustly supported long before 2012.

While other states are looking forward to a roll back of tax burden, and a movement to prioritize spending so that taxes go down instead of increase, RI has a new governor who diabolically conjures new ways to spend taxpayers money – what few remaining taxpayers are still left in the state – and new ways to tax them.

RI Conservatives: we either have to leave (which will leave even fewer to carry the burgeoning tax load) or we need to build off what momentum we really achieved and strategize starting from now to make a major correction in 2012 – and also plan to get Chafee out in 2014 – too bad it couldn’t be sooner, though there is always the recall.

Activists unite! You have nothing to lose but higher taxes. and poor leadership.

Labels: 2010 Election, Age of Obama, Candy Store Generation

Political conservatives who live in RI (all 6 of us) have a very tough decision to make next week.  In the governor’s race, should we vote for John Robitaille, a conservative Republican, or dare we take a huge leap and vote for Frank Caprio, a Democrat, who will be campaigning this weekend with none other than former President Clinton?

Why would conservative Republicans give the time of day to, let alone vote for someone like Caprio? For conservatives, the good side of Frank is that he is a fiscal conservative, a lover of small business, and an opposer of overly burdensome taxes.  On social issues he’s part way on the dark side; he said that if the General Assembly approved of gay marriage in RI - which they’re apt to do with so many of the leaders gay - he would sign the bill.  I think he should wait to see what voters want on that issue, but there it is.

On the Republican side, Robitaille has the right stance on issues, and he’s been gaining some momentum, but the problem RI conservatives face is, who do you vote for to assure that Lincoln Chafee loses?  With a recent Rasmussen poll showing Chafee in the mid-thirties while Caprio and Robitaille in the mid to upper twenties, the state sits on a precipice.

Chafee will tax us enough for the few remaining productive citizens who work and pay taxes will get to pay even more taxes unless they’re smart enough to move to less taxing neighboring states like Taxachusetts or Connecticut, a mere 40 miles away at the most.  Even Taxachusetts will be a tax haven for RIer’s were Chafee to win.

RI passed the tipping point long ago where the gimme’s beat out the tax-me’s a long time ago, and will continue their stranglehold on the state to ask for more and more from the poor tax-me’s unless drastic action is taken.

In South Carolina, the Republican governor mandated that if the legislature wants to spend more on a high priority like schools or roads, they have to subordinate something else in the budget and maintain the volume of what the burdened taxpayers already contribute to the state.  In 11.5% jobless RI, Chafee thinks we can increase what the taxpayers contribute so we can spend more and more.

As Bill Murray said about the groundhog in the movie “Groundhog Day,” “He must be stopped!”

If we don’t stop Chafee, the few of us who pay the taxes for all the gimme’s in the state will have to leave or become bankrupt, and that will in turn most definitely bankrupt the state.

So it’s time for us decide.  If we pool our votes in one direction or the other, we can be assured of a Chafee loss, but who to choose?

As for me, I’m going to take the initiative and say I think Caprio’s got the best shot.  Anyone who tells a president of his own party to “stuff it,” is courageous enough for me to know he will be courageous about the smaller things – like opposing taxes and helping to rebuild business and jobs this state.

I ask you five remaining RI conservative Republicans to join me.

Labels: 2010 Election, Age of Obama, Candy Store Generation, Had Enough Generation, Rhode Island

What, you ask? Why write about this now? That was in January; the big thing in the last week, even the last two days, is health care mis-reform. True. I can only claim that this is on my mind, and has been ever since it happened. I took some notes, expanded them into a theory, and waited for a quiet evening to come up. It's here, finally. I should do some more on my taxes tonight, but I made such good progress last night that I feel like doing other, more pleasurable things tonight. Taxes I have always with me; the Scott Brown phenomenon is still here, and again to take center stage as we see how he performs regarding the next phase of health care.

Why did Massachusetts turn from its Democratic party candidate and elect a Republican? The standard interpretations of this are:

• a Republican resurgence. I don't think so--not in way-out whacko Mass.
• a conservative resurgence. Again, in Massachusetts? Maybe a little, or rather what the electorate voted on this time was more in line with stock conservative policies, thereby appearing to be a conservative resurgence.
• anti-government health care. No, Massachusetts already have that; its electorate wouldn't mind a Federal takeover of a less-than-perfect State-run system.
• anti-Obama. I doubt it, not while his popularity far out runs the popularity of the health care reform bill itself.
• anti-Democratic. No, not in Massachusetts.

So what else could it be? A few things come to mind, all of which probably contribute to what my conclusion is.

• anti-Federalist (i.e. anti-statist). This seems more likely. Even in Massachusetts, the state that stood alone, or nearly so, in support of George McGovern and Walter Mondale, the state that never saw a Federal law it didn't like. Yet, the rhetoric of the campaign and what coverage I saw in fly-over country suggests people getting tired of the Feds always butting in, grabbing more power, usurping more of our God-given liberties.
• anti-deficit. This is likely, I think. People saw the accumulation of deficits beginning in the later Bush admin years and accelerating under Obama and his Congress. I think in part the Mass voters saw this accumulation and decided they had had enough.
• anti-Washington DC. This is a strong component, I believe. Once a person gets elected to an office centered in Washington, it's hard to get them out. Those occasionally voted out just stay there and become lobbyists, waiting till their own party returns to administrative power when they can get a fat Cabinet post, all while not paying the taxes they voted on the American populace (can anyone say Tom Dashcle?). By the way, I believe the Democrats are mis-interpreting this as an anti-incumbent vote. Perhaps it's difficult to separate anti-DC from anti-incumbent, but I see a shade of difference.

All of these add up to one thing: People have HAD ENOUGH. I wrote once before, I think on this blog, about the HAD ENOUGH Generation needing to rise up and fix all the mess that the late-WW2 generation and the Baby Boomers were leaving behind. I didn't know when the HAD ENOUGH Generation would show itself. Would it be our children, Gen X? Or their children, Gen Y? I personally thought it would be the latter, believing that our children would be too much like us to perceive that the government had failed. But they seem to be rising up, if I'm interpreting the Mass senate vote correctly.

It remains to be seen if this first breath of the HAD ENOUGH Generation will be followed through in the next couple of rounds. I would have liked to have seen what would have happened if there had been an election to replace Murtha. If that one went Republican, I think it would have been a good indication. We now have to wait till November, and then till 2012, excepting any intermediate elections that would come along.

Keep going, HAD ENOUGHers. You have my best wishes as well as my support.

Labels: Age of Obama, Candy Store Generation, Had Enough Generation, health care reform

Fast forward to the last four months of the Bush Administration, and the Panic of 2008. The economy was already in a downturn, and had been for some months. We all got a stimulus check, a return of our tax money, earlier in 2008. So we already knew things were going downhill.

Then banks that were "too big to fail" started to fail. We learned they were "too big to allow to fail"--or so we were told. How many billions of dollars were authorized or appropriated to rescue failing banks? Was it $700 billion? I think the earlier stimulus bill was about $300 billion, so that put us at a trillion dollars, spent or authorized, to prop up an ailing economy.

Of course, we weren't through yet. Bail-out of the United Auto Workers at General Motors and Chrysler was to come, a paltry $20 billion or so. Then there's the next stimulus package, passed in the early days of the Obama administration. There's no telling where that ended up. No one read the bill in any of its several versions. $800 billion is the best guess, but it might be a hundred more.

So we are up to about $2 trillion dollars of spending, give or take a couple of hundred billion, either already done or fixin' to be done, to keep our economy from going into a depression. We, the Baby Boomers in control of Congress, the Baby Boomers who are running the corporations, the Baby Boomers who are filling the majority of places in the work force and beginning to creep to retirement age (the oldest of our group are already there) have done this. Where did we get the money? Did we have it, stashed in a failing bank? Was it buried in a field? Of course, no. We manufactured it out of thin air. We are either going to print it or borrow it. Borrowing we are familiar with, since we've done so much of it over the years. Printing money is kind of new, but we are willing to try it. Call it "Instant Money".

And, typical of the Baby Boomers, the Candy Store Generation, we are not looking far enough ahead to think about how we will pay the bill for debt service when it comes due. We'll no doubt piddle around with it over the next ten years, but really the bill will be paid by the next generation, the Gen X-ers as they are called, or maybe even the ones after them, Generation Y. One of these groups will eventually take real steps to fix everything. That will be when the bills come due and the taxes need to be raised to pay them and they will stand up and say "had enough." Had enough of borrowing. Had enough of confiscatory taxation. Had enough of these lame-brained Baby Boomer schemes to continuously live off other people's money. And they will be called the "Had Enough" Generation.

I don't know if I'll live to see the Had Enough Generation clean up the mess the Candy Store Generation has made. It's a good sized mess. Candy wrappers everywhere. Failing social programs. Failing retirement programs (i.e. Social Security, which we wouldn't fix for our children so long as it still worked for us). Expansion of rights based on prosperity not on what God gave us. Unrealistic expectations suddenly crashing down around us. A debt amassed that no reasonable bank would loan proportionately to any corporation or individual. We've sure made a mess that we're leaving the Had Enough-ers to clean up.

I guess "The Greatest Generation" didn't teach us too good.

Labels: Candy Store Generation, Had Enough Generation, The Panic of 2008

The Baby Boomers, who I'm calling the Candy Store Generation, could also be called the Instant Generation. Instant food, instant prosperity, instant news, instant answers, instant replay, instant resolution. Things moved fast for us. En-mass, we entered grade school mostly in the 1950s, high school in the 1960s, college in the late 60s and early 70s, the work force in the 70s, toiled under old codgers in the 80s, and finally entered management in the 1990s as the "Greatest" generation had almost all retired.

By the 2000s we were running the corporations; we were stockholders--sometimes major stockholders; we ran the mutual funds; we called the shots. Among the worker bees who filled the ranks of corporate employees, while the next generation had begun to join us, most of the workers who produced most of the good and services were being produced by Baby Boomers. So we made the products, provided services, managed the companies, received the dividends, and benefited from stock price increases. Or, if we weren't yet to the point of being stockholders, our parents were, and they would soon be assuming room temperature and those stocks would be ours.

So what did we do with all this influence? As the instant generation, we expected instant results for our money. Stockholders demanded dividends each quarter and rising stock prices. Corporate boards, being of the same mind themselves, were quite happy to oblige the stockholders. CEOs, COOs, CFOs, and all the other C--Os, being of the same mind themselves, were quite happy to manage the businesses that way. So the focus became extremely short-term, only to the end of the next quarter.

I wanted to develop this train of thought more, but suddenly I'm out of ideas or words. Hopefully I have painted a clear picture. We, the Baby Boomers, being in the candy store, ran our economy with such a short-term focus that long-term success was improbable if not impossible.

Labels: Candy Store Generation

September and October, 2000. The presidential debates. Vice President Albert Arnold Gore Jr. vs. Governor George Walker Bush from Texas. Most of us watched them, and may remember something of the proceedings.

The backdrop was the winding down of the Clinton presidency, the last six years of which were with Republican majorities in Congress, both House and Senate--majorities large enough that Clinton could not pick off a few disgruntled Republican moderates or liberals (yes, the latter existed back then, as Rhode Islanders know too well) and get his preferred agenda passed into legislation. He had to deal with Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole then Trent Lott, who set the economic agenda. Fiscal responsibility was in, and "The era of big government [was] over."

Nearing the end of those six years, the budget was more or less balanced, and, thanks more to Congress than to the president, the Congressional Budget Office was projecting surpluses as far as could be forecast, perhaps totalling a trillion dollars over a decade. Conditions not seen for a generation--or two--or maybe three.

So the presidential debates took place amid economic good times, and a key topic was what to do with the surplus. Gore's solution: bold new social programs, and pay off the national debt in twelve years, rather than continue to roll it over (as a taxpayer who expected to be in twelve of his sixteen peak earning years during that time, I wasn't sure why I should be called on to obliterate in twelve years what a procession of Congresses created in forty), no relief for tax payers. Bush's solution: bold new social programs, coupled with tax reductions that paid lip service to the notion that the surplus would be (remember, it hadn't actually happened yet; it was just a projection) an excess of government revenue--taxes and fees--over government needs. It wasn't the government's money; it was the taxpayer's money. And the candidates were fixin' to either spend all or most of it on social programs, programs unthinkable a generation before, "rights" suddenly discovered as possible through prosperity, not endowed by God.

I was struck by the idiocy of it all, and how everyone running for office, everyone in the media, everyone around me listening to the rhetoric, lapped it all up. I saw myself in a candy store, watching those around me. Gore and Bush were children in the candy store, there with their daddies. Daddy, who came of age during a depression, was a frugal soul, and normally gave each child a few grudging pennies and told them to buy as much as he could. But on this day, as I watched, their daddies gave each of them $100 dollars and turned them loose. Children expecting Daddy to give them a few pennies when he gave the 10,000 are dangerous. They went crazy, created havoc as they purchased a full hundred dollars worth and made themselves sick on the confections.

Besides the election of Republican majorities elected in 1994, Congress changed in another way between that year and 2000. In 1981 when Ronald Reagan took office, with a Democratic House and Republican Senate, he was able to make headway toward fiscally responsible government because Congress was still composed of a majority (or at least a sizable contingent including the leadership) of "the greatest generation"--those born in the late teens, 20s, and early 30s of the 20th Century, who weathered a long depression, fought and won a world war, drove the nation to post-war prosperity, and faced their own racial prejudices and enacted public policies to offset what their bigoted hearts felt. But by 1994, the balance in Congress had begun to tip, a process more or less completed by 2000, from that generation to its progeny--the Baby Boomers, a generation raised on privilege and ease, coddled by our televisions and indiscriminately drinking words of the information age, accepting of big government--my generation.

In three additional posts (hopefully over the next three days, if the creek don't rise), I'll explore this concept of the Baby Boomers being the Candy Store Generation. This will be my thoughts, rather than extensive research. Perhaps, some day, the research will follow.

Labels: Candy Store Generation