Help Wanted:Must be a Grownup

One convention down and one to go. Now we get to look forward to two months of the same kind of political ad that we have all grown to HATE!!!!

You may think I am going to lay into both candidates, as I like to do. No this one is for the voters of which I of course am one. Obama and to a lesser extent McCain will try to convince us that he will be the answers to all of our questions, the solution to our puzzles and the savior that will deliver us to that period in history where we consider to be the perfect age. When is that exactly?

For aging union workers like my father it is somewhere around 1952. Unions were strong, no jobs were lost to offshore outsourcing, and there was always enough money in the budget for steak.

For middle age conservatives it was somewhere around 1984. The economy was strong. Reagan was President and we were on the way to ending to cold war with the end of the Soviet Union.

For younger 30 somethings it is around 1996. Dot coms were producing lots of stock gains, we were spending the 'peace dividend' like it was monopoly money and the economy will be strong forever. Bill Clinton ended welfare as we know it and single handedly ended that nasty business cycle.

Now in the present. Everything is bad right? For the Truman 1952 crowd off shoring is ruining everything, for some of the Reagan crowd Compassionate Conservatism has given way to out of control spending and for the Clinton crowd, well everything Bill Clinton 'accomplished' was ruined by Bush. That about sum it up?

I look at it a little differently. Today the economy is on the downward part of the business cycle. We may be on the way back up or we may be sinking further. We won't know for a couple of quarters. We liked to believe that the Soviets became peace loving Russians but that was never true. Ever wonder why none of these former Communists never came out against Communism? Ever wonder why none of them ever said their conquest of the satellites was evil? It is simply because they don't believe it. Today awash with oil money Russia wants nothing less than to reconstitute the old Soviet empire under a new name and manager. Today government is doing what it has done since the days of the Progressives. They are picking winners and losers by choosing groups. The Democrats have their favorite groups and the Republicans have their favorite groups. For the cost of votes and contributions the party in power pays off their groups. I don't say this to say the are corrupt or evil, I truly believe they think that is the best way to help the most people.

Here is how I see economics. We make up the economy. That does not mean that the government has no effect. Far from it, the President and the Congress can either remove barriers or put up barriers. From there you and I take it away. Presidents do not however make your lives better through their existence. They cannot make the global economy become just an American economy again, nor can they make the dot-com world come back and they can't magically return us to a day when America was the only dominant economy in the world as it was in the early fifties. A little thing call a world way had eliminated most of the rest but only for a short time.

Presidents and state and local leaders can do one important thing that they don't do enough of now: Talk about what America means. The more freedom we can produce the better our fortunes will be. The better the climate for businesses to come here the more jobs for our people. The more our cities are cities and not war zones more businesses will come to your city. The cities are run by leaders and not city bosses (Chicago comes to mind) then the more people will have confidence in their leadership.

These all sound like platitudes that will never happen. In some ways they are. What they must start with is voting. Not voting for a candidate for a letter before his name, not for voting for a candidate because either are or aren't a women or of your race. None of these things will restore confidence to the political environment. Here is the tough one. Each and every American trying to produce, without caring about what other Americans have or make, but doing the best every day to be the best human being you can be, and if you make as much as some evil rich person. To me America is about individuals not groups. Politicians see groups. we have to make them see individuals or they will continue to sell us their make believe visions of what they will deliver. You are America, not McCain and Obama. Please vote in November but don't vote for a fairy tale. Vote with your eyes wide open.

The conventions are here

Recently when I have written I have stayed away from blatant political issues. I have preferred to write about issues that are more philosophical that have their end result in politics. There is a simple reason for this. Both candidates and both parties bore me. Yes I will vote for John McCain and mostly for Republicans but both the party and the candidate are far from my ideal candidate.

Now that the conventions are here we will soon be solidly into the political season. We will be inundated with push polls, attack ads, newspaper endorsements that all things political.

I have a very simple criteria for whom I vote for:
1. Which candidate favors policies that value individualism the most?
2. Which candidate favors policies that do not reward dependency?
3. Which candidate favors policies that are in sync with my social values? Values are important here, I do not mean religion, I mean values.
4. Which candidate favors policies and value economic freedom the most?
5. Which candidate favors policies that support law and order the closest?
6. Which candidate favors policies that support a strong national defense?
and finally, and this should be a summary of the previous six criteria
7. Which candidate favors policies that are in sync with the constitution.

In my view neither candidate nor party is in any way close to these criteria. You might ask why not a third party candidate? My simple reason here is that none of these candidates could possibly win. If a candidate comes along that could win I may consider it, but Bob Barr will not be our next president, neither will Cynthia McKinney. Using this years candidates as an example any vote that makes it more likely for Barak Obama to be president is a bad vote to me.

Enjoy what you can of the political season. I personally enjoy the debate. I don't enjoy the demagogues, but I do enjoy the debate.

Our Curious relationship with wealth

We Americans are curious in a lot of ways. In many ways we are a contradiction. That is partly because of our historic belief in freedom. Unlike the Socialist republics of western Europe and the dictatorships of Africa and South America we have written into our founding documents the fundamentals of freedom. No matter your political beliefs you cherish freedom. We have great disagreements about what freedoms are most powerful but we cherish freedom.

The political left tends to value freedoms that people on the right don't. That is OK because we have freedom. We have bitter arguments about what are rights and what aren't. This too shows our basic love of freedom.

One 0f the best examples of this is wealth. The left tends to look suspiciously at wealth. Far short of universal condemnation though they dislike a particular source of wealth. Wealth accumulated from business is very suspect with progressives. Bill Gates, before he got involved with his charitable foundation was a pariah. Now he is embraced by the left. We need wealth for charitable giving, but of course the most far left people really don't trust charitable giving as much as they trust government, but in our current society will embrace George Soros with open arms, but not say Rupert Murdock. This of course is because **gasp** Murdock created Fox News.

Another way of looking at wealth is private property. This was a core issue with our founders. The right to keep your private property is at the heart of our commercial success up till now. When incremental tax rates fall production goes up for example. This is simple economics, but that doesn't please left wing believers. Another source of wealth that is good is Hollywood money. Warren Beatty, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn are good stewards in popular culture. Oil Execs are not.

What does wealth do for us? This is too broad a question for one piece but I will attempt. Wealth gives the holder the ability simply to create. They may start a business. They may expand a business. They may endow an artist. They may give it to charity. They may put it in tax free government bonds. All of these are possible and of course all are done. Only the values of the wealth holder constrains the options. Personally I don't find it my business what they do with it. Even though I despise many things that George Soros holds dear, I find no need to restrict his ability to do what he wishes with his money.

Why then do right leaning people become villianized for their pursuits. Investments in science that is contrary to the Al Gore school of global warming becomes so evil that it draws angry letters from Senators on government stationary. Investment in local churches is poo-poo'd as wasting resources that could be used on the poor.

Another role of wealth is to safeguard us with better products and innovation. We notice that the industrialized world has less profound effects when natural disaster hits. Better construction, better engineering is purchased with wealth. When third world lands are hit with typhoon or earthquake hundreds of thousands die for one reason, lack of wealth. They cannot build using the latest technology and engineering. This is unfortunate. It is also not going to change as long as we encourage them to shun modernity and capitalism.

Yes wealth is a powerful thing, and a most hated thing in many circles. Count me out of those circles. As for me, I embrace all the wealth I can accrue.

So are the janitors also evil?

The denouncements from the left are pouring in. Exxon Mobil earned a record amount of profit. They earned $11.68 billion in profit. We are continually told how bad they are. We are told how evil it is that they are earning this profit on the backs of poor people.

My question is this: Is Exxon Mobile a person? Of course not. Exxon like all corporations is built of thousands of people. From the CEO to the janitors that clean the buildings. These people all earn their living supporting the large behemoth that is Exxon Mobil. The left like to act like corporations are the living embodiment of their CEO. We saw it with the accounting scandals of Enron. The workers were victims, only Kenneth Lay was evil.

Senator Obama right on cue has a plan to take money from the oil companies to give away to purchase votes, oops I mean gas. He proposes $500 checks to single people and $1,000 checks to married couples to assist them in purchasing fuel. He would get this by confiscating profits from oil companies.

Using this to make my point, I wonder how many people will need to lose their jobs to pay for this tax grab? How many people won't be offered jobs to pay for Obama's vote grab? How much money will not go into research on alternative fuels because of his money grab? How about those people working for Exxon now? Will they get raises? Some yes, but I'll bet they are cut.

Those janitor that clean the buildings for low wages. Should they be punished because Senator Obama wants to make people think he cares? Do they deserve that? How about the research that won't be done? What if that could make a breakthrough in fuel technology? Is it worth it to get Obama elected? I don't think so.

Personally I think huge corporations are marginally less oppressive than government. You want to punish them? Reduce not increase the restrictions on the industry. One of the things that probably will happen is that more firms large and small will enter the industry. This is called competition. Don't say it too loud. People like Senator Obama don't like that word. They might just pass a law restricting your use of the word. They might tax you when you use it. OK sarcasm aside, increased competition would force Exxon and the other behemoths to put even more money into research and production and yes reduce their profits by forcing them to put more money into future profits. That would be using the market to solve a major problem. That is what guarantees it will never be proposed by Senator Obama. If that happens he gets no credit and therefore can't buy your vote.

On the bright side when Exxon lays off middle class and lower income workers to pay for the new tax bill, at least they will get the $500 bucks that Senator Obama promised us. I think they may prefer the job though.