Check out this excellent Cato Institute website that allows you to evaluate the voting record of each member of the past six sessions of Congress on free trade issues.
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Category Archives: Politics – General
Hillary’s redemption?
It’s rare that I post on politics two days in a row (or even two times in a week, for that matter), but the meltdown of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has been one of those fascinating political developments that simply begs for analysis (yesterday’s post is here).
David Berg, one of Houston’s best trial lawyers and a longtime Democratic Party supporter, provides this insightful op-ed in the Chronicle yesterday explaining why he switched from supporting Clinton to Obama and why Clinton is suffering in comparison to Obama:
I guarantee you, as the oldest living man in America who has actually attended a Hannah Montana concert, my daughter is completely colorblind. From what I have seen of her generation, and that of my grown sons’, that is the norm, not the exception. Racial politics simply won’t work; not this time ó and if all that good will seeps into the wider world ó perhaps never again.
I wish, frankly, that the Clintons, who in many ways helped make Obama’s candidacy possible, could hear firsthand how they let down so many people who cared about them and supported them through many tough years ó how by their divisive tactics they have become the people and politics they deplore.
In short, I wish they could have been there Tuesday night to understand clearly how times and mores have changed and, perhaps, to understand how important it is that a new generation be given a chance.
By the way, on more mundane topics, it appears that Clinton’s management ability is not what her supporters crack it up to be. $11,000 on pizza and $1,200 on Dunkiní Donuts?
Meanwhile, NY Times columnist David Brooks examines the new political syndrome — Obama Comedown Syndrome (a/k/a “OCS”).
Bashing the capitalist roaders
Does it appear to anyone else that Hillary Clinton is getting a bit desperate in attempting to salvage her campaign for the Democratic nomination? Get a load of this:
Sen. Hillary Clinton took a swipe at [investment bankers], suggesting wealthy investment bankers and hedge fund managers on Wall Street aren’t doing real ‘work.’ [. . .]
“We also have to reward work more,” Clinton told a small group of Ohio residents today. “and by that, I mean, I have people in New York working on Wall Street as investment managers, as hedge fund executives. Under the tax code, they can pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes on $50 million dollars, than a teacher, or a nurse, or a truck driver in Parma pays on $50,000. That’s very discouraging to people.” [. . .]
The line about investment fund and hedge fund managers has been introduced into Clinton’s talking points as she campaigns across the economically struggling state of Ohio.
Investment bankers are certainly an easy target, but Clinton’s statement that they don’t do “real work” is either disingenuous or appallingly ignorant. Would Clinton say such a thing about other financial intermediaries such as real estate brokers? Investment bankers working on multi-billion dollar mergers are not all that different from real estate brokers — they are financial intermediaries who get paid a commission for helping to originate and close deals. In short, they are being paid a fee for arranging a transaction between a willing buyer and a willing seller.
And believe me, for anyone who has ever seen investment bankers work a deal, it’s definitely hard work. Finding potential buyers and sellers, persuading them to become involved in a transaction, and making the deal happen amidst the myriad of risks that could undermine it is not a cakewalk. Long hours, the ability to deal with rejection, the uncertainty of the fee until the deal closes, grinding travel and pressurized work conditions are just a few of the hardships that investment bankers endure.
Inasmuch as such work is hard, it’s not for everybody. Thus, with really good investment bankers in short supply, they can command high compensation. And the good ones are well worth it. Where else will a seller or buyer find someone with a comprehensive list of direct contacts among potential parties to a transaction and extensive experience getting difficult deals closed? A principal to a transaction is simply renting those contacts and experience and, although often expensive, the investment banker is worth every penny if he or she can pull a deal together for the principal.
The foregoing is pretty basic stuff, so it’s alarming that a Senator from a state with more investment bankers than any other would engage in demagoguery over them. John Carney over at Dealbreaker sums up the irony quite well:
“Now being the First Lady for eight years and a Senator from a state in which you’ve never lived, that’s real work.”
And lest the Obama crowd get too over-confident with Clinton’s increasingly bizarre statements, get a load of this performance by Austin lawyer, former Austin mayor and current Texas state senator Kirk Watson, who has endorsed Obama:
The aftermath of the Clemens hearing
Many folks have been asking me about my thoughts on the Roger Clemens saga, but I am so disappointed with the abysmal level of discourse regarding the Mitchell Commission Report and the issues involved with the use of steroids and other PED’s in society that I find it hard to drum up much enthusiasm for addressing it. Compare the discussion of the issues from this earlier post with this live blog analysis of the questions and answers from Clemens hearing and you will see what I mean. Sort of makes you want to whipsaw the committee in the same manner as this Colman McCarthy/Washington Post op-ed, doesn’t it? Art DeVany expresses similar sentiments.
Although I expressed reservations early on about the unconventional way in which Clemens’ legal team has been defending the matter, I don’t think the hearing measurably increased Clemens’ risk of being charged criminally. In fact, in an odd way, the hearing may have actually mitigated that risk somewhat.
McNamee came across as such a manipulator that my sense is that it’s doubtful that prosecutors would base a criminal case against Clemens primarily on McNamee’s testimony. Thus, unless investigators come up with a conduit of the PED’s who is willing to testify that the PED’s were delivered to Clemens and McNamee, Clemens may avoid criminal charges. He is certainly not out of the woods yet, but the Congressional hearing probably hurt him more in the court of public opinion than it did with regard to a potential criminal case (Update: Peter Henning agrees with me).
Nevertheless, I’m not yet ready to bet on that prediction. At least without long odds in my favor.
Vetting the Trans-Texas Corridor
This Ralph Blumenthal/NY Times article does a good job of summarizing the massive scale that is the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor project:
. . . the Trans-Texas Corridor, a public-private partnership unrivaled in the stateís ó or probably any stateís ó history, that would stretch well into the century and, if completed in full, end up costing around $200 billion. [. . .]
The plan envisions a 4,000-mile network of new toll roads, with car and truck lanes, rail lines, and pipeline and utilities zones, to bypass congested cities and speed freight to and from Mexico. [. . .]
The corridor project grew out of the 2002 governorís race when [Governor] Rick Perry, . . . surprised transportation experts by taking ideas they had discussed a decade earlier, to little interest, and ìsupersizing them,î as one recalled.
The project grew to consist of four ìpriority segments:î new multimodal toll roads up to 1,200 feet wide paralleling Interstates 35 and 37 from Denison in North Texas to the Rio Grande Valley; a proposed I-69 from Texarkana to Houston and Laredo; I-45 from Dallas-Fort Worth to Houston; and I-10 from El Paso to Orange on the Louisiana border. But the exact routes are years away from being designated.
Elevating form over substance
The McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill was not John McCain’s finest hour. John Lott makes a good point about the utter hypocrisy of it all in connection with the Clintons’ recent loan to Hillary’s cash-strapped campaign:
Former President Clinton stands to reap around $20 million — and will sever a politically sensitive partnership tie to Dubai — by ending his high-profile business relationship with the investment firm of billionaire friend Ron Burkle. . . .
Obviously Clinton has gotten a lot of money from other sources, so there is no need to single out Burkle, but Burkle obviously can’t donate $10 or $12 million to Clinton’s campaign. Yet, if he pays Clinton for work that isn’t very obvious, Clinton can then turn around and spend it on a campaign. Does it really matter that Burkle can’t give the money directly to Clinton?
A birthday wish
Don’t miss Greg Mankiw’s birthday wish:
My birthday wish is for all of us to stop asking what the government can do for us today. Instead, we should focus on what we can do together to prepare the economy for our children and grandchildren. That means getting ready to care more for ourselves in old age, perhaps by retiring later, perhaps by saving more. I hope that when I celebrate my 100th birthday in 2058, my descendants wonít look upon Grandpa and his generation as the biggest economic problem of their time.
Read the entire op-ed. Salient thought for a political season.
An uncomfortable issue for John McCain
The hypocritical and unproductive nature of the government policy of drug prohibition has been a frequent subject on this blog (see here, here, here and here), so this Radley Balko post about Cindy McCain, John McCain’s wife, caught my eye:
. . .the problem with the hypocritical practice of letting politiciansí family members get off for drug crimes that land normal people in prison is that it doesnít seem to do much in the way of making them more sympathetic. It just hardens them into more militant drug warriors.
Read the entire post.
The wisdom of U.S. Presidential campaigns
Much is wrong with U.S. Presidential campaigns. They last much too long, are far too expensive and the rhetoric is mostly mind-numbing.
However, for all its faults, the messy process does have a way of eliminating the candidates that need to be weeded out (see also here and here).
By the way, Megan McArdle has the New York City perspective on Giuliani’s withdrawal.