Substantial Support for Obama Health Care Law Exists Amongst Religious Groups, Including Catholic Organizations – Wait, That Can’t Be Right

If That Were So Wouldn’t the Media Have Reported It?  (No, Not Really)

As the controversy over health care, the President’s health care reform law, contraception and the role of government in family planning has erupted over the past several weeks, anyone who receives their news from the main stream media would have been under the impression there were two separate sides.  On one side would be the President and his supporters, arguing for the extension of health care access to every American and the requirement that all American have health insurance.  On the other side would be all the religious leaders and groups who felt the health care reform improperly restricted their right to deny access to certain health care procedures to people.

As it turn out, in the real world the opposition to the current Affordable Care Act is not universal within the religious community.  Think Progress has called everyone’s attention to a brief filed on behalf of a large number of diverse religious organizations supporting the ACA.  That brief was filed on behalf of groups including Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Protestants. 

The basis of their support is their belief that a truly devout and religious person would support access to quality and affordable health care for all, and that Medicaid and Medicare are key elements to that access.

Our organizations, as well as people of faith throughout our society, strongly support Medicaid and Medicare. In the faith community, we are often the first to witness need and distress from all causes. As providers of services and care, both physical and spiritual, our members, congregations and institutions, including religiously affiliated health care providers, are very familiar with the importance of Medicaid and Medicare.

And they go on to say

All individuals, regardless of their age, income, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race or ethnicity, geography, employment status, or health status, deserve equal access to quality, affordable, inclusive and account-able health care. Reducing health care options for some based on any of these factors is profoundly unjust.

And in case anyone is worried that tax exempt dollars paid for the legal expertise to file legal briefs, there is this

Counsel for the parties filed blanket consents to amicus briefs in this case. Counsel for amici timely notified counsel of record of its intent to file this brief. No party’s counsel authored this brief in whole or in part. No party or party’s counsel contributed money to fund preparation or submission of this brief. No person, other than amici’s counsel, contributed money intended to fund preparation or submission of this brief.  

But don’t look for this aspect of the argument in any of the major newspapers, television networks to other major sources of news.  They are not interested in fairly reporting the news, just in sensationalizing the news to sell papers and get viewers.  Besides, reporting this aspect of the story might be considered bias in favor of the truth, and no one wants that.

Martha Stewart Continues to Prosper Based on the Martha Stewart Brand

A Comeback Story That Says – Well We Don’t Know What it Says

Martha Stewart is an American story.  Ms. Stewart moved from being a baby sitter for Mickey Mantle's kids and a model to being a household guru.  She had her own TV show, her own product line and her own public company.  She also got involved in an insider trading scheme, and she was ultimately tried and convicted of lying to the government. 



Why Is This Former Convict Smiling?



Ms. Stewart served her time in a not particularly pleasant women’s prison in West Virginia.  Her public complaints were relatively mild and few, and when released she resumed her career of marketing “Martha Stewart”.  This has been a tremendous financial success.  Ms. Stewart and Macy’s teamed up, with great results for both parties.

In 2005, Martha Stewart’s company approached Macy’s (M) with an intriguing proposition. It offered the nation’s second-largest department store chain the chance to sell a wide range of home goods bearing the name of the style doyenne. Stewart was already a household name, with a successful TV show and magazine and a line of housewares sold by discounter Kmart (SHLD). There was one possible downside: Stewart had just been released from a federal prison after serving five months for obstruction of justice. Nonetheless, Macy’s bit, and what followed was a partnership that made the Martha Stewart Collection one of the chain’s most visible brands.

Now Ms. Stewart is moving up to J.C. Penney

The chain agreed to buy a 17 percent stake in MSLO for $38.5 million and, starting next February, will open hundreds of mini-stores devoted to all things Martha. According to the companies, the partnership will generate more than $200 million in revenue over 10 years for MSLO. “Penney offered to buy a chunk of stock and infuse a bunch of money, and gave a great opportunity to grow,” says Margaret Gilliam, founder of an eponymous retail consulting firm.

Naturally all of this has Macy’s upset, and naturally all of it will end up on court, and naturally all of the rest of do not really care what the outcome of that court battle will be.  Of greater interest though is how a former convict has been able to do so well with her personal brand.  Here’s one explanation.

That Stewart can flex her muscles against a major licensee so responsible for much of her past exposure is due in part to a big shift in U.S. retailing. Since the Great Recession, stores have been luring balky consumers with merchandise they can’t find elsewhere, often hooked to a famous name—Kim Kardashian at Sears stores, for example. Retail consultant Robin Lewis says exclusive merchandise inoculates retailers against an increasingly common consumer practice: comparing prices on smartphones. That’s one reason it’s hard to go shopping these days without encountering Stewart’s towels (Macy’s), doggie raincoats (PetSmart) (PETM), build-it-yourself furniture (Home Depot) (HD), craft kits (Michaels Stores), and desktop organizers (Staples) (SPLS). Her brand even transcends retail, with signature houses in subdivisions built by KB Home (KBH) and destination weddings at Sandals Resorts.

And as for the socio-economic meaning of all this, well it’s hard to say.  On one hand one has to admire Ms. Stewart for fighting back from a prison sentence and being an even stronger brand name.  There is no question Ms. Stewart was made an example by the government, that’s what the government does with celebrity defendants.  Their rationale is that high profile cases help deter crimes, and they may be right and no its not fair to the Martha Stewarts of the world, but that is part of the price of fame.

On the other hand it is hard to see why consumers will purchase a brand just because a celebrity’s name is attached to it.  Are American consumers that shallow?  Apparently they are.  And so Martha Stewart has probably eclipsed an American icon like Betty Crocker as a marketing persona.  And even that was hard for Ms. Stewart, because Betty Crocker is a fictional person whose life is infinite.  Of course, one suspects people will buy Martha Stewart products long after she has passed away, and when they do few if any will even know she was once a real person.

Michele Bachmann to Run in Congressional District in Which She Does Not Reside

Maybe the People in the District Where She Does Reside Know Her Too Well

Most people, The Dismal Political Economist included have always felt that one feature of American democracy was that the Congress was composed on Senators, who represent an entire state and Members of the House who represent a Congressional District.  This structure was the result of one of the many compromises that created the United States Constitution, giving disproportionate representation to smaller states in order to help protect their rights from infringement by a larger state.

It seems only natural and fair that the people in a Congressional District elect one of their residents to represent them in the House.  After all isn't that exactly what the term “representation” means.  But it turns out that in Minnesota one does not have to reside in the Congressional District that one chooses to represent. For example for former (thank you) Presidential candidate Michele Bachman

Members of Congress don't have to live in the district they represent, so Bachmann is free to run wherever she likes in Minnesota.

And so Ms. Bachman will not run in the 4^th Congressional District of Minnesota, where she resides.  Instead she will run in the 6^th Congressional District where she does not reside.

A Minnesota judicial panel on Tuesday released new political district lines that place U.S. Reps. Michele Bachmann, a Republican, and Betty McCollum, a Democrat, into the same congressional district, according to Bachmann's office.

Bachmann said that she will run for her old 6th District seat even though newly drawn congressional maps put her home in the 4th District, currently represented by McCollum.

"I'm announcing today that I will be running in the 6th Congressional district. I'll continue my service to the people in the district where I essentially went to junior high, high school, college, had my babies born and we built our business and we have our church and our family," Bachmann said

This Forum has frequently commented on how politicians in general and Republican specifically do not really like this “democracy” thing all that much.  And as for the people of the 6^th District in Minnesota, well if they elect Michele Bachmann to represent them even though she does not represent them, well, they are getting what they deserve.  Actually they will not be getting what they deserve, that is, representation in the House of Representatives but that is there fault, no anyone elses.

There is Bad News and Bad News on Unemployment in Europe –

Why Can’t We Have Good News? – Because European Economic Policy is Producing the Bad News

If anyone wants to contrast the economic situation in Europe with that of the United States, he or she would find out that while employment is growing and the unemployment rate is falling in the U. S., the opposite is happening in Europe.  Even worse, the burden is not spread evenly, young people are bearing the brunt of the suffering, with the youth unemployment rate in Spain and Greece above 40%. 

Spain has recently voted in a center-right government that is trying to tackle the problem by instituting reforms in the labor markets and employment agreements.  The problem for most of Europe is that once a person is hired, it is extremely difficult to get rid of them if they are not appropriate for the job or if their services are no longer needed. 

Everything the government is Spain is trying to do makes sense, because the structure of employment rights in that country and most others does not leave business management in charge of the hiring decision.

By cutting red tape, the new law makes it easier and cheaper to lay off workers. For most firms, maximum lay-off payments will be reduced from 42 months’ pay to 12 months, says Mr de Guindos. That may not immediately affect growth, he adds, but it will hugely boost business confidence. “The reform changes the idea companies have that labour rules are an obstacle,” says Salvador del Rey, of the Cuatrecasas International Institute, a think-tank. Another measure tackles Spain’s top-heavy collective-bargaining system. Whereas unions and employers previously imposed terms from above, companies can now break free of them. This means employers can negotiate shorter working hours or lower wages.

The labor laws that Spain is trying to be rid of are a great example of the law of unintended consequences.  By trying to make employment more secure, unions and government made employment less secure.  The proof, if the existing system were working to preserve employment there would not be charts like this.

But despite the policy of changing the labor markets and the way they function, one cannot be optimistic things will improve.  This is because there has to be a demand for that labor when the labor markets are freed up.  And Spain, along with most other European countries is adopting policy to reduce demand for labor.  This is being done in the name of “austerity” and bringing the fiscal house in order.

How well does that policy work.  Well ask the Greeks, they have been trying it for several years with catastrophic results.

Another Thing to Worry About – The Universe is Not Only Expanding, It is Expanding at an Increasing Rate

Just What Everyone Needed – Another Useless Issue to Throw Money At

The current issues facing Americans are pretty severe.  There is the question of Iranian nuclear capability, the decreasing functionality of the federal government, and the quest to find out why anyone would ever vote for Rick Santorum amongst others.  Now a new issue has been added to the list of worries, the state of the universe.

This is a problem out there that has been known to scientists but for some reason has been kept from the rest of us.

It has been known since the late 1920s that the universe is getting bigger. But it was thought that the expansion was slowing. When in 1998 two independent studies reached the opposite conclusion, cosmology was knocked head over heels.

Okay maybe it hasn’t been kept from anybody,

Since then, 5,000 papers have been written to try to explain (or explain away) this result. “That’s more than one a day,” marvels Saul Perlmutter, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who led the Supernova Cosmology Project—one of the studies that was responsible for dropping the bombshell.

Maybe it’s just nobody cared.  But it turns out this is a big deal amongst scientists who have nothing better to do, like finding a cure for cancer or trying to determine what genetic defect has caused European governments to try to destroy the European economy.  After all, 5,000 papers and counting have been published on this problem which affects the lives of exactly zero of the  billions of inhabitants of the planet.

For everyone who is wondering, here is the explanation of the issue.

Relativity says that for the universe to be flat, it has to have a very particular density—which in relativity is a measure not just of the mass contained in a certain volume, but also of the energy. The puzzle was that various lines of evidence showed that the universe’s endowment of ordinary matter (the stuff that people, planets and stars are made of) would give it just 4% of that density. Adding in extraordinary matter—“dark matter”, not made of atoms, that interacts with the rest of the universe almost only by means of gravity—gets at most an extra 22%. That left almost three-quarters of the critical density unaccounted for.

Wow, you would think is scientists are looking for something unaccounted for, they might focus on the $1.2 billion and growing missing funds from MF Global.  That’s where we would look if we had scientific expertise and credentials.

But not to worry, a solution may be in hand.  The scientists are going to take pictures of the universe with a digital camera.  No not the one you carry in your man purse or woman purse, this is a really big digital camera.

AT FIVE tonnes and 520 megapixels, it is the biggest digital camera ever built—which is fitting, because it is designed to tackle the biggest problem in the universe. On February 20th researchers at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (pictured), which sits 2,200 metres (7,200 feet) above sea level in the Atacama desert of northern Chile, will begin installing this behemoth on a telescope called Blanco. It is the centrepiece of the Dark Energy Survey (DES), the most ambitious attempt yet to understand a mystery as perplexing as any that faces physics: what is driving the universe to expand at an ever greater rate.

Really, the biggest problem in the universe is to understand why the universe is expanding at a greater rate?  No, sorry scientists, that is not the biggest problem in the universe, and besides if you really want to know the answer, just call the universe and ask it.  It’s in the yellow pages, under the category “Universes” and it has an 800 number so the call will not even cost you anything.

As Mitt Romney Tries to Shift the Debate to Tax Cuts for the Wealthy, Social Issues Like Pre-Abortion Testing in Virginia Present a Challenge to His Candidacy

Mitt and His Potential VP Mate Va. Gov.  Robert McDonnell Face an Unpleasant Choice

Republican controlled states have moved around the Supreme Court’s guarantee that a woman is the one in charge of her body by enacting all sorts of restrictions on the right to an abortion.  The idea is to make it so difficult to obtain an abortion that abortion rights will be eliminated de facto if not de jure.

Virginia is a moderate state that for reasons beyond understanding has turned it government over to radical Conservatives.  These radicals are not representative of the state’s electorate, yet the state voters continue to elect them.  This results in Virginians getting the government they deserve, but not the government they want.  Case in point is abortion rights.  Here is the rather ugly description by Think Progress of the policy Conservatives want to put into place in Virginia.  (accompanying graphic diagram is omitted)

 a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced.”

As might be expected, there has been a substantial backlash against the proposed legislation and stalwart radical Conservative Gov. Robert McDonnell of Virginia, who covets the second spot on a Romney ticket has been forced into reconsideration of his support.

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell is backing off his unconditional support for a billrequiring women to have an ultrasound before an abortion, focusing new attention on one of the most controversial pieces of legislation in Virginia’s General Assembly this year.

Until this weekend, McDonnell (R) and his aides had said the governor would sign the measure if it made it to his desk. McDonnell, who strongly opposes abortion, will no longer make that commitment.

There is a whole bunch of other objectionable material in the proposed legislation, like requirements for what is put in a person's private medical file.  One would think that Conservatives more than anyone else would reject the idea that government should control what goes in a persons medical records, but then Conservatives don't really believe in limiting government intervention into citizen's lives, do they.

Mr. McDonnell would obviously like a compromise to make the issue go away and is now supporting a bill which drops the highly odious provisionss and retains only the mostly odious positions.   But the key factor here is Mitt Romney.  Mr. Romney needs to avoid even being asked the question of whether or not he supports the Virginia bill.  Mr. Romney is trying to make tax and economic policy the center of the campaign, because he cannot challenge Mr. Santorum on conservative issues as even Mr. Romney cannot change his positions to such a degree as to be more preferable to social Conservatives on social issues than Mr. Santorum.

But if Mr. Romney has to answer the question of whether or not he supports the Virginia policy his candidacy will suffer from whatever answer he gives.  So look for Mr. Romney to be prepared to totally duck the issue if he cannot prevent it from being brought up.  And since Mr. Romney has had rather a bad time of it recently, The Dismal Political Economist will, as a goodwill gesture free of charge, provide the answer he can give.  (It’s just not hard to come up with a weasel like answer).

“Virginia has the right to do whatever they want, I support their policy of anti-abortion rights and may or may not agree with their specifics”.

And so for everyone else, when you hear Mr. Romney say something like that you all will know where it came from.

In Florida the Policy on Higher Education: Cut State Support, Deny Tuition Increases and Create a New State College

Maybe the Legislature Needs a Higher Education

Colleges and Universities are wasteful and inefficient.  They have bloated administrations, unproductive tenured faculty members and their costs have been rising faster than general inflation for decades.  But college and universities are essential for an economic system, they fuel growth and development, they make  the workforce more productive and they enhance the culture of the nation.  They are also one of the few portals through which men and women whose parents are not wealthy can enter into a life of financial success.

In spite of all of this, or maybe because state colleges and universities serve ordinary citizens, the Republican legislature of Florida has been cutting state support of public higher education for years.

The cuts in Florida began four years ago and have continued unabated. Since 2008, state spending on education has dropped by 24 percent and is now at 2003 levels. Meanwhile, universities have raised tuition every year, putting many students in a financial bind. Florida’s 11 public universities have been raising tuition 15 percent a year for the past four years, and some of them for five years, although they still rank among the least expensive in the nation.

The current impetus in the state is to cut even more.

A proposal in the House would reduce state financing by nearly $250 million next year and would allow universities to increase tuition by as little as 8 percent and as much as 15 percent. A measure in the Senate would cut more than $500 million and would allow smaller institutions that are defined as colleges to raise tuition by 3 percent (the full-scale universities would not be permitted to raise tuition).

But as one would notice, the state legislature knows that raising tuition is not popular, so they would put limits on that.  So what happens if financial support for the colleges is cut and tuition is not raised.  Hm, maybe the schools would have to cut back resources for higher education.  Yep, that must be it.

So given a legislative climate highly hostile to higher education, why would the state consider adding a 12^th college to the lineup. 

Mr. Alexander, who is serving out his final year in the Senate because of term limits, has pushed for independence for the Lakeland campus, the University of South Florida Polytechnic, which has 4,400 students. He wants to make it the state’s 12th university, but the University of South Florida opposes the idea.

See, if the colleges and universities are already administratively bloated, why would someone want to add to that problem?  Oh, that’s right we are dealing with egomaniacal politicians who think government serves to glorify them.

“The whole notion that we would set up a 12th university when we are cutting the budget for the other 11 is ridiculous,” said Pam Iorio, who served two terms as Tampa’s mayor and left the job last year. “This is just something that he wants. He wants it as a legacy project, to be able to leave office and to say in his hometown that this university was created by him.”

And just to show he is serious, State Senator Alexander has targeted the University of South Florida because of its opposition to the glorification of State Senator Alexander

For some universities, the situation is dire. The University of South Florida in Tampa stands to lose a crippling 58 percent of its financing under the Senate bill. It was singled out as the result of a fight with Senator JD Alexander, chairman of the Budget Committee, over the university’s unwillingness to sever its ties with its Lakeland branch.

As for the state’s conservative governor, this is about all he has to say

The governor also strongly opposes letting universities raise tuition again.

Presumably this policy of cutting support for the future is popular with Florida's wealthy retirement citizens.  After all, they got theirs, why should they care anything about those coming after them.  Really, they are not called the "selfish generation" for nothing.

Here’s a Great Idea – File a Class Action Lawsuit – Reach a Nice Settlement – And

The Lawyers Get All the Money – The Clients Get Nothing

For anyone looking for (another) reason to dislike the legal profession, there is this.  Following a merger the tradition in this country is for the shareholders of the selling company to sue for some reason or other.  Usually the basis for the suit is that somehow the shareholders of the selling company did not get fair value.  The basis for the lawsuit doesn’t really matter, the origin of the suit is to generate legal fees for the firm representing the class of plaintiff’s, with some money, of course, left over for the plaintiffs.

But for some law firms the money going to the plaintiffs just gets in the way of money going to the law firms.  So it turns out that a Businessweek investigation found that in a large number of cases the settlement proceeds all go to the plaintiff’s attorneys.

In the last two years, 57 investor class actions filed against merging companies settled with court approval. Of those, 40 cases, or 70 percent, included money for plaintiffs’ lawyers and none for clients, according to court data compiled by Bloomberg. The lawyers’ take in those cases: $32.4 million.

Now one might thing that such a situation is illegal.  Apparently not.  One might think that such a situation is unethical.  Apparently not.  Here’s the way the scam works.

Two hours and 27 minutes after a Dec. 27 announcement that Ventas (VTR), a Chicago-based owner of senior housing and medical properties, would acquire Cogdell Spencer, the law firm Rigrodsky & Long posted a notice that it was investigating whether directors had shopped for the best price. The notice invited shareholders in Cogdell, a medical building owner in Charlotte, N.C., to call Rigrodsky & Long for information. Within a week, 11 more law firms posted similar notices. Lawsuits followed. “Every single deal, as soon as it gets announced, websites go up and notices go up on the Internet that this and that plaintiffs’ firm is investigating,” says Jim Woolery,JPMorgan Chase’s (JPM) co-head of North American mergers and acquisitions and a former partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. “What they are doing is trolling for plaintiffs.” He adds, “The overwhelming—overwhelming—majority of these cases do not result in any substantive benefit for shareholders.”

 Of course, Delaware could crack down on this process.  And maybe they are doing so with this result

 “Delaware could risk losing its status as the de facto national corporate law court,” according to the study by Northwestern’s Black and law professors at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford. One possible factor is that Chancery judges have gotten tougher on lawyers who produce meager results for their clients, lawyers and academics say. 

As for the legal profession itself, well it is self regulating, as should be obvious from this news story.

Letter from Investment Management Firm Zilch Capital Sheds Light on Wall Street Practices

The Economist Magazine Invents a Better Mousetrap Satire

Many times this Forum is forced to admit that someone else does better what the Forum is trying to do.  In this case it is The Economist with an unreal communication from an investment management firm to its investors.  It is presented in full because it is to be enjoyed that way.

The lexicon of hedge funds

From alpha to smart beta

The industry’s language is changing

Feb 18th 2012 | from the print edition

Dear investor,

In line with the rest of our industry we are making some changes to the language we use in our marketing and communications. We are writing this letter so we can explain these changes properly. Most importantly, Zilch Capital used to refer to itself as a “hedge fund” but 2008 made it embarrassingly clear we didn’t know how to hedge. At all. So like many others, we have embraced the title of “alternative asset manager”. It’s clunky but ambiguous enough to shield us from criticism next time around.

We know we used to promise “absolute returns” (ie, that you would make money regardless of market conditions) but this pledge has proved impossible to honour. Instead we’re going to give you “risk-adjusted” returns or, failing that, “relative” returns. In years like 2011, when we delivered much less than the S&P 500, you may find that we don’t talk about returns at all.

It is also time to move on from the concept of delivering “alpha”, the skill you’ve paid us such fat fees for. Upon reflection, we have decided that we’re actually much better at giving you “smart beta”. This term is already being touted at industry conferences and we hope shortly to be able to explain what it means. Like our peers we have also started talking a lot about how we are “multi-strategy” and “capital-structure agnostic”, and boasting about the benefits of our “unconstrained” investment approach. This is better than saying we don’t really understand what’s going on.

Some parts of the lexicon will not see style drift. We are still trying to keep alive “two and twenty”, the industry’s shorthand for 2% management fees and 20% performance fees. It is, we’re sure you’ll agree, important to keep up some traditions. Thank you for your continued partnership.

Zilch Capital LLC

Dear Dismal Political Economist! – The Shelf Life of a Mitt Romney Position

An Advice Column for the Perplexed and Confused on Economic and Political Issues

[Editor’s Note:  In his continuing effort to bring light and clarification to  current events and current issues, The Dismal Political Economist is now answering reader’s questions on how the current political and economic climate affects them personally.]

Dear Dismal Political Economist

My husband and I are thinking of buying into a policy position of Mitt Romney.  We have researched policy positions by major candidates on the Web, and we have looking at reliability ratings from folks who previously purchased policy positions from various candidates.  We have also read Consumer’s Reports and other publications and contacted the Better Business Bureau for further guidance.

Based on our research we now feel a Mitt Romney position is right for us.  We want to buy now, while the values of Mr. Romney’s positions are heavily discounted but we will not be using the policy position until much later in the year.  Our question is what should be use as the shelf life of the position, that is, how long can we wait before the position goes bad and is repudiated by Mr. Romney?

Signed

Concerned in Albuquerque

Dear Concerned

You are right to have qualms about accepting a position from Mr. Romney and having it go bad before it is implemented or even repeatedly endorsed by him.  It used to be that Mr. Romney’s positions had a shelf life of several years, and that it would be as much as three or more years before Mr. Romney determined that his particular position was not politically conducive, and that he had to disavow it, rendering that position spoiled and useless.

These days it appears the shelf life of a Romney position can be measured in months rather than years.  His tax policy of last September lasted only six months before it spoiled and was inedible.  You really want to check the label on the policy you are considering before you purchase it.

Fortunately there is a way to estimate the shelf life of Mr. Romney’s proposals.  If they contain 60% or more pander to the right wing of the Republican party, they may well last 12 months or more.  If they are less than 60% pandering, then they should not be consumed more than 6 weeks after opening. 

Many consumers are worried that a Romney position based on principle and independent of political gain for Mr. Romney spoils immediately, but you should not be concerned.  Those positions were removed from the shelves over a decade ago, and are not expected to be available any time soon.

The DPE

Conservative Opinion Writer Kathleen Parker Tries to Save Rick Santorum from Rick Santorum and Fails

Some Things Just Cannot Be Done

The recent furor over the comments of Republican Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum have lead to rather substantial criticism of Mr. Santorum.  There is good reason for this, as Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker explains. 

It is easy to pound Santorum, and no one makes it easier than Santorum himself. Nevermind that he invokes Satan, claiming that the “Father of Lies” has his sights on the United States, as Santorum did in 2008 at Ave Maria University in Florida. He has never met a question he wouldn’t answer or a combatant he wouldn’t engage. 

But Ms. Parker, is a Conservative and like all Conservatives she feels the problem is just that the national press mis-understands what Mr. Santorum is saying, particular with respect to whether or not a state government may ban all forms of birth control.

Thus, when a reporter asks whether he thinks states should be able to ban birth control, Santorum says yes, but . . .

HEADLINE!!! “Santorum says states should be able to ban birth control!!!”

Except that’s not what he meant, nor is it what he intends. 

Well if that is not what he means, what does he mean.  Here is Ms. Parker’s explanation.

 Santorum was expressing a legal opinion, and his answer was within the context of whether states have any regulatory jurisdiction over the question. 

Okay, he was expressing a legal opinion, which means the supposed headline that Ms. Parker says is incorrect is exactly what he means.  Her faux headline summarizes Mr. Santorum’s position exactly. His position is that states have the right to completely ban birth control.

Mr. Santorum himself is on record as not favoring a ban on birth control, just giving the states the right to do so.  Even with his feeble political skills and rabid adherence to government control over personal behavior he knows that political position is not tenable’ a national candidate cannot succeed if he calls for government bans on family planning.  So his position is the states should have the right to do so, and then let others do the dirty political work that he will not do himself.

The argument here is similar to the arguments against Civil Rights legislation in the 1960’s.  At that time Conservatives who were opposed to Civil Rights protection argued that while they themselves were in favor of equal rights, government should not enforce that policy.  This policy position allowed them to take the anti-prejudice position while at the same time supporting policy that allowed racial discrimination to continue. 

Such an argument with respect to family planning is just as disreputable today as that argument on Civil Rights was then. 

Deathly Ill, Newt Gingrich Campaign Finally Succumbs – Autopsy Concludes Self Inflicted Wounds Were Fatal

Final Blow Was Accurate Reporting on Mr. Gingrich’s Career by the Washington Post

This Forum has consistently criticized the Washington Post for its lack of journalism, so it is only right that we commend the Post when it does conduct what used to be called investigative reporting.  The Post has researched the career of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich using archival materials at the University of West George, material stored there by a Gingrich supporter and biographer.

Here is some of what the Post found, starting with as good a summary of the article as there can be

When Gingrich was in the House, his chief of staff noted at a 1983 staff meeting that his boss frequently derided Reagan, along with then-White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III and Robert H. Michel, the House Republican leader.

Gingrich “assumed that he’s the whole Republican Party,” said the Gingrich aide, Frank Gregorsky, according to a transcript of the meeting. “He knows more than the president, the president’s people, Michel, Baker. He calls them stupid all the time, and I think that’s going to get him into big trouble someday.”

Okay Mr. Gregorsky, you win for best prognosis of 1983.  And as far as the icon of the Republican Party is concerned, here is what Mr. Gingrich said about Mr. Reagan

Ronald Reagan’s “weakness,” Gingrich told the National Academy of Public Administrationin Atlanta, was that “he didn’t think government mattered. . . . The Reagan failure was to grossly undervalue the centrality of government as the organizing mechanism for reinforcing societal behavior.”

Yep, that did it. 

Services for the Gingrich campaign have not yet been scheduled, but are expected to take place soon, with formal burial expected some time after the Super Tuesday primaries.  Although brain dead, the campaign is being kept technically alive on life support transfusions of money from a billionaire who believes a zombie* Gingrich campaign will help stave off the challenge of Rick Santorum to the nomination of Mitt Romney.

*Technical Note:  Zombies are not real, they are just entertaining fiction.

Discussions on the Economy Are So Interesting You Could Sell Tickets – An Absurd Statement That is Actually True

Paul Krugman is Popular – Because Paul Krugman is Right

Suppose for some reason that the Metropolitan Museum of Art of all people held a panel discussion on the economy.  No, we don’t know why that institution would do so, but they did.  Also suppose for some reason that the panelists were noted economists like Edmund Phelps and Jeffrey Sachs.  The questions is, how much would you have to pay people to attend such a session? 

However, add Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman to the panel and that question changes.  Now the question is how much would people be willing to pay to attend the session.  Well you could charge $25.00 and see if anyone would buy them.  It turns out, they would and more.

Advance tickets cost $25 and were sold out, and standing- room tickets offered the same day also sold out an hour before the panel began.

That is, of course a testament to the intelligence of Mr. Krugman and the fact that he has been “right on” in his analysis of the economy and of economic policy.  The reason for this is not that Mr. Krugman is smarter than the rest of those folks, it is that he is developing economic analysis based on economic principles.  His critics, like Mr. Sachs

Sachs, an economics professor at Columbia University who also spoke on the panel, criticized Krugman earlier this month for not paying enough attention to the growing federal debt. Sachs said the government should focus more on investing in long-term programs like education instead of short-term stimulus measures.

are driven by ideological positions, and force their analysis to conform to pre-determined conclusions.  This results in bogus commentary that results from bogus conclusions. 

Mr. Sachs has called Mr. Krugman out for being a “crude Keynesian”.

“Krugman has staked out a rather crude Keynesian position and unrelentingly so,” Sachs said Feb. 9, referring to John Maynard Keynes, the British economist who advocated government spending to spur growth during the Great Depression. Krugman “knows one thing, which is stimulus, stimulus, stimulus and expand deficit spending,” Sachs, 57, said in the television interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Ken Prewitt and Tom Keene.

And Mr. Krugman has taken that criticism with his usual good charm

“So I’m the Keynesian on this panel,” Krugman said yesterday after fellow panelist and Nobel-prize winning economist Edmund Phelps also referred to “crude” Keynesianism. “I’ve been saying that the next guy who calls me ‘crude,’ I’m going to call him out and punch him in the schnoz,” he said to laughter from the audience of more than 700 in the museum’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium.

But the reality is this.  Mr. Krugman has a long record of commentary, and he has been right.  He said that the Stimulus package of the Obama administration was good, but insufficient, and he was right.  He said that European policy of trying to grow their economies by austerity would lead to recession, and he was right. 

Maybe this is the problem with his opponents, they cannot attack Mr. Krugman on his positions and analysis, which have been proven accurate so they resort to terms like “crude Keynesian”.  Wow, that must really hurt.

Think There is a Smart Investment Advisor Out There to Pick Winning Stocks for You – Think Again

You Cannot Beat the Market – So Join It

There are two major competing ideas in the investment world.  One is that there are a bunch of smart people out there who can pick stocks and put them into a portfolio that will consistently perform better than the market as a whole.  The way to find these smart people who manage mutual funds available to the public is to look at past performance and pick funds that did better in previous years.

The second theory is that it is impossible to consistently create a portfolio that will perform better than the market, that on average about half of the managed portfolios will do better than the market, about half will do worse, and that past performance is no indicator of future performance.  Under this theory it is impossible to determine in advance which funds will do better than the market.

The logic behind the second theory is compelling.  Since large managed portfolios like mutual funds are diversified, not only will they on average fail to beat the market, they will on average underperform the market average.  The reason is that these funds charge up to 2% of the portfolio as fees.  So in order to just equal the market they have to do 2% better than the market.

The statistics are clear on this, as this report shows.

According to James Bianco of Bianco Research, 2011 was a particularly rotten year for stock pickers: Only 17% of more than 4,000 funds that invest in large U.S. stocks beat their benchmark. In most years, fewer than half do.

What!!!  Only 17% of the people paid huge sums to pick the winning stocks did better than simply investing in the market as a whole, something that can be done by buying an index fund who performance matches the market.

Now you all know the basis of the (very) old joke, “If you want to make a small fortune by letting someone who is an “expert” invest your money, you need to start with a large fortune”.  Or as a statement attributed to Warren Buffet goes, “when a person with money meets a person with experience, the person with experience gets the money and the person with the money ends up with an experience”.

Is Mitt Romney Getting Ready to Flip-Flop on Mitt Romney’s Tax Plan

Documenting the Old Plan Before the New Plan is Released and the Old Plan Goes Down the Memory Hole

Last September Mitt Romney released a 59 point economic program.  This was going to be the program that propelled Mr. Romney to the nomination, by making him the “expert” on economic policy.  It hasn’t worked out quite that way, and now Mr. Romney is telegraphing that he will release a new and improved plan.  Because once the new plan is announced it may be impossible to find the old plan, as a public service here is the old plan.  (note, if the link no longer works it’s because Mr. Romney’s campaign wants everyone to forget the old plan.)

Individual Taxes

Mitt Romney believes in the conservative principle that Americans, to the maximum extent possible, should be able to keep the money they earn. Unfortunately, as Benjamin Franklin wrote, there are only two things that are unavoidable: death and taxes. We need taxes to pay for the operations of government. But they should be collected by a system that is simple and fair, and that causes the least possible disruption to the productive economy.

·                                   • Maintain current tax rates on personal income

·                                   • Maintain current tax rates on interest, dividends, and capital gains

·                                   • Eliminate taxes for taxpayers with AGI below $200,000 on interest, dividends, and capital gains

·                                   • Eliminate the death tax

·                                   • Pursue a conservative overhaul of the tax system over the long term that includes lower, flatter rates on a broader base

Corporate Taxes

Our system of corporate taxation is also in urgent need of an overhaul. Right now, with a top marginal rate of 35 percent, it vies for the developed world’s highest, placing our companies—indeed, our entire country—at a competitive disadvantage. That is the bad news. The good news is that with the rate set so high, there is a lot of room to bring it down.

·                                   • Reduce corporate income tax rate to 25 percent

·                                   • Pursue transition from “worldwide” to “territorial” system for corporate taxation

Incidentally that “death tax” thing is what the tax code and rational people call the Estate Tax.  Eliminating it could save Mr. Romney and his family over $100 million.  But it would not be nice to mention that, so we won’t.

So what is everyone expecting now?  Well Larry Kudlow, one of the typically wrong Conservative business and financial commentators is expecting a big change.

"Team Romney tells me there will be a bolder tax-cut plan released either at the debate tomorrow night (if Mitt gets it in) or more formally at his Detroit Economic Club speech on Friday. I'm embargoed from releasing details until tomorrow. But I can say that the new plan will be across-the-board with supply-side incentives from rate reduction, and that it will help small-business owners as well as everyone else."

With a tough Michigan primary ahead does Mr. Romney once again abandon his previous positions to appeal to the Conservative voting base of the Michiganders?  Stay tuned, but really, is it all that suspenseful?

Supreme Court to Finally Rule Against Affirmative Action of Any Type

Ready or Not Actions to Redress Discrimination Are Going to Be Ruled Unconstitutional

The proponents of Civil Rights and using government power to end discrimination have been both Democrats and Republicans.  Laws that prohibited discrimination based on race were passed on a bi-partisan basis.  Opposition to such laws were also bi-partisan, and that opposition was from Conservatives.  In some cases the opposition was principled and in many cases the opposition was the result of racial bias.

Simply ending discrimination did not end the damage of discrimination.  Affirmative action laws were enacted to help offset the damage done by decades of discrimination.  The result was that suddenly Conservatives determined that using the law to prohibit discrimination was not all that bad an idea after all, that civil rights laws should be used to protect the majority.  While Conservatives opposed civil rights legislation that protected minorities, they found they had no problem and in fact were avid supporters of legal action to protect the majority.

As the Supreme Court has been slowly taken over by Conservatives, the Court has ruled against Affirmative Action.  It is now poised to once and for all end an action that seek to redress the huge damage done by racial discrimination.  It will rule on a case in Texas where a person claims they were discriminated against as part of an Affirmative Action program.

Opponents of affirmative action hope that the current court, more conservative than the one that made the 2003 decision, will rule out the use of race.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote the 5 to 4 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger , was replaced by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who in past decisions has opposed the use of race in education decisions. And one of the court’s liberals, Justice Elena Kagan, has recused herself from the Texas case, presumably because of her previous job as President Obama’s solicitor general.

There should be little suspense over the outcome of this case.  The Supreme Court, dominated by Conservatives, will rule that any and all Affirmative Action programs are Unconstitutional.  Whether or not minorities can overcome the residual racism (or in some cases residual traditionalism where institutions act in a prejudicial manner not because they are racist, but because they have always favored certain groups) and prosper without Affirmative Action is no longer the issue.  They will have to, those programs will no longer be in place.