Swapping Apotheker, who has now been ousted from two high-profile CEO jobs in two years, for Whitman is a decision designed to stem investor fury over a series of questionable strategy moves.
Analysts are worried about Whitman's technology experience. It seems like HP has struggled because it has fallen behind in the ever evolving technology sector and bringing in a candidate that does not fit into that mold can be concerning:
“Our concern would be that she doesn’t have a lot of enterprise and technology experience,” said Jayson Noland, a tech analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. told the Post. “She’s not the most obvious choice to me.”
In response to doubts about Ms. Whitman’s qualifications to run H-P, Ray Lane compares Meg Whitman to Ronald Reagan! He says “Ronald Reagan was an actor. He turned out to be a pretty good president.”
These are probably attempts to appease shareholders. HP stock has dropped off since the announcement was made: Bernstein is not impressed:
The Street is duly unimpressed with Whitman's appointment:
Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems, is a Meg Whitman fan and says she's a good fit for HP:
“I am a big fan of Meg Whitman and she surrounds herself with good people,” said McNealy in a phone interview. He argued that she will bring much-needed stability. “I am bullish on Meg, but not bullish on how HP got there.”
He's not worried about her familiarity with tech either:
“She understands tech, even though she didn’t come from the computer industry. Heck, even Lou Gerstner (ex-CEO of IBM) didn’t come from the computer business.”
I'm not convinced by Whitman. I see that she did a great job with EBay, but I don't know if she can do the same with HP. They are in different businesses. From what I've seen, it seems like she is the flashy hire. I think the board is banking on her name brand appeal to make up for some of what they've lost in the last year in terms of credibility. However, what would have restored credibility in the best way was hiring the best candidate to lead HP. Now, Whitman could turn this ship around. Regardless, I feel HP could have been more thorough in finding a new CEO.
When I heard him talk about this last night, I wasn't sure he understood how what he was saying was coming across. He keeps referring to it as "sex" but I thought he meant to say "sexual orientation" given the context of what he was saying.
GOProud said in a statement that Santorum "disrespected" men and women in uniform with his response to Stephen Hill's question about whether any of the presidential candidates would "circumvent" the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
He seems to be the only one that's still against DADT:
What's remarkable about Santorum's position on "don't ask, don't tell" -- which formally ended this past week -- is not necessarily his keenness to judge the post-DADT environment for formerly closeted soldiers. It's that, on this matter at least, he is increasingly the lone culture warrior in the GOP presidential field. Following the debate, no other candidate or campaign offered support for a reinstitution of the law.
Herman Cain said this:
On a personal level, Cain added: "I have no problem with [gays serving openly]. The first order of business should be to do their job. As long as they do their jobs I think people in the military will be fine with that. It is when it becomes a distraction and you have got to spend a lot of time creating special situations, this is what I disagree with."
“That brave gay soldier is doing something Rick Santorum has never done -- put his life on the line to defend our freedoms and our way of life,” the group said in a statement attributed to Christopher R. Barron, the group’s chairman of the board, and Jimmy LaSalvia, its executive director. “It is telling that Rick Santorum is so blinded by his anti-gay bigotry that he couldn't even bring himself to thank that gay soldier for his service. Stephen Hill is serving our country in Iraq, fighting a war Senator Santorum says he supports. How can Senator Santorum claim to support this war if he doesn't support the brave men and women who are fighting it?”
Santorum has tried to paint himself as the top supporter of the military in this race. He had to differentiate himself from the rest of the candidates. However, as he fired that gun, it appears the recoil has caused him to hit himself in the face. I still think he somewhat misspoke, but you have to watch what you say in the public setting and you can't be as aggressive as he was in trying to take a stand when you're not sure of your words.
When I first heard Rick Perry declare his candidacy, I was excited. It meant new blood in the race; someone different who could inject life into the GOP. The more I've seen of him, the more I am unimpressed with him as a person and as a leader.
I'm not the only one that think so: While he established himself as the frontrunner, those days were numbered as he quickly has lost ground as a result of the last two debates. I can't really explain it because he has a good enough record where he really has a chance. Time and time again he seems unprepared in the debates. He's getting hammered on Social Security. He's getting hammered on crony capitalism. He's getting hammered on immigration. If he had been prepared, he would withstand the attacks, but he's just taking the hit. He's campaign has taken a hit.
The most telling moment Thursday evening was a botched attack on top rival Mitt Romney for Romney’s move during his political career toward more conservative stances in a number of issues, an attack that obviously had been readied in advance.
But Perry blew the delivery, offering instead a muddled stew of lines about Romney’s positions on abortion and healthcare, leaving the audience at the Fox News/Google debate in Orlando, Fla., and the audience at home unsure where Romney stood now or Romney stood then. (Of course, Romney’s critics would maintain that has always been the case.) It allowed Romney to close his portion of the debate decisively, while making a case that Perry didn’t seem to have a grasp of the issues.
The lack of preparation has reflected poorly on him. It would be easy to compare him George W. Bush, but that might be unfair to Bush at this point. Perry is just weak:
Perry arguably let Santorum push him around on border issues, as well, where Perry’s expertise should be unchallenged. Instead, Santorum hammered Perry on providing college tuition aid to the children of illegal immigrants and mocked him on border security. In another answer, Perry misspoke, saying Medicaid when he meant Medicare.
May be debating is just not his thing. However, as a President, you need to be multidimensional. There's also the fact that Perry has repeatedly stated that he wants to have a conversation on the issues, yet in the debates, he has repeatedly shied away from such discussion.
Don't even get me started on that smile. But that has more with the "look," which when all is said and done isn't important if a man (or woman) is capable. However, if a man is capable, he most certainly look Presidential, right? It's the stupidest thing to judge a potential President on looks, but people do do it. But is this a Presidential look? The aura of that first speech is lost. This is no secret:
When former senator Rick Santorum started to push Perry on his illegal immigration record, Perry made the mistake of asking Santorum whether he had been to the border. Of course, the former two-term senator has. Lots of members of Congress have. (And you don’t ask questions like that unless you’ve got a pretty good idea about the answer.)
That was symptomatic of Perry’s problems Thursday night. While he tried to recover from the attacks on himself by leveling his own attacks on the other candidates — mostly Mitt Romney, of course — he showed himself to be pretty inept at the art of the attack.
Whether or not debate is an important part of being president, it will be an important part of the election. If he does get past the attacks from Romney, Bachmann, Santorum, and the rest of the GOP Presidential hopefuls, he will have to go toe-to-toe with Obama. Now, that might be easier considering Obama has struggled on issues which Perry has succeeded. However, Obama has already once been elected President. He can do it again.
Perry needs to step up his game, or step down from his candidacy.
So I've long lambasted the weakness of the United States education system. I've been particularly disappointed with the lack of science and math education. Today, I read an interesting op-ed by the former CEO of Lockheed Martin:
With all the talk of America's very real weaknesses in the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math), you might be surprised to learn that the answer—according to the federal government's National Assessment of Educational Progress—is neither science nor math. And despite what might be suggested by the number of underwater home loans, high-school seniors actually fare best in economics.
Which leaves history as the answer, the subject in which students perform the most poorly. It's a result that puts American employers and America's freedoms in a worrisome spot.
Mr. Augustine goes onto say:
In my position as CEO of a firm employing over 80,000 engineers, I can testify that most were excellent engineers—but the factor that most distinguished those who advanced in the organization was the ability to think broadly and read and write clearly.
When we think about education reform, we should not limit our thinking to what aspects need to be improved, but rather, how to improve the whole. Being able to think is probably one of the biggest drags on students today. The skills you obtain from studying one subject can pay dividends to learning other subjects.
How do you improve the educational system though? Is there one way? Probably not. We live in a diverse country with diverse challenges. In Florida, there was a method that worked.
In an article praising a Bush, they say education should be left to the states:
“By federalizing education policy you create resistance at the classroom, school, school district -- and even the state level,” he told the Harvard Political Review earlier this year. “I think you’re getting more dynamic results by having the states play the policy role and holding local school districts accountable for actual learning.”
The state of Florida's educational system was not succeeding:
In 1998, Florida’s public educational system was ranked among the worst in the nation. Its high school graduation rate was an appalling 52 percent; 47 percent of its fourth-graders were functionally illiterate, according to nationally administered tests. To address this crisis, the state had adopted a rigorous set of criteria for each grade called the Sunshine State Standards, and established a system of tests, the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test (FCAT), administered to fourth-, fifth-, eighth- and 10th-graders to see if students were living up to them.
What did Jeb Bush do? Reform, spend, improve:
Their first major legislative initiative, passed swiftly by the Florida legislature, was called the Florida A-Plus Plan. It’s primary features included the following four provisions: Making the FCAT an annual exercise so that each student is tested each year; assign letter grades, A through F, to every school in the state based on academic performance; requiring D and F schools to produce a detailed plan to improve performance -- and providing state money to help; and allowing students from chronically underperforming schools the option of transferring to any public school in their district, or an adjacent district, or even attending a private school at state expense.
And merit-based pay:
Bush and his team followed up in subsequent years with a plethora of other innovations. These included the always-controversial merit pay to retain the best teachers; changes in teacher certification procedures designed to attract instructors with a high grasp of the subject material (especially in math); ending “social promotions,” especially from third grade to fourth; and subsidizing PSAT tests for high school students from needy families. A third wave of policies expanded scholarships for needy kids, funded charter schools and “virtual” schools, and opened a number of pre-kindergartens programs across the state.
Bush saw success even in underrepresented minorities. This was a tremendous accomplishment.
Florida is a unique example, but it's not one that should be ignored. They did a lot of things I would agree with such as incentivizing schools to do better and to provide students and their families with options. For far too long, public education has been what is offered. It is time to let the people have the choice. This should paint a clearer picture to what works and what does not.
Mitt Romney continues to get attacked over his lackluster jobs record as governor. From a pure numbers perspective, he probably should be bashed. However, when you consider what he did compared to his predecessors and his successors, he looks favorabley compared to someone like Rick Perry:
Romney was right. Employment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the number of jobs in Texas grew nearly 3 percent annually while Ann Richards was governor and about 5 percent per year under Bush. Over Perry's 11 years as governor, job growth has averaged less than 2 percent per year.
With the favorable jobs market of Texas, Perry's growth rate has lagged behind both Bush and Richards. What does that say about Perry? As governor, Romney was in charge of turning around Massachusetts. He did it with a democratic legislature, something that Perry hasn't had to deal with. He had to deal with a bad credit rating, which he helped improve. He had to deal with the democratic healthcare legislation, which now ironically bare his name, RomneyCare. All of the potential issues that a future President of the United States is going to deal with, Romney has already faced.
Despite challenges, Romney produced results. Were they the best results in the country? Absolutely not. But given the circumstances, Romney was an effective governor.
Ripping Obama and attacking the state of the nation. The visuals are moving. I would have gone for a more subtle jab: I would have done a take of the iconic Shepard Fairey print of Obama, except, of course, with the zero for his zero job growth in August.
So you're sitting at home, reading sports news, you see all these schools desperate to join all these conference, but you don't see the Big Ten mentioned at all. Instantly, you panic. What the hell is going on? Why are we sitting back and doing nothing? Why aren't we going after these schools?
Well, do we really need to?
From a Big Ten and Michigan standpoint, not really: The Big Ten has the three most popular teams in college football, so they can afford to wait as far as conference realignment goes. It doesn't make sense for them to go after schools left and right, when they already have a good base. Everyone says to go after Notre Dame and Texas, but if you're going to expand, it's going to be an even number of schools. Additionally, it's going to lead to more of a split if you do bring in more schools in terms of TV revenue. I don't think it makes sense for Notre Dame or Texas to come to the Big Ten at the moment, nor does it make sense for us to take them on.
If you really do want to expand, it's all about strategy. The crown jewel of college sports, despite the fact that it's not as big a college football market as one thinks is New York. Everyone wants into New York. So what about New York? The Big Ten already has 3 of the top 10 most popular teams in New York. I really think they'll only benefit if they bring in a Notre Dame or a Rutgers if they want to expand. Rutgers might not be worth it because the increase in subscriptions might be offset by the fact that there is another mouth to feed. Notre Dame really is the only one that makes sense from a competitive and financial perspective. The problem is that they won't want to come to the Big Ten if they come in because of their current deal with NBC.
They're not Michigan, they're not Ohio State, and they're not Penn State.
I don't think I want the Big Ten to expand otherwise. Brian Bennett of ESPN spells it out. It doesn't make sense for the Big Ten to take on Missouri or Kansas for the sake of expansion. They don't bring anything to the table in terms of competition or financial benefits, but they're AAU schools which fit in if there is expansion.
Honestly, the Big Ten is in good shape. They got a good school in Nebraska that actually brings something to the table. They might miss out on Texas and Notre Dame, but neither schools would want to fit into the Big Ten when you look at the Big Ten Network. With all the expansion, everyone wants the Big Ten to get in on it too, but I believe staying true and keeping things the way they are might be the best thing to do.
Right now, the Big Ten has a great TV deal and a great network that does well to give exposure to all the schools. They already have some great brand names under their moniker. There is no need to try and bring more mouths under their roof at the moment. Even with all of this expansion, the Big Ten will continue to thrive in its current state.
A couple months ago, Netflix took flack for raising their prices for their subscription services. While they took heat, the company raised prices to deal with the growing cost of increasing the content available for their customers. It was a necessary move to grow the business.
Yesterday, Netflix announced that it was separating its DVD-by-mail services and its Internet movie-streaming service:
In his overnight email to the company's 23 million domestic subscribers, Mr. Hastings said the DVD business will be renamed Qwikster, hived off into a separate subsidiary that will have its own billing system, website and list of movies.
Now, I think that the DVD business is becoming somewhat archaic as we move towards a more digital world with cloud computing becoming more prevalent. With that said, there is still a demand for it, and I don't see that separating the businesses is a smart idea. It would be, if the customers were mutually exclusive in terms of online streamers versus DVD renters. This does not appear to be the case.
The outrage was immediate, as more than 16,000 users responded on Netflix's blog:
"You are making things significantly worse for us," one customer wrote, in a screed that echoed many of the others. "Now not only will we have to pay a LOT more for your services, but we will also have to access two separate websites."
Netflix is taking a long-term view, and as a result, they are taking a short-term drubbing. This is taking place both from their customers and their investors. Let's look at their customers first:
But what sealed the deal was Sunday night's so-called apology -- your mea culpa for the price hike. But you don't rescind the price hike?! Even worse, you announce proudly that you're creating an entirely new service to handle the DVD mail business, Qwikster?
So now, I have to go to one site to see if a movie is streaming, and if not, go to another site to put it in my by-mail queue to wait for a hard disc.
It's clear you don't care about keeping me happy, like you once did. I don't feel so proud being caught with that little red envelope anymore.
Clearly, these decisions were driven by what the company sees for the business. While it does make long-term sense, I think they're underestimating the good will they had generated for the brand by being the people's DVD and online streaming company. Now they're in hot water. The investors are getting out: After a tremendous rally, that even my dad took note of and lamented not getting in on, the company has taken a huge hit over the last month. Even though the market as a whole has taken a hit, it certainly has not taken as big a hit as Netflix. The company has lost more than half of its shareholder equity in the last two months.
For me, the number one thing about business is knowing how customers are going to react to your business decisions. It is this understanding that shows that a company will succeed. You look at Apple and you see how a company with a strong understanding of its consumer has succeeded. Netflix has demonstrated an increasingly poor understanding of its consumer's needs and stands to suffer as a result.
While I strongly agree that the streaming business is the future, I think neglecting or complicating the DVD business is a poor decision. One of the main influences of technology has been to consolidate business activity. This is doing the exact opposite. While it may help Netflix tackle the content gap in the streaming business by separating the two businesses, this could have been executed much better. Additionally, I would have to question the timing, given the bad publicity that the price hikes garnered.
Time will tell whether Netflix will remain a strong company, but at the moment, you cannot like the direction it is going as a consumer and/or an investor.
So I've been ripping Obama for trying to use Keynesian measures to help us get out of this recession. The problem for me is that government spending will lead to government reliance. You don't have to look far to see the potential problem that may develop. Greece continues to have trouble getting their citizens off the government's teat:
But others entertain strong doubts about the willingness and ability of the Greek political class to implement the structural measures that will improve the performance of the Greek economy. "The present government has done absolutely nothing during the last 12 months to speed up privatizations, reduce the public sector or open up closed professions," Athanasios Papandropoulos, a leading economic analyst, told me recently in an interview. "In these 12 months it has not fired even one civil servant. The only thing it is doing is trying to tax the private sector out of existence. Why should we believe that they will do something different now?"
Government reliance has changed the expectancy of the citizens. They don't believe the government is going to change:
Structural reforms have been repeatedly announced by Greek officials during the past. Yet nothing has happened. Greece's plans tend to resemble Soviet Five Year Plans: They look good on paper but have absolutely no bearing on reality. Anyone in the government who tries to point this out is forced to resign. Economist Stella Balfousia, the head of the Greek Parliament budget office, had to tender her resignation after her office published a report contradicting the government's official forecasts on debt and deficit.
While I don't think the US is going to be Greece, I do think we need to limit the influence of the public sector. There are many roles the public sector can play, but being the primary provider of jobs is not one of them. That should be left to the private sector. This is why I've had such a problem with the plans that Obama has put out there. I don't want to see US start to stutter; I want to see the US continue to grow.
I remember when I was in high school, I wrote a paper about how the United Auo Workers Union was ruining the American Auto Industry by demanding too much. At the time, the Big Three were losing billions of dollars and jobs were fleeing the rust belt, where the UAW has a stronghold, as a result.
The time around, the UAW has less ground to stand on in that they cannot strike against Chrysler or General Motors. This was part of the agreement when the US bailed out those two companies in light of the financial crisis. Ford did not take the money, so they do have to worry about a potential strike. Additionally, Ford appears to be the healthiest of the three companies.
In these recent negotiations, there are signs that the UAW and the Big Three are on better terms:
Not many decades ago, contract expirations used to be firm deadlines for the UAW. Agreements, or strike notification, usually came around the midnight deadline when the negotiators were groggy from several nights of very little sleep.
This year it helped that the union had agreed not to strike General Motors and Chrysler over wages.
This shows a pleasant change between the two parties. It's funny how a few lean years can do to a relationship. I think it's always important that the interests of a union and the companies it is negotiating with are aligned. So often, the interests are not aligned and this is not good for either party.
“They’re all new jobs, and quite a few of those jobs were located in Mexico,” UAW Vice President Joe Ashton said. “What we said going into negotiations is one of our major objectives is jobs, and we think we met that objective.”
“I am really proud of our whole team,” King said at the press conference. “We really came into negotiations to create jobs in America.”
Perhaps the most important result of this good news is that it is good for Michigan, a state that has been hit hard by the automakers' struggles:
Although the details will not be confirmed until today, early word suggests that workers will get a nice array of one-time rewards, in the form of a signing bonus and increased profit-sharing. That keeps the company's day-to-day costs fixed going forward, a boon in this still all-too-uncertain economy, while recognizing that workers deserve recognition for the role they continue to play in keeping the company and its products strong.
As a fan of the American Auto Industry, it was important for an amicable deal to get done. Hopefully, this deal will signal a new era of better relationships between the UAW and the automakers. Hopefully, it will lead to a more successful Michigan.
In a midterm election with a weak President and even weaker contending candidates, you would think a senate race would not be very important. However, here in beautiful Massachusetts, a race between heavyweight contenders is stacking up.
Yesterday, Democrat Elizabeth Warren declared her candidacy for the senate. While she has to win the primary against some solid candidates, she has been instantly dubbed the favorite to challenge Republican Scott Brown for his Senate position. If you remember, Scott Brown, improbably, defeated favorite Martha Coakley with a campaign that very much mirrored that of President Barack Obama. For Democrats, the seat has even sentimental value as it was the seat of the late Ted Kennedy. Democrats hope to reclaim the seat and Warren has been a favorite both in the Commonwealth and in Washington. They see her as the right candidate to take on Brown.
Basically, I want to survey how the campaign will go and why you should care.
The Campaign: Warren declared her candidacy yesterday:
She's already a favorite of Democrats because of her work in creating Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She's a Harvard Law Professor and wants to fight for the middle class. They feel she can reach their constituency, unlike Martha Coakley.
Warren was tapped by President Barack Obama last year to set up a new consumer protection agency, but congressional Republicans opposed her leading the office. She returned to Massachusetts this summer.
Supporters say her image as a crusader against well-heeled Wall Street interests and her national profile will give her candidacy muscle, though she’s never run for political office.
At the same time, her ties to Barack Obama and her job at Harvard might not cast her in the most positive light amongst the "townies:"
Should the professor win the primary, expect Brown to label her an out-of-touch academic in the mold of another law school professor, President Obama.
Ties to Harvard have all of a sudden become a bad thing with all the academics that have gone into government and introduced failed policies. There's also the negative stigma of elitism that is directed from Cambridge, a city of high intellectual capital but also a center of liberal thought.
But, assuming she gets past the Democratic primary, any attempt to use her background as a consumer advocate to run a populist campaign against incumbent Republican Scott Brown will be burdened by her day job as a professor at Harvard Law School. Even before Warren officially declared, she was already being accused of “Harvard elitism.” Her fortunes in 2012 may well turn on whether she finds an effective response.
Why is Harvard bad?
Todd Feinburg, co-host of one of Boston’s popular morning call-in radio shows, told me that “all my callers know about her is she’s a Harvard elitist. They see the country being run by Harvard elitists who don’t know what they’re doing.”
But Massachusetts only has so many registed Republicans. In fact, they only represent 11 percent of the electorate. So who are the ones that elected Scott Brown and who are the ones that Warren will have to win over?
Rather, she’ll be after another group that may already be casting suspicion on her resume—the historically Democratic blue-collar voters whom Scott Brown won over with a barn coat and a pick-up truck in the 2010 special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat.
There's a term that they've come up with and I love it:
Specifically, the middle-class and lower-middle-class voters Brown appealed to are what veteran Boston political commentator Jon Keller calls “townies,” those multi-generational Massachusettsans who don’t live in the state’s campus nexuses, poor urban areas or affluent suburbs, but in the hardscrabble towns and cities on Boston’s periphery. Keller argues Brown peeled them off in unprecedented fashion not only because of his everyman persona but because of the way he baited their economic and cultural anxieties: Brown incited small-town fears about illegal immigrants underbidding contracts, and argued that President Obama’s Affordable Care Act would “screw unions out of their gold-plated plans.”
I'll note that there is a difference between the types of demographics in the Boston area. Having lived here my entire life, I've been exposed to them. Most of the educated people in the Boston area tend to side with the liberals while the further you get away from Boston, the more socially conservative people you get. Scott Brown campaigned on the every man campaign and it resonated with those people on the outer parts of the Commonwealth.
One of the problems with Coakley is that she was too associated with Boston. With Warren, the connection will be more linked towards her ties to Harvard:
Which brings us back to the Harvard question. If townie voters identify Warren with Harvard (and echt-liberal Cambridge, where she happens to live) to the same degree they linked Coakley with Boston, Sullivan and other local pundits predict that Brown will carry the election. Thinking along the same lines, Brown’s campaign has already begun calling her “Professor Warren.”
Even though Brown and Warren aren't that different:
Where he was raised in a broken home in tiny Wrentham and did whatever he had to to pay for his education, Warren grew up poor in Oklahoma, won a scholarship to college, and paid her own way through law school. She can also argue that her scholarly work on bankruptcy and contract law hasn’t secluded her in an ivory tower, but given her a pathway to understanding the problems of ordinary people.
With her financial backing and her party popularity, she should run a good campaign. It appears she's ready to put in the work. I'm still skeptical that she can actually reach out to the people, considering she doesn't have New England roots. If you look at all of Massachusetts's politicians in recent years, all of them were deeply rooted in Massachusetts. Can she reach the townies?
Senator Scott Brown remains the most popular major political figure in Massachusetts, but his approval rating has fallen from a year ago, a sign he may be more vulnerable than anticipated as he gears up for a reelection fight, according to a Boston Globe poll.
And the actual numbers:
Though Brown, who faces reelection next year, has fallen a bit from the lofty perch of public approval he had enjoyed, he remains quite popular for a Republican in a traditionally Democratic state. Nearly half of respondents, 49 percent, said they view him favorably, compared with 26 percent who view him unfavorably. A Globe poll conducted last September showed him with 58 percent approval and 21 percent disapproval.
That article also says this about Warren:
Warren, the choice of many Washington Democrats and some state party insiders to face off against Brown, remains unknown to large swaths of the voting public, according to the poll. While those who know of her tend to like her - 23 percent rate her favorably, 12 percent unfavorably - 60 percent said they don’t know who she is or have no opinion of her.
“If she’s going to be the candidate, she’s going to have to do a lot of work just to boost name recognition,’’ Smith said.
That work she's prepared to do is good because people don't know who she is. If I was Brown, I would capitalize on this by portraying her as someone from the Ivory Tower of Cambridge and someone who has spent time in Washington DC, but isn't knowledgeable of the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. For Warren, the advantage of people not knowing who she is means she can portray herself as she wants. In these days, a lot of Democrats have a bad rap, and she should take solace in the fact that she's not one of those Democrats.
As far as the campaign, I think Brown is still a very popular candidate and so long as he puts up a good campaign, he will be reelected. The Democrats made a huge mistake by taking Massachusetts for granted when Brown was elected. Brown must be weary not to do the same thing.
Why You Should Care: Well, it appears that the Republicans have sured up their position in the Senate. When Brown was elected, he was the 41st seat, which was necessary to filibuster the Democrats. With the current President, the Democrats could have run amok with their spending policies. At the same time, the Republicans are still outnumbered by the Democrats in the senate. Looking at the potential elections for this class of Senators, it doesn't seem like there are many seats that the Republicans will lose, but Scott Brown in liberal Massachusetts may be the most likely, even with his popularity.
This election will go down the same year as the Presidential election and a lot can change with a potential new President. The Republicans will need all the help they can get. It's an important election and they're vulnerable both on the state and national level.
If you were watching the Tea Party Debate last night, then you missed a great football game. Yes, I spent the evening basking in the glow of my television as two Michigan quarterbacks threw for a Monday Night Football record amount of yards. I flipped over to the debate for may be ten seconds and heard Herman Cain speak, but I missed the majority of the action.
I don't know how many of you missed it, but I'm going to review the main talking points.
Social Security: Mitt Romney attacked Rick Perry for calling it a Ponzi Scheme:
In the debate, Romney chided Perry for referring to Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme" and vowed to protect the program. Romney called such language "over the top" and said that Perry wrote in his book "Fed Up!" that the entitlement program is unconstitutional.
Rick Perry responded by saying that Romney was using the term to scare seniors. While that may be true, Perry did say that in his book. What's more important to me is that Romney is taking the offensive. My big knock on him has been that he is not very assertive in the debates. He seemed to really leave his mark last night.
I expect him to show that he is serious about being president and taking control of the Republican primaries.
For too long, politicians have been afraid to speak honestly about Social Security. We must have the guts to talk about its financial condition if we are to fix Social Security and make it financially viable for generations to come.
So basically, he says we should talk about it, but doesn't give a solution. He didn't provide a solution last night either. He will continue to get pounded on this and other matters of entitlement reform until he comes up with a proper plan for making Social Security financially viable.
HPV: Perry also continues to be attacked for making young girls get HPV vaccinations. Michelle Bachmann has been the most offended by this:
"To have innocent little 12-year old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong," Bachmann says in her e-mail requesting donations, titled "I'm Offended.
Perry has been weak in defending himself. The thing Republicans seem most offended by is the fact it was passed through an executive order rather than through the legislature.
It's an effort to help these young women healthy. I don't see how you can't strongly defend yourself against that.
Regardless, it does bring into question Perry's values. He has admitted that he would have liked to have gotten it through the legislature, but there's also questions of chrony capitalism in this matter. Bachmann again:
She returned to that line of attack on NBC’s "Today" show. “It’s very clear that crony capitalism could have likely been the cause” of the HPV vaccination program. She ripped Perry for deciding to implement the program through a 2007 executive order.
Crony capitalism or not, I don't know how big an issue is. Yeah, it has brought into question Perry's character, but there are other flaws with Perry related to bigger issues.
Immigration: While I don't see this as being a huge issue, Perry also came weak on immigration:
Third, immigration. In Texas, Perry has extended in-state, taxpayer-subsidized tuition to the children of illegal immigrants. It's a sensible policy, as it brings them into the fold and gives them the opportunity to improve their lives and contribute to the wider economy. But his opponents slammed Perry hard for a policy they called "amnesty." Romney was straightforward in stating what is, for most conservatives, gospel: This is a nation of laws, and we follow the laws.
As a border state, Perry should have a stronger opinion or more connected policies regarding immigration, but he failed once again. Even Jon Huntsman ripped him on it:
Even Jon Huntsman, when he wasn’t making baffling jokes about Kurt Cobain, told Perry his claim that he couldn’t secure the border was “pretty much a treasonous comment.”
"What we did in the state of Texas was clearly a states right issue. And the legislature passed with only four dissenting votes in the House and the Senate to allow this to occur," he said. "We were clearly sending a message to young people, regardless of what the sound of their last name is, that we believe in you. That if you want to live in the state of Texas and you want to pursue citizenship, that we're going to allow you the opportunity to be contributing members in the state of Texas and not be a drag on our state."
I'm not quite sure how well that's going to fly, especially with Tea Party voters. Anything that suggests providing subsidies is a hot button issue. Giving these benefits to illegal immigrants is, as Bachmann put it, "not the American way."
Also notable was Rick Santorum's flub:
Former two-term Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum suggested that Perry's support for the Texas DREAM act was a ploy to attract Latino voters.
"What Governor Perry's done is he provided in-state tuition for -- for illegal immigrants. Maybe that was an attempt to attract the illegal vote -- I mean, the Latino voters," Santorum said, quickly correcting his flub.
I don't think attacking a race of people is a good idea, Mr. Santorum.
Jobs: Romney finally made a strong case for Perry's record:
It's easy to do well when you have everything going for you. In Massachusetts, which is one of the most liberal states, Romney didn't have a lot going for him. He had a democratic state senate. He had high taxes. There were jobs leaving the state. There were a lot of things going to the other way.
Romney is correct that Massachusetts was losing jobs month after month for nearly a year before he took office. Those losses stabilized in his first year, and the state then began to see job growth. According to BLS statistics, over the entirety of Romney's term in office, the ranks of Massachusetts' employed went from 3,224,600 to 3,270,400. That’s a 1.4 percent increase. However, that was far slower growth than the national average, 5.3 percent. In fact, as Perry and Huntsman correctly pointed out at the debate, Massachusetts ranked 47th in job growth over the length of Romney's term. The only states that did worse: Louisiana, Michigan and Ohio.
So what's the difference between the rate at which Massachusetts was losing jobs and the job growth that Romney had? Are we not talking turn around? Or are we just focusing on job growth?
Isn't this a legitimate question to see whether he did turn things around even if at a slow pace?
General Impressions: It sounds like Perry is losing his lead or he's suffering from being the front runner at the moment. As the front runner, he is taking the brunt of the crossfire from his opponents. He has a target on his back and the rest of the candidates, even Michelle Bachmann, are hitting it.
The most important thing to me was to see Mitt Romney actually take control and assert himself. He took command and showed that he is passionate about wanting to be president. He showed them that he means serious business. That's what stood out to me.
The rest of the candidates aren't legitimate contenders to me. Bachmann is this year's Sarah Palin. Ron Paul still isn't a viable mainstream candidate. Rick Santorum isn't really making any headway. I've been very disappointed with Jon Huntsman who has yet to be in bloom.
As the candidates continue to debate, we'll learn more about how things are going to turn up. It seems now that there are two horses with the rest nipping at their heels.
Everybody remembers where they were when they found out. They remember it like yesterday and it will be something they will never forget. Events like that will never escape your memory. It will forever be there, haunting.
i was in Mr. Means's (yes that was his real name and he was anything but mean) math class when it happened. We got called in for an assembly. The entire middle school was called in. i had no idea what was going on. Ms. Newman told us what had happened. It didn't hit me. I was 13 at the time and I didn't grasp the magnitude of the situation.
After we were dismissed from the assembly, I remember checkin CNN and reading what was going on. I was more naturally curious about what happened than shocked or anything else. I wasn't frightened at the time.
That night, all I did was watch the news. They told us that Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were responsible for the attacks. They showed his face. Suddenly, I was filled with fear. It finally hit me. That night, I cried. I couldn't sleep. There was a feeling of helplessness, fear, and anger. This was my first real exposure to what terrorism is.
In many ways, it was the day I lost my innocence. I don't remember every moment of that day, but I will never forget how I felt.
10 years later, I'm still haunted by it. I look at the New York skyline and it seems empty. I had the chance to go to the World Trade Center, but we went to the Empire State Building instead. When I imagine what would have happened if we had gone there on the day of an attack, it makes chills go down my spine.
In memoriam, we all remember the events of that day, hoping that it never happened.
Since I called out Obama for not knowing how to create jobs, I guess I should tackle this issue.
My main beef with Obama is that he's using fiscal stimulus to try and create jobs. The way he's spending just isn't working. The economy continues to suffer even as he's spending billions of dollars "creating jobs:"
What’s clear, however, is that the Obama Administration badly needs a re-start after a(nother) disastrous August that saw the president’s numbers drop to record lows and the country descend deeper into economic pessimism.
Assuming that the jobs report shows in the neighborhood of 60,000 jobs created, it would provide fodder to Obama’s Republican critics who have long argued that not only are his policies not working but that the administration has little idea what else to do to make things better.
Despite this, it seems that President Obama wants to do more of the same:
President Barack Obama signaled Monday he'll propose a major infrastructure program and an extension of a payroll tax break in the jobs speech he planned to deliver Thursday before a joint session of Congress.
While the state of this country's infrastructure is a topic for another day, at what point will Obama realize that "creating" construction jobs is creating work not jobs. Once these projects are completed, there's nothing left to do unless you spend more money on improving infrastructure. It's just a spending spiral that he's creating. You can't do that.
But issuing a call for jobs isn't as simple as it may seem. While the new jobs numbers present the GOP with an obvious issue with which to hammer the president, Republicans in Congress and out on the campaign trail have spent much of the year focused on a different economic area: fiscal austerity and proposals to pare the big federal budget deficit.
However, it seems that it will become a more contested issue. Mitt Romney outlined his plan today:
Standing in front of a large banner that read “Day One, Job One,” Mr. Romney detailed the 10 actions he would take the first day of his presidency. Five of them are executive orders, and the other five are pieces of legislation that he would send to Congress and request action on within 30 days.
“The right course for America is to believe in growth,” Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, said at McCandless International Trucks. “Growing our economy is the way to get people to work and to balance our national budget.”
The way I see it, in terms of the difference to approaches, Romney is putting the money back into the households and to the businesses, while Obama is using that money to spend on creating jobs. Clearly it's more efficient Romney's way. I'm not convinced that how great an effect it will have.
We know, for starters, that 100% of net job growth in the U.S. comes from entrepreneurial start-ups, as a Kauffman Foundation report documented in 2010. If you took start-ups out of the picture and looked only at large or incumbent businesses, job growth over the last 35 years would actually be negative. In the words of Kauffman's Tim Kane, "When it comes to U.S. job growth, start-up companies aren't everything. They're the only thing."
While big companies may have to hire or fire people from time to time, they're, for the most part, mature companies. They're not going to continue to grow. The new technologies that are born and the new jobs are spurred by small businesses:
As I noted in an article last year with retired chief judge Paul Michel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which handles patent appeals, simply clearing the patent backlog could create up to 2.25 million jobs by 2014. And it wouldn't cost the taxpayer a dime, since the patent office is the only self-supporting agency of the federal government.
The problem with the current government is that they're not spending money right. I don't trust a government that is going to take tax payer money and misappropriate it in misguided band-aid programs.
While I'm not satisfied with the Republicans' plans thus far, I feel their plans will better alleviate the troubled economy because it will allow households and firms to choose where to spend that money. Deregulation has been mentioned by several candidates, but there hasn't been a specific plan laid out. Hopefully, as the election trail heats up, the candidates will be pushed to come up with specific ways to fix the economy and to create jobs.
One of the cornerstone's of Obama's campaign was to invest in clean technology jobs. One of the companies that the government extended a loan to has filed for bankruptcy:
Despite receiving a $535 million federal loan and about $1 billion in venture capital, high-profile solar-panel maker Solyndra Inc. plans to file for bankruptcy protection, undermined by a weak global economy and competition from China.
Lots of venture capital companies bought into the hype, investing in green technology to piggyback their own capital on federal favoritism. Solyndra's relationship with the White House came under special scrutiny because of Solyndra backer and Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser's history as an Obama fundraiser. In a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu in February, the House Energy and Commerce Committee raised concerns about the loan, noting that the company had suffered "financial setbacks," and asking for information about "whether Solyndra was the right candidate" for the loan guarantee.
These points all lead me to wonder about a big company in this space, Solyndra. This is a private company. I don’t have any financials to look at as a result. Neither do you. But you should, this company is heavily indebted to Uncle Sam.
So what in God's name are they doing?
I don't want to get too much into chrony capitalism, using public funds to feed special interests or to benefit campaign financiers. There are better solar companies that are thriving. Why did Obama put it into that black box?
Arlington officials boast the project will save $14,000 in annual electricity costs, but the solar panels have a life span of no more than 10 to 15 years. So the feds spent $300,000 to shave at most $150,000 off the net present value of Arlington's electric bills. Some 3,000 counties across the country received federal funds for the same kind of negative-return energy conservation "investments." This is the kind of "clean energy" program the administration wants to expand.
He has no idea what he's doing. It makes no economic sense to put money into a technology that doesn't pay off. This is throwing money away. The construction jobs are temporary. This is wasted money. Without even getting into where the money is going, a rich county, it doesn't make sense to put solar panels on a roof when it doesn't make economical sense. That's not investing in clean technology. That's wasting money.
Investing in clean technology would mean growing the technology so that there are jobs to help advance the technology within the industry. Obama has been so out of touch with what really works and that's the problem. He keeps talking about stimulus and improving infrastructure, but all he's doing is creating temporary low-skill jobs. On top of that, when he's investing into new technologies, he's putting money into failing companies like Solyndra.
I think it's safe to say that Obama has not delivered on his promise to create clean technology jobs, but to go even further, I'm not sure he even knows what creating jobs is. The struggling economy and his failed policies only reinforce this belief.
