(Republican Politics, American Style) Now Renamed as The Bigger Picture

Class Evaluation for POEC 6357.001 - Political Economy of Latin America

2011-04-25T18:29:00.002Z

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Class: POEC 6357.001 - Political Economy of Latin America
Instructor(s): Jennifer Holmes

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Spring 2011 EPPS Online Evaluations: Win an iPad 2

Students who complete their Spring 2011 EPPS class evaluations using the UES Online Evaluation system will be eligible to win an Apple iPad 2.

One winner will be randomly selected by the Office of the President and Provost by May 12, 2011. Winners will be notified by email. Names of winners will be announced on UT DallasÕ evaluation website.

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Class Evaluation for POEC 7318.0i1 - Ethics, Culture and Public Responsibility

2011-04-25T18:29:00.001Z

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Class: POEC 7318.0i1 - Ethics, Culture and Public Responsibility
Instructor(s): Wendy Hassett

https://provost.utdallas.edu/ues/evaluation/VZCXMHC-7614596

Once you've completed an evaluation for this class, no further emails will be sent by the evaluation system. To avoid additional emails, please complete the evaluation ASAP.

Spring 2011 EPPS Online Evaluations: Win an iPad 2

Students who complete their Spring 2011 EPPS class evaluations using the UES Online Evaluation system will be eligible to win an Apple iPad 2.

Rules:

Only students taking classes offered by the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences (EPPS) during the Spring 2011 term are eligible to enter.
Classes which offer a manual (paper+pencil) evaluation are not included in this promotion.
To enter, a student must complete ALL online evaluations offered to them by the Office of the Provost during the evaluation cycle.
The prize is an Apple iPad 2 - 16GB Ð Wi-Fi. Approximate retail value is $499.00. Prize must be accepted as awarded and no cash equivalent is available.

Online evaluations are managed by the Provost's Technology Group - please contact ptg@utdallas.edu or 972-883-6969 if you need help or have questions. Please do not reply to this email.

Facebook Password Change

2010-12-11T01:51:00.001Z

Hey Charles,

You recently changed your Facebook password. As a security precaution, this notification has been sent to all email addresses associated with your account.

If you did not change your password, your account may have been the victim of a phishing scam. Please follow the link to regain control over your account:
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Thanks,
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Extended - Course Evaluation for OPRE 6301.0g1 - Quantitative Introduction to Risk and Uncertainty in Business

2010-12-08T01:53:00.001Z

By popular demand - the evaluation period has been extended

Finals week is almost over. Please evaluate OPRE 6301.0g1 - Quantitative Introduction to Risk and Uncertainty in Business .

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https://provost.utdallas.edu/ues/evaluation/VSDMUBC-4876500

Finals week is almost over. Please evaluate OPRE 6301.0g1 - Quantitative Introduction to Risk and Uncertainty in Business

Good luck on your final examinations and projects.

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Course Evaluation for OPRE 6301.0g1 - Quantitative Introduction to Risk and Uncertainty in Business

2010-12-06T14:19:00.001Z

Last chance - please evaluate your UT Dallas class now!

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Course Evaluation for OPRE 6301.0g1 - Quantitative Introduction to Risk and Uncertainty in Business

2010-11-30T16:11:00.001Z

Make your opinion count!

We've noticed that you haven't yet participated in the online evaluation for OPRE 6301.0g1 - Quantitative Introduction to Risk and Uncertainty in Business . Evaluations are an important tool the university uses to make improvements without the participation of students we won't know what's good or bad or simply needs improvement.

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This link will expire on December 5th, 11:55pm, so please use it quickly. You can only evaluate each class one time. If you have registered multiple email addresses with the University, you may receive this same email in multiple locations. Once you've completed an evaluation for this class, no further emails will be sent by the evaluation system.

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Course Evaluation for SCI 5322.0t1 - Basis of Evolution

2010-11-23T00:06:00.001Z

It's Class Evaluation Time at UT Dallas

As a recent participant in SCI 5322.0t1 - Basis of Evolution you are being invited to evaluate your class experience and instructor via the UT Dallas online evaluation system.

It's quick, easy, and secure to provide feedback. Just click the following unique link to access the online evaluation form - you won't even need to login (but only if you use this link):

https://provost.utdallas.edu/ues/evaluation/VAXBARC-4488531

Online evaluations are managed by the Provost's Technology Group - please contact ptg@utdallas.edu or 972-883-6969 if you need help or have questions. Please do not reply to this email.

Course Evaluation for OPRE 6301.0g1 - Quantitative Introduction to Risk and Uncertainty in Business

2010-11-22T23:22:00.001Z

It's Class Evaluation Time at UT Dallas

As a recent participant in OPRE 6301.0g1 - Quantitative Introduction to Risk and Uncertainty in Business you are being invited to evaluate your class experience and instructor via the UT Dallas online evaluation system.

It's quick, easy, and secure to provide feedback. Just click the following unique link to access the online evaluation form - you won't even need to login (but only if you use this link):

https://provost.utdallas.edu/ues/evaluation/VSDMUBC-4876500

Online evaluations are managed by the Provost's Technology Group - please contact ptg@utdallas.edu or 972-883-6969 if you need help or have questions. Please do not reply to this email.

So Far, So Good

2009-11-22T14:17:00.001Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on December 4th 2008 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

Since it looks like my Cabinet predictions regarding the players in the incoming Obama administration came pretty close to the mark, today I want to discuss their implications for the Obama presidency as well as my dear “old” Republican Party.
Some of my Republican cohorts believe I was just another one of those poor souls who fell under Obama’s spell after drinking some Obama “kool-aid”. But when it comes to my country and domestic politics, I have always been a cold eyed realist. As such I am not given to dreamy visions of great things coming to pass as the result of the election of any one individual or the ascension to power of any political party.
The fact of the matter is, I spend very little time celebrating the triumphs of those I have supported politically because I have this annoying habit of immediately beginning to worry about what mistakes they are going to make and how soon they will make them. As a natural optimist, I know this may strike some people as being a somewhat cynical outlook, but it is nonetheless an attitude about American politics that has evolved over the years based on my past experience and many political disappointments. So ever since Obama’s election on 4 November, I have been closely watching the Obama Presidential transition and the Cabinet choices Obama is making for signs of impending problems.
In what I hope is a good sign for the future of the United States, I must confess that I have thus far been unable to find any fault with Obama’s decisions about who he plans to place in positions of power within his Presidential administration. In a notable departure from past Republican and Democratic administrations, Obama isn’t just giving jobs to his friends and political hacks from his party or the special interest groups that supported him. Not since the pre-Civil War day’s selection of William Seward by Abraham Lincoln, has a US President been so bold as to offer an important and highly visible Cabinet position like Secretary of State to his most bitter political rival.
While Obama’s unexpected courtship and selection of Hillary Clinton to be America’s top foreign policy official has been hailed by some as a shrewd political move to neutralize his top political opponent, I suspect it is more than just a savvy political decision. Let’s face it, unlike Lincoln’s pick of Seward; Hillary Clinton also brings a former President named Bill Clinton and all the attendant Clinton baggage with her as well. So I believe picking Clinton for this particular post is actually a clear demonstration of Obama’s confidence in himself as President and his commitment to surround himself with strong, smart political personalities who won’t hesitate to disagree with him.
Given the myriad of complex foreign and domestic crises the US is currently facing, the incoming President will need the best and brightest of its politicians and policy wonks to effectively deal with America’s problems. Some of my Republican colleagues have cynically noted that Obama has been picking the same old Washington DC “insiders” to help him govern instead of the outsiders one would expect from a President who promised he would change the way the US Federal Government operates.
Maybe I’m wrong and they will prove to be correct in this assessment. But I would counter with the argument that these experienced Washington hands are also more likely to get the new legislation the US needs to address its problems passed in Congress than outsiders unfamiliar with the way business gets done in our nation’s capital. Unfortunately many American’s, including those Republican’s who are so enamored of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, cling to the romantic notion that you need inexperienced fresh faces in Washington to shake things up and move the country forward.
They forget that President’s Carter and Clinton went that route and failed miserably while consummate Washington insiders like President’s Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon got landmark Civil Rights and Environmental Protection laws passed. Unlike President Clinton, Obama has decided that Tom Daschle will be both his Secretary of Health and Human Services as well as his White House health “czar”, a strategy that will avoid potential conflicts and ensure something gets done in this policy arena. Unlike President Bush, Obama is also bringing the brightest of both his personal friends and Washington insiders into his administration instead of a bunch of old buddies whose most outstanding qualities were their years of loyalty to him or partisan Republican ideology.
Thus far, none of Obama’s choices have been individuals who are considered overly partisan by most knowledgeable Republicans. People like Rahm Emanuel and Phil Schiliro have demonstrated expertise developing pragmatic solutions to address problems as well as the steps necessary to win support for them from opponents across the aisle. Indeed, they and the other open minded Washington insiders Obama has picked, like Peter Orzag as Budget Director and Eric Holder as Attorney General, are respected by Republicans and Democrats alike for their practicality, professionalism and honesty.
The dilemma for the Republican Party is going to be coming up with viable alternatives to the legislative solutions Obama’s experienced Washington insiders will be proposing in the very near future. But the Republican Party currently lacks leaders who can articulate a vision that addresses America’s foreign and domestic problems that is also significantly different than the failed policies of President Bush as well as those being proposed by President-elect Barack Obama.
While I am encouraged by what I have seen from President-elect Obama so far, I am under no illusions that he and his team have all the answers. In the long run I believe the interests of the American people are best served if President Obama and the Democratic Party have a strong Republican opposition party in Congress to prevent them from over-reaching in their attempts to fix the problems the US is facing. So next week I’ll discuss the Republican Party’s prospects in 2010 and beyond.

Global warming and how it is affecting Ireland’s weather

2009-11-22T14:15:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on July 24th 2008 in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

In today’s column I want to discuss one of our favourite subjects here in Ireland….the weather and the impact of global warming on it. As some of you may recall (or may not wish to given how awful it was) last summer was Ireland’s wettest summer in the last 10 years and one of the wettest in Ireland’s history. It was also the coolest summer since 2002, but having said that, it was still one of the 10 warmest summers in Ireland’s recorded weather history, with temperatures averaging more than a half a degree higher than the average for the 30 years from 1961thru 1990.
Fortunately for those of us living in Ireland this year, at the half-way point in July it appears we will be spared a repeat of last summer’s 60 straight days of rain, which stretched from mid-June thru mid-August until we got a bit of “Indian Summer” relief during late August and September. But for those of us living in Dublin and eastern Ireland the summer of 2007 was the most miserable that even the oldest natives can ever remember. Furthermore, the Poulter index, (a more scientific method of determining how good or bad our summer weather was because it uses a formula based on mean temperature, rainfall and sunshine at weather station to quantify Ireland’s summer weather) showed the lowest (i.e. miserable) value for Dublin since 1986 and the fourth lowest value for Birr since they began measurements there almost a hundred years ago.
What I and I’m sure many others living in Ireland are wondering though is this; was last summer just a freak of nature (an aberration if you will) or was it a sign of what we have to look forward to in the coming years as a consequence of global warming?
In an attempt to answer this question I decided to do a bit of research, some of it unscientific, but the vast majority of it was based on real, hard, factual data that it would be nigh unto impossible for anyone to dispute. To put things in perspective lets review what has occurred so far this summer if for no other reason than it would appear to support the contention that last summer was just an aberration rather than a consequence of global warming we can expect to see more of in the future.
Last summer was foreshadowed by a lovely warm April and early June sandwiched around a fairly miserable month of May. Of course it turned out May was a harbinger for what most of the rest of last summer became, wet and wretched. Thus far this summer has been almost the reverse of last in that April was quite cool and the first half of June was both cool and rainy, while May was the driest it’s been in the last 15 years as well as the hottest May Ireland has seen in more than a century. Since the past month has also seen nothing like the 60 straight days of rain we saw last summer from mid-June onward, one could make a reasonable though unscientific case that last summer wasn’t a consequence of global warming but was just a natural seasonal anomaly.
Unfortunately, a closer look at Ireland’s historical weather patterns based on scientific measurements and other factual data leads one to conclude that such is probably not the case however. When viewed from a much broader perspective based on decades of weather research data, last summer is likely to be repeated more often than any of us living here in Ireland would care to see. This is due to the fact that last summer as well as this summer both fit within a pattern that has recently emerged which shows that Ireland is both wetter and hotter than it was 30 years ago. Both of these characteristics, wetter and hotter, are the unnatural consequences of global warming for the Emerald Isle.
But the fact that temperatures have gotten warmer and rainfall has increased over what it was 30 years ago isn’t what people living here in Ireland need to be concerned about. It’s the other consequences that are linked to this changing weather pattern that should concern all Irish residents because dealing with them won’t be as simple as buying a few more umbrellas or some lighter weight clothing.
Our wetter climate will result in increased soil erosion throughout the island as well as an increase in flooding and the damage to homes and businesses that comes with it. Our hotter climate will also lead to water shortages in some areas of the country, particularly when strong high pressure systems settle over the country.
This past May was exceptionally warm, especially over the western half of the country and temperatures rose above 20°C in many places around the country during the second week in May. In fact both April and May were relatively dry except in parts of the west, even though March and June were wetter than normal in most areas of the country.
A wetter and hotter Ireland will also continue to experience more extreme forms of weather just as Ireland’s neighbours to the east in the UK and on the continent are also confronting with increasing frequency. Tornados, which are common in the lower latitudes of my native land, and extremely high non-tornado wind gusts, have become an increasing danger in European countries over the last 10 years. Right here in Ireland the highest wind gust in the last 50 years, 73 knots (135km/hour), was recorded this year at both Valentia Observatory on March 10th and at Belmullet on March 11th.
Believe it or not, this summer’s June downpours and storms also broke long-standing records around the country according to Met Éireann, even though twice as much rain fell in June of last year. Furthermore Dublin was struck with the strongest winds it has seen in almost 30 years dating back to 1980. Next week I will discuss some more consequences.

All Future Posts will be at The Bigger Picture website

2009-09-08T20:21:00.003Z

All of my newspaper columns that were published under my byline of "Republican Politics, American Style" from October 2006 up to March 2009 are archived here. Beginning in March 2009 I changed my newspaper column byline to "The Bigger Picture" so all of my newspaper columns published from March 2009 to the current date are posted and archived at The Bigger Picture website. Here is a link for it:
http://www.metroeireannthebiggerpicture.blogspot.com/

Terrorists are simply Cowards

2009-04-14T13:03:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on April 16th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I want to discuss Irish Republicans instead of American Republicans, even though Irish and American Republicans do share certain affinities including a propensity to use violence to advance their political agendas because they are bullies and cowards.
The word “coward” comes from an old French word coart (the modern French version is couard) and is a combination of the French word for “tail” and an agent noun suffix. It means “one with a tail” or one in the habit of turning it, and it was derived from a dog’s habit of putting its tail between its legs when it is afraid. A person who acts in a cowardly manner is someone who demonstrates a weak or ignoble lack of courage.
Research indicates that adults who bully have personalities that are authoritarian, combined with a strong need to control or dominate and that they use violence as a tool to conceal their shame or anxiety and to boost their self esteem by demeaning others. Risk factors for adult bullies include tendencies towards envy and resentment as well as quickness to anger and use force, addiction to aggressive behaviors, concern with preserving one’s self image and engaging in obsessive or rigid actions.
Bullies use aggressive behavior in an effort to perpetuate the myth that people who act this way are really tough people. But the truth about bullies is that they are weak, cowardly and inadequate people who cannot interact in a mature manner because they lack knowledge, experience, wisdom and emotional maturity. Bullies are actually fearful, dysfunctional, disordered, aggressive and emotionally retarded, which is why they resort to physical and or psychological violence to get their way. But many bullies are also very adept at manipulating the perceptions of other adults, who by their failures and inactions condone the bullying. The sad truth is that only very weak people have a need to bully.
Two thousand years ago the ancient Roman statesman, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, observed that “All cruelty springs from weakness” and “He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.” Seneca’s observations about the Roman Empire’s bullies and those who excuse their behaviour, square neatly with my own views regarding Irish nationalist bullies and their misguided Irish Republican Army supporters.
Unfortunately bullies or terrorists, call them what you will because there actually isn’t much of a difference, have been with us for thousands of years and so they are likely to still be around many years from now long after all of us have departed this earth. The only real difference between them is that terrorists are bullies who have also wrapped themselves in cloaks of religious, ethnic or nationalistic rhetoric so that they can justify their propensity for violence and solicit weak minded individuals to do their dirty work for them. Real leaders lead by example whereas terrorist leaders are simply cowards who manipulate others to do what they can’t or wouldn’t be stupid enough to do themselves.
Mind you, I’m not saying that there aren’t people living in this world who don’t have legitimate ethnic, political or religious grievances. Many dissident political, ethnic and religious minorities have suffered for centuries from the pernicious effects of overt and covert discrimination by those wielding political and or military power. But it is one thing to protest in a peaceful and non-violent manner against such unfairness and quite another to use these injustices as an excuse for cowardly and criminal violent behaviour.
The suicide bombers used by Tamil rebels, Islamic extremists and other terrorist groups are weak minded individuals who have been manipulated by terrorist leaders into thinking that murdering innocent individuals is a moral and justified act of self sacrifice. Hmmm. If killing others and yourself in the process is so moral and justified then why aren’t the terrorist leaders taking these actions themselves instead of manipulating others to so? Why don’t these terrorist bullies confront soldiers who are capable of defending themselves instead of stealthily attacking unarmed soldiers and civilians, then slinking away before they can be identified with their tails tucked between their legs?
The truth about terrorist leaders and those who do their bidding is that they are no different than drug lords and the criminals they employ. All they really want is power and to be a law unto themselves. They have no use for laws that would protect minorities or that would regard them as equal under the law with others, because they want to be above the law. They care nothing for other people; only for what those people can do for them, which is why they have so little regard for the lives of others and gladly sacrifice them.
There is no difference between Mexican drug lord Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman causing thousands of deaths in Mexico’s drug war and the thousands of deaths bin Laden is responsible for in his pseudo-religious political jihad. So what is the difference between John Gilligan sending his henchmen to murder an unarmed journalist and the IRA sending thugs to murder unarmed soldiers, policemen and pizza deliverymen? What they have in common is neither Gilligan nor these IRA thugs would ever dare to do their dirty work in anything but a cowardly manner.
Courage is the ability to confront fear, intimidation, pain, risk, danger, uncertainty and to act rightly in the face of popular opposition, shame or discouragement. Courage, real courage, means standing up against something or someone that is unjust or evil knowing that the consequences of your actions might lead to your death or imprisonment. Aristotle also notes that the vice which represents a deficiency of courage is cowardice.
People like Mahatma Gandhi, Veronica Guerin and Dr. Martin Luther King possessed true courage. On the other hand, what the IRA dissidents, Osama bin Ladens, John Gilligans and Joaquin Guzmans of this world have is a deficiency of courage; that vice Aristotle called cowardice. So next week I will discuss why extremists use religious reasons to justify their cowardly actions.

The economic future looks bright for America

2009-04-14T13:01:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on April 9th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Given the short comings of the French approach to increasing its population (and thus its taxpaying workforce) that I cited in last weeks column, today I want to explore why America’s population is growing faster than that of any other developed country as well as the long term benefits America will realize as a result of this.
Unlike France, the American government doesn’t pay couples to have children, although it does provide parents with income tax deductions that partially subsidize the cost of child care and the expenses associated with raising children. But these income tax breaks are nowhere near as generous as the subsidies provided by France and other developed countries such as our Scandinavian neighbours. So why have America’s fertility and population growth rates now taken an upward trajectory when all the other developed countries’ fertility and population growth rates are on a downward trajectory?
If we take a closer look at America’s current demographic structure and the underlying characteristics of its fertility and population growth rates we can see that it is not skewed in favor of any one ethnic group. As one might expect the fertility rate of Hispanics is higher than that for other ethnic groups at 3.0, but the rate for non-Hispanic whites is 1.9 while the rate for African-Americans is 2.1.
America’s population growth is also fairly well balanced between growth driven by immigration and growth resulting from the birth and fertility rates of native-born Americans. That means America’s population growth isn’t subject to the destabilizing effects the addition of large numbers of immigrant workers and their families can have on a nation’s workforce and its social structures.
America’s steady and fairly balanced population growth will also continue to keep America’s population younger than the aging populations of other developed countries. Currently the median age in America is 36.6, but its 40.4 in Europe and Ireland is the only EU nation with a median age lower than the US at 34.6. According to Bill Frey, a demographer at the University of Michigan, the median age in America in 2050 will only be 37 while in Europe it will be almost 53. In other words, the difference between US and EU median ages is likely to rise from 4 to as much as16 years by 2050.
This means that Americans will have to continue to spend more than EU countries on education, but it also means that US taxpayers will have to shoulder a much lighter burden of retiree pension and healthcare costs than its EU and East Asia neighbours between now and 2050. Retiree benefit costs are expected to skyrocket in America and the developed countries of Europe and East Asia thanks to the retirements of post World War II baby boomers. As a result, US government debts could rise to a level almost equal to 100% of US national income by 2050. But government debts would rise to over 150% of income in East Asia and EU overall, and to over 250% in Germany and France.
A younger population will also result in lower labour costs for companies operating in the US and make American companies more productive and globally competitive. This is exactly what happened in Japan during the 1960s and 1970s when its workforce was younger than the US labour force and those lower labour costs helped Japanese companies become much stronger competitors around the world. Using current demographic trends, the number of people over 65 will be equivalent to 60% of the working-age population in Europe and Asia in 2050, compared to only 40% in America.
These huge economic impacts on countries with declining populations can best be addressed by encouraging more young people to immigrate to these countries. But except for the years between 1920 and 1970 when it was encouraged by France, immigration levels have always been low in European and Asian countries. So even if these countries suddenly decided to throw their doors open to immigrants, I think there is a good chance they won’t get the results they would be hoping for.
America is a nation of immigrants and 75% of all the people in the world who have ever emigrated from their native countries have moved to the United States. That’s why Kenneth Prewitt, former head of the US Census Bureau, argues that “in the struggle to find workers to support growing economies, nations that are hospitable to immigrants will have an advantage.” In other words, immigrants tend to go where they already have friends and or family waiting to welcome them and help them get jobs. So if you were an immigrant where would you prefer to move; to a youthful and multi-coloured America (where you likely know someone) or to an aging Europe with a 90%+ white population?
There are also military and geopolitical implications associated with the declining populations of countries in Europe and East Asia. Despite its promises to narrow its defense spending gap with America to address the military imbalance within NATO, ever since the end of the cold war Europe has chosen to increase spending on social programmes instead. As a result the United States now spends twice as much on military defense than the entire EU spends each year and that military imbalance is unlikely to ever be corrected. Why? Because if Europe is unwilling to spend what is needed on defense when people over 65 are only 30% of the working-age population, what do you expect Europe to do between now and 2050 when the proportion of 65 year olds doubles?
I would contend that anyone who thinks the United States’ economic, military and or political power has peaked and has already begun the same slow but inexorable decline that Rome and England experienced is making a big mistake. Thanks to its positive demographic trends, it is much more likely that America’s economic, military and political power will become even more solidly entrenched during the rest of this century. What other country has America’s potential?

Fertility is a Good Thing

2009-04-01T23:10:00.001Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on April 2nd in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I want to discuss how the developed countries in Europe and other parts of the world can maintain their quality of life and pay for their escalating retiree pension and healthcare costs without raising the taxes of those who are still working.
There are many who will not agree with me or like what I am about to say but the only viable solution that I can see involves the three I’s of Immigration, Integration and Impregnation. That’s right. Immigration, Integration and Impregnation.
“Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that during these tough economic times our government should allow more of those poor people from developing countries into our country, even though they’ll be competing with some of us for jobs?” Yes, that’s right.
“Are you also telling me that we need to be hospitable towards these immigrants and that our government needs to make sure that these immigrants are treated equally with those of us who were born and raised in this country?” Yeah, you’re exactly right.
“Are you also suggesting we might want to consider having more children, which means we’ll have to spend our money raising them instead of on holidays, and that our government should spend more on schools and teachers to educate them?” Yep, sure am.
“Well I think your solution is bollocks! There is no way I’m going to sit by and allow more of ‘them’ into my country, much less allow my government to treat ‘them’ as equals and I’m not about to give up any of me pints or holidays so I can have more kids.”
OK. Then let’s talk about the alternative. How would you like to see your taxes increased so the government can pay for your pension and healthcare after you retire? Does increasing the VAT and or taxes on petrol, alcohol, fags and the like sound ok?
“No way am I going to stand for that. Everything I buy costs too much as it is.”
OK. Then how does increasing the income tax you pay to around 50% sound?
“No. That won’t work for me because my income taxes are already high enough.”
OK. Then what do you suggest the government do to increase its tax revenues?
“Make corporations and businesses pay more taxes and stop wasting money on feeding and housing ‘them’ immigrants. Start taking care of your own instead of everyone else’s and make our government agencies operate more efficiently.”
OK. Do you also have a plan to replace the jobs that will be lost when some of those corporations and businesses pull up their stakes and exit from this higher tax environment? How do you plan to prevent those businesses that remain in the country from raising their prices and passing along some or all of the costs associated with their higher tax bills? What about jobs for the people in the public sector who will be made redundant when the government decides to begin operating more efficiently? Will you tell your children they have to pay higher taxes than you paid to fund your retirement?
“Uh, no I don’t really have a plan to deal with that stuff but I’m sure there is one.”
Hmmm. Seems to me that the truth of the matter is you just want to have your cake and eat it too. Who wouldn’t like that? Unfortunately, the world doesn’t operate that way. There is a cost to be paid for everything and if you don’t want to pay higher taxes then the money to pay for your retirement and healthcare costs has to come from somewhere. But if you raise taxes on businesses, they will pass them along to you with higher prices and or move their jobs (and yours) out of the country. Cut back the public sector and you’ll have to find jobs for them somewhere else or have them go on the dole.
What I am proposing is that you consider an alternative involving increased levels of immigration coupled with enhanced integration and impregnation policies that will boost the population of your country and swell the number of people paying taxes. Those new immigrant taxpayers will supply your government with more tax revenues and they will enhance your country’s overall economic activity, which will then create even more new jobs. Then your government won’t have to raise the VAT or income taxes you pay now or the taxes that your children will be paying years from now after you have retired.
“I don’t know, I still don’t like the idea of letting more of ‘them’ into our country. We have too many of them as it is and the ones that work are taking jobs away from us. Why shouldn’t we just pay our country’s women to have more kids like France does?”
Well you make a good point there. In France, the payments and subsidies for working women and couples to have more children have indeed increased that country’s birth and fertility rates. But there is also a downside to subsidizing childbirth that I think you have overlooked. The government funds that encourage childbirth come from the same basket the government uses to finance pensions and health services for retirees. Since France’s baby boomers will soon be retiring, this means that population growth will have to be large enough to provide for both increasing payments for children as well as retirees. But I doubt it will be enough to cover both because France’s fertility rate still falls short of the replacement level of 2.1 children. This means that a substantial part of the financial burden of paying for both will fall upon future generations in the form of higher taxation.
But there is another alternative to governments paying their nation’s working women to have more children that can also lead to replacement level fertility rates as well as a large enough increase in population to pay for increased retiree costs. I will discuss this American approach in more detail next week.

More about the Three I's

2009-04-01T22:57:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on March 26th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
In my follow up to last week’s column, this week I will attempt to explain why France and the United States have the two of the highest fertility rates of all the developed countries in the world as well as why economists and some politicians view this as positive factor for their country’s future financial health and well being.
Believe it or not, by the end of the 18th century France was actually the most populous country in Europe and the third most populous country in the world, behind China and India. Unlike the rest of 19th century Europe, France also saw very few of its citizens immigrate to America. But during the 19th century, France’s fertility rate began to decline much faster than other European countries, causing France to fall behind Russia, Germany, the UK and Italy as Europe’s fifth most populous nation in 1900. France’s low fertility rates also resulted in virtually no population growth between 1900 and 1945 at a time when other European countries, including Ireland, had booming populations and much higher fertility rates than they do today.
In an effort to avoid the negative economic consequences of declining population, France undertook efforts to increase immigration by encouraging citizens from its colonies in North Africa and Indochina as well as those living in other countries in Southern and Eastern Europe to immigrate to France following the end of World War I. Even though fertility rates in France and other developed countries soared following the end of World War II, France still continued to encourage immigration from its former colonies in North Africa, particularly Algeria until the mid-seventies. Today France has over 3 million citizens who are of Algerian descent, many of them 3rd or 4th generation.
But beginning in the seventies fertility rates in America and all other developed countries began to decline thanks largely to women in those countries entering the workforce, delaying both marriage and childbirth, which in turn meant fewer children. Today, the only reason why countries in Europe with low fertility rates like Germany and Spain have thus far avoided population declines has been because of increases in immigration. But thanks to France’s success integrating its immigrants, its fertility rate is the highest in Europe even though France stopped encouraging immigration 30 years ago.
While France’s 2.0 fertility rate still falls short of America’s and the developed country population replacement rate of 2.1 children per couple, France’s immigrant women from North Africa and Turkey are at least partially responsible for this. Native French women only have an average of 1.7 children each but their immigrant women counterparts give a boost to France’s fertility rate by having almost 3 children per woman. Since France has a chronically high unemployment rate, especially among its immigrant population and their descendants, I asked some French immigrants why they wanted to have 2 or more children given such bleak future employment opportunities.
They told me that while their children may have difficulty finding jobs once they reach adulthood; they still believed that their children’s future job prospects would be roughly equal to those for the children of native French people. But they also told me that the French government had numerous income-based policies such as free child care and tax benefits, which encouraged women to have more children than they might otherwise. They went on to say that even higher income families received many of the same benefits such that only a fraction of any working woman’s income had to be spent on child care.
I thus concluded that the reason why France has grown to become the 3rd most populous country in Europe was because it had both opened its doors to immigration at the beginning of the 20th century and then it instituted policies to encourage impregnation in the latter half of the 20th century. I also concluded that the reason France now has the highest fertility rate in Europe was because it had been more successful than other European countries, in terms of integrating immigrants into French society through its use of government policies that treated all of its native citizens and immigrants equally.
Hmm, increasing Immigration plus better Integration equals more Impregnations. I + I = I+ So my formula, D+E=F+ or (cultural) Diversity + Equality (of opportunity) = Fertility + (higher rates of) appears to explain what is going on in France. But will it also work to explain why America has the highest fertility rate for developed countries? How would this formula work in America, given the fact that the United States doesn’t have anything close to France in terms of policies that encourage women to have children?
Well before we examine America’s fertility rate in more detail, maybe we should discuss why I think increasing immigration and or higher fertility rates bode well for all citizens living in more developed countries. Precisely why do economists and politicians view this as positive for developed countries’ future financial health and well being?
To be sure, if having a larger population was the key to the door of greater economic power then China and India would be the most powerful developed countries in the world instead of the world’s most populous developing nations. Most people believe that a larger population diminishes their quality of life by exacerbating problems like urban sprawl and strains on countries’ transportation and education infrastructures. It’s also a fact that increased immigration leads to more competition between a country’s native citizens and immigrants for economic resources and increased social tensions.
But allowing a country’s population to decline means its labor force will become older, smaller and less productive. This has major implications for public policy given the fact that developed countries also have to provide pensions and health care for their retirees. As the workforce gets smaller, governments will have to steadily increase taxes of the remaining workers in order to pay for their retirees’ healthcare and pensions. Isn’t there a better solution? Let’s discuss one next week.

The Three I's

2009-04-01T22:52:00.001Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on March 19th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Last week I closed my column by saying “just as the US led the world into the current economic recession, so too will the US lead the world out of it.” One of my friends questioned this reasoning given the continuous stream of bad economic news currently emanating from America. I told them that, in addition to my belief the US economy would bottom out and start improving before the EU’s, America had a number of other factors working in its favor that Ireland and the EU did not.
Today I’ll be discussing America, France, the EU and the three I’s; Immigration, Integration and Impregnation. As a basis for this discussion I will be using the equation D+E=F+ or (cultural) Diversity + Equality (of opportunity) = Fertility + (higher rates of).
All of these different factors affect a country’s demographic trends, which I believe have a wider and longer lasting impact on a nation’s society than any other single political, social or economic force has. But we don’t notice changes in demographics like we do changes involving those other forces because a country’s demography changes very gradually and over much longer periods of time, usually several decades
A 19th-century French philosopher named Auguste Comte once said that “Demography is destiny” in an effort to emphasize its huge yet very subtle influence on the political, social and economic changes that occur in any given country. Comte is also considered the father of “sociology” so I find it ironic that so many practitioners of social science (including anthropology, communication studies, criminology, economics, geography, history, political science, psychology, social studies and sociology) don’t pay more attention to changes in the demographics of a nation’s population.
But during the past 50 years some economists and politicians in the world’s developed countries have taken note of demographic trends that they find worrisome. However, unlike most of their fellow citizens, their biggest concern isn’t the effect that unfettered immigration of people from poor developing countries will have on their nations’ education and social welfare system. Rather their concern is that their countries will soon be unable to financially support their existing education and social welfare infrastructure unless something is done to arrest a decline in their national populations.
Most of these concerned economists and politicians have only recently come to the conclusion that the solution to the problem of declining population involves one or more of the three I’s; Immigration, Integration and or Impregnation. That is because the two main reasons why countries’ populations begin to decline are low rates of inward migration and or low fertility rates. In the developing world countries need higher birth and fertility rates of 3 or more children per woman because so many children die at a young age and adults there have a shorter life expectancy. But in more developed nations like the US and Ireland, women of child bearing age need to have only slightly more than 2 children each in order to maintain their countries’ populations at their current levels.
When the number of impregnations and subsequent childbirths in developed countries falls below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman for a period of 30 or more years, then that nation’s total population begins to slowly decline unless it is offset by significant levels of immigration. If those immigrants are able to successfully integrate with the native population, they and their children will remain in that country as productive members of society. But if they do not find acceptance in that country, these immigrants and their children will either leave or become a social welfare burden to it.
One doesn’t have to look far to see examples of immigrants who either have or have not been successful integrating into the native communities of their new homelands. Many here in Europe cite their respective country’s Muslim communities as the most glaring example of less than successful integration of immigrants into their societies. Judging by the attitudes expressed by both Muslim émigrés and non-Muslim natives in the UK and Germany, such observations appear to be fairly accurate.
But despite the fairly recent 2005 and 2007 urban riot in the mainly Muslim banlieues of its largest cities, this doesn’t seem to be the case in France. Contrary to many news reports at the time, there wasn’t any religious aspect to these disturbances, rather they were social riots triggered by the poor housing, racial discrimination and unemployment of up to 40% in the grim housing estates surrounding France’s largest cities. The young rioters were not just Muslims either, but also included many Christian teenagers from the Caribbean as well as many other non-Muslim teenage immigrants.
In fact, a recent Pew research poll taken after these riots concluded that “All in all, one might conclude that, despite their problems, ¬prime among them joblessness among youth generally, not just Muslim youth, the French need to take no integrationist lessons from their European neighbors.” Polls show that in France far fewer Muslims see any kind of conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in modern French society. Almost half of America’s Christians, 48%, and France’s Muslims, 42%, consider themselves to be American or French national citizens first (not as a Christian or Muslim first) vs. only 7% in the UK, and 13% in Germany. In Muslim countries, those putting national identity ahead of religious, ranges from 6% in Pakistan to 39% in Indonesia.
Despite widespread reports of French nationalists and Americans distaste for Muslim immigrants, research indicates that Muslims in both the US and France are generally more assimilated and prosperous than Muslims in the rest of Europe. As a result, Muslim immigration to France and to America has continued to increase. In fact more people from Islamic countries became legal permanent US residents in 2005 than in any other year in the previous two decades.
But France and America also share another similarity I’ll discuss more next week; they have the highest fertility rates of all the world’s developed countries.

Toxic Assets

2009-04-01T22:48:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on March 12th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
A couple of weeks ago I suggested that the US and other governments take possession of their banks “toxic assets” so that those banks could go back to private investors and raise fresh capital that they could start lending again with a clean set of books. To reduce the cost to taxpayers I also suggested that those governments could get warrants when they acquire toxic assets that would convert to bank stock the governments could sell to private investors, and hire private equity managers to oversee the valuations and disposal of those “toxic assets” to ensure that they’re sold only when the time is right.
Well it now appears that the US government is going to pursue a hybridized version of what I suggested. Instead of taking these “toxic assets” off the books of the banks and creating a “bad bank” to hold and dispose of them, President Obama’s economic team is proposing to set up several public-private funds to compete with each other in valuing and buying these bank assets. The basic idea is to attract private investors to both manage and put their own money into these funds with the US government as their partner agreeing to cap their losses and share in the risk of buying these “toxic assets”.
President Obama believes that by competing to buy these “toxic assets”, these new “vulture funds” could establish some more realistic market prices for the “toxic assets” that will allow banks to sell them off. While the Obama administration’s proposal isn’t as clean as what I proposed two weeks ago, I am cautiously optimistic that it might succeed in realizing the same goal; cleaning up the banks books so they can once again begin to raise and subsequently lend new capital to businesses and consumers in the US.
In the meantime I believe the economic situation in the US and the rest of the world will continue to get worse before it begins to get better. There is an old saying that “it’s always darkest before the dawn” and I happen to believe that is the case here as regards the current global recession. But I am now detecting the first glimmers of light at the end of that long tunnel of economic misery the world is now traversing. The first indication that the worst may soon be over will be the bottoming out of the stock market in the United States which may be closer at hand than most people currently think. So why exactly do I believe this might be the case?
Yesterday the US stock market dropped to its lowest level in twelve years, and while it may have a bit further to fall yet, I suspect it is now fairly close to its bottom. That means there are some really good companies with strong balance sheets and excellent future earnings potential available at relatively low stock prices. Savvy investors will begin to buy these stocks now or in the near future while they are cheap which will in turn stabilize the overall stock market.
Note I said stabilize, not reverse, the current downward trend of stock markets around the world. Global stock markets won’t start moving back up again until a majority of private investors become confident that the financial crisis is well on its way to being resolved. Because we are still some months away from being able to predict with any level of confidence that the banks have finally cleaned up their books, I foresee a period of small movements up and down for stock markets over the course of the next year.
The smartest investors are the ones who step in and begin buying stocks or investing when the market in one of these kind of “troughs”. They don’t wait until they are certain the market has bottomed out but instead buy whenever they see weakness in an already down market. They do so because they know that once the majority of other investors regain confidence in the market they will then be competing with them for the best investments and paying a higher price for them as a result of this competition.
The other big components of the current financial meltdown were the collapse of home prices followed by a collapse in consumer spending. Once again, at least in the US, I see the first glimmers of light in both of these areas as well. Consumer spending in the US actually rose a modest .06% in January for the first time following a record six months worth of steady declines. While it may decline again in the coming months I think this is a signal that the downward trend is now over and the US will enter a period of more modest advances and declines in consumer spending during the rest of 2009.
Private investors have now begun moving into the US housing market as they see opportunities to buy homes for roughly 45-50% of the prices they would have paid two years ago before the housing bubble burst. This is a sign that the US housing market has finally reached a bottom and any further declines in home values will be relatively modest. Just like stock prices however, don’t expect home prices to begin rising again until they have spent some months languishing at the low end of the housing market.
Similarly, while US unemployment continues to rise, manufacturing activity in February actually increased for the first time in more than a year. This is a sign that the steady contraction in US business and manufacturing which has been going on since the beginning of 2008 is also coming to an end. Nevertheless, you should expect US economic, employment and spending reports to continue to be pretty dismal for the rest of 2009. But the good news for Ireland and the rest of the world is; just as the US led the world into the current economic recession, so too will the US lead the world out of it.

President Obama's State of the Union Address

2009-04-01T22:43:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on March 5th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Last Wednesday at 3:15 in the morning I found myself doing something I can not recall ever doing before. It took me a moment to realize that I had actually started to clap at the end of an hour long speech I had just listened to on the telly. Sure, I’ve clapped, along with other members of the audience, at the end of other speeches I have heard, but not when I’m sitting alone in front of the television. When I realized what I was doing I immediately stopped myself and wondered; “Why on earth am I clapping at my TV?”
Well I guess the answer is that I must have been pretty impressed by President Barak Obama’s first speech to a Joint Session of Congress, which is the traditional first term President’s equivalent to the State of the Union address. When President Obama addresses Congress and the nation again at this same time next year, this speech will be called Obama’s first State of the Union address because only a President who has been in office during the previous year is entitled to deliver a State of the Union speech.
But even though this speech wasn’t actually a State of the Union address, it was still treated like one since it was broadcast nationally by all ten of the major television networks in America. In fact President Obama’s speech was watched by viewers in more than 37 million US homes, the third largest TV audience to ever watch a State of the Union address and here in Ireland I was able to watch the speech broadcast live by the BBC, SkyNews and France 24. This unprecedented interest in President Obama’s first major speech after his inauguration only a month earlier underscores both the American and worldwide interest in President Obama’s plan to deal with the economic recession.
Neither I nor my parents were alive when Franklin Roosevelt, only eight days into his first term as President, delivered the first of his famous and reassuring fireside chats to an American public reeling from the devastating effects of a worldwide depression. Then as now America and the rest of the world were anxiously hoping for bold and effective economic leadership. While it remains to be seen if Obama will be as effective as Franklin Roosevelt, last Wednesday night I think President Obama delivered the kind of message that Americans and citizens of other nations were so desperately hungry for.
Instead of being lofty and inspirational like his presidential campaign speeches, I characterized President Obama’s inaugural address as being a very sober and serious speech. That’s because President Obama was preparing Americans for a long and nasty recession while simultaneously reassuring citizens in America and around the world that we would eventually overcome the many challenges we are currently confronting. I felt the tenor of his inaugural address was quite appropriate given the rather dire economic conditions America and the world was facing on the day he became our 44th President.
Last Wednesday night President Obama’s hour long speech added some layers of detail that were missing from his relatively brief 18 minute inaugural address. In his inaugural address President Obama had also challenged those “who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans”. One month later, having already achieved the passage of his top priority, the $800 billion economic stimulus bill, President Obama proceeded to lay out his other “big” plans for improving education, creating jobs through investments in rebuilding America’s infrastructure and developing energy independence.
President Obama also outlined his plans for reforming Medicare and Social Security in order to set the stage for implementing a universal healthcare program health care and an upcoming federal budget that doesn’t hide things like the cost of the Iraq war as well as his plans to help beleaguered US homeowners. Having spent the weeks following his inauguration using a pessimistic tone to apply pressure to Congress to pass his stimulus plan, President Obama used more optimistic language in this latest speech detailing his plans while also promising that America “will emerge stronger than before.”
He acknowledged Americans anger towards Wall Street but also reminded them that many of them had also played a role by using credit recklessly and spending beyond their means. Obama then sought to convince viewers that the only way to avoid making the current economic crisis worse may be to commit more taxpayer money to cleaning up Wall streets financial mess. He cautioned Americans about opposing this idea saying that “we cannot afford to govern out of anger or yield to the politics of the moment.” Obama went on to say that “it’s not about helping banks, it’s about helping people.” He made the case that America and the world faced a decade of hard times unless we acted to stabilize the banking system so banks could begin lending so we could buy cars and homes again.
President Obama also continued to refrain from using partisan rhetoric during his speech and instead encouraged Republicans to take the “carrot” he was offering and rise above partisan politics and try work with him in developing bipartisan solutions for the many problems the country faces. But Obama also showed his Republican opponents the “stick” by giving his audience a powerful critique of the policies of the past 8 years which led up to the crisis which he and his administration had just “inherited.”
I thought President Obama did an excellent job of making the case for using the current economic crisis to make far reaching changes and reforms in the areas of healthcare, education and energy independence by creating “opportunity from ordeal.” President Obama closed his speech by reminding Americans that the world was watching saying “As we stand at this crossroads of history, the eyes of all people in all nations are once again upon us, watching to see what we do with this moment, waiting for us to lead.” Well one thing’s for sure, Obama is leading.

The Automaker bailout

2009-04-01T22:42:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on February 26th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I want to discuss the additional government loans being proposed for GM and Chrysler and expand on my comments in last week’s column about my belief that the US and other governments’ must take ownership of their banks “bad assets”, in order to get them off their books so that banks can start raising and lending new capital again.
I recognize that taking these kinds of radical actions sounds to many observers like I am proposing that taxpayers should get stuck with the bill for the mistakes of these US automakers and the lending excesses of financial executives around the globe. Indeed, in a worse case scenario, taxpayers may end up footing a large part of the bill. But history tells me that if the automaker loans and the disposal of toxic bank assets are handled in a judicious manner, then there is a very good chance that taxpayers won’t be stuck with much if any of a tab, and might even profit from these so-called “government bailouts”.
As regards the loans for Chrysler and GM, the very same issues; that such help rewards failure and could cost taxpayers a lot of money, were debated 30 years ago prior to the US Congress approving the first such government loan for Chrysler. The US was also in the midst of a severe economic downturn and the bankruptcy, of what was then America’s 10th largest manufacturer was considered unthinkable to many US citizens. In fact, in most respects, the current situation involving GM, and to a lesser extent, Chrysler, mirrors that which existed in 1979. So what was the end result of that government loan?
First Chrysler proceeded to develop and produce its first front wheel drive small cars, which in turn helped Chrysler double its automobile line-up’s corporate average miles-per-gallon of petrol. Then Chrysler paid off the US taxpayer guaranteed loans in 1983, resulting in a net profit for US taxpayers of over $350 million. Excuse me, but I happen to think a $350 million profit on a 4 year, $1.5 billion loan sounds pretty good.
Having said this, while I am supportive of giving GM more government loans, I’m not so sure US taxpayers should also do so in the case of Chrysler. That is because unlike GM, Chrysler is no longer a publicly held stock company like it was back in 1979. Cerebus Capital Management LP, a huge private equity fund owned by a large group of well heeled private investors, bought Chrysler from DaimlerChrysler 18 months ago. It actually acquired Chrysler’s automaking operations free of debt, so it could get its hands on Chrysler’s lucrative auto finance subsidiary, Chrysler Financial Corporation.
Cerebus wanted to combine Chrysler’s much smaller finance operation, with the GM finance subsidiary, General Motors Acceptance Corporation, that Cerebus had bought a controlling stake of 51% in from GM a year earlier. Of course back in 2006 and 2007 when Cerebus made these acquisitions, the US and world economies were growing quickly and money to finance risky acquisitions was easy to get. But Cerebus Chairman and CEO John Snow, President Bush’s former Treasury Secretary, and Cerebus Capital’s wealthy private investors also knew there were risks associated with such acquisitions. As such, I don’t think it’s fair to provide more government loans to help Cerebus unless Cerebus Capital’s investors decide to invest more of their own money in Chrysler as well.
The US government also has some even more recent experience dealing with the toxic assets of America’s financial institutions. The Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) was a US Government-owned asset management company created by Congress in 1989 to deal with the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. It was charged with liquidating the assets of savings and loan associations (S&Ls) declared insolvent by the Office of Thrift Supervision, mainly real estate and mortgage loans. The RTC also took over the deposit insurance duties of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. So what kind of job did it do?
Congress initially gave the RTC $50 billion to clean up the S&L mess, but the RTC wound up needing three additional infusions of taxpayer funds over six years because the situation proved to be much worse than Congress originally thought. In the end, according to one study, taxpayers took a $124 billion loss on the RTC’s total assets of $394 billion. That means taxpayers lost 31 cents on each dollar of assets handled by the RTC, an institution that was simply disposing of the property of failed institutions.
So using this recent US government toxic asset disposal history as a guide, if the US government has to end up taking over a total of $3 trillion in toxic bank assets, then a more realistic worst case scenario is that the ultimate cost to tax payers will be at most $1 trillion or about $150 billion a year over the next 6 years. I also think the same calculus could be applied to toxic bank assets in Ireland, the UK and the rest of the world. But just as there was a silver lining to those US government loans to Chrysler back in 1980, I also think it’s possible that taxpayers in the US and other nations could actually end up seeing a profit from a judicious acquisition and subsequent disposal of these “toxic assets”.
While government officials will have to spend a lot of money to show the market that they won't let their banks fail, taxpayers won't have to end up on the hook for the entire amount of money that's being injected into these banks. Governments could get warrants when they acquire toxic assets that would convert to bank stock when the government sells them, and hire private equity managers to oversee the assets to ensure that they’re sold only when the time is right.
I think these kinds of arrangements will allow governments to extract some gains for taxpayers once the recession ends so that taxpayers can actually profit from the financial bailout.

President Obama's Economic Stimulus package

2009-04-01T22:40:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on February 19th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
I closed last week’s column, about how President Obama has performed during his first weeks in office; by saying I would discuss President Obama’s economic stimulus measures in detail in this week’s column. But as you read this I will be winging my way across the Atlantic Ocean back home to Ireland from a conference in New York City, so some of what I discuss here may have already been rendered obsolete based on whatever actions the US Congress has or hasn’t taken on this very important piece of legislation.
With that caveat I will now discuss what I believe will be the likely outcome of the US Senate debate about the cost of the economic stimulus package, as well as what I believe the US government (and other countries and their governments) will eventually have to do to bring the world economy back from depths it has so quickly sunk to. As a lifelong fiscal conservative I must confess to being aghast at the almost one trillion dollar price tag of the stimulus package. But I’m also aware that the world is confronting the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930’s, so extraordinary measures seem to be appropriate under the circumstances.
I am pleased to see Republicans arguing against some of the new federal spending programs that will continue long after the current economic crisis is over. But I must also note that many of these so-called fiscal conservatives’ voices were no where to be heard while former President Bush was running up half a trillion dollar annual budget deficits to finance his spending programs and the Iraq war. Since America wasn’t confronting such an enormous financial crisis during those years, Republican opposition to Obama’s deficit spending plans strikes me as being a bit like “the kettle calling the pot black.”
I am particularly disappointed in Senator John McCain, who has made absolutely no effort to try to forge the kind of compromises he has in the past with Democrats on economic and other issues. Having been soundly defeated by Obama in his bid for the Presidency, it appears John now wants to upstage President Obama and thereby salvage what’s left of his political reputation among his fellow Republicans in the process. John and other Republicans, who seem to have suddenly found their fiscal conservative voices now that they are out of power, are also playing a very dangerous game here.
But fortunately for America and the rest of the world, I don’t believe that McCain and his other so-called fiscally conservative Republican allies will win this particular dust-up with President Obama and the Senate’s Democrats. There are a few much more statesmen like Republicans in the Senate who have decided that now is not the time to be playing these kinds of dangerous political games. This group includes veteran Republican Senators like Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and George V. Voinovich from economically depressed Ohio, as well as the three female Republican Senators, Lisa Murkowski from Alaska and the two Senators from Maine, Olympia Snow and Susan Collins.
These five Republicans have been working behind closed doors with some moderate Democrats like Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Colorado’s newly elected Senator Mark Udall, to trim or eliminate some of the new spending programs from the stimulus bill in order to ensure its eventual passage this month. This alliance of moderate Senate Democrats and Republicans is reminiscent of the so-called Gang of 14 Senators, who banded together four years ago to halt attempts by the then Republican controlled Senate to ram Bush’s judicial appointments through the Senate.
Make no mistake, there are many very worthwhile spending programs included in the Congressional Democrats economic stimulus package which have been endorsed and supported by President Obama. But now is not the time and this legislation is not the place to provide additional funding for the Head Start program, prisons, education for the disadvantaged, school improvements, child nutrition and violence against women.
President Obama has wisely avoided getting involved in the negotiations being conducted by Senate moderates about what specific programs should be cut from the stimulus bill. He has instead focused on the urgent need for a substantial package of tax cuts and infrastructure spending to address America’s economic crisis. To that end, President Obama has repeatedly urged members of Congress from both parties to rise above partisan politics and work together on the specifics so that he can sign the new bill into law immediately after it has been approved by both houses of Congress.
While I support most elements of the economic stimulus package and believe that it will be passed and signed into law before the end of February, I don’t think this and similar economic stimulus measures by other countries will resolve the current economic crisis in America or anywhere else in the world. Nor am I alone in my opinions about what additional steps the US and other governments will eventually have to take to get their economies moving again. Some respected economists as well as members of Obama’s economic team have also come to similar conclusions.
The world’s banks won’t be ready or able to start lending money again until the US and other governments’ take ownership of their banks “bad assets” to get them off these banks’ books. Once this has been done, these newly “washed” banks can raise private capital which they’ll be eager to lend to credit worthy businesses and consumers.
Mind you, these “bad assets” our governments will then be stuck with are not actually worthless. But unwinding these “securities”, which are actually packages of debt containing both good and bad mortgage or consumer loans, to figure out which elements have value and which ones don’t will be a long and time consuming process. But the world’s economy is dependent on banks and private investors who can’t afford to wait and find out what these securities are worth. Therefore, our governments must do so.

How is Obama doing so far

2009-04-01T22:37:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on February 12th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
I am heading back to the states tomorrow to present a paper at an international conference in New York and to take the pulse of citizens in my homeland regarding President Obama’s performance in office less than one month into his first term. So today I want to discuss what I think of President Obama’s first three weeks in office.
As I mentioned in previous columns I generally applaud the kind of people President Obama has selected to run the US government and various federal agencies and indeed the Congress has moved swiftly to approve the nominations of the vast majority of President Obama’s Cabinet nominees. But that isn’t to say President Obama hasn’t stumbled in a few cases, most notably with the nomination of Tom Daschle as both Secretary of Health and Human Services and White House Health Insurance Czar.
Given his legislative and lobbying experience on healthcare insurance issues and close personal relationship with President Obama, Tom Daschle was and, I believe, still is the best person for these critical positions in President Obama’s new administration. Unfortunately, Tom Daschle made a crucial error as regards paying his personal income taxes and the decision to withdraw his nomination for both posts in President Obama’s administration is the price Daschle and Obama now have to pay for this transgression.
Regardless of the whether or not one believes that Tom Daschle knew or should have know that having a gratis driver and limousine (courtesy of Washington DC insider and corporate media mogul Leo Hindery) at his disposal for the past three years had income tax consequences, that was not his biggest mistake. What sunk Tom Daschle’s chance to play a significant role in the President Obama’s new administration was his decision to wait until January of this year, just days before his Senate confirmation hearings, to write a check for the back taxes he owed. There is no excuse for this delay.
Even if one buys Daschle and President Obama’s contention that failing to declare the driver and limo perk as taxable income was an innocent mistake, the fact of the matter is Daschle knew he owed income taxes for this “oversight” over six months ago and yet waited until he was about to be grilled about this matter by members of the US Senate to pay up. This action alone calls into question whether or not Tom Daschle was acting in accordance with the “spirit” of President Obama’s administration’s new ethical standards.
As President Obama himself later acknowledged, there cannot be two sets of ethical standards for people who work in President Obama’s administration, one for those who have been his closest advisors and friends and another for those outside his inner circle. While President Obama should have recognized the ethical lapse and never nominated Daschle, it was still refreshing to see President Obama “fess up” and admit he had made a mistake trying to get Tom Daschle approved as a member of his Cabinet. President Obama’s admission stands in marked contrast to former President Bush, who could never admit that any of his administration’s personnel choices had been faulty.
But President Obama’s nomination of moderate Republican Senator Judd Gregg as his Commerce Secretary to replace his first choice, Democratic Governor Bill Richardson, demonstrated President Obama’s considerable political savvy in two ways. It underscored President Obama’s commitment to run the US government in a bipartisan manner by adding a third Republican and a fiscal conservative to his Cabinet, while also creating an opportunity for the Democratic Party to capture another open Senate seat in 2 years. Although another Republican, Gregg’s former Chief of Staff, Bonnie Newman, has been appointed to fill Gregg’s seat for the next 2 years, she will not be running for re-election in 2010, thus making it much easier for a Democrat to take over this Senate seat.
I also applaud many of the executive decisions and actions taken by President Obama during his first days as America’s Chief Executive. Following through on his campaign promises, President Obama signed a succession of executive orders which among other things, closed Guantanamo Bay as a terrorist detention facility and ended the separate but not equal justice system the Bush administration had tried to use to try terror suspects. President Obama also ordered his generals to develop a plan to withdraw American troops from Iraq within 16 months and a plan to deal with a resurgent Taliban insurrection and stabilize the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan.
President Obama also chose to make his first televised international media interview with a Muslim TV network and dispatched former Senator George Mitchell, who helped settle the conflict in Northern Ireland 10 years ago, to the Middle East to put a renewed focus on settling the Arab-Israeli conflict. Obama also reversed Bush directives that stopped the flow of US aid to NGOs that provided abortion assistance.
Closer to home, President Obama moved quickly to mandate an end to the use of questionable interrogation techniques by the CIA, opened federal coffers to provide more money for stem cell research and signed a bill to increase the number of uninsured children covered by a special SCHIP health insurance program.
President Obama also began a concerted push for a very large economic stimulus program that he hopes to sign into law the same day I arrive back in the states. Most Republicans say this 800 billion dollar package of tax cuts and infrastructure spending is too large and decry the effect it will have on America’s already huge budget deficit.
But I can’t help but wonder where these same fiscally conservative Republicans were, when George Bush was President and he sent Congress a variety of bills an increases in Defense spending that doubled the size of that deficit in only six short years. My fellow Republicans appear to have very short memories and are obviously hoping American voters do as well. But I will discuss President Obama’s economic stimulus measures in detail in next week’s column.

My Indian Travelogue Comes to a Close

2009-04-01T22:30:00.001Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on February 12th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I want to bring my India travelogue to a close by discussing some of the people I met and the other sights I saw during my Indian sojourn.
While I was leaving the Gandhi Museum to return to my hotel, an obviously poor and homeless young girl of maybe 13 years approached my car begging for money. She was dragging a very deformed foot around on crutches and looked like she hadn’t had a bath in at least a week. The sight of this pitiful young waif was more than I could bear, so I reached into my pocket and gave her 10 rupees, about 15 euro cents.
The look of absolute joy and gratitude on her face when I dropped the coins into the dirty little palm of her hand was indescribable and judging by her reaction you would have thought I had just given her a million Euros. I then responded by taking her picture but as soon as she saw the camera she became even more animated; smiling and waving at me while she thanked me again and again, until my car slowly pulled away into traffic. I didn’t really need a photo of this young girl however, because as I write this, I can still see her smiling face pressed against my car window.
The next day I went to see Akshardham, a Hindu temple which was as modern a tourist attraction as the others I saw in India were ancient. But unlike the older and much more historic holy places India is famous for, visitors to the Akshardham temple must check their purses, phones, camera’s and other valuables before they are even allowed to enter the temple’s grounds, in part to ensure that no photos are taken while you are inside.
Inside one finds beautifully manicured gardens dedicated to famous Hindu’s important to Indian history, exhibitions which explain the Swaminaran faith and Hindu teachings along with gold and marble statues of various Hindu deities. For a fee of 50 to 100 rupees (75-150 Euro cents) there is an indoor boat ride, a huge new IMAX theatre showing a movie about Lord Swaminarayan and a sound and light show which depicts the Hindu vision of the beginning and the end of the world. But compared to all the other places I saw in India, Akshardham did strike me as a bit over the top.
A few days later, while I was being driven back to my hotel from Jawaharlal Nehru University, I had another memorable encounter with the poorest of India’s poor; a rather sad looking little 5 year old boy dressed in rags and caring for his year old baby brother. But when I stopped to take his picture, he stood up smiling and waved happily at me as if he didn’t have a care in the world. When I gave him 10 rupees though, he let out a whoop as if he had hit the jackpot and the two of them began following my rickshaw as we moved along with the flow of the traffic.
Once again I didn’t really need a picture of him and his little brother to preserve the memory though, because it is still as fresh in my mind now as it was right after I lost sight them in Delhi’s traffic congestion. I am still amazed at how genuinely happy India’s poorest people and children appear to be. Indeed money can’t buy that kind of happiness.
The following weekend I visited India Gate and the beautiful government buidings that house India’s parliament and the prime minister’s offices, an area of New Delhi curiously devoid of the squalor one sees everywhere else in the city. The next day I spent walking the grounds surrounding Qutb Minar, one of the largest minarets in the world. This minaret used to be a part of one of the largest Mosques in the world, Quwwat al Islam Mosque (The Power of Islam Mosque) which now lies in ruins.
Ironically, the mosque was originally built using the ruins of older temples built for the Hindu and Jain religious faiths, so what remains today is an diverse mix of India’s Hindu and Muslim architecture. The site also holds the graves of some of India’s ancient rulers and a huge, pure iron pillar, which never rusts, that was taken from a Hindu temple.
Then on my last weekend in New Delhi, I took an overnight trip to Agra to tour one of the Seven Wonders of the World; the famous Muslim shrine to a man’s love for his wife, the Taj Mahal. To help protect the beauty of this white marble masterpiece from pollution, petrol burning cars and trucks are banned from the area surrounding this marble palace, which upon closer inspection, is actually white marble with calligraphy panels made of inlaid jasper. Inside the Mausoleum is the tomb of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan’s favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, surrounded by beautiful and intricate geometric designs made up of inlaid lapis and other semi-precious stones.
The entire Taj Mahal complex is actually a series of towers and buildings that are surrounded by and connected to beautifully designed and well maintained gardens. It would be safe to say it would cost trillions of Euros to build a complex like this today.
When I was leaving Agra to return to Delhi and my flight home to Ireland, I had one more memorable encounter with a native Indian woman carrying a months old baby. She was begging for money and I once again parted with 10 rupees. And just like the children I gave 10 rupees to she was overjoyed and oh so thankful while I took her photo.
Today I am a much richer person because of what I experienced in India. I believe that India’s real jewel isn’t the Taj Mahal, its India’s people. The vast majority of Indians may be extremely poor in terms of material possessions but they are incredibly rich in character and spirit.

A Witness to President Obama's Inauguration

2009-04-01T22:24:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on January 29th in Metro Éireann by Charles Laffiteau
I hope you have been enjoying my columns about my recent trip to India, but in my next two columns I am going to take a brief detour from recounting my Indian “adventure” to discuss my most recent trip back to the states last week for Barack Obama’s historic inauguration as America’s 44th President.
Having already been a witness to history when President Obama was officially nominated as the Democratic Party’s candidate for President, I was extremely grateful for the opportunity to once again be a witness to history. But I must confess that I was also wondering how the experience of seeing President Obama take the reins of power in Washington DC on 20 January could possibly equal what I had experienced less than 5 months earlier on 28 August in Denver Colorado. Boy oh boy, was I ever wrong.
Hmmm….Lets just say that I made the mistake of underestimating the power of being one of 2 million witnesses to history as opposed to being one in a crowd of only 85-90,000 people. In my defense, I had truly been awestruck in Denver looking up from my vantage point on the floor of the Democratic convention at the thousands of people jammed into every corner and seat at Mile High Stadium. This was also the largest crowd to have ever heard a US Presidential candidate deliver a nomination acceptance speech.
I had also never before been to a Presidential inauguration or a political gathering of any kind numbering more than a few hundred thousand people. Of course the only other Presidential inauguration I have ever been invited to was President Reagan’s first inauguration in 1981, which drew a crowd of only half a million people. Well if you think the sight of 500,000 spectators is awe inspiring, how does one even begin to describe what it’s like to turn around from your spot on Capitol Hill and look behind you at a crowd estimated to be almost 2 million strong? I’m sorry, but even now, days later, I still can’t come up with the words to adequately describe the sight and the feelings it evoked.
However, much like my trip to India, my journey to President Obama’s presidential inauguration had more than a few moments of tension prior to my arrival on the lawn of the US Capitol building. In fact, with less than an hour to go before President Obama took his oath of office, I was still standing in a packed queue of several thousand people at one of the four entry gates for those lucky enough to have tickets. But that was only the last of my moments of anxiety which had actually begun several hours earlier.
I had departed my friend’s home in Arlington Virginia some three hours earlier, at 8am, so that I could catch the Metro subway train for the fifteen minute trip into the city to a stop less than a half hour walk from the entry gate for US Capitol grounds ticket holders. I had been told that these entry gates would open at 9am so I figured I had allowed myself plenty of time to get there and grab a good viewing spot. Unfortunately I had also not accounted for the fact that the trains into the city would be so jammed with passengers who had gotten on at earlier stops, that there would be no room left for passengers to get on where I was at the Metro stop in Pentagon City.
But having some experience riding the rails, I also knew that if the trains coming into Pentagon City were already full at 8am, then this would remain the case for at least the next couple of hours. So I decided to jump out of the queue for the train to the city in favor of a seat on the virtually empty train heading the other way out of the city. I knew that while this detour would cost me some precious minutes, I would also be guaranteed a spot on the train when it turned around and started back into the city.
But when the outbound train stopped at Reagan International Airport I took a chance and hopped off and waited for the next inbound train, thinking maybe I could save a bit of time this way. As it turned out I was lucky enough to just squeeze onto the next train into DC and arrived at my original planned destination just before 9am. But those people I left behind at Pentagon City didn’t even get on a train until about 10:30am, so I was very glad I decided “to go south in order to go north.” After I got off at Metro’s Chinatown stop, I walked another 10 blocks to the entry point for my gate, only to find a large queue of ticket holders waiting to be let through to the entry gate on the next street.
Since this crowd wasn’t moving I fell in behind an ambulance which was slowly moving through the crowd towards my ultimate destination, the US Capitol. When the ambulance reached an open area at the next intersection past the throng I had been caught in, I turned to my right and walked into another queue of several thousand only this one was right in front of my entry gate. I looked at my watch and it was 9:45am so I figured now I was sure to get in. To my chagrin however, I remained in this queue for the next hour and a half, pressed so tightly by people on all sides that it was impossible to fall down or move in any direction other than forward towards the entry gate.
But my tension evaporated at 11:15am when they finally allowed me to go through the gate and the omnipresent metal detectors. I literally ran to a spot between two portable loos just behind the people who were seated on the Capitol lawn and wedged myself into the small opening between them. Granted this wasn’t the best smelling spot on the Capitol grounds but it gave me an unobstructed view of President Obama’s entire inauguration ceremony.
I count myself as very lucky to have made it to my viewing spot “between the loos” for several reasons. After the inauguration was over I talked with two ladies who had the same kind of tickets I had at an Italian restaurant where I had lunch. They told me they had remained in the same queue I had bypassed by following the ambulance, and as a result missed the entire inauguration because they never even made it to the entry gate.
Then when I was on the Metro returning to Arlington, I talked with a couple that had silver tickets for the viewing area next to the Capitol’s reflecting pool. They had arrived at 6am and because they had arrived so early, they were in a huge queue that was directed into the Third Street tunnel to wait until the entry gates opened. In this case the early bird didn’t catch the worm however, because no one came to get them until it was too late to clear security and get to their ticketed spots next to the reflecting pool. After listening to them I was actually grateful I had arrived later than I originally planned.
Fortunately for me, my only moment of disappointment on this historic day came shortly after I got to my viewing spot on the Capitol lawn. As President Bush and his wife Laura were introduced shortly before 11:30am, many in the crowd around me booed lustily. Mind you, while I have been one of the Bush administration’s harshest critics over the last 6 years, I thought this public display of disrespect towards the outgoing President and his wife was both uncalled for and in poor taste.
But the sour mood among some of my fellow spectators in the crowd quickly evaporated when President Obama, his wife Michelle and his family were introduced to a rousing cheer as they joined President Bush and former US Presidents Clinton, H. W. Bush and Carter on the Inaugural Platform. It was at this point that I turned around and for the first time looked down at the 2 million people standing behind me. This vast crowd stretched as far as my eyes could see down the National Mall, past the Washington monument and all the way to the Lincoln Memorial some 2 miles (3 kilometers) away. The sight of this gave me goose bumps and a warm feeling about what the future holds.
In the spirit of a new era of bipartisan politics, President Obama picked a prominent social conservative minister, Rick Warren, to deliver the Inaugural invocation, a choice that infuriated many progressive Democrats. This sentiment was underscored when I, in fact, heard a very distinct murmur of dissatisfaction rippling through the crowd around me when Rick Warren was first introduced. But Warren’s invocation was actually quite soothing and nonpartisan for the most part.
While I thought it was a mistake that Warren chose to lead the crowd in saying the “Lords Prayer” (which is so particularly Christian) at the end of his invocation, I guess I shouldn’t have been since he is, after all, an evangelical Christian minister. But except for this gaffe, I thought Warren’s invocation was appropriately focused on the need for national unity. One of the most memorable lines I remember him saying was; “Help us, oh God, to remember that we are Americans, united not by race or religion or blood but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all. When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the Earth with the respect that they deserve, forgive us.”
Chief Justice John Roberts then proceeded to screw up administering the oath of office such that he, and now President Obama, repeated it in a private ceremony a day later in order to ensure the constitutionality of the swearing in process. But President Obama was unflustered by this mistake, delivering his 18 minute inaugural address without so much as a single hitch.
But President Obama’s inaugural address wasn’t as lofty and inspirational as many in the crowd expected given the President’s reputation as a skillful orator and speech writer. I would characterize it as a very sober and serious speech and yet, one that still included a large measure of determination and hope regarding America’s future. Although President Obama used it to repudiate many of the policies of President Bush, he was also very careful and made sure that he never personally attacked him in the process.
I think the following quotes from President Obama’s speech neatly summarize the sober and yet hopeful tenor of his inaugural address; “Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious, and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America: They will be met.” He also acknowledged those who doubt that we can overcome these challenges saying that; “There are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage.”
President Obama also acknowledged that the rest of the world was hopefully watching and looking to America to lead it through the current economic crisis as well as to help resolve some of the world’s numerous ethnic and religious conflicts when he said; “We are ready to lead again.” He repudiated the Bush administration’s use of torture and its curtailment of civil liberties by saying that this was a “false choice between our safety and our ideals” but also warned the enemies of the United States that; “Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”
The inauguration ceremony ended with a wonderful (and somewhat humorous) benediction delivered by the Reverend Joseph Lowery, a civil rights veteran and colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King. He acknowledged America’s racial divisions and the need for a continuation of progress in addressing them, saying; “We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around (crowd laughs) when yellow will be mellow (crowd laughs harder), when the red man can get ahead man (still more laughter) and when white will embrace what is right.” What can you say to this closing line from Rev. Lowery on a most remarkable day but, “Amen”.

The Indian Adventure Continues

2009-04-01T22:08:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on February 5th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
While there are any number of reasons why you should not rent and or drive a vehicle in New Delhi, or India for that matter, the best one is for your own safety. Sure they drive on the left just like folks in Ireland and the UK do, but that is where the similarities both begin and end.
Try navigating a toll road, designed like the motorways here in Ireland, but also sharing the driving lanes with carts pulled by bicycles, camels, donkeys, oxen and the occasional human animal. There are also the farm tractors, pedestrians and omnipresent rickshaws that use the same road lanes that one also has to be on the lookout for. Plus, even though motorcycles, cars and trucks are supposed to travel in the left hand lane unless they are overtaking slower moving traffic, the reality is that virtually all of them drive in the middle of the road straddling both lanes
Now, unlike Ireland, the big heavy trucks which carry goods between cities and to stores and factories are not allowed to use many of India’s motorways between 7am and 7pm in order to ease traffic congestion. But when they are on the road these big trucks TAKE the right of way, regardless of whether or not they are legally entitled to it. The rule is, the bigger the truck, the more right of way its driver believes he is entitled to.
Another curious feature of India’s divided highways is the fact that trucks can enter them and travel in the opposite direction of traffic for distances of several miles until they reach a break in the median strip where they can cross over onto the other side and the proper traffic flow lanes. Imagine my surprise when the car I was in had to shift to the left from the inside right hand speed lane on the highway from Delhi to Agra because a huge truck was barreling down the road straight at us in that same lane.
Automobile and truck horns constantly assault one’s hearing when you are on the road because India’s drivers not only don’t pay little attention to what is beside or behind them, but also because they do not use their indicators or yield the right of way, and they frequently change lanes without signaling. Furthermore, Indian drivers also frequently pass on blind corners, up steep hills or in the face of oncoming traffic and many of them either don’t use their headlights or turn on their high beams when they encounter on coming traffic, blinding the other driver. Small wonder India has 131.2 fatalities per 10,000 motor vehicles compared to only 1.4 for the UK and 1.8 for Ireland.
However, assuming that one is smart enough to hire a driver to take you to see the many wonderful sights that there are in India, you will be truly amazed by many of them. I stayed close to New Delhi for my first two weeks and still didn’t see everything that there was to see in the Capital of India, but I probably could have had it not been for many hours I spent in the United Nations workshop that was the primary purpose for my trip. Having said that, it was also the native Indians who took part in that workshop who served as my guides to what sights I should and eventually did see during my stay.
My first weekend was spent visiting the National Gandhi Museum and the Memorial of Mahatma Gandhi at Rajghat on the bank of the Yamuna River in New Delhi. At the memorial site known as Rajghat Samadhi, there is an eternal flame burning at the spot where Mahatma Gandhi’s mortal body was consigned to flames at his funeral.
The memorial itself is striking for both its beauty and its simplicity, which would also be in keeping with Gandhi’s ideal of simplicity. It consists of the brick platform on which Gandhi’s body had been laid, and a black marble platform of the same size and dimensions which are surrounded by a white marble fence and several acres of beautifully landscaped grounds. Visitors must remove their shoes (10 rupees to check them at stand near the entrance) so the stone walkways will give you a “hot foot” but fortunately there is plenty of “cool” grass to walk on nearby as well.
The National Gandhi Museum is within easy walking distance from Rajghat and is filled with photographs, paintings and sculptures of Mahatma Gandhi as well as a full scale replica of his bedroom and “office”. The museum also has numerous other artifacts including “Official” documents and plaques which were given to Gandhi by leaders from other countries and organizations around the world in recognition of Gandhi’s contributions to India’s history, democracy, non-violence and world peace.
I must say, however, that I am still mystified as regards why Gandhi was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This seems to me to be a striking omission by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, but one that I hope they will someday choose to correct even if it’s a posthumous award.
In addition to the numerous historical artifacts which surround visitors when they are inside the museum, there are also some very interesting displays outside as well. At the entrance is a large rock carving depicting Gandhi’s “Great Salt March”, a non-violent protest against a salt tax which shook the British Empire and led to world wide recognition of the legitimacy of India’s claims for independence.
Next door to the museum is a full scale replica of Hridayakunj, the residence of Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba, the beloved wife of Gandhi who died in his arms while they were both still imprisoned by the British. The residence is surrounded by beautiful gardens including the wonderful gazebo where I had my picture taken under the hands of a huge sculpture of a seated Gandhi. Next week I will discuss my visit to Qutab Minar and the Akshardham temple.

My Indian Adventure

2009-04-01T22:05:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on January 15th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

I closed last week’s column by noting that I arrived in New Delhi refreshed and eager to begin my Indian adventure thanks to a fortuitous free upgrade to a “bed” seat in the First Class section of my Qatar Airways flight from Doha to New Delhi
By the time I retrieved my bags and cleared Indian customs it was almost 5am, so I took the first of my two “conventional” taxi rides from the airport to my home away from home, the Hotel Empire, which is located in the Safdarjung Enclave not far from Jawaharlal Nehru University in southwestern New Delhi. It was a conventional taxi ride in that the taxi not only had a taxi sign, meter, doors and windows, but also air conditioning. For the balance of my stay in New Delhi the only other time I rode in a conventional taxi was on my return trip to Indira Gandhi International Airport three weeks later.
That was because I discovered these conventional taxis actually cost three to four times more per kilometer traveled than the ubiquitous door less, window less, green and yellow three wheel “rickshaws” that ply their trade throughout the city and the rest of the country. Now by way of comparison, the distance I traveled from the airport to the Hotel Empire is comparable to traveling from the Dublin Airport to the City Centre at a cost of only 400 Indian rupees or about 6 Euros. But covering the same distance in a rickshaw costs all of 100 rupees, approximately one and a half Euros.
Another interesting characteristic of both public and private transportation in New Delhi is the type of fuel they use. While the conventional petrol and diesel we use to fuel our cars and trucks here in Ireland is also used by many vehicles in New Delhi, compressed natural gas (CNG) is mandated for the public transport system of India’s capital. In fact the Dublin Bus equivalent, the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), actually operates the world's largest fleet of CNG powered buses.
But what I also noticed was that most of the rickshaws as well as many personal vehicles in New Delhi have also been converted to CNG. The cost of converting a gasoline vehicle to burn CNG runs about 600 to 700 Euros, but the fuel savings are immense since CNG only costs 19 Rupees or .29 Euros per kg compared with 56 Rupees or .86 Euros per liter for petrol. CNG is also much more environmentally friendly because using it instead of petrol and biofuels also drastically reduces CO2 carbon emissions without impacting the world’s food supply and pushing up food prices.
But while New Delhi appears to be ahead of many other cities in the US and Europe when it comes to addressing the problems associated with vehicular CO2 carbon emissions, it still has a long way to go as regards the condition of its road, bridge and mass transit infrastructure. If you think Ireland has problems with bumpy roads, mind-numbing traffic congestion and spotty rail service then just wait till you visit India. The main roads and paved side streets are uniformly bad with uneven surfaces, large cracks and numerous pot holes, some big enough to swallow a small child.
Some of the wider thoroughfares actually have painted stripes on the pavement to separate the lanes of traffic, but I view this as a waste of time and money since absolutely no one pays any attention to them. For instance, the main road in front of my hotel had three such traffic lanes, but as my photos taken from the front of a rickshaw show, drivers jam their vehicles five or six abreast into this 3 lane road space. The so called rush hour from 7 to 9am and 5 to 7pm when traffic is supposedly at its worst during the work week, is a bit of a misnomer since it actually starts around 6am and doesn’t let up till after 10pm. The only difference I could see between “normal” traffic and rush hour traffic was that traffic on the side streets moved a bit faster between 10am and 4pm and after 8pm.
Unlike Dublin bus passengers, New Delhi bus riders actually have different types of buses and fare levels to choose from. The cheapest fares are offered on older buses where passengers often ride on the roof or hang onto the sides and which appear to be held together by nothing more than string and baling wire. A higher fare will get you a spot to stand inside a newer and slightly less crowded bus while the newest and most expensive buses yield its passengers a seat or a place to stand in air conditioned comfort. Both DTC and privately owned and operated buses have color coded stripes on them which tell passengers the fare, which runs between two and ten Rupees (.03 to .15 Euros). By the way if you happen to be walking on a street and see one coming, be careful. The drivers not only drive very fast but they also have a tendency to run over pedestrians too.
New Delhi has a decent suburban rail system and an overcrowded Metro rapid transit system with a combination of elevated, at-grade and underground lines. But believe it or not, most of the Metro and railway stops are nowhere near any bus stops. I should also note that while I was in New Delhi, a partially built bridge designed as part of the Metro’s expansion collapsed, sending concrete and steel beams crashing down on several vehicles in a crowded neighborhood, killing 4 people and injuring another 20.
So while getting around New Delhi is relatively cheap by Irish standards, there is also a certain amount of risk involved. But whatever the drawbacks of public transportation are, they pale in comparison to taking your life into your own hands by renting or driving an automobile. I’ll discuss this and the sights of New Delhi next week.

My Indian visa and a first class upgrade

2009-01-02T21:59:00.001Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on January 1st in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

Last week I shared with you my overall impressions of wonder and amazement regarding the nation of India so I will now attempt to flesh out this perspective by sharing with you some of the more memorable things I experienced during my trip.
I must begin though by telling you that I actually came perilously close to not even making this trip. I originally planned to get my Indian visa while I was back in the states attending the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. But then the Indian consulate I was supposed to obtain my visa from in Houston Texas was closed unexpectedly due to the damages it sustained during Hurricane Ike. This meant I would have to wait until my return to Ireland to get my visa with only one short week remaining until my flight departed for New Delhi. But that was still enough time… or so I thought.
I went to the Indian Embassy on Tuesday the day after I arrived back in Dublin but was told I had missed the morning window for submitting a visa application and needed to return on Wednesday morning to do so. When I came back the next day however, I was informed that the Embassy also required three business days to process my visa. Well since my flight was departing at 6:30am the following Tuesday I figured I was cutting it very close but I would still get my visa just in the nick of time. Wrong!
Unfortunately I hadn’t accounted for the Indian Embassy being closed the next day because of Gandhi Jayanti, India’s national holiday to celebrate the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi. So because of the holiday and the three business day visa processing requirement I was told I’d have to wait until the following Tuesday after 4pm to get my visa. That gnawing concern I had felt regarding my visa was now morphing into out and out panic because there was no way I could afford the cost to change the departure date of my non-refundable airline ticket on Qatar Airways. I knew that unless I found a way to get my visa a day earlier then I was not only going to be unable to make the trip to India, but I was also going to forfeit more than 1000 Euros that I had already paid for my ticket.
While I am not a particularly religious person, the thought of losing over a thousand euros and completely missing the trip to India as well proved to be a very strong motivation for me to do some real serious praying. Now maybe it was just luck or fate rather than any sort of divine intervention, but when I returned to the Indian Embassy on Monday afternoon instead of Tuesday, things mysteriously began to turn my way. First, one of the employees in the visa office said she recognized me as a columnist for Metro Éireann and asked me to wait outside for about twenty minutes.
After what seemed like an eternity, she finally returned and ushered me upstairs and into the office of the Indian Minister and Deputy Head of the Irish Mission, Mr. Mahesh Chandra Naithani, who just so happened to have a copy of Metro Éireann sitting on his desk. We exchanged pleasantries and then proceeded to discuss my upcoming excursion to India. As soon as he asked about my departure date I explained my dilemma and my need for a visa that same day. Thankfully Mr. Naithani immediately called in Mr. Tara Chand, who then facilitated the processing of my visa while Mr Naithani and I continued our discussion about various issues involving India.
I must say I will always be grateful to Mr. Naithani, Mr. Chand and the young woman in the visa office whose name I don’t even know, for taking pity on me and for helping me to obtain my visa a day early. Absent their intervention and assistance, I wouldn’t even have a story to tell you here, much less the many wonderful memories of my trip that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
My journey to India commenced the following morning with a flight to London’s Heathrow airport where I connected to my Qatar Airways flight from London to the Persian Gulf. But I also remember wishing I could have been sitting in First or Business Class instead of Coach, not for the amenities, but so I could get a bit of sleep in their fully reclining seats before my 4:00am arrival into New Delhi the following morning.
I fly in Coach on all of my international travels to save money and I don’t mind so much that this isn’t the most comfortable way to fly for long periods. Whenever I travel across multiple time zones I always try to get on the clock of my destination as quickly as possible and have no trouble doing so when I fly from west to east. But when I am flying a long distance from east to west, which usually means it is also overnight, I usually suffer from jet lag unless I am able to get at least a few hours sleep while I am in route. However, it also isn’t easy to sleep in those rather cramped seats you find in an airplane’s Coach Section.
Well once again call it luck or fate or maybe even divine intervention, but when I checked in for my overnight flight to New Delhi from Doha, I was informed that my seat had been changed and I had been upgraded to Business Class. But when I got on the plane and proceeded to find my seat I walked through Business Class and found out that my seat was actually in First Class. Needless to say that lie flat seat in First Class allowed me to arrive in New Delhi refreshed and ready to begin my Indian adventure.
Next week I will continue discussing what I experienced there.

India: Cradle of the human race

2008-12-25T15:20:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on December 18th - 25th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

Next month I will be heading back to the United States to attend the historic inauguration of Barak Obama as America’s 44th President and I plan to discuss my experiences in Washington DC in future columns. In the meantime I am going to depart from my usual discourse about US politics and instead try to describe what I experienced during the course of my three week trip to India during the month of October.
Unfortunately, India has been in the headlines of late due to the violent actions of a group of pseudo-religious Islamic terrorists in the city of Mumbai, aka Bombay, which resulted in the deaths of 171 innocent men, women and children. But as shocked as I was by this terrorist assault on Mumbai, I can only imagine how shocked the peace loving people of India were by these bloody attacks. India after all, is the home and birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi, the world’s pioneer in the use of totally non-violent civil disobedience as a means of political protest and resistance to tyranny. I suspect Gandhi must have been turning over in his grave since it was only 80 years ago that India’s Hindus and Muslims had been united in support of Gandhi’s campaign of non-violent civil disobedience.
There are many people in this world who, like Gandhi, believe there is never a justification for the use of violence under any circumstances and I have nothing but admiration for them and their ideals. My own personal position regarding the use of violence is that there are absolutely no justifications for ever using violence against another human being unless it is in defense of ones own life or the lives of others. Thus my position about the violence perpetrated by so called religious Muslim, Hindu or Christian extremists is their use of violence is in fact an act of religious desecration.
While Catholics in Northern Ireland, Muslims in Palestine and other religious or ethnic minorities in many parts of the world very often have legitimate grievances about how they are treated, there are absolutely no religious grounds for their use of violence to address those grievances. These terrorists and their religious leaders are simply murderers using their religion to put a cloak of legitimacy around their decidedly unholy intentions.
But enough about my opinions on religious terrorists, I want to discuss something much more interesting and enervating, my recent trip to India. I have had the privilege of traveling to many different countries around the world during the course of my life, but nowhere I have ever been quite compares with India. A famous American author, Mark Twain visited India in the 19th century and described India as “the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.”
Then during the 20th century the famous American historian Will Durant, who authored the Pulitzer Prize winning eleven volume ‘biography’ of civilization, The Story of Civilization, wrote even more definitely that “India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.”
I quote these famous American authors here because quite frankly, as a 21st century American visitor, I had great difficulty trying to come up with words that would adequately describe my impressions about this extraordinary country. But it isn’t just American’s who are mesmerized by India.
The Nobel Prize winning French novelist Romain Rolland wrote that “If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.” While China is also a nation with a rich history and a unique place among the world’s greatest civilizations, the former Chinese Ambassador to the United States, Hu Shih, has also acknowledged India’s special place in China’s own history by noting that; “India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border.”
The colors, the sights, the sounds, the smells and the tastes of India constantly assaulted my senses throughout the course of my stay, leaving me breathless and exhausted by the time I left to return home to Ireland. But now that I have had the benefit of several weeks to recover and put my thoughts in order, I can finally share with you that my overall impression of India is that it’s a country with an amazing history, possessing both incredible potential and equally daunting challenges.
The people of India represent a very diverse mix of ethnic and religious backgrounds all of whom are aware and proud of India’s rich heritage even though the people of India do not actually share a common language. Shortly after arriving in New Delhi I became friends with Arrun, an PhD student from Chennai in Southern India. Arrun is engaged to Shani, another Indian PhD student who is from Punjab, a region that borders Pakistan in northwestern India. Talk about two people from totally different backgrounds and cultures. Arrun is a meat eating Christian while Shani is a vegetarian Hindu and neither one can understand the other’s native language. But what these two wonderful people do share in common is English as their second language as well as a deep love and affection for each other and India.
Next week I will continue with this discussion of my trip to this amazing country.

The Future of the GOP

2008-12-25T15:17:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on December 11th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

One of my best friends here in Ireland recently asked me how I could have been such a strong supporter of President-elect Obama from the very beginning of his campaign to be President and yet now still be advocating on behalf of strengthening the Republican Party as a force of opposition to Obama and the Democratic Party.
While I understand why these seemingly conflicting actions may strike others as being somewhat counter-intuitive, there is actually a method to my madness I will now attempt to explain. The Democratic Party and most of its constituents regard America as a center-left liberal democracy, while most Republicans view the United States as a center-right federal republic. Well as far as I am concerned both view points are to some extent accurate, which is precisely why I also believe neither Party has a true handle on how best to govern America’s divergent and often conflicting interests.
Unlike most other democratically elected governments in the world, the United States is a liberal democracy which has a strong federal republic government run by officials appointed by an elected President and approved by a democratically elected legislature. Either or both elected bodies of the legislature must also approve those executive branch appointments, fund all departments of government and decide how much authority those federal government agents will or should have.
The name United States of America is also a reflection of the considerable political governance power that individual states and their respective executive and legislative branches have relative to the nation’s federal government. Last but not least, the US also has a strong and fairly independent state and federal judicial system that arbitrates disputes between the elected state or federal officials and the elected state or federal legislatures. Most of the other governments around the world have either strong state and weak national governments or weak state and strong national governments coupled with either strong national presidents and weak legislative bodies or strong parliamentary legislatures which also control the executive branch of government.
While the federal government’s power in the US has grown over the years at the expense of state governments, the independent federal judicial system and the inherent suspicion with which many American voters regard the federal government have combined to limit both the scale and pace of growth of the US federal government. As a result, it is usually the states which take the lead in devising and implementing new or different ways of dealing with social issues or problems, while the federal government determines how the US will deal with global issues and relations with other countries.
The Republican Party has traditionally been the US political party that sought to keep the power of the federal government in check while it concentrated on defending and or extending America’s political influence and expanding its economic interests in the rest of the world. On the other hand the Democratic Party has traditionally been the political party which has sought to use the federal government to devise and implement changes in US domestic policies to address a wide variety of social ills.
Unfortunately history shows that both parties have a tendency to push their agendas too far to the left or right when they are in control of Congress and the Presidency. While I hope that the Democrats won’t act in a way that reinforces this view over the next few years, I also know that a stronger Republican Party is more likely to prevent this than any amount of wishful thinking on my part.
But the increasing power and influence of predominately white, older and or less educated socially conservative voters in the Republican Party has led it to stray from its traditional values of restraining the growth of the federal government and spending by that government. These socially conservative voters have also sought to enforce their religious views and moral values at a national level on issues like abortion and how to deal with social problems like violent crime, illegal immigration and teenage pregnancy.
Many of these Republican voters don’t like change because it scares them. This explains why they are so prone to follow the lead of demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Republican politicians who argue against teenage sex education or tout bigger fences and more prison cells as solutions to America’ social problems. They view the scientific evidence on global warming with the same suspicion as fundamentalist ministers who think creationism trumps all of the scientific evidence that supports evolution.
It’s no wonder they rushed to express their support for a former beauty pageant contestant who doesn’t believe global warming is caused by humans, thinks Africa is a country and chants “drill, baby, drill” as a solution to America’s energy woes. But make no mistake; Sarah Palin will be a force to be reckoned with nationally, either as a candidate for the US Senate in 2010 and or the US Presidency in 2012 or 2016. However I’m not losing any sleep over the possibility that Palin might win a higher political office than Governor of Alaska. I say this for two reasons.
First, while Palin may have taken some well deserved lumps from the media during her brief run for Vice President, she has yet to be bloodied by other conservative Republicans like Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney in what’s likely to be a “steel cage” match for the 2012 presidential nomination. The second reason is because America may still be a center-right country on fiscal issues, but it has also become center-left on the environment and social issues.
Fortunately there are some younger Republican leaders who recognize what the social conservative base of the party still denies. I’m keeping an eye on Governor’s Charlie Crist, Jon Huntsman, Bobby Jindal and Senator John Thune. I expect a stronger Republican Party will emerge only after one or more of them has wrested control of the Party and its message from the social conservatives who currently hold the reins of power.

My predictions about Obama’s cabinet picks

2008-12-25T15:08:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on November 27th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

Today I will discuss the Republicans and Democrats who I believe are most likely to be chosen by President-elect Obama to serve either in his Cabinet or in other important positions within the new Presidential administration.
However I will begin by first sharing my insights regarding the role Hillary Clinton will play in the new Obama administration. Ever since the end of the Democratic primary contests there has repeatedly been speculation that Clinton might be asked to join Obama’s Cabinet with a healthcare portfolio if she wasn’t picked as Obama’s running mate. Such talk was based more on the hopes of some of Hillary’s erstwhile Democratic primary supporters than on any realistic assessment of the situation. But if Obama does indeed decide to follow Abraham Lincoln’s example he will most likely offer her a more important and high profile Cabinet position such as Secretary of State.
I don’t know that Bill Clinton would be interested in Hillary taking the position; but I’m sure she would find a high profile job as Secretary of State very tempting. However, in a sign that she knows Obama isn’t going to offer her a Cabinet job overseeing America’s healthcare, Clinton has already attempted to stage a takeover of future healthcare legislation in the US Senate.
But healthcare is the domain of Senator Ted Kennedy and is an issue that he has championed for many years as the head of the Senate’s health committee. Ignoring the fact that Kennedy has already been working on new healthcare legislation in line with Obama’s own healthcare plans, Clinton rather boldly attempted to hijack healthcare legislation in the Senate by asking Senator Kennedy to appoint her as the head of a new Senate sub-committee on healthcare. Clinton and her supporters viewed this as a consolation prize for losing the Presidential nomination to President-elect Obama.
But they don’t give losing Presidential candidates such prizes in the US Senate because the Senate already has sixteen current Senators who have unsuccessfully run for President including six who currently serve on Kennedy’s Health Committee. Giving Clinton the chair of a new sub-committee would have also meant ignoring the fact that two other former Democratic Presidential candidates on Senator Kennedy’s Health committee have more seniority than Clinton and in the US Senate, seniority rules.
This leads me to speculate about my second Cabinet position, that of Secretary for Health and Human Services. Given how important the healthcare issue was for Obama and other Democrats during the Presidential primary campaign, I am betting that President-elect Obama opts for a trusted confidant like former Senator Tom Daschle to fill this sensitive Cabinet post and work with Ted Kennedy on healthcare legislation.
The most likely nominees to replace Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State, if Obama doesn’t pick Hillary Clinton, include two Republicans, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana and soon to be retired Senator Chuck Hagel from Nebraska. Since Senator John Kerry is in line to take over Vice President Biden’s chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that leaves former Presidential candidate Bill Richardson as the other Democratic contender for this very visible and important Cabinet position.
I would be surprised if the current Republican Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates doesn’t agree to stick around for at least the next year or two as Obama’s Secretary of Defense. Gates is a Republican foreign policy realist who has tried repeatedly to shut down Guantanamo Bay over the objections of Vice President Cheney and is well respected by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. But whether he stays on for a while or leaves, Gates will likely to be replaced eventually by another trusted Obama military advisor, former Secretary of the Navy, Richard Danzig. While Retired Generals Colin Powell and James Jones would also be good choices that are popular with both Republicans and Democrats, history tells me this job always goes to a civilian.
The CIA Directors job will probably be offered to Anthony Lake, who has been functioning as Obama’s top national security advisor for the past two years. If Lake was to accept such an appointment it would prove to be an ironic twist of fate given the fact President Bill Clinton had nominated him for the same position back in the nineties only to see his confirmation scuttled by Republicans who were then in control of the Senate.
One of the two top contenders for National Security Advisor would also represent a bit of déjà vu since she happens to be a black female with a Doctorate and the last name of Rice. But that would be Dr. Susan Rice, not former Bush National Security Advisor and current Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice. But I’m betting Dr. Rice is more likely to end up as United Nations Ambassador than as the second black female named Rice to hold America’s top National Security post. The other contender is Bill Clinton’s former Deputy National Security Advisor, James Steinberg, who has become a master of issues related to national security but also has a reputation for having a nasty temper.
Most intriguing of all will be Obama’s choice to replace Hank Paulson as US Treasury Secretary. The US Treasury Secretary job is not usually considered to be as important or visible a Cabinet position as the Secretary of State and Defense Secretary jobs, but this appointment will be the most avidly awaited of all of Obama’s Cabinet posts given the current state of economic affairs in the US and the rest of the world.
Former Federal Reserve Chief Paul Volker has name recognition but is probably too old to be installed in the Treasury job for more than a couple of years. A better long term choice is the current head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Tim Geithner, who has been squarely in the middle of government efforts to deal with the current crisis, or former Bill Clinton era Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
I wonder just how close I’ll come with these predictions.

Challenges await

2008-12-25T15:05:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on November 20th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

I closed last week’s column by stating my belief that given Obama’s less than advantageous upbringing by a single mother who had little in the way of monetary resources, his subsequent election as President of the United States represents the true fulfillment of the American Dream. Now any child born or raised in the United States can legitimately hope and dream that, regardless of their ethnicity, race, religion or economic circumstances, they too can achieve the same measure of success that Barack Obama has.
But I also said that I thought President Obama’s election would mark a turning point in American political history akin to those seen during the administrations of earlier US Presidents like Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy and Reagan.
It remains to be seen whether or not I am correct on this point given the huge challenges that confront President Obama at this point in America’s history. In no particular order these challenges include; the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression, two wars in the most politically unstable region of the world, a gaping budget deficit with interest payments equal to 40% of US tax revenues, underfunded Social Security and Medicare entitlement systems, a broken healthcare system and a looming global environmental disaster caused by unfettered greenhouse gas emissions.
But the biggest immediate crisis that President Obama must confront is a psychological one, a crisis of confidence which afflicts both Wall Street and the general public in the United States. Unlike previous US Presidents, this crisis of confidence is such that President-elect Obama doesn’t have the luxury of waiting until after he takes office on 20 January to begin addressing this issue. But in the process of doing so Obama must be careful not to appear to be usurping the power of the lame duck President he will be replacing because, as Obama himself acknowledged twice during his first press conference as President-elect, “We (the United States) only have one President at time.”
Thus far I have been encouraged by the way both President-elect Obama and President Bush have handled this delicate transition of power. For his part President Bush has gone the extra mile in terms of bringing his successor and his advisors up to speed regarding national security issues and the steps he is contemplating taking to deal with the world’s financial crisis. While President Bush is consulting with Obama and his economic advisors about what steps are being taken by the Bush administration to deal with America’s economic recession, Obama has been careful not to make any specific foreign or domestic policy proposals that would put him at odds with President Bush.
The language President-elect Obama uses when he addresses the American people has also changed from his Presidential campaign’s often lofty and inspiring “poetry” to a much more sober and businesslike “prose”. This change in tone and substance was initiated during the latter stages of the Presidential campaign when Obama was discussing the recent financial crisis. While Obama didn’t want to diminish American hopes for a better future, it was nonetheless important for him to lower expectations that there is a quick fix for the problems facing Americans as well as citizens of other countries around the world. The painful reality is there are no easy or quick solutions.
Thus far, Obama’s choices of advisors to serve with him in his new administration reflect a thoughtfulness and pragmatism that bode well for his ability to both govern and develop workable solutions for the issues he will be confronting as America’s 44th President. His selection of Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his all important White House Chief of Staff demonstrated Obama’s intention to be tough but not ideological in his future dealings with legislators from both political parties.
Rahm Emanuel is no “yes man” and has a reputation for salty language, bare knuckled political tactics and working 25 (hours a day) / 8 (days a week). Emanuel will never win any popularity contests, but he also has a reputation for making pragmatic policy decisions and getting the job done. As such Rahm Emanuel is also a reflection of the kind of team Obama has begun to assemble to take back to Washington DC. The players on Obama’s team are all realists who are very diversified in terms of their perspectives and viewpoints, but unified regarding their commitment to Obama’s non-ideological approach to solving problems and showing demonstrable results.
This new kind of approach to policy making in Washington DC will be a welcome change from the governance style we have become accustomed to over the past eight years. The Bush administration placed a premium on loyalty, had no tolerance for dissenting points of view and always put ideology ahead of realism and practicality. The results or lack thereof from this kind of governance philosophy speak for themselves.
I will discuss the Republicans and Democrats selected or under consideration for Cabinet positions in Obama’s administration in next week’s column. For now I will close with a few more tid bits of information from the just concluded Presidential campaign.
During the summer the Obama campaign found out that someone had hacked into their computer system and off loaded a large number of files. Obama’s security people initially thought it might be the work of their political opponents, until they found out that the McCain campaign’s computer system had also been compromised in the same manner. Although no one will discuss it officially, it’s now believed that the hackers were members of either Russian or Chinese intelligence looking for information on both candidates’ policy positions that they could use in future negotiations with the US.
Following their election defeat the McCain campaign has also admitted “Sarah the fashion diva” Palin spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000 on new duds for her and her husband. Since Palin claims the only difference between a “hockey mom” and a pit-bull is lipstick, one can’t help but wonder how expensive owning a pit-bull must really be.

The Dream is realized

2008-12-25T15:02:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on November 13th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau

In the next few columns I’ll be “scatter shooting” as I attempt to share my reflections on America’s historic election of its first person of colour as President and other bits of information related to the just concluded US Presidential Election campaign.
To begin with, on 26 October, the Republicans for Obama group here in Ireland (all three of us) gathered at Bewley’s Café Theatre to celebrate Obama’s election. Some up and coming Irish musicians were playing in Bewley’s Café Theatre that evening, so I chose Bewley’s as the spot to celebrate the fact that one of America’s most prominent Republicans (and President Bush’s first Secretary of State), Colin Powell, had endorsed President-elect Barack Obama on national TV a few hours earlier.
Sarah Anne Bennett opened the show by playing a collection of original song compositions and covers by other artists on acoustic guitar accompanied by a violinist and another guitar player. Sarah Anne Bennett proved to be a great warm-up for the featured artist, Liz Seaver, who I had first heard a couple of months earlier when she played at the Sugar Club. Both of these Irish musicians were in great form that evening so my selection of Bewley’s Café Theatre as the place to celebrate Powell’s endorsement and Obama’s impending election as our next President proved to be a hit with both my American mates as well as all of the other people who were in attendance that night.
While most American’s here in Ireland and in the US would regard such a celebration as premature, we Republicans viewed the Powell endorsement of Obama as the coup de gras of this seeming endless 2008 US Presidential campaign. While other prominent Republicans like Susan Eisenhower and former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClelland had also endorsed Obama for President, none of these carried the gravitas of the endorsement from a person with General Powell’s record of service to his country. As such, Powell’s endorsement also served to validate our decision to cross party lines and support the person we thought would be the best leader for America in the coming years.
As we now know, my predictions regarding the breadth and depth of President Obama and the Democratic Party’s Election Day triumph were basically accurate although I erred on the aggressive side regarding how big some of the final margins of victory would be. More specifically, I thought the Democrats would also win the Senate races in Mississippi as well as Georgia and Alaska, where Republican incumbents currently hold narrow leads, in addition to the other six states that I forecast Democrats would take away from the Republicans’ column. I also thought the Democrats would do a little better in the US House of Representatives by picking up at least 25 Republican seats instead of the nonetheless significant 20 seats they actually ended up winning.
On the other hand I had also predicted Barack Obama would win the popular and electoral votes by much wider margins than any recent non-incumbent Presidents. In fact, President-elect Obama did roll up a modern-day electoral and popular vote landslide victory on 4 November by more than doubling up McCain and Palin in the Electoral College tally and trouncing them by more than 8 million votes in the popular vote.
What I find even more gratifying is the fact that President-elect Obama won a higher percentage of white voters than either of his two white Democratic predecessors, Al Gore and John Kerry. What that tells me is that while race is still an issue for many older and less educated white Americans, it is no longer a deciding issue in national elections. In fact white Americans, who represented 90% of voters when Jimmy Carter was elected President in 1976, made up only 74% of the electorate in this last election.
Alas, my Republican Party, the “Grand Old Party” aka the GOP, today finds itself being much less the “Grand” and more the “Old” and outdated “Party” in American politics. As such, the General Election results were also a reflection of the contrasts I saw when I attended the Democratic and Republican conventions a few months ago. As noted in previous columns, the Republican Party has become overwhelmingly white, male, rural and aged, while the Democratic Party has evolved to become a more accurate reflection of America’s rapidly changing, racially and ethnically mixed demographics.
But the social conservatives who now control the GOP don’t appear to be able to do the math regarding America’s changing demographics. They want to turn their backs on the more moderate elements of the Republican Party and insist that future Republican candidates must not only be opposed to abortion, but must also insist on tougher border security and the neo-conservative vision of a strong national defense. I am amazed that so many of them actually believe they can still win national elections by being anti-abortion, anti-Black, anti-government, anti-Hispanic, anti-taxes and anti-young people to name just a few of the many things these social conservatives are opposed to.
Fortunately for America, President Obama’s election represents another major turning point in American politics. Abraham Lincoln’s election led to the end of legalized slavery and Franklin Roosevelt’s to a revival of the world’s economy and an end to tyrannical regimes in Germany and Japan. Kennedy’s election led to an end to legalized segregation and racial discrimination in the US and Ronald Reagan’s led to fundamental changes in economic policies and the collapse of Communism around the world.
But the election of a person of colour to America’s highest office is much more than a realization of Martin Luther King’s dream, which he so eloquently expressed in his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 45 years ago. Given his humble upbringing, Obama’s election also represents the ultimate fulfillment of that timeless American Dream; that anyone, from any family, no matter how economically poor, can still overcome such disadvantages and become the leader of the world’s only remaining superpower.

Breaking down my election predictions

2008-12-25T14:56:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on November 6th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

In last weeks column I made some rather bold predictions regarding what I believe will be a modern day landslide election victory for both Barack Obama and the Democratic Party on 4 November. More specifically I said Obama would end up with 393-396 or maybe even 401-404 electoral (and that) the Democrats will also pick up 34-36 seats in the House of Representatives and 8-10 seats in the US Senate.
Since the actual US election results will already be in by the time this column is published, in today’s column I will break down my projections so readers can ascertain just how close or how far off the mark I was with my post-election results forecast. Before I begin, I also want to note that it has been 20 years since a US Presidential candidate; President George Bush in 1988, won more than 380 electoral votes on Election Day. Thus the recent history of closer contests is the reason why I would characterize Barack Obama winning roughly 400 electoral votes as a modern-day landslide election.
In 2000, Al Gore won the overall US popular vote by a half a million votes but narrowly lost the electoral vote and the US Presidency by a margin of 271-266 when the disputed electoral votes of the state of Florida were awarded to his opponent. Given the closeness of past US Presidential contests, most media pundits have focused on which candidate will emerge as the winner in key battleground states like Ohio and Florida in their attempts to predict the likely winner of this year’s election.
But my belief that Democrats will gain more than 45 House and Senate seats in Congress and that Obama will win the US Electoral College vote (based on the candidate who wins the most votes in each state and thus the electoral votes of that state) by a much wider margin than any recent President is based largely on two key assumptions.
The first is that Senator Obama will win the 266 electoral votes of the same states previously won by losing Democratic candidates, Al Gore and John Kerry, even though Gore and Kerry won many of those states by very narrow margins. However, since Senator Obama had double digit leads in the polls of every single one of those states just days ahead of 4 November, this was also a fairly safe assumption on my part.
With this rock solid base of 266 electoral votes already in his back pocket, all Barack Obama really needed to do was swing one of the small states Bush had won by only a few thousand votes in 2004, like New Mexico or Iowa, into the Democratic column in order to win this year’s election. But Presidential candidates that win office by narrow margins usually begin their terms with the psychological handicap of being perceived by members of Congress as politically “weaker” and thus less able to make significant policy changes than Presidents who win big electoral victories at the polls.
Obama and his advisors correctly sensed that they had an opportunity to broaden the playing field and win this year’s election by a wide margin, thus giving Obama’s new Presidential administration a “mandate” from America’s voters to make whatever changes Obama believes are necessary. Members of Congress from both political parties are also much more likely to pass legislation in support of controversial initiatives put forth by President’s who have demonstrated broad national support with their election.
So the Obama campaign decided to pursue a strategy of not only taking the fight to John McCain and the Republican Party in traditional battleground states like Missouri, Ohio and Florida, but to aggressively pursue disaffected voters in states like Virginia and Indiana that had not voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate in decades. This strategy also forced McCain to spend time and money defending states previous Democratic candidates had ceded to their Republican opponents, instead of allowing him to focus Republican resources on winning the traditional battleground states.
With only one week left before the election the results of the Obama General Election campaign strategy looked impressive. By September, Obama had either caught up with John McCain or begun slowly building a lead over Senator McCain among voters in traditional Republican states like North Carolina that had provided President Bush with double digit margins of victory in previous elections. The efforts of Obama in these states were also having a positive impact on the election of Democratic candidates for Congress against Republican incumbents like Republican Senator Libby Dole in these same states.
So my second assumption is that Obama will not only sweep to victory in the electoral vote rich swing states of Missouri, Florida and Ohio, but that he will pad his vote totals by adding Southern states like North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia as well as the Western states of Colorado, Nevada, Montana and New Mexico to base of 266 votes.
I also believe Obama’s voters in many traditional Republican states will also choose Democrats to replace retiring Republican Senators in Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia and will elect Democratic challengers instead of Republican incumbents in Georgia, Alaska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon and Minnesota. If they have a really good night, the Democrats might just send Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell back home to Kentucky as well.
In the US House of Representatives I foresee a thumping of Republican candidates the likes of which is rarely seen in these biennial Congressional elections. Usually the party in power (Democrats this year) loses seats or at best gains only a handful of seats when the US economy is in the throes of a recession. But 25 long time Republican legislators opted to retire rather than run for reelection in 2008 thus opening the door for Democrats to snag all of these open seats as well as those of incumbent Republicans who suffer from “foot in mouth disease” like North Carolina’s Robin Hayes and Minnesota’s Michelle Bachmann.
Were these predictions accurate?

My Election Day Predictions

2008-12-25T14:44:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on October 30th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

While you were sleeping last night, Barack Obama broadcast a half hour political infomercial simultaneously on all four US national TV as well as all three US cable/satellite TV news networks, in an attempt to “close the deal” and win the votes of the last of America’s “undecided” voters. Now do I think Senator Obama really needed to spend in excess of $6,000,000 to beam a single TV political advertisement into every home in America with just 6 days left in the US Presidential campaign? No, I don’t!
But even though I don’t believe Barack Obama needed to run this TV ad in order to ensure that he will win the US presidency next Tuesday, I think it might serve a more useful purpose in the weeks and months that follow Election Day. That’s because this particular political commercial wasn’t just designed to win over “undecided” voters. Rather, this commercial was actually Obama’s first, and probably his only, opportunity to address all Americans, including those who already have or will vote for McCain on 4 November, without interference from debate moderators or rebuttals from his opponents.
As President, Obama will have many other opportunities to address the American people on national TV, but because the US TV networks provide this time for “free”, they are also obligated to provide “equal time” for representatives of the opposing political party to comment or respond to whatever the President says on these broadcasts. Since Senator McCain and the Republican Party elected not to buy the same kind of nationwide TV commercial time, they forfeited the opportunity to immediately attack or attempt to counter Obama’s final message to America’s voters before Election Day.
I will comment further on last night’s political commercial after the election is over. For now let it suffice to say that I think it will assist President Obama in gaining the support of most Americans, including those who won’t vote for him, for the foreign and domestic policy prescriptions President Obama will be proposing in the coming months.
Last week I mentioned that the winner of the last of the three US Presidential debates was a character called “Joe the plumber”. Well even though “Joe the plumber” subsequently received a lot of publicity on the campaign trail, thanks to McCain turning him into a symbol for small business owners worried about Obama’s future tax plans, poor old “Joe the plumber” still ended up getting upstaged a few days later by a “hockey mom”, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah “the fashion diva” Palin.
Having “Sarah the fashion diva” replace “Joe the plumber” as the center of the news media’s and potential voter’s attention on the Republican presidential campaign was definitely not what John McCain had in mind with only twelve days left till the election. I should also note that for the previous six weeks, McCain and Palin’s campaign appearances and stump speeches had all been aimed at winning over lower income “blue collar” white voters who are seldom mistaken for Saks or Neiman Marcus customers.
So what were McCain’s advisors thinking when they decided they needed to spend over $150,000 in scarce campaign funds at stores like Saks and Neiman Marcus to properly clothe their new Vice Presidential candidate for the two month General Election contest? Hmmmm. Maybe they weren’t thinking. On the other hand when one considers the fact that the highest paid member of McCain’s presidential campaign staff is Palin’s make-up artist, who is making over $22,000 a month, and that Palin’s hair stylist earns another $10,000 a month, then $150,000 for designer clothes doesn’t seem so out of line.
At any rate, now that I have shared this latest bit of Presidential campaign background information with you, its once again time for me to stick my neck out a bit and make some predictions about what I believe will happen this coming Tuesday.
As many of you are aware, I have been promoting the Presidential candidacy of Senator Barack Obama in this column for the better part of two years now. As recently as nine months ago when Obama still trailed Hillary Clinton by 30 points in US national opinion polls, I continued to stand by my prediction that Obama would eventually win the Democratic Presidential nomination. It should therefore come as no surprise that I continue to believe and predict that Senator Barack Obama will also win the US Presidential contest over Senator John McCain on 4 November.
But forecasting a win for Barack Obama next Tuesday is the easy part. What is more problematic for me is predicting how close the final voting results will be in both the Presidential and Congressional races. When I was interviewed by the producers of RTÉ’s Primetime while I was in Denver two months ago, I told them that even though Obama and McCain were running even in the national polls, I thought Obama would end up winning the US popular vote by a margin of 2-3 million votes. But I also said that I thought Obama would win the all important electoral vote by a much larger margin than any of his recent Democratic and Republican predecessors.
Today I am going to stand by that prediction and even go so far as to predict a modern day electoral landslide for Barack Obama as well as his fellow Democratic Congressional candidates. I believe that Senator Obama will capture the electoral votes of states in Republican Midwest bastions like Indiana, Ohio and Missouri in addition to GOP Southern strongholds in Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia as well as in the reliable Republican Rocky Mountain zone including Montana, Colorado and Nevada. In fact, I am betting Obama ends up with a modern-day electoral landslide of 393-396 or maybe even 401-404 electoral votes versus fewer than 150 for John McCain.
As for Congress, I think the Democrats will also pick up 34-36 seats in the House of Representatives and 8-10 seats in the US Senate. I’ll discuss the details next week.

A star is born Joe the Plumnber

2008-12-25T14:40:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on October 23rd in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

After nineteen months and some 35 televised presidential candidate debates, at long last the longest running Presidential campaign in American history is finally (and mercifully) drawing to a close. While the last of the three debates between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama wasn’t a game changer for either candidate, it did exemplify the importance of the symbolism attached to the “average” person in American politics.
That’s because the star of this final debate wasn’t either one of the two Presidential candidates, rather it was a guy from Toledo Ohio they called “Joe the plumber”. During the course of the debate John McCain repeatedly referred to “Joe the plumber” while he was attacking Barack Obama’s proposal to raise the taxes of the top 5% of Americans who earn more than $250,000 per year. Not only did you hear the name “Joe the plumber” mentioned some twenty times during this final debate, but on several occasions both candidates directed some of their comments and responses directly at him. In fact, McCain claims the real winner in this debate was “Joe the plumber”.
So why were both candidates paying so much attention to “Joe the plumber”? Well “Joe the plumber” is a 34 year old man who had recently confronted Senator Obama while Obama was campaigning door to door in the battleground state of Ohio. Joe told Senator Obama that he was getting ready to buy a plumbing business which took in between $250,000 and $280,000 per year. He wanted to know why Obama was proposing to increase his taxes saying “Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?”
In response to this and another question about a “flat” tax (i.e. where you pay the same % of income tax regardless of how much money you make), Obama responded that while it was great Joe could afford to buy this plumbing business, he was also sure that their had been years in the past when he could have also used a tax break like the one Obama is proposing. Senator Obama went on to say that other middle class Americans who were nurses, teachers and the like needed a tax break now so that they could cope with America’s current financial stress. Obama then added that under these circumstances “I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody,”
The entire exchange between Obama and “Joe the plumber” was recorded and subsequently posted on You-Tube where it caught the attention of conservative bloggers and the McCain campaign, who seized on it as an example of how Obama’s tax plans will hurt small business owners. John McCain then attempted to use “Joe the plumber” as part of his campaign’s attacks on Obama and to symbolize the “American Dream” of attaining wealth and independence saying; “America didn’t become the greatest nation on earth by spreading the wealth. We became the greatest nation by creating new wealth.”
Republicans also responded the next day with signs at a McCain political rally touting “Joe the plumber” as a future Vice Presidential running mate for Sarah Palin. The American news media responded to the publicity “Joe the plumber” got during the last of this year’s final Presidential debate by clamoring to interview the real “Joe the plumber” on nationally televised politics and news shows thus making “Joe the plumber” an instant overnight TV celebrity. So who exactly is this person known as “Joe the plumber”?
Well to begin with his real name is Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher and the truth is he isn’t actually a licensed plumber. Wurzelbacher is actually one of the two employees of Newell Plumbing & Heating, in Toledo Ohio and the other employee is the business owner, a licensed plumber named Al Newell. But it is illegal to do plumbing work in Toledo and surrounding communities unless you are either a licensed plumber or you are in an apprenticeship/journeyman program. Since Joe is not, his boss, Al Newell, will soon be getting a letter from the city reminding him of these requirements.
It also turns out Joe’s plan to buy the plumbing business he works for is actually just a “pipe” dream, since he actually has no money to do so and has merely discussed the possibility of some day buying it when the current owner decides to retire. Nor does it appear that Newell Plumbing & Heating grosses the $250,000 to $280,000 a year he told Senator Obama, much less that it has a taxable income of anywhere close to this amount.
In fact, if the net income of Newell Plumbing & Heating after deductions for business expenses was shared by Joe and his boss Al Newell, both they and their company’s incomes would fall well below the top tax brackets on which Mr. Obama wants to raise rates and they would all qualify for a tax cut instead. Maybe “Joe the plumber” doesn’t care about this tax cut and is more worried about paying higher taxes in the future should he someday be able to buy this business, but I can’t help but wonder what his current boss Al Newell thinks about Obama’s tax plan.
Since one can question both the truthfulness of his statements to Senator Obama and the logic “Joe the plumber” used in concluding that Obama’s tax proposals would hurt him as a “potential” small business owner, I question the wisdom of Senator McCain using a guy like “Joe the plumber” to symbolize the embodiment of the American Dream.
But maybe it makes sense when you consider some other factors. You see “Joe the plumber” also owes the state of Ohio almost $1200 in back taxes, so I think he is really more concerned about not paying any taxes at all, than he is about a rise in his tax rate. Since Joe also admits he is a registered Republican and no fan of Obama, maybe McCain’s use of “Joe the plumber” as a symbol does make a certain amount of sense.

My grades for 2nd Presidential debate

2008-12-25T14:36:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on October 16th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

Its 7:30 in the morning here in New Delhi, India and I am sitting in my room watching the US Presidential debates live on satellite TV. This town hall style debate will soon be over and all I can tell you is that nothing that was said here tonight has come as a surprise to me or probably any other American voter watching this second of three Presidential debates. So why am I or any other voter bothering to watch these debates?
I’m interested in seeing how each candidate performs and how they respond to the questions posed to them. Some undecided voters may be hoping to hear or see something from one of the candidates that will either resonate with them or turn them off so they can make a decision about who to vote for or against four weeks from now. Everyone else is cheering the candidate they support and hoping his opponent makes a serious mistake. That is why the style of the candidates in these debates matters so much more than the substance of their responses. This isn’t necessarily the way we should judge a debate, given the sharp differences of opinion between the candidates on many major domestic and foreign policy issues, but it has become the reality of American politics today.
So now I will begin to discuss my impressions about both candidates beginning with the Republican Presidential nominee, Senator John McCain. To begin with, Senator McCain’s disdain for his opponent, Barack Obama, was very palpable throughout the course of the debate, at one point referring to his opponent as “that one”. Stylistically speaking, I don’t acting contemptuous helps someone win over undecided voters, so I viewed his scornful attitude as a negative for McCain’s overall performance.
On the other hand, McCain was the only candidate who actually proposed something new in the way of policies he would pursue if he was elected so I saw that as a plus for him. McCain said that the US Treasury should buy up the United States’ bad sub-prime mortgages, renegotiate the interest rates those homeowners are paying and bring some stability to the US housing market in the process. This is not a new idea since it was proposed in an article published a week earlier in the Wall Street Journal and was also suggested by Barack Obama in a speech he delivered more than a month ago. But John McCain failed to provide any details about his proposal which, as I understand it, is already well within the power of the US Treasury Secretary to implement thanks to recently passed legislation to deal with the home mortgage loan problem.
Still it was the first and thus far only original economic suggestion Senator McCain has offered American voters, who are understandably very concerned about the current state and direction of the US economy. But as for any other real substance in his responses, McCain had little to offer beyond his campaign slogans and equally vague suggestions that he would cut pork barrel spending to deal with the deficit and that we should cut taxes for everyone, including those who are making millions of dollars a year.
For this reason I gave John McCain a grade of B- for the substance of his remarks, a combination of a B+ for his only new suggestion and a C for him continuing to espouse ways to deal with the ballooning budget deficit that simply don’t add up.
While it was obvious that John McCain is very much at home with the town hall question and answer debate format, he largely negated the stylistic advantage he brought to this debate my continuing to refuse to look at his opponent just as he had done in the first debate. He was very comfortable approaching audience members who had questions to ask him and calling them by name, often touching them on the arm or shaking their hands. But once the debate concluded he didn’t bother to shake Obama’s hand or stick around to talk with those same audience members, leaving Barack Obama alone on the stage after the debate, to chat with the audience and try to get them to vote for him.
So the grade of A I was initially going to give John for the style he displayed, deteriorated to a C by the time the debate was over thanks to his scornful manner and quick exit, thus leaving John McCain with a C+ as his overall mark for the evening.
Senator Barack Obama did not appear real comfortable with the town hall debate format at first as he stood in the center of the stage while listening to his initial questions from the audience. But Senator Obama seemed to warm up as the evening progressed and began walking over to those asking questions and addressing them more directly as John McCain had been doing throughout the debate and then hanging around afterwards to talk with the audience some more. In fact I noticed that Obama made a beeline to a likely McCain supporter, a retired Navy Petty Officer whose hand McCain had shaken before answering his question, and engaged him in a discussion. For this reason I upped my final style grade for Obama from a C+ to a B.
There was nothing new as regards the substance of Senator Obama’s responses to questions. He gave reasonably concise and substantive responses to roughly half of the questions but became a bit long winded whenever he was trying to avoid answering others. While Obama continued to make a stronger case than McCain regarding why he would do a better job as President addressing America’s foreign and domestic problems, I had to give him a B for substance and a B for his overall debate performance.
Overall, this was not the game changing debate performance McCain needed to close the slowly widening gap between him and Obama in public opinion polls with only four weeks left before Election Day.

The Sarah Palin Show (aka The Veep Debate)

2008-12-25T14:32:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on October 9th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

As I did last week for the first of the three Presidential debates, in this weeks column I will share my impressions regarding the performance of the Republican and Democratic Vice Presidential candidates in their one and only joint appearance at the Vice Presidents debate in St. Louis Missouri. I should also note that unlike the site of the first Presidential debate in Oxford Mississippi, the state of Missouri is considered a key battleground state in the upcoming election with Senator John McCain clinging to a narrow lead over our next President, Barack Obama, in the most recent polls taken there.
Having said that, I will now turn my attention to the two parties respective Vice Presidential nominee’s performances in the debates, beginning with the Republican candidate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. For her overall performance I gave Sarah Palin a higher passing grade of B than I gave her running mate John McCain (C+) based on style rather than substance. In fact it was Mrs. Palin lack of substance which brought her overall debate mark down because I gave her an A for the style she displayed during the course of her 90 minute tete a tete with Senator Joe Biden.
Unlike her prospective new boss, Senator John McCain, Sarah Palin displayed the camera savvy and delivery style Senator McCain lacks, which makes her come across as a more appealing and attractive candidate to watch and listen to on the TV tube than John McCain. Throughout the debate Governor Palin spoke to the audience watching on TV rather than those in attendance in the auditorium, rarely acknowledging them or looking at her opponent, Joe Biden, or the moderator, Gwen Ifill. It was obvious that Palin hasn’t lost the stage skills she first developed competing in beauty pageants. I actually would have given her an A+ for her performance had it not been for her annoying tendency to avoid answering questions by veering off in another direction with her responses.
As for the substance of Mrs. Palin’s remarks and her responses to the questions, I gave her a barely passing grade of C- largely because she only made a couple of minor mistakes when she made reference to the names of other people, such as referring to the US Commander in Afghanistan as General “McClellan” instead of saying his real name, General David McKiernan. She also explained to the TV audience why she wasn’t answering the questions posed to her by the moderator saying at one point “I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record.”
But the fact that Sarah Palin couldn’t muster substantive answers to many of the questions posed to her was not really surprising given her rather dismal performances in prior one on one interviews with TV news reporters like Katie Couric of CBS. It was already obvious from those interviews that Governor Palin didn’t have command of any national issues that went beyond those of oil and gas drilling that she had dealt with as a Governor, so the expectations for her performance in this debate were already quite low.
As a result, I am sure most of my Republican cohorts were very pleased with Mrs. Palin’s debate performance on national television given their dismay at her previous performance in unscripted television interviews. Unlike Sarah Palin’s most recent TV interviews, her responses to the questions posed to her in the debate were steady even though she avoided answering many of the questions. Instead of stumbling pauses while trying to answer tough questions which went beyond her limited knowledge of national and international issues, Sarah reverted to McCain’s Presidential campaign talking points.
I couldn’t begin to tell you how many times she referred to herself and Senator McCain as “mavericks” or as a “team of mavericks” but suffice to say it was a “heck of a lot” (another phrase Palin repeatedly used). But while Governor Palin didn’t make a fool of herself on the debate stage, she also did little to dispel the concerns of many voters about her lack of experience and knowledge about national issues. But I think the main objective here was for Palin to at least do no further harm to the McCain presidential campaign and I think she accomplished that.
As for Senator Joe Biden’s debate performance I gave him a grade of B+, which is the same grade I gave his boss, Barack Obama, in the previous week’s first presidential debate. But Senator Biden earned this mark based more on the substance of his responses to the questions, which got him an A grade, than the style he displayed on this nationally televised debate stage, which earned him a still positive grade of B.
I actually though Senator Biden improved on some of his past presidential debate performances because he didn’t revert to the long winded answers to questions or attacks by his opponent that he has been known for. In fact he rarely lost patience with Mrs. Palin’s repeated forays away from the questions being asked of her by remaining forceful and poised in responding to an opponent who was difficult to attack because she was a woman and he was a man.
While this is not fair, it is the reality of how much of the viewing public would have interpreted any attacks on Sarah Palin and her spotty record as a small town mayor and Governor in Alaska that Biden might have attempted. Trust me, Biden had many opportunities to attack Sarah Palin, but he instead stuck to his game plan and focused his attacks on McCain’s record of supporting George Bush saying “The issue is how different is John McCain’s policy going to be than George Bush’s.”
I seriously doubt Palin’s performance will help the McCain campaign in the final month, but at least she didn’t do any further damage to his campaign.

My grades for 1st Presidential debate

2008-12-25T14:29:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on October 2nd in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

Today I want to discuss my impressions about the performances of both candidates in last Friday’s first US Presidential debate. While there will be two more Presidential debates following tonight’s only debate between Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden and McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin, historically the tone and substance for the entire series of Presidential debates is set during the course of the first of the three debates thus making it the most important one of the three to watch.
Even though my sentiments favoring Senator Obama in this year’s election are well known to most if not all of the readers of this column, my impressions of the candidate’s performances are based on both the style and the substance of their responses to the questions that have been posed to them by the moderator. In fact in past Presidential debates I have quite often given higher marks to the Presidential candidate I oppose (i.e. President Bush in 2004, Bill Clinton in 1992) than to the candidate I support.
Having said that, I want to begin my analysis by first giving my readers an overall mark for each candidate’s performance, followed by my reasons for giving each of them their respective grade. I will then use this same format in next week’s column about the Vice Presidential debates and any subsequent columns I might write about the remaining US Presidential debates. Practically speaking, baring a major gaffe or extremely poor performance by either candidate, these debates don’t sway many votes to or from either party’s presidential nominee. The real audience is the 10-15% of the electorate which still remains undecided about who to vote for with only a few weeks left before Election Day.
To begin with, I must first note that this initial Presidential debate almost didn’t happen. On Wednesday afternoon, just over 48 hours before the first debate was scheduled to begin, John McCain announced he was suspending his Presidential campaign so that he could devote his time and energy to resolving the financial crisis which has enveloped America’s investment banks and financial institutions on Wall Street. McCain then challenged Obama to also suspend campaigning for President and to agree to postpone the first Presidential debate.
But Obama, as well as many independent political observers, viewed McCain’s move as a political ploy and refused to take the bait. Senator Obama questioned why John McCain couldn’t seem to deal with two problems, preparing for a debate about US foreign policy and dealing with a US economic crisis, at the same time. Obama then challenged McCain saying that the financial crisis underscored the need to have just such a debate between both candidates about the future direction America would be taking.
In the end it was McCain who blinked and decided he had better show up at the debate in Oxford Mississippi even though he had previously said he wouldn’t if the US Congress had been unable to settle on a resolution to the problems on Wall Street before the debate. So Obama won the debate about the debates before the initial debate ever got underway. Not a very auspicious start for John McCain if you ask me.
As for the actual debate Friday evening, since I am still a Republican I will begin with the Republican candidate, John McCain, to whom I gave a passing grade of C+ mainly for the substance rather than the style of his initial debate performance.
Last week I closed my column saying that “I believe America will vote for change. Barack Obama embodies change. McCain doesn’t!” Well in last Friday’s debate John McCain apparently decided to cede this issue to Senator Obama, since McCain barely used the term “change” in any of his responses or remarks. I must confess I found this surprising since John McCain has been hammering away at the “change” message in his TV advertising and stump speeches for the last four weeks.
Ever since McCain’s announcement that Sarah Palin would be his Vice President, John has been trying to emphasize the fact that he is the “change” candidate who will change the way government works in Washington DC. But during the debate he focused on burnishing his image as a “maverick”, twice using the line that he has never won a “Miss Congeniality” award from his Republican colleagues or the Bush administration.
McCain had difficulty finding his footing during the first half hour of the debate when both candidates were answering questions about America’s current financial crisis. But he was folksy, used his campaign slogans about the economy effectively and avoided Obama’s taunts about McCain’s support of Bush’s tax and economic policies. On Iraq McCain repeatedly avoided his support for the war and instead emphasized his support for the US troop surge. He became more comfortable in the last hour and was also more aggressive in taking the attack to Obama in his responses to foreign policy questions.
On the other hand I gave Senator Obama a grade of B+ largely based on the stylistic improvements I noted in the way Obama responded to questions as compared to Obama’s previous debate performances during the Democratic primaries.
Obama’s answers to all of the questions were more concise and less professorial than those he often gave in previous Democratic debates. In contrast to McCain’s poking fun at himself and repeated attempts to make humorous quips, Obama avoided humor and came across as the more calm and businesslike of the two. Obama was confident and prepared with imminently reasonable answers for every question from the moderator as well as every accusation hurled at him by an oft times scolding and cranky sounding John McCain.
Obama did a better job of speaking directly to his opponent and engaging with the moderator and the audience while McCain ignored them and directed his responses to those watching on TV. While this was by far the best debate appearance I have seen from John McCain, it was likewise Obama’s best debate performance this year.

Is John McCain still calling the shots?

2008-12-25T14:24:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on September 25th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

As you read this I am probably either getting ready to catch a plane or flying over the Atlantic on my return home to Ireland from the states. But before I leave I want to finish my discussion of John McCain’s sudden change in campaign strategy as well as his decision to embrace the same negative political attack advertising tactics President Bush and his chief advisor Karl Rove used so effectively against John McCain back in 2000.
A few months ago John McCain’s campaign events were free-wheeling and fairly entertaining affairs characterized by McCain answering questions from voters and making humorous wise-cracking remarks to audiences of interested and or undecided voters in the “town hall” format he is most comfortable with. McCain would also answer any and all questions from the TV and newspaper journalists covering his campaign from his couch at the back of his bus or the front of his plane while traveling between events.
But during the last three months it has become very evident that former Bush campaign advisor Steve Schmidt is now the man calling the shots for the McCain campaign, not McCain the Presidential candidate. Now there are two drawn curtains separating McCain from the news media on his plane and the couch is used as a repository for newspapers instead of being a seat for McCain to use when he chats with reporters. That’s because the chats reporters used to have with McCain aboard McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” bus and his jet “Straight Talk Air” are now a thing of the past.
This is the same Senator John McCain who has repeatedly promised that, unlike President Bush, if he was the President he would have press conferences every week. Hmmm. One has to wonder then why Presidential candidate McCain has not seen fit to hold a press conference since early August. The town hall meetings McCain favors have also changed from campaign events open to all interested voters into “invitation only” affairs with an audience consisting of friendly supporters rather than undecided voters.
The same John McCain, who used to roll his eyes when he was asked about the sound bite advertising and attack ads used by President Bush and other politicians, now delivers sound bite attacks on Senator Obama every time he is given the opportunity to speak into a microphone. Furthermore, McCain’s TV ads have already been criticized by non-partisan watchdog groups for their mischaracterizations of Senator Obama’s positions and lack of truthfulness. One example of this was a McCain ad accusing Obama of voting for legislation that would have led to teaching sex education to five year old children while he was serving as an Illinois state legislator.
The John McCain who once opposed opening up more of the United States’ territorial waters to off shore drilling for oil and gas now leads his supporters in chants of “Drill, Baby. Drill” at his campaign events. As for the John McCain who has sponsored legislation on campaign finance reforms, he has apparently been replaced by a team of Bush advisors who are exploiting legal loopholes to raise money in ways that circumvent the intent of John McCain’s own campaign finance reform laws.
The John McCain of September 2008, who for years was reticent to discuss his time in captivity as a North Vietnamese prisoner of war (POW), now finds a way to weave his experiences as a POW into his responses to virtually all questions. McCain’s nationally televised interview with Reverend Rick Warren last month was a prime example of this new campaign tactic in action as were the speeches given by McCain’s cohorts at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul Minnesota two weeks later.
But it seems to me that the real reason John McCain and his minions want to remind voters that he suffered for more than five years in the Hanoi Hilton, is that they think doing so might make people feel guilty if they are contemplating voting for his opponent. Indeed, McCain doesn’t want voters to consider where he stands on the issues which divide our nation because he is on the wrong side of them. McCain wants people to vote for him because they “owe it to him” since he once suffered for them as a POW.
Will McCain’s new campaign strategy and tactics work? Will they be enough to get him elected President on 4 November? While I could be wrong, I believe they will not be enough to win the election for McCain on 4 November. Granted these are tried and true strategies and tactics that Republicans have successfully used in past elections and they have already allowed McCain to close the gap between him and Barack Obama which had once existed in most national polls.
Indeed, McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate has energized the social conservatives who had previously been lukewarm to McCain’s presidential aspirations. Cutting off media access to McCain and not allowing journalists to question Sarah Palin has also made it difficult for the news media to make either one of them accountable for their scurrilous attacks on Senator Obama’s record or distortions of their own positions on any number of issues. I just don’t think these tactics will hold up over the long term because I think the American voter is smart enough to figure this out before they cast their presidential ballots less than forty five days from now.
You see despite McCain’s attempts to recast himself as a “change” candidate by selecting a white working mother as his Vice President, I think American voters will eventually see the pick of Palin for what it is; the act of a politician who will do or say anything to get himself elected. Once they do, these voters will then stop and ask themselves if this is really what America needs. With an economic future growing more uncertain with each passing day, I believe America will vote for change. Barack Obama embodies change. McCain doesn’t!

Why pick sarah Palin?

2008-12-25T14:14:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on September 18th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

In my column last week I noted some of the most glaring contrasts that I saw between the Democratic and Republican National Conventions so this week I want to continue along this same track and offer a bit of my own analysis of what underlies them.
I overheard Peggy Noonan, a respected Republican columnist who writes for the Wall Street Journal, characterizing McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate as a “gimmick”. While she isn’t the only Republican who views McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as a desperate political ploy, I think there was a lot more strategic thinking that went into this decision than meets the eye.
To begin with, McCain and his advisors had already spent several months pushing McCain’s “experience” theme against Barack Obama’s presidential campaign theme of “change”, but they had never been able to close the 3 to 9 percentage point lead in national polls that Obama had held since clinching the Democratic nomination last May.
Thus with only 2 months remaining till Election Day, McCain and his campaign manager, lobbyist Rick Davis, knew that the maintaining the status quo was becoming an increasingly risky strategy. So regardless of what others might call it, Mccain correctly (in my opinion) sensed that they needed to do something to change the dynamics of the 2008 Presidential race or they were most likely going to lose the election on 4 November, and McCain’s choice for Vice President was their last realistic chance to shake things up.
McCain’s first choice was Joe Lieberman, and given the fact that Lieberman had been the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate in 2000, this would have definitely created the kind of stir McCain and his campaign advisors were looking for. But while the selection of Lieberman would have stirred up some positive reactions from independents and some of the more conservative older Democratic voters, it would have also alienated many Republican social conservatives. McCain and his campaign staff thus concluded that any gains they might realize among independents and disaffected Democrats would likely be off set by their loss of support from social conservatives.
On the other hand the news media had not already spent several weeks discussing Bobby Jindal, Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney as possible running mates social conservatives would find acceptable, so selecting one of them would not shake up the race nor would it arouse much interest from undecided independent and older voters. Furthermore, while all three of these men may have been acceptable to socially conservative Republicans, it was unlikely that their presence on the ticket would encourage a larger than expected number of social conservative to turn out and vote for McCain on Election Day.
Thus having calculated that none of the prospective Vice Presidential candidates they had vetted and considered during the summer would deliver the boost in the polls that McCain needed, his advisors turned their attention to the prospect of something that would; picking a woman to be McCain’s running mate.
A woman would not only be both a historic and a surprise choice as McCain’s Vice President, she would also offer McCain the opportunity to appeal to some of those disaffected white women who had been Hillary Clinton supporters. The right woman wouldn’t have to result in the loss of the support of social conservatives but could instead lead to an increase in support from independent and older Democratic voters.
But with only a few days left until the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, McCain and his advisors also knew they would have to move quickly, even though they knew that making such a decision too hastily might later come back to haunt them.
Four women who McCain and his staff believed social conservatives would support were considered; Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, North Carolina Senator Libby Dole, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. So how did McCain end up picking the woman with the least experience of the four?
Well, Dole had the experience and name recognition McCain wanted, but was eliminated because she was the same age as McCain and his advisors believed McCain needed someone younger on the ticket.
While Rice was much younger and had the same qualifications as Dole, she was also black and thus not likely to increase the turnout of the older racially prejudiced white voters McCain is counting on to vote for him on 4 November.
Even though Hutchison also had good qualifications, she was also 65. Because she was only 7 years younger than McCain, her age was not deemed to be an attractive quality for a Vice President running with the oldest Presidential candidate in US history.
So through this process of elimination, John McCain was left with only one candidate who could address his need for a younger woman as a vice presidential running mate; Governor Sarah Palin. The only real risk McCain was running in selecting Palin as his Vice President was the fact that she had very little political experience and was a relative unknown to most American voters outside of the state of Alaska. It also meant that McCain would have to abandon his “experience” trumps “change” argument and try to recast himself as a “change” candidate just like Obama had done.
While most political media pundits in the states think McCain made a very risky move by plucking Palin from her perch as a first term Governor of a sparsely populated state to be his Vice President, I disagree. In fact I believe selecting Palin was actually the best choice McCain could have made if he wanted to have any realistic chance to close the consistent lead in national polls that Barack Obama had held throughout the summer. In other words, the potential rewards to be gained by picking Sarah Palin outweighed the risks associated with abandoning his attacks on Obama’s lack of experience.
Will McCain’s sudden change in campaign strategy work? That’s our discussion for next week.

Marked contrasts between the Republican and Democratic Conventions

2008-09-15T21:09:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on September 11th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

By the time you read this column it will be September 11th, the seventh anniversary of the al Qaeda airliner attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington DC. But for Senator John McCain and the Republicans assembled in the Xcel Energy Center here in St. Paul Minnesota last night, it almost seemed like the attacks had come only last week rather than almost seven years ago.
Senator McCain must have used the word “fight” at least three or four dozen times during the course of his Republican Presidential nomination acceptance speech. He then closed his address and got his audience on its feet cheering him by saying “Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We’re Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history.” While McCain is correct in his observation that we Americans do make history, unfortunately the type of history we make isn’t always the kind we can (or should) stand up and cheer about.
But the tone of John McCain’s acceptance speech was just one of several remarkably stark contrasts I noted between the Republican and Democratic National conventions over the last two weeks. One of the other more vivid differences was the colour (or maybe I should say lack of colour) of the skin of the participants in the Republican National Convention. While the participants in previous Republican conventions over the past twenty years have also been predominately white and male, I cannot recall one that has ever been either as white or as male dominated as this year’s.
More than two thirds of the 20,000 plus in attendance were men and I would estimate that no more than seven or eight hundred of the Republicans (counting both men and women) were Hispanic, with another three to four hundred members who were black. As a result it wasn’t to difficult to distinguish the racial, gender and ethnic differences between the crowds at the Republican and Democratic conventions. Whereas the Republican convention was probably 95% white Caucasians and 70% male, only two thirds of the convention goers were white and there were equal numbers of men and women at the Democratic convention in Denver.
A worrisome sign for the future of the Republican Party in America is the fact that the Democratic convention in Denver much more nearly reflected the current ethnic, gender and racial makeup of the United States. Why should the Republican Party be concerned? Because based on current demographic trends, thirty years from now Caucasians will represent less than 50% of the United States (US) population, which means the Republican Party has decided to hitch its wagon to the largest but also the most rapidly shrinking segment of the US electorate.
However when I point out my fear, that the Republican Party is on a path which will lead to a semi-permanent status as the minority opposition party in the US, to other Republicans, the vast majority are loathe to acknowledge such a possibility. In fact, more often than not, they usually respond by citing the fact that 44% of Hispanic and Asian voters went for Bush in 2004 while ignoring the reality that these two rapidly growing minority groups still make up only 3% of the total of all Republican delegates.
But as is so often the case, my Republican cohorts won’t be able to acknowledge much less confront the truth about where their party is heading until a series of electoral defeats over the span of several election cycles forces them to. Since the 2006 Congressional elections was actually the first time the Republican Party had lost seats in a generation, I think they will not only have to lose this November but will also have to lose again in 2010 before the party will be ready for some long overdue soul searching.
John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his Vice President was also in sharp contrast with Barack Obama’s pick of Joe Biden as his running mate a week earlier. For several months McCain considered Governors’ Tim Pawlenty and Bobby Jindal, former Governors’ Tom Ridge and Mitt Romney as well as Senator Joe Lieberman to be his Vice Presidential running mate. But when McCain’s campaign aides floated the idea that McCain might pick a pro-choice candidate like Lieberman or Ridge (McCain’s top two choices to be his running mate) as his Vice President, Republican social conservatives put him on notice that they would rebel if he did so.
Because McCain was afraid of arousing the anger of these social conservatives, he resigned himself to finding someone who would please them as his Vice Presidential nominee. While John McCain knew that Pawlenty, Romney and Jindal would all be acceptable choices, none of them were favourites of Republican social conservatives.
So McCain dispatched his campaign aides to interview one of their favourites, Sarah Palin, on Wednesday, met her for the first time on Thursday, and then offered her the job after interviewing her for two hours. At this point I can’t decide which disturbs me more; McCain’s caving in to social conservatives or the haste with which he made his decision to go with Sarah Palin. I think maybe I’ll leave that for a later column.
Senator Obama also spent a couple of months doing background checks in addition to traveling and making campaign appearances with Governors’ Tim Kaine and Kathleen Sebelius as well as Senators’ Jack Reed, Evan Bayh, Chuck Hagel and Joe Biden as part of his evaluation process. But unlike Senator McCain, Obama did not make his choice of Joe Biden in haste or as a reaction to pressure from many Democrats to select Hillary Clinton as his running mate. Obama did so because he thought it was important to purposely select a nominee he both liked and respected and because he knew that picking Clinton as his Vice President would severely undercut his message of “Change”.

Witness to history

2008-09-15T21:08:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on September 4th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

After a month of attacks by his Republican opponent, John McCain, which had succeeded in narrowing his lead in national polls, Barack Obama chose last Thursday night 28 August, to finally respond to them. So what do I think about Obama’s response?
Only time will tell how effective Barack’s speech was in answering the Republican attacks on his candidacy, because his audience wasn’t actually the 84,000 people who joined me to listen to his Democratic presidential nomination acceptance speech in Denver’s Mile High football stadium. Obama’s real audience was the record number of 43 million plus voters who were watching it on the US television networks.
So on a warm summer evening, under clear skies and in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, Senator Obama delivered what I believe was the most important speech of his Presidential campaign thus far. But unlike his keynote address to the 2004 Democratic Convention or his Philadelphia speech on race relations earlier this year, this speech wasn’t notable for its inspirational message. It was however, exactly the type of speech Barack Obama needed to deliver under the circumstances. As such, it may well go down in US political history as one of the best purely political speeches ever delivered.
There is an old saying that “All’s fair in Love and War.” Since many people believe that political contests are very much akin to war, they also use this analogy to justify the use of whatever tactics they think will help them win elections. While the vast majority of American voters decry the use of negative personal attacks on political candidates by their opponents, the fact of the matter is the only reason many politicians continue to use such strategies is because they work. That is because many of the very same voters, who profess not to like these tactics, nonetheless respond to them by voting based on their perception of the truth of such personal attacks rather than on what the candidates’ positions are on the political issues that concern these same voters.
Senator Obama’s message of “Change” is rooted in his belief that for America to move forward and deal with its many foreign and domestic problems, US politicians must move beyond these bitter and divisive personal attacks and instead focus on the issues. McCain himself has espoused a similar approach in years past but, with the US Presidency almost within his grasp, decided to abandon this approach in favour of the same negative personal attack campaign strategy that worked so well for President Bush.
So the challenge for Obama in his speech last Thursday was to respond to McCain’s personal attacks, which are designed to portray Obama as a “celebrity” lacking any real substance who is also “unpatriotic” and an “elitist”, without stooping to the same level as McCain and making similar attacks. The situation reminded me of that facing King Henry V almost 600 years ago at Agincourt in Northern France.
Henry V’s men were exhausted so all Henry wanted to do was sail home, but the French were determined to engage them in battle rather than let them withdraw to England. Forced to engage in battle when he had no desire to do so, King Henry V countered the overwhelming advantages of the French army by turning their offensive attacks against his positions back against them. As a result King Henry won this famous battle even though he and his men had no desire to fight on the grounds of Agincourt.
In a similar vein, last Thursday evening Obama succeeded in hurling all of John McCain’s attacks back against him saying at one point. “If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgement to serve as the next (US) Commander-in-Chief, that’s a debate I’m ready to have.”
In response to McCain’s claims that Obama was “unpatriotic” because of his political positions including his opposition to the Iraq war, Senator Obama responded “What I will not do is suggest that the Senator (McCain) takes his positions for political purposes. Because the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other’s character and patriotism. The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan (Republican) playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red (Republican) America or a Blue (Democrat) America – they have served the United States of America. So I’ve got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.”
During the course of his speech Obama also responded to McCain’s “elitist” attacks by noting his upbringing by a single mother who struggled to support her family and the college loans he and his wife needed to use to finance their educations. And in response to McCain’s charges that he was just a “celebrity” with a message of hope that was lacking in substance, Senator Obama went point by point through the various economic, energy, environment, health insurance and tax issues and said very specifically what exactly he planned to do to address them once he became President.
Finally, Barack closed his address by borrowing a line from the “I have a Dream” speech delivered in Washington DC by Dr. Martin Luther King 45 years ago on the same day. “America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done.”
What Obama did not do was attack McCain’s elite upbringing or any of John’s numerous shortcomings as a person. It will be interesting to see how John McCain responds to Barack Obama’s acceptance speech when he gives his own Republican presidential nomination acceptance speech this evening. I’ll discuss that next week.

Democratic National Convention

2008-08-31T13:19:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on August 28th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

Tonight I will be in the crowd of 80,000 US citizens, along with other media representatives from around the world, witnessing history in the making at Denver Colorado’s Mile High Stadium. Senator Barack Obama will be giving his Democratic Party Presidential nomination acceptance speech before the largest audience to ever attend such an event. The only other time a United States (US) Presidential candidate has given an acceptance speech at an outdoor arena was back on 15 July 1960, when John F. Kennedy accepted the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination before an estimated 50,000 Americans at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California.
But five long weeks ago, Senator Obama spoke before a much larger crowd from the base of the Victory Column in Tiergarten Park in Berlin; a crowd consisting of over 200,000 Germans and citizens from every other country in Europe as well as many other countries in the rest of the world. In fact, this was Senator Barack Obama’s largest audience yet as a US Presidential candidate. As such this huge crowd of non-US citizens stands as a testament to the fact that, despite the well deserved battering my country’s image has taken over the last six years around the world, America is still regarded as the world’s best hope for leadership in solving the many problems which stand before us.
But if one closely listened to the substance of Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin, you would have noticed that he was not only also speaking to Americans back home in the US, but that Obama was also outlining his vision of future American foreign policy positions that many here in Europe would disagree with. While Senator Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war and his plan to withdraw American forces from that country after he is elected draws broad support from Europeans, Obama’s position on the conflict in Afghanistan is another matter.
Senator Obama spoke eloquently of the need for the US and Europe to stand together against Iran’s desire to develop nuclear weapons and asked for both Europe and Germany’s help on the frontlines of the global “war on terror” in Afghanistan. He did so knowing full well that German Chancellor Angela Merkel opposes sending more German troops to Afghanistan because many if not most Germans are against the idea. Senator Obama sought to remind his German audience that the harsh reality of the world today is that no country can escape the dangers posed by pseudo-religious terrorism nor can any single country defeat this threat. Obama noted that “None of us can deny these threats, or escape responsibility in meeting them. Yet, in the absence of Soviet tanks and a terrible wall, it has become easy to forget this truth.”
Senator Obama then pointed out that the end of the Cold War that was symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall had given rise to new dangers that were not constrained by national borders or even by oceans. Obama reminded his German hosts that the September 11th terrorists hatched their plot in Hamburg and then trained for their mission in Kandahar, Afghanistan and across the border in Karachi, Pakistan. Then in an acknowledgement of another borderless global problem, Obama noted that it was a combination of CO² emissions from cars in cities like Boston, Massachusetts along with factories in Beijing, China that were melting our polar ice caps.
Unfortunately, in the minds of many Germans and Americans as well as citizens of other countries, President Bush’s illegitimate war in Iraq has become intertwined with legitimate efforts to combat terrorism in Afghanistan. The fact that this misconception has been embraced by so many people means that President Bush and his political hacks have largely succeeded in their attempts to link their Iraq war with the global “war on terror.” While I expect there are many who would disagree with me, I continue to believe that the US led multi-national invasion of Afghanistan was justified as a necessary measure to thwart the threat posed by pseudo-religious Islamic inspired terrorists.
The Taliban regime in Afghanistan provided both a government sponsored sanctuary as well as training bases for Osama bin laden’s al Qaeda terrorist organization. The initial US military response involved the use of a small number of Special Forces soldiers in Afghanistan in recognition of the fact that you don’t attack a network like al Qaeda with a field army. It took fewer than 200 US Special Forces A-team troops to effectively topple the Taliban regime and put bin laden and al Qaeda on the run.
But then President Bush took the heat off of bin laden and al Qaeda by deciding to finish the job his Daddy didn’t by invading Iraq and falsely justifying his actions as a necessary response to the terrorism threat posed by Saddam Hussein. The decision to turn what was essentially a Special Forces counter-terrorism guerrilla operation in Afghanistan with little or no media publicity, into a headline grabbing conventional war in Iraq helped Bush win political re-election, but at a horrendous cost in terms of American lives in addition to our economic, military and political power.
. Many Europeans see the second coming of John F. Kennedy in Obama. Many also believe that Obama is the antidote for the disease of unreasoning fear that the Bush administration has been spreading for the last 6 years in the US and the rest of the world. But I would caution all of those who feel this way to be careful and not “put the cart before the horse.” Granted, Barack is a breath of fresh air and a source of hope and inspiration for millions of Americans and others around the globe. But he is still only one man and America is only one country.
Obama noted the real solution to the world’s problems in Berlin; “Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice. It is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.”

Has the Republican Party developed a thin skin or what?

2008-08-23T11:54:00.003Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on August 21st in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

I closed last week’s column by questioning the Republican National Convention’s decision to deny Metro Éireann’s request for press credentials for this columnist. I view the GOP’s decision to deny our request as just another example of various attempts still being made by the Bush administration and its allies to protect the image they wish the general public to see by censoring the perspectives, pictures, statements or words and or restricting the access of those who disagree with them.
But facts are facts and the truth is the truth no matter how hard one may try to put a happy face on your shortcomings as a leader. It is a fact that in a truly unbelievable reversal of long standing Republican Party commitments to fiscal conservatism, President Bush and his administration, along with his Republican cronies in Congress, has presided over the most fiscally irresponsible period in our nation’s history. When Mr. Bush took office, he predicted that federal debt held by the public (the amount borrowed by the US government to pay for past deficits) would shrink to just 8 percent of the gross domestic product in 2009. But Bush now estimates that it will amount to 40 percent in 2009 and the worst may be yet to come. Denying a Republican Party member, who is critical of this track record of fiscal irresponsibility, press credentials for your Presidential National Convention isn’t going to fix this problem or make it go away any time soon either.
But the current Republican presidential administration has actually gone far beyond telling political appointees to retract Court ordered proposals, such as the EPA report I mentioned in previous columns, or denying media access to critics of its policies. I will now point to some other recent instances where I believe Bush and his minions have crossed the line in their vain attempts to cast themselves and or their policies in a more favorable light. A recent case in point involves media coverage of the Iraq war.
An American freelance photographer in Iraq named Zoriah Miller, was recently barred from covering the activities of US Marines in Iraq after photos of several US Marines killed in a 26 June suicide attack were posted on his website. Not satisfied with forbidding Mr. Miller to work in areas of Iraq controlled by the US Marine Corps, Maj. Gen. John Kelly, the Marine commander in Iraq, is now seeking to have Mr. Miller barred from all United States military facilities throughout the world.
Civil liberties advocates and journalists as well as members of the American public who oppose the war in Iraq argue that this is simply one more example of the great lengths to which the Bush administration has gone in an effort to sanitize public portrayals of the war and its human costs in American lives. In a marked contrast with the Vietnam War almost 40 years ago, only about a half dozen photos of a few of the over 4,000 American soldiers killed in Iraq have ever been published during the last five years.
From the very beginning of this misguided war to bring democracy to Iraq and remake the country in the image of the United States, the Bush administration has sought manipulate US public opinion about the war. At the start of the Iraq war, it would only allow journalists and photographers it approved to accompany US forces on their combat missions. But now that the war has become increasingly unpopular with most Americans in spite of the Bush administration’s attempts to sanitize media coverage of it, journalists say it is has become that much harder to accompany troops on combat missions in Iraq.
Furthermore, Iraqi prisoners who were often photographed during the first years of the war are now off limits for such photos. The Bush administration claims that this is because “they are concerned about these prisoners’ rights.” Hmmm, I wonder what the detainees in Guantanamo Bay would have to say about the Bush administration’s new found concern for the “rights” of its prisoners of war. Would you like to hazard a guess?
Nor has the Bush administration been content to only censor photos taken by imbedded war photographers. It has also banned both photos as well as the filming of the flag draped coffins of American’s killed in Iraq arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and now routinely makes memorial services for these soldiers off limits as well. That is also the reason why Bush’s officials in the Pentagon told Obama he could only visit US soldiers wounded in Iraq at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, if he went alone and without his military adviser, retired Air Force Major General Scott Gration.
But the Bush administration isn’t just concerned about the US public’s perceptions of its misguided policies; believe it or not President Bush is also concerned about the views of citizens of other countries too. That is why the Bush administration banned US Embassy staff and State Department personnel in Germany from attending the speech Barack Obama delivered 24 July in Berlin. Shortly after hearing about Obama’s plans to speak in Berlin, he U.S. Embassy instructed all Foreign Service personnel stationed there not to attend Sen. Barack Obama's speech, which it labeled a "partisan political activity” prohibited under its regulations for those serving overseas.
But others dispute this unprecedented interpretation of the US Foreign Affairs manual. The diplomatic corps union, American Foreign Service Association objected to the ruling, saying it was an “unnecessarily narrow interpretation” of the Foreign Affairs Manual and “The fact that you are working for the U.S. government overseas should not preclude political activity that you could engage in the United States.”
While government employees in the US are not permitted to give money or work on behalf of political candidates, they are permitted to attend campaign events, political rallies and speeches made by candidates because they are still entitled to vote for them. But Republicans have suddenly developed thin skins.

Due to the overwhelming interest in the Republican National Convention

2008-08-14T13:37:00.001Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on August 14th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

Today I want to offer a bit more in the way of commentary on the current Republican administration’s attitudes regarding the environment as well as members of my own Republican Party’s noticeably thin skin as their time in office grasping the levers of power in Washington DC slowly dwindles away.
Regarding the environment, I should note that the United States EPA report on the effects of global warming due to green house gases emissions that I referenced in previous columns was generated in response to a 2007 US Supreme Court ruling against the Bush administration. In response to a lawsuit by state governments, the Bush administration had originally told the US Supreme Court that the EPA would not set standards for CO² emmisions even if was supposed to do so under the US Clean Air Act. When the Court finally ruled on the states’ lawsuit it came as no surprise (to anyone except for Bush and his political hacks) that the US Supreme Court doesn’t like being told that a government agency won’t do what it is mandated to do under US law.
That is why the Supreme Court ordered the EPA to issue a report about the effects of these emmisions on public health and to develop standards to regulate such emmisions. But the Republican led Bush administration effectively controls the EPA, which is supposed to “independently” establish regulations and enforce the US’s air quality standards, because it is an agency run by Bush presidential appointees. So what do you think happened when the EPA complied with the US Supreme Court ruling and issued its health report and a proposal to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act?
Well the EPA e-mailed the health report and its proposal to regulate CO² emmisions to the White House Office of Management and Budget which was supposed to review it on behalf of the President before it was delivered to the Court and then released to the general public. So what did the White House then do with this report?
The White House never even bothered to open the documents, much less review them, and instead instructed the EPA to retract it. So EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson backed off from the “independent” conclusions that he and the EPA staff had reached and instead decided to issue an “advanced notice of proposed rulemaking” that invited public comment on the question of how the EPA should regulate the CO² emissions that cause global warming. The EPA then issued the report the Court ordered it to in answer to the question “Does global warming pose a threat to human health or public welfare?”, but took no stand on the issue even though the EPA report clearly showed that global warming was a threat to both US human health and public welfare.
I have to tell you, this current Republican President and his lackeys beat anything I have ever seen. Whether its through sheer arrogance, stupidity or both, this bunch is bound and determined to do nothing to protect the American public or risk offending the US automotive or fossil fuels industry interests that they answer to during the waning days of the Bush administration. Maybe I shouldn’t be so amazed by such manipulation, but in all honesty President Bush and company continue to amaze me with their antics.
On a more hopeful note, two weeks from today I will be at Mile High Stadium in Denver Colorado listening to Senator (and soon to be President) Barack Obama deliver what I think will be a truly memorable and historic Democratic National Convention acceptance speech as the Democratic Party’s nominee to become the 44th President of the United States. In fact I was lucky to get press credentials to cover the Democratic Convention because of the overwhelming demand for credentials from media figures both at home and abroad.
On the other hand, I wasn’t worried about press credentials for the Republican Convention because I’m a registered member of the Republican Party and had previously attended conventions. I also knew that the Republican National Convention had received only a third of the number of requests for press credentials that the Democratic National Convention had so I knew granting Metro Éireann’s request wouldn’t be a problem at all. Or so I thought.
So I’m waiting to receive my press credentials for the Republican Convention, when I received this unsigned email on July 21, 2008.
Dear Special Press Credential Applicant:
Thank you for applying for credentials to cover the 2008 Republican National Convention. We appreciate your interest in covering this historic event. Unfortunately, due to the overwhelming interest in covering our convention, we are unable to accommodate your request for Special Press Credentials. We hope you choose to follow our proceedings through other means, including our live-stream at www.GOPConvention2008.com.
Sincerely, Special Press Credentials Office 2008 Republican National Convention.
I sent the following reply to Hayden Pruett, the gentleman who we had been corresponding with regarding Metro Éireann’s request for my press credentials to cover the Republican Convention.
Dear Hayden, You refused our request “due to the overwhelming interest in covering our convention”? Surely you jest! Sorry Hayden, but I know better. Even though I'm a life-long Republican and still registered as such in Texas, I guess I should have expected this kind of media snub from my Republican co-horts though. Well I will still wish you all the best with the convention in St. Paul anyway. Take care now. Best Regards, Charles Laffiteau
While I could be wrong, I am fairly certain that the Republican Party has identified this columnist as someone who is not interested in furthering their interests. If you consider the Republican Party’s interests and the current Republican President’s interests to be one and the same, then such sentiments would be accurate. But if you place the interests of your nation and the traditional values of the Republican Party ahead of the President’s own interests, then this would not be accurate. What do you think?

Water Shortages....in Ireland?

2008-08-09T08:37:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on August 7th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

I closed last week’s column with a promise to discuss why a wetter Ireland could also be facing water shortages in the very near future. I don’t blame you for finding such a prediction hard to believe, but if you will bear with me I think you will understand why this is a distinct possibility by the time you finish reading this week’s column.
In the United States (US) much of our population growth over the past fifty years has occurred in the south east from Virginia down thru the Carolinas and Georgia into our number one retirement and tourist destination of Florida. The other regions of the country which have grown the fastest have been the south west and the west coast including my home state of Texas as well as points farther west including Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and our most populous state of California.
Unfortunately for people living in these regions, there is not an abundance of natural fresh water in any of these states. Out west they have to rely on water stored in the winter snow pack of the Rocky Mountains, while in states like Texas and Georgia they depend on rainwater runoff stored in huge lakes created to supply their growing populations with fresh drinking water. Currently the south east is suffering through the worst drought in memory and this region’s lakes are at record low levels, thus imperilling the supply of drinking water for the residents of large cities like Atlanta Georgia. Out west California is in the midst of the worst fire season in its history thanks to the effects of lengthy droughts and higher temperatures, both of which are linked to global warming.
However, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report released on 17 July does not give residents of these areas much comfort regarding the prospects for these current conditions improving anytime in the foreseeable future. The changing weather patterns out west are thinning the snowpack that feeds the region’s lakes and rivers. This in turn affects the electricity generated by hydroelectric dams as well as water supplies for farmers, ranchers and residents of cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
On the east coast rising sea levels have already led to severe erosion of barrier islands as well as the mainland, because the sea eats away at dry land and then storm surges come in and finish the job by washing it away in a flash. Rising sea levels also affect the wells which tap underground aquifers for fresh water, by leeching into the underground caverns and rock formations where this water collects. Cities from Texas to Georgia to Washington DC and New York are also experiencing significantly more “bad air” days, because heat speeds up the process by which automobile exhausts are cooked into smog. The report also found that rising temperatures are likely to mean more periods of sustained summer heat, which threatens the health of the poor and elderly who cannot afford the electricity expenses associated with running air conditioners.
Here in Ireland, the EPA report generated by John Sweeney and Laura McElwain revealed that Ireland’s changing weather patterns were increasing rainfall on the western and northern coasts of Ireland and decreasing in the east. But the more intense and longer periods of rainfall in those areas increases the possibility of floods in the winter and can also lead to water shortages in the summer. Then the twin forces of winter flooding and summer droughts increases soil erosion in Ireland’s interior at the same time rising sea levels and increased storm surge activity are eating away at the Emerald Isle’s edges.
Another important factor cited in the EPA report supports the contention that Ireland will soon be facing water shortages. That’s because Ireland’s population growth over the past thirty years has in many respects been similar to what we have seen in the US. Most of Ireland’s economic and population growth has been occurring in Dublin and the south east regions of the country which, like the American south and west, are the regions of Ireland that have the least in terms of water availability. For example, the EPA report notes that Dublin has only one water source and it is currently running at 99% of its capacity. What will happen when climate change due to global warming and less rainfall in Dublin and the south east regions of Ireland diminish the capacity of that single source of water for Dublin? Can you spell water r-a-t-i-o-n-i-n-g?
Mandatory water restrictions are now commonplace in the south and west of the United States so, even though you may find it hard to imagine such measures ever being introduced here in Ireland; don’t say you were never warned this could happen.
Sweeney and McElwain believe that the urbanization that occurred in Ireland after World War II was probably a factor in why Ireland cooled more slowly than the rest of the world. They also believe the growth in automobile usage and construction activity associated with the economic boom beginning in 1990 has contributed to the higher levels of warming Ireland is also experiencing. There isn’t much we can or should do to discourage construction activity, which has already slowed due to worsening economic conditions, or slow the pace of urbanization in Ireland. But Ireland’s EPA report clearly shows there is a need for much more than what is currently being done to discourage the use of automobiles and encourage the use of public transportation.
The recent tax increases to encourage the use of lower carbon emission engines was only a tiny step in the right direction. But Ireland must also undertake massive investments in its public transportation infrastructure to provide its residents with viable alternatives to the automobile. The prosperity Ireland has experienced over the last twenty years is what led to the growth in automobile usage here. But if something isn’t done to discourage it, Ireland will end up choking on the fumes of that same prosperity.

What do the US and Ireland's EPA reports say?

2008-08-03T03:14:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on July 31st in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

In last week’s column I began discussing some of the consequences of global warming that residents of a wetter and hotter Emerald Isle will be confronting in the coming years. Today I want to continue that discussion by focusing on the results of some climate change research conducted by the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as by John Sweeney and Laura McElwain, who work at the Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units (ICARUS) on the National University of Ireland’s (NUI) Maynooth campus.
Sweeney and McElwain conducted their research on behalf of Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which has since published their findings in landmark report on how climate change is affecting our island. This report is notable because its findings both preceded and in many respects mirrored those released in my own country on 17 July by the US’s much larger and better funded EPA. Both of these reports also echo warnings from other scientists as well as the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about the problems we face due to the negative impacts of global warming on our climate and health.
For those out there who still doubt that global warming poses grave threats to our health and our welfare, I would like to point out that the most recent report issued by my home country’s EPA came about despite the opposition of President Bush’s political hacks, who have consistently resisted any conclusions that increasing temperatures will harm human health. This contention is supported by the fact that the US report was released just days after the same EPA, which is run by Bush appointees, declined to regulate the pollutants blamed for warming. In fact the Bush administration would have never released such a report were it not for a 2007 Supreme Court ruling in a federal lawsuit (brought to court on behalf of a group of US state governments) that instructed the Bush administration to determine whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases should be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
Clearly the Bush administration is determined to do the bidding of the US automotive and fossil fuel industries for as long as it remains in office, so any US federal government action to deal with the pollutants responsible for global warming will have to wait until after a Democratic President Obama takes office on 20 January 2009. But Ireland doesn’t need to wait to take action like we have been forced to in the US. Ireland’s government ministries are currently run by TD’s drawn from the Fianna Fáil and Green Party Coalition which one would expect to be more sensitive to environmental concerns. I can therefore see no reason why both the Dáil and the Northern Assembly cannot begin to take concrete steps to reduce carbon emissions on the island in addition to becoming international advocates for a cleaner planet within both the EU and the UN.
The urgent need for government action on behalf of all residents of Ireland to deal with the threats posed by global warming is made clear by the conclusions drawn from Sweeney and McElwain’s research. Their meteorological data (which is based on rainfall and temperature measurements collected over the last century) shows that Ireland is not only wetter and hotter than it was 30 years ago, but that the temperature increases we have seen here in Ireland have been double the average increase seen globally. While the rest of Europe is also facing the same negative effects from global warming, Ireland is on the leading edge and will thus be impacted more severely than any of its EU neighbours.
Sweeney and McElwain’s research shows that both the world and Ireland have experienced two periods of global warming over the last century, between 1910 and 1945 and again between 1980 and 2004. But Ireland developed its own unique global warming weather pattern following the end of World War II. When temperatures in the rest of the world began to cool in the mid-forties it took much longer for Ireland’s temperatures to drop. Then when the second period of international global warming began in 1980, Ireland’s temperatures rose at a much faster rate than the average temperature increase for the rest of the world. This faster rate of temperature increase puts Ireland at risk in terms of more frequent and longer lasting heat waves as well as droughts such as those now being experienced in the United States, Australia and other parts of the world.
In their EPA report, Sweeney and McElwain express their concern about future Irish heat waves because they regard them as a threat to Ireland’s “human health, agriculture and water supply”. They also go on to predict that, in future years, Ireland’s heat waves will likely increase in terms of their “severity, frequency or duration”. While some of you might relish the thought of an Irish heat wave while you shiver under your umbrella in the13 C summer “heat”, you will think again once you swelter through a few days at 33 C which, when it’s coupled with Ireland’s high humidity, will feel like 36 C.
The 17 July EPA report paints a remarkably similar picture of the negative consequences US citizens face as my homeland grows warmer. Among other things the EPA report says that “it is very likely” that more people will die during our increasingly frequent heat waves or long periods of high temperatures and that those most at risk of dying will be the inner city poor and elderly people. In other words our society in the US will become one that is increasingly oriented towards the “survival of the fittest.” Is this really what the citizens and residents of Ireland want to see happen to Irish society?
Next week I will conclude my discussion of the impacts global warming is having on Ireland by discussing why a wetter Ireland will not only face more flooding but could also be facing water shortages in the very near future.

Republican Veep Stakes

2008-07-20T15:15:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on July 17th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

Having covered the Democratic field in several previous columns, today I want to discuss who John McCain might pick as his Vice President.
Its worth noting that even though John McCain was the Republican candidate I personally favoured and thought would be the best Republican nominee, in a marked contrast with Barack Obama, McCain didn’t win the nomination because he ran a better campaign than his opponents. McCain won in spite of his many presidential campaign mistakes simply because everything beyond his control fell into place. For John McCain this combination of fortuitous events resulted in a “perfect storm” that wrecked all of the other Republican presidential candidates’ ships, in some case before they ever got to sea.
So I will begin my review of the Republican field of possible Vice Presidential candidates by starting with the losers of the Republican Presidential nomination contest. The fourth place finisher and champion of the Libertarian wing of the Republican Party, Ron Paul, might have actually had an outside chance at being the VP were it not for his vocal opposition to continuing the Iraq war, so there is absolutely no chance McCain picks this former opponent who is so diametrically opposed to his own position on Iraq.
Then we have former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose Presidential campaign ship ran aground on the Florida shoals at the end of January before Rudy ever had a chance to get his boat out into the open waters of the Super Tuesday primaries. Because Giuliani has a reputation as a crime buster as well as a moderate record on most social issues, he could actually help McCain win some votes among the independents and moderate Republicans who are currently leaning towards the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Furthermore, over the last 50 years almost all Presidential elections have been decided in the favour of the candidate who drew a majority of independent votes.
But a choice of Giuliani as VP appears unlikely in this year’s Presidential election because McCain himself is already suspect as a true conservative in the eyes of most Republican Party social conservatives. To pick Giuliani as his running mate would have the effect of “kicking sand in their faces” and would lead many of these Republican Party stalwarts to simply not bother voting in the General Election. Since there are so many social conservatives who don’t trust that McCain is really as conservative as he claims, this makes choosing someone like Giuliani as a running mate virtually impossible.
The elimination of Giuliani as a VP possibility also underscores the fact that the toughest issue for McCain to resolve prior to the General Election will be deciding how to run to the centre on issues in order to attract moderate and independent voters without further alienating the Republican base of social conservatives in the process. .
Unfortunately for Senator McCain his own weakness among Republican social conservative is a negative consequence stemming from his attractiveness to independent and moderate voters through the years. Thus I believe McCain will be forced to pick a VP who is perceived as a true conservative by social conservatives, rather than someone who could help him win the support of independent and moderate voters in November.
So what about Mitt Romney, the multi-millionaire former Massachusetts Governor who finished third in the Republican Presidential nomination contest? Even though Romney probably has a better reputation among social conservative voters than John McCain does, many evangelical Christians are nonetheless apprehensive of him as well. While some of their apprehensions are due to their questions about how Christian he is because of his Mormon faith, Romney’s positions on many social values issues were decidedly more liberal when he was Governor of Massachusetts, than the stances he took while running for President.
On the other hand Romney has both the prior business experience and support of the Republican Party’s economic conservatives, not to mention millions of dollars of his own money that he could pour into the Presidential race. Romney’s millions are an important consideration because for the first time in memory, the Republican Party looks to be at a financial disadvantage going into the General Election. This is largely due to Obama’s huge base of internet campaign donors that Obama has turned to repeatedly during the course of the Democratic nomination to raise more money than his opponents.
While Romney wouldn’t be a bad choice for VP because of his money and support among economic conservatives, I think his chances are slim because of the genuine animosity that exists between him and John McCain. The simple fact of the matter is that it’s hard to tab someone to be your second in command when you genuinely dislike that person. While Romney would jump at the chance to be VP I just don’t think McCain is the type to forget the things Romney said about him on the campaign trail.
That leads me to the guy who finished second to McCain, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Unlike Romney, Huckabee never said unkind things about McCain during the Presidential nomination contest and he is a darling of Republican social conservatives. But Huckabee doesn’t bring anything else to the ticket other than a penchant for stand up comedy which is why McCain probably won’t choose him either.
I could be wrong, but I’m betting McCain ends up picking someone like Minnesota Governor Tom Pawlenty or Florida Governor Charlie Crist as his running mate. Both men are safe choices that won’t antagonize the GOP’s economic or social conservatives and as Governors of important swing states, can help deliver their states’ electoral votes to McCain’s column come November.
If McCain does pick one of them it would also represent the kind of political calculations that lead to a VP choice that has always worked well in the past, but may not be what voters are hungry for in a “Change” election. In other words, I think the best choice isn’t always the safest choice.

Obama's main obstacles

2008-07-20T15:12:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on July 10th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

As a follow-up to last weeks column I want to discuss the three interconnected obstacles which Senator Obama must still overcome if he wants to become America’s 44th US president.
The first one is our fear of change involving someone or something which is either unknown or unfamiliar to us. The second obstacle is ignorance of the facts coupled with a predisposition to believe what we want to believe when we don’t know the facts. The last obstacle is the latent racial prejudice which still exists in the hearts and minds of many white Americans more than a hundred years after the United States first Republican President named Abraham Lincoln freed America’s slaves.
Sadly for me, as soon as Barack Obama claimed the Democratic nomination for President of the United States I began to receive emails from friends and acquaintances which underscored the unfortunate existence of all three of these obstacles to Barack Obama’s election as America’s next president in November. Now I want to offer you some quotes from the email that I have received most often in the last couple of months.
The first email came under the heading of FAMILY PICTURES OF THE 'POTENTIAL' NEW FIRST FAMILY?? How come we haven't seen or known about some of these....? These statements were then followed by a series of photos of black relatives of Barack Obama in Kenya and then a photo of Obama speaking with Odinga seated in front of him above the following caption description; Barack has stated his support for Luo Raila Odinga (Opposition Leader in Kenya who signed a 'Shariah pact' With Muslims and claims to be Obama's cousin) and is married to Ida Odinga. They have four children - two sons and two daughters. His oldest son, Fidel, is named after Fidel Castro. Below this is a photo of Barack Obama’s father above a caption which reads; Barack's father, Muslim, hard-drinker, Was married three times, attended Harvard and returned to Kenya. Obama claims he was an atheist, But he was raised Muslim and was Given a Muslim burial at Barack's
family's request.
Then there are the only two photos with white people in them. The first one is above a caption saying; Mother's 2nd husband Lolo Soetoro (Indonesian Muslim),Their daughter Maya, and Obama. Followed by another photo of Barack with his white grandparents above a caption reading; Abandoned by his father and shipped off by his mother to his white grandparents, Barry Sotero becomes Barack Hussein Obama. Obama would describe his grandparents as 'white folk.' (Yeah, 'white folk' that would NOT abandon you, their grandchild. Shame on you Obama)
Next we see a photo above a caption reading; Barack stands behind Kezia (stepmother) in a Kenyan family shot. (Including brother Abongo 'Roy' Obama who is a Luo activist and A 'Militant Muslim' who argues that the black man must 'liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture.' ) Followed by another photo of Barack speaking through a megaphone above a caption reading; Obama's visit to Africa '06 (Where are the transcripts of the speeches he gave here? Campaigning for Odinga? Wouldn't it be great to be able to read these? Do the people of the State of Illinois know about Obama's radical background?)
Then we get the closing line of the email which reads; SINCE CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, AND THE NEW YORK TIMES, WILL NOT SHOW THESE PICTURES, AND WE WONDER WHY NOT, WILL YOU FORWARD THESE TO THE (APPROXIMATE NUMBER) 200 MILLION AMERICANS THAT HAVE INTERNET ACCESS? THANK YOU. THE ABOVE CAPTIONS HAD SOME MENTION OF 'MILITANT MUSLIMS' AND 'SHARIA LAW'. HERE IS A WEBSITE THAT TELLS YOU ALL ABOUT THEM (ALSO CALLED ISLAMIC TERRORISTS), AND THE END RESULTS OF THEM. But neither this one nor any of the other smear emails contain any such links, nor do any of them cite the references or sources that support the numerous false and misleading statements made in the captions.
The intent of the photos and captions in this and other similar emails is as ominous as it is clear. This particular email and others like it are designed to strike fear in the hearts and minds of white American voters by erroneously leading them to believe that Obama is not only a Muslim but is also one who is sympathetic to Communism and that the truth about Obama’s true beliefs is not being disclosed by the US news media.
Because Barack Obama has only been in the US Senate for two years, he is still not very well known outside of Democratic Party circles and his home state of Illinois. Many older and or less educated white Americans are afraid of change involving politicians they don’t know or are unfamiliar with. Then you have to factor in the ignorance of many of these voters as well as other Americans as regards their understanding about the true beliefs of the Muslim faith. All they know is that it was Muslim extremists who carried out the 9/11 attacks on American soil, so they are predisposed to believe that Islam and all of its Muslim adherents must be evil.
Finally these emails play on the fears and to the latent racial prejudice of many older and or less educated white Americans by repeatedly projecting images in their photos of Africans and blacks in unfamiliar native African garb, coupled with false assertions linking these blacks to people many white Americans perceive to be our new enemy, Islam and or Muslims as well as an old familiar enemy, Communism.
Maybe now you can now understand why I believe Barack Obama’s number one obstacle in November isn’t John McCain and the Republican Party. His main barrier to being elected President is fear of the unknown plus ignorance of the facts coupled with decades of racial prejudice which still lurks just below the surface in the hearts and minds of older and or less educated white Americans. It remains to be seen if Obama can overcome this obstacle.

History in the making and deja vu

2008-07-20T15:05:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on July 3rd in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

Thoroughly exhausted from my trip to the states and the effects of 18 months of US Presidential political campaign activism, I am hoping to unwind this weekend by camping and enjoying some music at this weekend’s Oxegen festival in County Kildare. But before I turn off the noise from the traffic in the city and tune in to the music at Oxegen, I want to offer my readers a bit of commentary regarding Barack Obama’s Democratic Presidential nomination.
Who among you believed you would ever live to see the day that an African American would be nominated by a major American political party to become President of the United States? I hoped that I might, but rather doubted that I actually would.
Would you have believed it four years ago if someone had told you that American voters would do precisely that on a late spring evening in June of 2008? I can assure you I wouldn’t have believed it and probably would have suggested that the person telling me this needed to see a doctor and have a serious discussion about their delusional thinking.
June 3rd of 2008 will be remembered by current and future generations of Americans as one of the most historic and momentous occasions in US history. As a result of Barack Obama’s victory following the last Democratic primary of 2008, Senator Obama will now have the opportunity to deliver an acceptance speech on the evening of the last day of the Democratic Party’s National convention in Denver, Colorado
Is it just a coincidence that the final day of the convention on August 28th just so happens to come 45 years to the day after another famous speech was delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC? Maybe it is just a coincidence. But maybe…..just maybe…. there is something else at work here.
Because you see that other famous speech which was delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th 1963, was one that inspired a generation of Americans to put an end to racial discrimination. The man who delivered that speech was none other than Dr. Marin Luther King, who evoked the name of President Lincoln in his “I Have a Dream” speech, which is credited with mobilizing supporters of desegregation and prompted the 1964 Civil Rights Act which put an end to legal segregation in the US.
Allow me to offer you a few excerpts from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech;
“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
The next year, Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But in my heart and soul I believe that were Dr. King alive today, he would gladly trade his Nobel Prize and every honor he had ever been given, to see the son of a black man and a white woman accept the Democratic nomination to become President of the United States of America.
Make no mistake, racial prejudice still exists in the United States and there will be many Americans who will not vote for Barack Obama on November 4th because he is an African American. After all, it took a hundred years after slavery ended to outlaw discrimination against the descendants of slaves. But I also believe there are many more Americans who will not allow racial prejudice to dictate their voting decision today than there were back in 1963.
Dr. King would be very gratified by the racial progress we’ve made during the 45 years between his “I Have a Dream” speech and Barack Obama’s Presidential nomination acceptance speech. In fact, I happen to believe Dr. King will actually be in the convention hall on August 28th ……standing beside me……and wearing a smile from ear to ear.

Democratic Veep Stakes predictions

2008-07-20T15:03:00.002Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on June 26th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

As you read this I am back in the states taking care of some personal business as well as taking the pulse of my fellow American voters about the upcoming General Election. I have also discussed the 3 candidates I think would be best as Vice President with many of my friends and its safe to say the vast majority of them also think I m crazy.
I am going to dispense with the horse racing terminology in my descriptions of them except for telling you they are all considered 30:1 long shots to win a place on the ticket with Senator Obama. Part of the problem with these candidates is that many Americans are just like many of my friends in Texas and Arkansas in that they either didn’t even know who these people were or the few who did knew very little about them. So I will begin by first discussing the only female Vice Presidential candidate not named Clinton before moving on to discuss the two men.
Kathleen Sebelius is currently serving in her second and last term (due to term limits) as the Democratic Governor of the historically Republican state of Kansas after winning her 2006 re-election race by a landslide 18 percentage points over her Republican opponent. Sebelius has proven to be a very popular and capable executive during her two terms as Governor and has dealt effectively with a state legislature dominated by the Republican Party.
But Sebelius is also the daughter of former Ohio governor John J. Gilligan and is half of the first father/daughter governor pair in United States history. As a result, she has strong ties to the state of Ohio as well as the state of Michigan where she grew up and currently maintains a vacation home in Traverse City. Michigan and Ohio are key swing states in US Presidential elections so by picking her as his running mate Obama would increase his chances of winning both states in the General Election. It also goes without saying that selecting Sebelius would also help Obama win over many of Hillary Clinton’s very disappointed women supporters throughout the entire United States.
While not well known to many Americans outside of the US Midwest, Sebelius is held in high regard by National Democratic Party figures and was actually touted as a possible running mate for John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential race and was also one of the first Democratic super delegates to come out in support of Barack Obama.
However, while I am a strong supporter of Kathleen Sebelius as a VP candidate, I don’t see becoming US Vice President in her future. I think it is much more likely she will run for and win the US Senate seat of Republican Senator and former Presidential candidate Sam Brownback, when her second term as Governor is up in 2010.
An even less well know Vice Presidential running mate possibility for Obama is one of my other two favourites for the position on an Obama ticket. That would be a retired four star US Marine Corps General, Anthony Zinni. As a veteran of the Vietnam War and former Commander in Chief of US military forces in the Middle East, Zinni brings the military experience and credibility that Republican nominee John McCain wields to Obama’s ticket as his Vice President.
But in addition to his military commander credentials, Zinni also brings with him foreign policy gravitas because he was also appointed to serve as a special envoy for the United States to Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 2002. Furthermore, Zinni was also an early and vocal public critic of the Bush administration and much like Senator Obama, did not support Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq, which is also why he left his post as Bush’s special envoy for Israel and Palestine in 2003.
Zinni’s 2004 memoir, Battle Ready, co-authored with Tom Clancy, is stinging rebuke of the Bush administration and the man he voted for as President in 2000 as well as a must read for anyone interested in knowing the real story behind pre and post-battle planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But as much as I like him as a VP choice, I don’t think Zinni really wants to become that involved in politics and think it more likely he would serve as Obama’s National Security Advisor than run as his Vice President.
So that brings me to the last of my three favorite picks as Obama’s running mate, a Republican Senator from the state of Nebraska. While I may well be wrong about this, I believe that in a bid to demonstrate his commitment to a new era of bi-partisan politics, Obama will actually select US Senator Chuck Hagel from the opposition Republican Party to be his Vice President. So how did I come to such an outrageous conclusion?
For starters, Hagel is a Vietnam War veteran, a lifelong Republican and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations committee who previously worked as political organizer for Ronald Reagan and then as his #2 political appointee at the Veterans Administration. So his selection would not only be an unprecedented bi-partisan gesture but would also bring the military and foreign policy credentials Obama lacks to the ticket.
Furthermore, Hagel left government service in 1982 and became a multi-millionaire business entrepreneur and CEO before he returned to government as a US Senator in 1996. Thus he also possesses the business experience and economic credentials that both Obama and his opponent John McCain lack. But unlike McCain, Hagel was an also an early critic and vocal opponent of the Iraq War and his wife, Lilibet, is a major financial supporter of Obama.
While Chuck Hagel wouldn’t be a popular choice for some Democrats, Obama would find huge support for this among independent and Republican voters, particularily in Midwestern states that usually vote Republican. So next week I will discuss who McCain might choose to counter with as his VP.

Democratic Veep stakes

2008-07-20T15:03:00.001Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on June 19th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

As I promised you last week, this column will be my first attempt to handicap the thoroughbreds who are running in the Democratic Vice Presidential Stakes race. The winner of this race has historically run the gamut from heavy favourites to “dark horses” and often ends with a surprise long shot that no knowledgeable bettor would ever pick
But as most handicappers do, I will begin by discussing the media “odds makers’” favourites and work my way down the tote board to the long shots that I am placing my own personal bets on. Needless to say, no one will be more interested than I am in seeing how well I have called this particular race come July or August when the winner is announced. So without further adieu, let’s discuss the favourites in this stakes race.
At 3:2 odds we have the heavy betting favourite thus far, which is the distaff that finished second in the Donkey-Ass Stakes known as Billary. I have already discussed this hard running mare at length but I don’t think she can win this race so I will avoid dwelling on her and or her chances of winning and focus on the rest of the field instead. As for Billary’s future career in this sport, while Billary is too junior a Senator to acquire a leadership role or Committee Chairmanship when she returns to the Senate, if she works hard for Obama’s election this autumn she could be appointed to succeed fellow New York Senator Chuck Schumer in a high profile position chairing the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. It’s probably the best consolation job available for her.
The second choice is a strong running steed bred in Virginia named Senator Jim Webb and the odds of him winning are around 2:1. Webb is both a military (Navy) veteran and a former Republican who served as President Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy so he would bolster Obama’s credentials in the ready to be a Commander in Chief area since Obama has no such military related experience. But neither Abraham Lincoln nor Franklin Roosevelt had such experience when they were elected President and they both proved to be very able Commander in Chiefs. While Webb has been a vocal opponent of the Iraq war, he is also an advocate of economic protectionism which Obama is not and he has a reputation for being volatile and difficult to control. I just don’t think his temperament would be a good fit in terms of serving as Obama’s Vice President.
Another heavy betting favourite at 3:1 odds is a Spanish gelding bred in New Mexico named Governor Bill Richardson that finished fourth in the Donkey-Ass Stakes. Richardson would help Obama attract more Hispanic voters and would also bolster Obama’s perceived lack of foreign policy experience given his previous service in this area for former President Bill Clinton. New Mexico is also a crucial swing state in Presidential elections that was also the most closely contested state contest in the last two presidential elections. But I believe Richardson would be a much better fit in a cabinet position such as Secretary of State in Obama’s presidential administration so I am not going to bet on him in the Vice Presidential Stakes.
The other heavy favourite at 3:1 odds is the popular pony from North Carolina called John Edwards. Edwards is an experienced contender who finished a distant third in the 2008 Presidential Stakes race and also won this race the last time it was run in 2004. He is also very popular with the type of working class white voters that bet heavily on Billary in a string of races from coast to coast throughout this spring’s presidential campaign. But much like Richardson I see Edwards as a much better fit as the US Attorney General in Obama’s cabinet and it appears that Edwards himself views that position more favourably than running in the Vice Presidential Stakes again.
Among the nine middle odds thoroughbreds, at 10:1 there is another former Vice Presidential Stakes winner from the 1992 and 1996 races that was bred in Tennessee named Al Gore. His experience in the 2000 Presidential Stakes race, which he actually won before being disqualified by the Florida stewards, would no doubt help Obama immensely, but this pony seems to be quite content continuing to graze in Green pastures around the world and is unlikely to ever race again. A better place for him might be as an Obama administration Cabinet officer in charge of US Environmental policy.
At 9:1 there is another Virginia thoroughbred named Mark Warner but he is planning to run in the Virginia Senatorial race which he is also likely to win. It’s doubtful this horse will forgo this winning opportunity in order to run in the Vice presidential race.
Among the other hopefuls at 15:1 odds are the fifth and sixth place finishers in the Donkey-Ass Stakes, Senator’s Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Joe Biden from Delaware. While either would help Obama burnish his foreign policy credentials I think it is much more likely they would be offered a foreign policy job in Obama’s Cabinet.
At 17:1 odds there is an older Georgia bred horse with lots of military and foreign policy experience named Sam Nunn along with Obama’s South Dakota stable mate Tom Daschle, but I don’t see them running any better than the trio of Clinton supporters, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Governor Ted Strickland from Ohio or former General Wesley Clark from Arkansas, which the odds makers have put in a group at 13:1 odds.
Next week I will discuss the three long-shots in the field from which I believe the winner of the Vice Presidential Stakes race will emerge and why I like their chances even though most of the political odds makers don’t. Of course those same odds makers didn’t think much of Obama’s chances either until he broke out of the gate quickly at the start of the race in Iowa.

Alternative careers for Hillary Clinton

2008-06-11T14:08:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on June 12th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

Last week I mentioned an alternative career for Clinton as a US Supreme Court justice that I could foresee her pursuing and that Barack Obama might wish to consider as an alternative to a position in his cabinet. However this option is heavily dependent on how Mrs. Clinton orchestrates her withdrawal from the Democratic nomination contest and how vigorously she and the ex-President campaign for Barack Obama this autumn.
While I could be wrong, I continue to assume that Clintons will do more than pay lip service to the idea that Democratic Party unity and defeating John McCain in November is more important than their personal political ambitions to reclaim their former residence in the White House. But in response to suggestions that Obama might offer Clinton a position in his cabinet instead, the Clintons’ supporters were told to begin campaigning for her to be Obama’s Vice President.
Bill Clinton has been privately voicing support for placing his wife on the ticket for some weeks now because he has calculated that this would be the best alternative as a spot where Hillary could launch another Presidential bid in either 2012 or 2016. While I don’t believe Mrs. Clinton has the necessary CEO skills to be an effective and competent US President, I do agree with her husband that serving as Obama’s Vice President is her best path to winning the Democratic nomination in 2012 or 2016. I discussed both mine and the Clintons’ reasoning in last weeks column, but recent statements made by the Clintons while they were campaigning in South Dakota ahead of the final Democratic state primary severely undercut their campaign to become Obama’s running mate(s).
Let it suffice to say that because I now believe the Clintons’ chances of being on the ticket have gone from slim to none, I would now like to offer some suggestions about what she could do as an alternative. Obviously one option would be for her to return to the US Senate where she has demonstrated the ability to be an effective legislator. She will probably win re-election to her Senate seat easily in 2012 and could then run for President again in 2016 at the end of Obama’s second and final term in office.
Mrs. Clinton has learned a lot during the course of her failed bid for the Democratic nomination this year and it’s likely she won’t repeat all those same mistakes again. Hillary has also demonstrated she has both the tenacity and stamina to run for the presidency, so she would be a formidable opponent for whoever the incumbent Democratic Vice President happened to be or any other Democratic candidate for that matter. But an incumbent Vice President still possesses more advantages in such contests.
The other two options I see for Mrs. Clinton involve her giving up her Presidential aspirations for good and for all much like Ted Kennedy did after he failed to unseat President Jimmy Carter back in 1980. Since that failed race for US President, Senator Kennedy has gone on to become the third longest serving and, more importantly, one of the most distinguished and effective Senators the US has ever known. He is widely respected and held in great esteem by liberals and conservatives from both the Democratic and Republican parties. I believe Hillary Clinton has the intelligence and political savvy to serve as a worthy successor to Kennedy’s mantle should she choose to.
The other option entails Mrs. Clinton becoming willing to give up her political career and with it the national limelight that attends members of the US Congress. But a career as a Supreme Court justice has a number of advantage. The biggest of these is she does not have to go out to raise money and campaign for re-election every six years in addition to putting up with the sometimes harsh media scrutiny that attends any candidate for high political office. Another major plus is that Supreme Court justices serve for life in a position that commands the utmost in respect and dignity from the general public.
Personally, I think Mrs. Clinton is both more capable and better suited to a career involving either of these last two options or serving as Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. I also think Hillary could realize even greater personal satisfaction from any one of these three jobs than she would ever find in the job of US President. My only question is “Would Bill Clinton be satisfied with the prospect of never being able to return to their former residence in the White House except as invited guests?” At this juncture I would have to guess the answer would be “probably not”, but it’s really a bit too soon to tell yet.
So if the Clintons are out then who do I think Barack Obama will pick to be his running mate for the General Election? That’s a tough question and one that is much harder for me to predict than my March 15, 2007 column’s choice of Barack Obama as the best of the potential 2008 US Presidential candidates from either political party. But of course I will nonetheless attempt to do so anyway since Obama’s choice as Vice President will tell us a lot about how much the last few months of trench warfare with the Clintons has changed him as a Presidential candidate.
Given the Irish love for betting, I will begin by first giving you some odds on the various different Democratic Vice Presidential candidates that are being discussed in the news media both in the US and abroad, as well as my personal assessment of these candidates and reasons why they might or might not be selected. I will then follow that up with my appraisal of a couple of “dark horse” candidates that I think would be better choices than the ones being most prominently mentioned by the mainstream political media types. So now you know what to look forward to next week.

Why do the Clintons want to be Vice President?

2008-06-11T14:07:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on June 5th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

Last week I closed my column by promising to discuss the Clintons best chance for returning to a position of power in the White House. I call this the Clintons’ “back door” option because while one might prefer to enter this “House” through the front door, if that entrance is blocked then why not go in through the back door? In other words I think Hillary will try to gain entry as Obama’s Vice President.
Consider if you will that over one third of all US Presidents served as the US Vice President first, before later moving up to the job as US President. Sometimes they assumed the Presidency because of the untimely death of their predecessor while at other times they won their party’s nomination and then the general election when the President they served under didn’t run for President again. But regardless of how they became President, the fact remains that serving as Vice President is as good a stepping stone to the top job as there is in US politics.
While I could be wrong, I strongly believe that the Clintons have done their math and come to the same conclusion; that getting on the ticket with Obama is their only other good option for landing in the Oval Office again. This observation is also based on the end game I have watched the Clintons playing ever since they and their closest advisors were finally forced to admit (privately not publically) that they had lost the Democratic Presidential nomination to Barack Obama due to the disappointing vote of no confidence they got from the voters in last month’s Indiana and North Carolina primaries. Once the reality that it was over sunk in, the Clintons and their top tactical adviser, Harold Ickes, began sorting through various possibilities that could get them back into the White House and then developed a strategy based on a number of different possibilities.
The first scenario involves continuing to search for information about Obama that could blow up Barack Obama’s chances of clinching the Democratic nomination while simultaneously toning down attacks on him to placate the concerns expressed by many Democrats that the Clintons were hurting the Democratic Party using such tactics. Then if the hoped for information never materialized, the Clintons could tout how they made nice once they saw the end in sight, even though they nonetheless continued their campaign against Obama. Toning down their attacks also helps lay the groundwork for getting the Clintons on the ticket as Obama’s Vice Presidential running mate(s).
The second set-up involves threatening to fight on to the convention in August thus maintaining rather than repairing the racial, gender and socioeconomic divisions the Clintons have opened up within the Democratic Party and hurting Obama’s chances of wining the General election. More importantly, the prospect of losing in November because of theses divisions scares Democratic leaders so the Clintons believe this threat will cause them to pressure Obama to offer the Clintons the Vice Presidency.
The Clintons are well aware that Barack Obama, his wife Michelle and their closest advisors will vigorously resist the Clintons push to get on the ticket no matter how much they threaten to wreak havoc, so they are counting on Democratic leaders to pressure Obama to agree in the larger interests of Democratic Party unity. The Clintons will then be able to return to the White House thanks to the Vice President’s set of offices in the West Wing of the White House when the Obama-Clinton ticket wins in November.
The Clintons and Ickes have already calculated that they have a better chance of becoming President if Obama wins even if they have to wait 8 more years to run again, because they’ll be running as the incumbent Vice President instead of running against an incumbent Democratic Vice President not named Clinton. Hillary will be 69 years old in 2016 and while that’s still younger than John McCain currently is, her age won’t be as much of a concern because of the other advantages she would enjoy running as a sitting Vice President. The Clintons are also aware that Hillary’s Senate seat wouldn’t serve as well as the Vice Presidency as a springboard to the Oval office. This is due to the fact that the President elected later this year will only be the third Senator in US history to move straight from the Senate to the White House.
The Clintons also know that if they are not on the ticket and Obama loses this election to McCain, they are likely to be blamed by a large segment of the Democratic Party for their divisive primary attacks which will hurt their chances of being the nominee in 2012. But if they are on the same ticket with Obama and lose, they will be more likely to get away with blaming Obama’s weaknesses, telling Democrats that they had tried to warn the party of such an outcome in spite of their best efforts to win the election as Obama’s running mate(s).
The Clintons arguments for why Democrats should pressure Obama to make Clinton his VP look good on paper because millions of Democrats voted for her in the primaries. But the Clintons conveniently ignore the fact that some of her less educated, white supporters will likely vote for McCain, due to their latent racial prejudice, even if Obama chooses Clinton as his Vice President.
Another fact the Clintons ignore is the likelihood that many of Obama’s younger, independent and Republican supporters will regard a choice of Clinton as a running mate as a sell-out to the “old politics” that Obama has been campaigning against. The Clintons simply don’t fit Obama’s theme of change, which would lead some Obama supporters to either vote for McCain or throw up their hands in disgust and not bother to vote at all. Next week I’ll discuss a different career path for Hillary as a US Supreme Court Justice along with a few other potential VPs.

Bill Clinton now wants Hillary to be the Vice President

2008-05-30T10:42:00.001Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on May 29th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

As I predicted, the Clintons’ wins in the West Virginia and Kentucky primaries and Obama’s big win in Oregon last week surprised absolutely no one. Obama barely even campaigned in West Virginia and Kentucky and although the Clintons continue to argue they are more electable than Obama, they have ceased their negative attacks as they wind down their presidential campaign. It should all be over in two more weeks
During my discussion of the Clintons’ “end game” in last week’s column, my suggestion that the Clintons wanted Obama to pay off their campaign debts (as a way of gaining the Clintons’ support in this autumn’s general election) came as a rather unpleasant surprise to a few of my Republican friends who also happen to be supporters of Barack Obama. They thought it was totally unacceptable for our Obama campaign contributions to be used to help the Clintons..
First off I want to say that I do sympathize with the negative feelings about my suggestion that were expressed to me by many of my “Republicans for Obama” cohorts. The idea that our contributions might somehow be used to pay off the Clintons’ campaign debts is not a concept that I find easy to stomach either. Although such “pay offs” do happen with some frequency in US Presidential and congressional primaries, it is not the sort of thing either the winning or losing candidate are anxious to acknowledge publicly.
But however distasteful one might find this idea; it nonetheless serves an imminently practical and useful purpose for both the winning and losing candidates. The big benefit for the loser of course is they get relief from the burden of their accumulated campaign debts. In the case of the Clintons their financial liabilities are the largest that any candidate from either US political party have ever amassed and the Clintons’ $11.4 million in personal loans is less than half the total amount (which is close to $30 million).
As regards Obama shouldering a new $30 million burden in exchange for the Clintons withdrawal from the Democratic primary contest and their support in the November general election against John McCain, it should be noted that none of Obama’s current or future campaign donations will be used to pay off the Clintons’ campaign debts. Any and all money a person donates to Obama’s campaign can only be used by Obama to fund his Presidential campaign’s expenses, not the Clintons’ campaign debts. The way Obama helps pay off the Clintons’ campaign debts is by asking wealthy Obama supporters, who have already given him the $2,300 maximum allowed by law, to make a similar size contribution to the Clintons’ presidential campaign.
When the Clintons finally do call it quits at the beginning of June, what they will do is announce they are “suspending” their campaign, not ending it or withdrawing from the race. That allows them to legally continue to solicit and accept campaign donations even though their presidential campaign is actually over. If you think this sounds like some kind of shell game to avoid running afoul of US campaign finance laws then you would be right on the mark. Nonetheless, this is one of the realities of US political campaigning.
Given their numerous personal attacks on Obama and the divisive racial and gender separation tactics used by the Clintons over the past five months, many Obama campaign officials and supporters are none to pleased with the idea of helping the Clintons recoup the millions of dollars they had to loan their campaign this year to keep it going. Nonetheless it is in Obama’s long term general election interests to help them to do so as a way of unifying the Democratic Party and ensuring that Obama wins the election come November. “All’s Fair in Love and War” and in the US, politics is war!
The simple fact is Hillary Clinton has many older white, Hispanic and African American women supporters who had believed, hoped and prayed that a woman would finally be elected to serve in the most powerful job in the world. Many of them are extremely disappointed and maybe a little “bitter” that their dream will not be realized for at least another four or eight years, if not longer. But Obama needs them to get out and vote for him in the General Election instead of sitting at home nursing their wounded pride or expressing their anger by voting for McCain in November.
The Clintons have also appealed to the latent racial prejudice and fears of less educated, lower income white voters during their campaign. Obama needs the Clintons to tell voters that, despite what they said when they were campaigning against Obama, they should vote for Obama because he will still be a better President than McCain will. This will be a much harder sell for the Clintons than Hillary telling women to get out and vote for Obama, but their efforts to do so will be closely watched by both Obama’s supporters as well as Democratic Party leaders.
Should the Clintons fail to campaign vigorously for Obama leading up to the November election, both their standing and future influence in the Democratic Party will be seriously diminished. There are many Democrats who have never really liked the Clintons or the ethics related scandals surrounding them, but they tolerated them for the past 16 years because of Bill Clinton’s considerable political gifts.
If the Democrats lose this opportunity to reclaim the White House because of the racial and gender divides the Clintons have tried to take advantage of during their presidential campaign, the Clintons have to know that this will have a huge negative impact on any future political plans they might have. Even so, it remains to be seen whether the Clintons are truly willing to accept this loss of their best chance to return to the White House for the sake of their Democratic Party. But they do have one other chance which I will discuss next week

The Clintons' end game

2008-05-30T10:37:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on May 22nd in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

In my column three weeks ago, I predicted that the Democratic primary contests in North Carolina and Indiana would be the “last two contested Democratic primaries of the 2008 primary election season.” When I was questioned about the validity of this prediction following statements by Hillary Clinton that she would continue in the race following her lopsided loss in North Carolina and near loss of Indiana, I told the questioner that my prediction was just as valid today as it was three weeks ago.
I will now attempt to explain my rationale. To my way of thinking a “contested” primary is one in which two or more candidates are utilizing all of their personnel and financial resources in an effort to either win the primary or hold down their opponent’s margin of victory.
Two of the five remaining states, West Virginia on May 13th and Kentucky on May 20th, are virtual locks as primary wins for the Clintons because they both have a large base of lower income white voters and she leads in the polls there by 20 to 30 percentage points. In addition to these states, Puerto Rico which votes on June 1st, also has an overwhelmingly Hispanic population which also heavily favours the Clintons.
On the other hand, two of the other remaining states, Montana and South Dakota which both vote on June 3rd, have demographics which are very favourable to Barack Obama as does the state of Oregon, which like Kentucky also casts its votes on May 20th.
Both the Clintons and Obama realize there is virtually no chance that either of them will be able to hold down their opponent’s margin of victory, much less win outside of the areas they are already very strong in. As a result, neither candidate is pouring all or even a substantial portion of their available campaign resources into any of these six remaining primaries. To be sure, both the Clintons and Obama will still appear at campaign rallies, give a few speeches and even run some TV ads in all of these states.
But they will be doing so to “keep up appearances” so to speak, which is not the same thing as “contesting” the primaries in these states. No my friends, despite what you may be reading or seeing on the telly about the US Democratic Presidential nomination “contest”, it in fact ended on Tuesday, May 6th when Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination by trouncing the Clintons in North Carolina and by almost winning Indiana.
With the voting results that evening, Barack Obama demonstrated to both the uncommitted Democratic super delegates as well as the Republican Party that he could “take a licking and keep on ticking.” As a result, a new phase of the US Democratic presidential campaign got underway, the one I refer to as “the end game.” This is the part of the party’s nomination process where the victor and the vanquished begin to negotiate the terms of surrender for the loser.
Let me also emphasize that this is a very delicate but important process, especially for the winner, because it will go a long way towards determining the victor’s chances of success in the November general election presidential campaign. In this particular case, Obama will have to negotiate a face saving exit strategy for the Clintons if he wants to ensure that they will actively support him in his presidential bid against John McCain.
I will now describe for you how I believe this process will unfold over the next three months leading up to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this August. The first steps were taken by each side in their respective “victory” speeches after they were declared the winners of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries.
Both Clinton and Obama congratulated each other for their respective victories and then went on to stress the need as well as their desire for the Democratic Party to unite behind the party’s nominee in November. Flanked by a very glum looking Bill Clinton, Hillary’s victory speech in Indian sounded almost like a concession speech with an emphasis on Democratic Party unity in the fall election campaign. While Obama also stressed his desire for party unity after congratulating Hillary at the outset of his speech, the rest of it sounded very “presidential” and appeared to be aimed at general election voters rather than his supporters or the Democratic Party.
The negotiations on Hillary’s exit from the campaign began the next day when her campign first “leaked” and then confirmed that the Clintons had been forced to loan their presidential campaign an additional $6.4 million of their personal fortune during April and May. This was seen as an embarrassing admission because it was in addition to the Clintons’ previously announced $5 million loan back in late January.
But in fact this was actually a signal to the Obama campaign regarding one of the most important terms of the Clintons’ agreement to surrender. It was then followed by the Clintons’ pledge to keep the contest going all the way to the convention if necessary.
What the Clintons were really doing was telling Obama that if he would agree to pay off their campaign debts of the $11.4 million in personal loans as well as another $10 million plus they owed people like former campaign strategist Mark Penn, they would try to exit the race before the end of the May and start urging their supporters to back Obama. Otherwise they were prepared to loan their campaign more money and continue to fight on till the August convention.
I think it is likely that Obama will allow the Clintons to “suspend” their campaign sometime soon after May 21st following their likely victories in West Virginia and Kentucky and Obama’s win in Oregon May 20th. Then the Clintons can claim to be going out as winners and Obama can start to reunite the party well before the convention. Now we’ll wait and see if I’m correct.

I think the fat lady is singing

2008-05-30T10:34:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on May 15th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

As I write this column American voters have just finished going to the polls in North Carolina and Indiana as part of our never-ending Democratic presidential primary to vote for their choice as a successor to President Bush. Today also marks the last day of Bertie Ahern’s 11 years of service to Ireland as Taoiseach. I know the media have grown weary of Bertie and some Irish citizens have become disillusioned because of Bertie’s allegedly questionable personal financial dealings while he served as Finance Minister, but I think history will judge him much more kindly than many of his critics currently do.
In my opinion Bertie Ahern did a fairly good job as Taoiseach over the course of his three terms as Ireland’s political leader and this fact will eventually lead most Irish citizens to look back and recall his successive terms as Taoiseach fondly. I wish I could say the same for one of Bertie’s political contemporaries who will also be stepping down in about eight more months, US President George Bush. In a marked contrast with the US President, Bertie Ahern saw that the media spotlight on the controversy surrounding his personal finances going back some fifteen years was making it very difficult for both him and the Fianna Fáil Party to continue to govern Ireland in an effective manner.
Across the Atlantic, it was five years ago that President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq by telling the American people and the rest of the world “Mission Accomplished.” Well today the President still lives in a dream world of what might have been instead of the real world of what is. Thus while all US Presidents have some difficulty getting their agendas addressed in their last year in office (because public attention shifts to the contest to succeed them), Bush is earning the singular distinction of becoming the most irrelevant and unsuccessful president during his final year in office in US history.
The recent debate about waiving federal gas taxes for the summer months was entirely focused on what Bush’s three would-be successors thought should be done rather than what President Bush thought about this issue. But this is only one small snapshot of how Bush has become totally irrelevant as US President. Among other things, Bush’s plan for housing reform has gone nowhere, his push for a free trade pact with Colombia was dead on arrival, his recent so called climate-warming initiative has been totally ignored and the 71% disapproval rating of how Bush is doing his job is the highest figure for any US President since the question was first asked in the 1930s. Even more amazing to me is the fact that 29% of Americans still approve of the how Bush is doing his job.
In an effort to rationalize his current legislative ineffectiveness, Bush’s political aides continue to characterize him as being intent on pursuing matters of principle. This is their response to those who accuse Bush of being unreasonably stubborn and refusing to face up to the realities of a reeling US economy and a gaping budget deficit that are both due in no small measure to an Iraq war which occupies more US combat troops today than it did when Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq five years ago. Thus President Bush continues to demonstrate that he is much more concerned about how his legacy will be viewed some years from now than he is in proposing viable solutions or bipartisan legislation to address the current problems bedevilling the United States.
President Bush argues that his ineffectual legislative proposals are based on his principles (albeit questionable ones) that are set in stone. The end result is that he further marginalizes himself by ignoring the complaints of Democratic and Republican congressional leaders rather than trying to compromise with them. The magnitude of President Bush’s delusions about himself and his accomplishments as President is both an amazing and very disheartening sight to behold. Is it any wonder then that the American people have turned their focus to who the next President will be? Why should Americans even bother concerning themselves with the views of a man who doesn’t have any grasp of reality?
So based on the results from the Indiana and North Carolina Democratic primaries tonight what conclusions can we draw about who is likely to succeed George W. Bush?
While I may be wrong, based on my experiences in Arkansas politics I believe the Clintons’ purpose in playing up racial and gender divisions is two-fold. Either they will win the Democratic nomination and then the Presidency in November (they’re assuming of course that African-Americans will forgive the Clintons for their racially divisive campaign tactics and will still turn out to vote for them over McCain), or they will so damage Obama in the process of losing the Democratic nomination that Obama will end up losing to McCain in November. This scenario validates their claim that “he can’t win” without them publicly admitting that they’re also privately saying “because he is black”.
A loss by Obama in November would then position the Clintons to run for the Democratic nomination again in 2012 and tell Democrats “Hey we told you Hillary (and Bill) was the stronger candidate so now its time for you to let us prove it.” The Clinton’s greatest fear is that Obama will win in 2008 and then they won’t get another opportunity to run again until 2016, when Hillary will be 69 years old.
But the combination of Obama’s overwhelming triumph in North Carolina and the Clintons’ razor thin win of Indiana will probably be enough to swing most of the remaining Democratic super delegates to Obama’s side of the ledger. Whatever ground Clinton gained in the popular vote coming out of Pennsylvania was washed away tonight by the almost 15 percentage point loss Clinton sustained in North Carolina. I could be wrong, but I do believe I heard the “Fat Lady” singing tonight.

Who is fanning the flames of gender and racial divisions?

2008-05-30T10:03:00.001Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on May 8th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

In a column two weeks ago I began to discuss the politics of race and gender in America and ended by pointing to differences between the candidates positions on healthcare as well as Clinton’s propensity for fudging the truth. I also said that her lack of judgement on many issues had nothing to do with her being a woman, but instead were indicative of the kind of tactics used by many politicians; most of them males, in terms of telling people what they want to hear without substantive actions to back it up.
There is one more distinction I want to make between Obama and Clinton before I move on and that involves the issue of money. The Clintons have made over $100 million over the last seven years with Bill Clinton earning $52 million from speeches and consulting fees, which is more than all of the other former US Presidents have made combined.
Much of this money was paid to Bill Clinton by the same large corporations which have been Hillary’s most generous campaign supporters, hoping the Clintons would return to their positions of power in the White House. Anyone who believes Bill Clinton would have made anything approaching this kind of money from consulting fees and speeches if Hillary didn’t have any intention of running for President, is quite naïve in my opinion.
Yet Hillary claims she is fighting for the interests of working class families and small businesses. If this is true then why do the Clintons still owe many small businesses and working class union members many thousands of dollars in month’s old unpaid campaign bills, while Obama owes them nothing in unpaid bills for his campaign?
Among the Clintons’ hundreds of unpaid campaign bills is $7,700 owed to Ohio and Massachusetts theatrical stage employee union locals and $4,400 to New Hampshire’s Winnacunnet Cooperative School District. Furthermore, the campaign has stopped returning phone calls or e-mails and didn’t respond to a certified letter from Forty Two, an Ohio event production company which employs union workers, regarding over $30,000 in unpaid stage and equipment bills.
A union employee of Forty Two has this to say about Clinton; “We worked very hard to put together these events on a moment’s notice and do absolutely everything to a ‘t’ to make it look perfect on television for her and for her campaign. Sen. Clinton talks about helping working families, people in unions and small businesses. But when it comes down to actually doing something that shows that she can back up her words with action, she fails.” Sounds like a bit of buyers remorse from a Clinton supporter to me.
Clinton supporters like Geraldine Ferraro, who claim that Clinton is being ganged up on by the old “boys club” political establishment and that Obama is in the frontrunners position now because he is a “black man”, conveniently ignore the Clinton shortcomings that I have cited in my columns. These shortcomings have nothing to do with Clinton’s gender, but everything to do with the poor judgement and weak values she possesses. This also explains why Clinton and her supporters regard women (or former members of the Bill Clinton administration like Bill Richardson) who won’t vote for her as “traitors”.
Clinton is much more subtle, but no less effective, in her appeal to women to vote for her because she is a woman too, by repeatedly making comments about women approaching her with stories about how important her running for president is to them.
Clinton has also begun to play the race card by telling Democratic super-delegates that they must support her because “Obama can’t win” and leaving off the rest of the line “because he is black”. Clinton’s supporters are much more direct however, telling super-delegates that the reason Obama can’t win is because many white voters won’t vote for Obama in November because of the recent publicity surrounding some of the racist comments his former church pastor has made during some of his sermons over the years.
Obama has disavowed those statements by his former pastor and in a historic speech about race relations in America sought to explain to Americans why whites and blacks are still divided on racial issues forty years after the death of Martin Luther King. Obama’s speech was the most honest and forthright speech about US race relations that I have ever heard and, should he become president, it will go down in history as one of the best speeches he has ever delivered. Obama was raised by a single white mother and his white grandmother. I believe this speech came from his heart since he wrote it and then delivered it for 38 minutes without ever once referring to notes or using a teleprompter.
Obama addressed white voters by describing the effects of generations of discrimination on African Americans who grew up in a more segregated America, like Rev. Wright. Obama said “That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends, but it does find voice in the barbershop or the beauty shop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by (black) politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.”
Obama also addressed black voters telling them that “a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town, when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed, resentment builds over time. ”
So you decide; which Democratic candidate is trying to persuade Americans to move beyond racial and gender divisions and which one is still trying to fan the flames of these simmering old resentments to get elected?

This is not a Pretty Sight

2008-05-03T14:21:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on May 1st in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

The results are in from Pennsylvania and the Clintons as expected, won the popular vote by just over nine percentage points against Senator Barack Obama. Looking ahead, next Tuesday voters in North Carolina and Indian will go to the polls to cast their ballots in what I believe will likely be the last two contested Democratic primaries of the 2008 primary election season. Yes there will be still be five states plus Puerto Rico that will be voting for a Democratic nominee in the remaining four weeks of this season which ends on June 3rd , but I don’t think Billary Clinton will still be in the race anymore following the their losses to Senator Obama in these two upcoming May 6th primaries.
So what lessons about the nature of US politics can be drawn from the results of last week’s Democratic presidential primary in Pennsylvania? Well, thirteen percent of the white voters in Pennsylvania said that the race of the candidate was an important factor for them and 75 percent of these voted for Clinton. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, a Clinton supporter, had predicted race would be a factor back in February when he told political journalists that “You’ve got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate.” While they may represent a slowly diminishing segment of the total US population, the number of voters who cast their ballots for Mrs. Clinton because she was white arguably represent most if not all of the margin of difference between the two candidates.
Another thing we saw was that despite the distaste most Americans express for negative and or personal political attacks by candidates on their opponents, the fact remains that such tactics continue to work in favour of those who use them as the Clintons are now demonstrating. Until such time as these tactics have been shown to yield unfavourable results for those who choose to use them, we can expect them to continue regardless of what the opinion polls say about voters growing tired of them.
The Clintons have a lot of experience on both the giving and receiving end of negative personal attacks and have shown themselves to once again be very adept at fighting this kind of trench warfare. But the fact that they have increasingly resorted to such tactics ever since their initial defeat by Obama in Iowa isn’t really surprising all things considered. After running their Presidential campaign into the ditch and then finding themselves drowning in a sea of unpaid campaign debts, mud slinging was their only desperate resort to wrest the Democratic Presidential nomination away from Obama.
Watching the Clintons go down and out in this desperate grasping manner is not a pretty sight for me and many other Americans to watch however. In fact it actually saddens me because unlike many of my fellow Republicans, Independents and a sizeable number of Democratic supporters of Senator Obama, I do not see the Clintons as an evil or diabolical political duo.
I believe Hillary Clinton is one of, if not the most intelligent and astute women to have ever resided in the White House. Her daughter Chelsea is a reflection of what a good job she did as a parent under often trying circumstances. Hillary has also done a fairly good job as a US Senator for the state of New York over the last eight years, notwithstanding some of the very questionable politically motivated votes she has cast during her time as a US Senator.
For his part, I believe Bill Clinton is one of the most gifted and personable politicians that I have ever had the pleasure of campaigning against and or voting for. (Yes I voted for him when he ran for re-election in 1996) Bill Clinton also did fairly good job during his tenure as US President given the fact that he was dealing with a Republican majority in Congress during most of his two terms in office. Until he got involved in the current Presidential contest, Bill Clinton had also requited himself fairly well as a former President by acting as an Ambassador of good will for the United States.
Unfortunately however, the Clintons are now hard at work tarnishing their notable legacies of public service to the American people. Hillary Clinton sees the Democratic nomination as her just reward for all that she has endured through the years as the spouse of gifted but morally flawed former Arkansas Governor and US President. She believes that she has paid her dues as a political figure subjected to ridicule and years of public attacks by muckraking conservative pundits and Republican politicians. But she has also refused to acknowledge that some of her own actions have played a role in these attacks.
Bill Clinton erroneously views his wife Hillary’s bitter fight for the Democratic Presidential nomination as a referendum on his own Presidential legacy rather than as a gauge of the Hillary Clinton’s abilities as a Commander in Chief and Chief Executive Officer of the most powerful country in the world. Granted, Hillary never could have gotten to where she is today as a Senator and as the first woman to run for US President had she not been married to Bill Clinton, but this election is not about Bill Clinton or his legacy as US President.
The Clinton’s have refused to acknowledge the painful reality that their campaign is based on the politics of the last century. They continue to live in denial which is why they truly believe that it is their duty to save the Democratic Party from nominating a man who will not win the General Election because he is an African-American. Their denial is so strong that it allows them to ignore the damage that their scorched earth political tactics are doing to their political legacies and the Democratic Party. I truly hate to see them ending their political careers this way.

Gender issues in American Politics

2008-04-23T15:59:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on April 24th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

By the time you read this the results of the United States’ Pennsylvania Democratic primary will be known, so I will discuss those results and their implications for a continuation of the contest between Senators Obama and Clinton for the Democratic Presidential nomination in next week’s column. This week I want to begin discussing issues of race and gender in America, issues which affect citizens of many other countries as well.
Let me begin by telling you that I am an unabashed male chauvinist. The term “chauvinist” is derived from the last name of a legendary French soldier, famous for his devotion to Napoleon, Nicolas Chauvin. I am a male chauvinist in the sense that I love being a male of our species, make no apologies for it and will always defend us against attacks on our inclinations and tendencies as males. That is not to say that as males we don’t have some faults as human beings because, indeed, we have many different flaws.
Having said that, I think you should know that I am also a feminist. I am a feminist because I recognize, as many women also do, that for centuries the female of our species has suffered from abuse and been a victim of intolerable inequalities within male dominated societies around the world. If I was a female I too would want to fight against gender inequalities. To that end, in 2005 I was asked by some of my female classmates at the University of Texas at Dallas to help start the first on campus chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and served as the chapter’s Secretary (ironic position for a male officer to hold eh?) until I moved to Ireland in September of 2006.
Thus I am sympathetic to the many women of all ages and races in America and the rest of the world who regard Hillary Clinton’s Presidential candidacy as a true turning point in America’s history as regards equal rights and opportunities for women. But many women in America also believe that Barack Obama would be a better president than Hillary Clinton for many of the same reasons I do. Some of them are also members of the feminist movement and they tell me they’re being treated like traitors by their feminist friends because they’re not supporting the woman who is running in this historic election.
But is this really how we should make our decisions about who should lead the most powerful country in the world, based on our feelings about America’s history of racial and gender inequality?
Shouldn’t one ask the question “Am I really advancing the cause of equal rights regardless of one’s race or gender by casting my vote for a political candidate primarily because we are of the same race or gender?”
If I vote for a person on this basis and they get elected and then do a poor job won’t there be some who will wrongly associate this poor performance with their own misconceptions about racial and gender differences and say “Well I told you a person of this race or gender isn’t properly suited for the difficult job of US President.”?
What exactly distinguishes me from an obviously biased or prejudiced person who will not vote for a candidate or will vote against them precisely because they happen to be a woman or a person of colour?
The differences regarding what the US domestic and foreign policies would look like under Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are relatively few but not insignificant when you examine them closely. Obama recognizes that while Clinton’s proposal for a universal healthcare mandate sounds great to voters, such legislation has no chance of ever becoming law because the Republicans will keep it bottled up in the US Senate.
Hillary Clinton also chooses to ignore the fact that a similar plan was soundly defeated when she tried to push it through Congress during her husband’s first term in office 15 years ago. On the other hand Obama proposes incremental steps beginning with a mandate for children that Republicans will have difficulty opposing in the Senate. Obama believes that once you get some Republicans started down this path it will then be possible later to draw some of them to the idea of a mandate that covers adults as well.
Thus the real difference between Obama and Clinton’s universal health care plans is that Obama’s has a very good chance of passing the Senate while Clinton’s sounds better but has virtually no chance of ever becoming law. There are other important differences between these two candidates upon which one can base one’s decision on who to vote for which also have nothing to do with their race or gender.
On more than half a dozen occasions Hillary Clinton sought to burnish her military and foreign policy credentials by referencing her having to run from sniper fire on a visit to Bosnia as First Lady. That is until a few weeks ago when, following assertions contrary to Clinton’s by others who were there in Bosnia, CBS News unearthed video footage showing her entire arrival ceremony in Bosnia, noticeably absent any running from the plane or sniper fire. When confronted with this evidence Hillary at first claimed she miss-spoke and then later said she had done so due to sleep deprivation.
My question is what was Clinton thinking when she first started telling this tall tale three months ago in Iowa? Did she not bother to consider the fact that there were numerous US State Department, military and Bosnian witnesses to her arrival in Bosnia that day and that video footage of the visit probably also existed as well?
Unfortunately this is not the first time that Hillary Clinton has shown poor judgement and this lack of judgement has nothing to do with her being a woman. It does however reinforce my view that Hillary is just another politician who will say anything she thinks will help her get elected.

Food for Thought

2008-04-23T15:55:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on April 17th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

In recent weeks I have pointed to the negative impacts of global climate change to our health from tropical diseases and to our food supply from declining fish stocks. But even though many nations, including Ireland, have promised to take steps to curb CO² emissions over the last decade, the world's output of CO² emissions now totals over 10 billion tons a year and is continuing to increase each year rather than decrease.
So last week I closed my discussion about one of the negative consequences of climate change due to global warming, by saying that the consequences will be even direr for our children than they will be for us and then asking the question; “How will you explain your inaction to them?” Well today I want to discuss one of the few, but probably most visible, actions we have taken to reduce our current levels of CO² gas emissions, the production of biofuels.
While the idea of turning a product like soybean oil into an earth-friendly fuel such as biodiesel has merit, ample evidence suggests the concept has many limitations as well as unintended consequences. Alas, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but there are no quick, cheap, or easy ways to reduce the CO² emissions which are the primary cause of global warming. Believe me, I wish there were because dealing with this issue is going to cost me time, money and some inconvenience, just as it will everyone else.
But these are not sufficient excuses for us to continue to ignore the issue and simply let our children deal with the negative consequences of our inaction. Such an attitude is irresponsible at best and downright selfish if we are really honest about it. “Hey kids, sorry about the condition of the planet we are leaving you. We knew there was a problem with the way we were doing things, but since we couldn’t think of a quick, cheap or easy way to deal with it, we decided to just let you live with the consequences.”
Mind you I am not condemning Richard Branson for trying to experiment with powering his jet engines with biofuels. I applaud such efforts, however misguided they may be. At least Richard Branson is trying to do something to reduce his business’ carbon footprint, which is more than can be said for most other business enterprises.
But biofuels are not the panacea many in business and government once believed they were. There may be a fairly limited place for biofuels in the overall scheme of reducing CO² emissions, but it will never rise to the level that the many politicians and lobbyist engineers of tax breaks for the production of biofuels envision. Let me elaborate now on some of the reasons why biofuels are simply not a viable solution.
As we all know, appearances can often be deceiving. On the surface corn and sugar cane look like great sources of ethanol for our automotive fuel needs because when they are burned as a biofuel they emit far less CO² greenhouse gases than our traditional fossil fuels of coal, oil and natural gas. Moreover, there appears be a secondary benefit in that these biofuel crops also act to remove CO² from the atmosphere while they are growing in the field. The net effect makes them carbon-neutral, which is ideal for a fuel source because it means they do not add more CO² gases to our already overwhelmed atmosphere when they are burned than they remove while being grown in the field.
Sounds great at first blush, but when you drill down below the surface you find there are some unintended consequences that result from producing more biofuel crops like corn and sugar cane which will actually add to the buildup of CO² gases in the atmosphere. In fact burning biofuels could actually prove to be more harmful to the earth’s atmosphere than the current burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil is.
Princeton University recently released a study which showed that clearing temperate forests, tropical rainforests and or grasslands to grow biofuel crops unleashes long-sequestered carbon into the atmosphere. The earth’s forests and oceans capture and retain much of the excess CO² gases we emit by burning carbon based fossil fuels. While planting sugar cane or corn on land already in crop production is not a problem, clearing land to grow more food and or biofuel crops releases the huge quantities of carbon stored there into the air. This makes the current situation with CO² gases worse instead of better.
A Nature Conservancy study supports the Princeton University study but also goes a step further and shows that “converting rainforests, peat lands, savannas, or grasslands to produce biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia and the United States creates a ‘biofuel carbon debt’ by releasing 17 to 420 times more carbon dioxide (CO²) than the fossil fuels they replace.” The Nature Conservancy and other studies also point to other problems associated with producing more biofuel crops.
Growing corn requires the use of irrigation and lots of water. Water that is already in short supply in many areas of the world and a problem that will only get worse as the global climate continues to warm and certain areas get even drier than they currently are. There will be competition between homes and farmers for this water not to mention competition between consumers of grains for use as food and businesses buying grain to produce more biofuels. This last concern is potentially the most serious one.
Last year, two University of Minnesota professors wrote; “By putting pressure on global supplies of edible crops, the surge in ethanol production will translate into higher prices for both processed and staple foods around the world, If oil prices remain high -- which is likely -- the people most vulnerable to the price hikes brought on by the biofuel boom will be those in countries that both suffer food deficits and import petroleum.” That’s a lot of food for thought!

Plans for the George W. Bush Library have just been released

2008-04-08T14:42:00.002Z

Plans for the George W. Bush Presidential Library have recently been released.

The Library will include:

The Hurricane Katrina Room, which is still under construction and looks like a disaster.

The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you won’t be able to remember anything you see or hear.

The Creation Science Room, where you can see how God created the world in 7 days plus a bonus tour of how the Bush administration created the evidence that linked Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in just 7 days as well.

The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you don't have to show up.

The American Homeowners Room, where you can see millions of home foreclosure notices.

The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they won't let you in.

The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they won't let you out.

The Fiscal Responsibility Room, where you will hear lots of noise but see absolutely nothing.

The Weapons of Mass Destruction Room, which you won’t be able to find.

The Iraq War Room, where once you complete your first tour of the room, they make you go back for a second, third, fourth, & sometimes fifth tour.

The Abstinence Sex Education room, where you can see millions of positive teenge pregnancy test results.

The Dick Cheney Room, which you will find in an undisclosed location and which also includes a shooting gallery.

Future plans also include:

The K-Street Project Gift Shop, where you can buy an election.

The Airport Men's Room, where you can meet some of your favorite Republican Senators.

In addition to the aforementioned plans:

An entire floor will be devoted to a 1/64 scale model of the President's ego.

In order to highlight the President's accomplishments the museum will also have an electron microscope available to help you locate them.

There is no word yet on where the library will put the President's only book.

Its Trench Warfare Now

2008-04-04T02:45:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on April 3rd in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

Last week I discussed the CEO management style Mrs. Clinton has displayed over the course of the last year while running her Presidential campaign into the ditch. While not all of the problems Clinton has experienced on the campaign trail were of her own making, when you are telling voters you are the most experienced and capable Democratic candidate running for President then the buck stops with you regardless.
As President you can’t blame those you have appointed to positions of power in your administration for failing to get the job done. You have to casually admit you made a mistake appointing them by unceremoniously cutting them loose as quickly as possible, and simultaneously naming a successor who has a reputation for possessing whatever qualities that their predecessor lacked. There is no room for sentiment or personal loyalty when it comes to running a business enterprise or the US government. You have a much greater responsibility to US citizens and that responsibility is more important than one’s sense of personal loyalty to any one person, no matter how long they have been with you.
President Bush has repeatedly put his personal feelings of loyalty ahead of the interests of the US and its citizens by stubbornly resisting calls to replace long time aides who were failing in their jobs such as Alberto Gonzalez and Donald Rumsfeld. My concern is that Hillary Clinton has, from the outset of her presidential campaign, shown the same propensity as Bush for putting a higher premium on loyalty than competence or experience as a pre-requisite for working for her in her presidential campaign.
Thus far Clinton’s poor campaign management skills and inability to make hard choices have only had consequences that have affected her Democratic presidential nomination prospects. But install that same management philosophy and indecisiveness in the White House and it will be the American people who will suffer the consequences not just Clinton and her staffers. Is this the type of President I want answering the phone at 3am? A President who isn’t decisive and can’t bring herself to make tough choices?
When I saw Clinton’s 3am phone call advertisement questioning Obama’s ability to respond to some kind of middle of the night emergency, I got scared at the sight of her answering the call. While I understand her campaign’s use of this TV attack ad tactic in an attempt to cast doubt on Obama’s fitness to serve as Commander in Chief, the reality of such crises is that decisions on how to respond to them are made in much more unexciting ways. Even former Clinton National Security advisor and Hillary Clinton supporter David Rothkopf says that “It's a bit of a specious issue, somehow implying you need better judgment in the middle of the night.”
In fact US government historians and former national security advisers from both parties say that all serious presidential decisions have been made over the course of days or weeks and never in the middle of the night. Regardless, Senator Clinton’s decision to not even bother reading the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) prior to voting to authorize the Iraq war calls into question her ability to make better judgments as the US Commander in Chief in the middle of the day, much less in the middle of the night.
Aside from the fact that Senator Obama has shown better judgment than Senator Clinton on the Iraq war, Obama has also shown himself to be a much stronger and more decisive CEO than Clinton in terms of how he has managed his presidential campaign. The Obama presidential campaign staff is not composed of a bunch of people who all get along and agree on everything particularly as regards campaign strategy and tactics.
There were a number of Obama’s campaign advisers who were suggesting he change his campaign strategy and or tactics during the course of the last year while Obama continued to languish 20 plus percentage points behind Hillary Clinton in both national and early voting states’ polls. They wanted Obama to attack Clinton and among other things try to shed some light on the Clintons’ many questionable financial dealings since they left the White House in 2001.
Questions such as: How much money was Bill Clinton earning from speeches, (compared to what other former presidents made from speeches) on the basis of the presumption that he and Hillary would be returning to their White House perch after the 2008 elections? What were the names of the donors who had “donated” over $500 million to the Clinton Presidential Library and could they have been doing so to curry favor with the “next” Clinton administration? Why won’t the Clintons release their post-2000 tax returns until after they have been nominated as the Democratic candidate? What is in these tax returns that they don’t want Democratic voters to see until “after” they have voted?
Obama heard the voices calling for a change in strategy and considered the reasoning offered by those who proposed it. But Barack Obama decided that he was going to be consistent and continue to try and maintain a positive campaign message of bringing an end to the divisive politics that have dominated in the United States for the past forty years. He said that if he had to attack and tear his opponent down in order to win the nomination that he would be no better than that which he was fighting to change.
The Clintons have no such lofty illusions about political campaigns.. They are after all a product of the divisive anything goes politics that Obama is trying to bring an end to. Having squandered their advantages in name recognition, money and political establishment support, the Clintons have decided that they will attack Obama with a “kitchen sink” strategy in a final desperate effort to win the nomination no matter what it costs. I don’t think it will succeed but this is trench warfare now ….and the Clintons are very good at it.

Clinton shares many Bush traits

2008-04-04T02:43:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on March 27th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

So how is it the Clinton Presidential campaign went from leading all the national and early voting state polls by margins of 20 plus percentage points for almost a full year, (not to mention having over 200 super-delegates pledging their support before the first state primary votes are cast) to being behind in the number of primaries and delegates won, total number of all delegates and total popular vote in less than 3 months time? How do you begin your Presidential campaign with a massive war chest of Senate re-election and lobbyist campaign funds and find yourself loaning the campaign $5 million of your own $50 million personal fortune a year later because your political campaign is broke?
Now I could be wrong but I believe the answer lies in Clinton’s lack of effective Chief Executive Officer (CEO) management skills. Allow me to elaborate on why I believe this to be the case. At some point during their tenure all Presidents and CEOs have to resolve conflicts and disagreements between various different subordinates or groups of supporters. Such conflict is inevitable within any large organization because no matter how hard you might try to only hire people who share similar perspectives there are bound to be legitimate differences of opinion on how to accomplish certain objectives. It is the CEO’s job to resolve such conflicts so the organization can move on to deal with other issues and not get bogged down by sometimes petty disagreements.
In the case of the Clinton campaign, Hillary Clinton has cultivated an image as a strong and steady chief executive surrounded by legions of loyal and efficient staffers when in fact the reality of the inner workings of her Presidential campaign has been the exact opposite. The truth is that many of Clinton’s campaign advisers despised each other and there were also deep divisions within her campaign over campaign strategy, TV and radio advertising, where to allocate resources as well as how best to use former President Bill Clinton as a surrogate for Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail. These problems were allowed to fester for months throughout 2007 until her campaign ship almost ran aground on the shoals of financial insolvency at the end of January of this year.
Now don’t get me wrong here, but there is a legitimate CEO organizational management style whereby some CEOs actually seek to surround themselves with feuding subordinates because they believe the conflicting ideas that result from these clashes gives them the best possible set of options to choose from. There is also some evidence that would suggest that this style of management can be quite successful, but it requires a CEO who is both very decisive and also very involved in terms of the divergence of opinions between his or her subordinates. They only let the debate of ideas continue for a brief period of time before they step in and make a decision on which course the organization will take so that all involved can then move on to the next issue.
But while Hillary Clinton assembled a group of campaign advisors who were well known for their dislike of each other, she paid almost no attention to the details of the issues her campaign staffers were debating. Nor was Clinton decisive, preferring to delegate virtually all campaign decisions (no matter how large or how small they were) to various different lieutenants and to defer to her advisors on all critical campaign issues.
For months Clinton appeared to be totally unaware of the many conflicts that were simmering within her organization and that were also preventing her staffers from making decisions on how and where to confront the upstart candidacy of Barack Obama. The Clinton campaign’s seething cauldron of campaign staff resentments and unresolved conflicts over political strategies finally boiled over in the wake of consecutive February primary losses to Obama and led to the departures of her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, and Doyle’s top assistant, deputy campaign manager Mike Henry.
James A. Thurber, a professor of government at American University who is an expert on presidential management says this about Clinton as a CEO: “She hasn’t managed anything as complex as this before; that’s the problem with senators. She wasn’t as decisive as she should have been. And it’s a legitimate question to ask: Under great pressure from two different factions, can she make some hard decisions and move ahead? It seems to just fester. She doesn’t seem to know how to stop it or want to stop it.”
I found it interesting that Clinton chose another long-time member of her old White House inner circle of loyal aides as Patti Solis Doyle’s replacement. Maggie Williams, like Patti Solis Doyle, has had no previous experience running a presidential campaign or managing a paid political staff of almost a thousand people. In this respect Hillary Clinton has shown the same disturbing tendency that our current President Bush has shown during his two terms as President. Like Bush, Clinton appears to place a higher value on those who have demonstrated personal loyalty to her through the years than she does on their relative experience or competence.
Virtually all of Clinton’s key campaign aides are people who have worked for her for many years and are familiar with her peculiar management style. Clinton has also demonstrated the same propensity the current President Bush has shown for sticking by lieutenants who are not getting the job done even when other friends have urged Clinton to let them go. I find these tendencies troubling because it says a lot about the type of people Clinton is likely to nominate as Cabinet heads and for positions overseeing government agencies should she ever be elected President.
What the US doesn’t need is another four years of Presidential appointees who lack the experience or the competence to do the jobs they are tasked with. That is why I find these parallels between Bush’s and Clinton’s CEO management styles so disturbing.

The presidential candidates CEO skills

2008-04-04T02:42:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on March 20th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

Last week my closing comment was to express my hope for a landslide victory by Barack Obama in the General Election, one that would also usher in a bigger Democratic majority in Congress as well as many state legislatures.
One of my Republican friends, who is also sympathetic to my reasons for supporting Barack Obama, was nonetheless surprised to hear me advocating for larger Democratic legislative majorities as well. He wondered how I could do this given my longstanding opposition to many of the policies supported by previous Democratic legislative majorities in Congress as well as state government. So I will now attempt to explain my reasons for taking such a radically different position on this subject.
History has shown that US Presidents elected in landslide elections also bring substantial changes to the United State’s domestic political landscape. After his landslide election in 1932 Franklin Roosevelt brought Americans guaranteed old age pension benefits in the form of Social Security legislation. On the heels of his 1964 landslide Lyndon Johnson pushed through the 1965 Voting Rights Act that would later guarantee the success of 1964’s Civil Rights legislation. Ronald Reagan was able to cement the tax and economic reforms he had pushed through Congress (which significantly altered US economic and taxation policy) following his landslide win over Walter Mondale in 1984.
Just as the US was grappling with seemingly intractable domestic problems in those years, we now face a host of equally daunting issues that will require landmark legislation to effectively deal with them. I hope I will be able to see Barack Obama follow in the footsteps of these other Presidents because I believe he is the only one of the three remaining candidates with a chance of winning the Presidency in a landslide.
With a voter mandate provided by an overwhelming electoral win and a strengthened Democratic majority in Congress, Obama would be able to cut through a lot of the partisan political posturing we have seen in Congress for the last 20 years. With his emphasis on finding common ground and not trying to settle old political scores, I believe he would be able to get enough support from both Democrats and moderate Republicans to pass the difficult measures that will be required to address America’s ills while the country is simultaneously experiencing tough economic times.
If one closely examines the political campaigns of the three remaining Presidential hopefuls, you can get a pretty good idea of who is more likely to perform best in the role of US President. Being President of the United States of America is more akin to being the CEO of a huge corporation and thus is a role that is quite different than the advise and consent role played by a US Senator. Being an effective US Senator with a paid staff of 20 people doesn’t require the same kind of CEO skills needed to manage a Presidential campaign with a paid staff of over 500 people.
Let’s take a minute to examine the records of all 3 Senators and how well they have managed their respective Presidential campaigns over the past year. John McCain began his campaign in November of 2006 as the Republican frontrunner with the advantage of his past experience running for President in 2000 and narrowly losing in some key primaries against the current President Bush. He had the experience and the national name recognition from the previous campaign as well as a strong fundraising operation. McCain actually had more well connected lobbyists as fundraisers than any other candidate for President and raised over $13 million in the first quarter of last year.
So what happened? By July of last year the McCain presidential campaign was almost broke and they had to let almost 100 staffers go while the other remaining staff took pay cuts or switched to being unpaid advisors. McCain had also slipped from first to fourth place in national polls behind Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and the as yet undeclared candidacy of Fred Thompson. As a result McCain also showed both his campaign manager and chief campaign strategist the door.
But John McCain’s subsequent comeback to win the Republican nomination was less about savvy political campaign management and more due to the mistakes of his competitors and fortunate turns of events that McCain had no control or influence over.
In January of 2007 Hillary Clinton began her Presidential campaign in an even stronger position than John McCain thanks to the transfer of $10 million from her NY Senate campaign. She had been discussing running for President since the fall of 2002 and so it was widely assumed that much of the money raised for her 2006 Senate re-election was actually destined for the 2008 Presidential race.
She was the immediate Democratic frontrunner in all of the national polls due to her name recognition as the wife of a popular former President at a time when the current President was very unpopular. She also led the polls in the first 6 Democratic primary/caucus states and used this data coupled with influential lobbyists to raise an additional $25 million in the first quarter of 2007 to add to the $10 million from her 2006 Senate re-election campaign she started the presidential race with. By October of 2007 Hillary Clinton had a commanding lead in all of the national and early voting state polls over her 2 main rivals, John Edwards and Barack Obama.
By the beginning of December Senator Clinton was presumed by most political observers and establishment Democrats to be unstoppable in her quest to be the Democratic Presidential nominee. As a result many of these Democratic politicians decided to jump on the fast moving Clinton Presidential campaign train and announced they would cast their un-pledged delegate vote for Clinton at the Democratic National Convention. Clinton had over 200 Super-delegates pledged to support her before the first voters ever went to the polls.
So what happened? I will discuss this in some detail next week.

President Bush is out of touch with reality

2008-03-13T14:19:00.001Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on March 13th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

Today I want to turn my attention to the results of the March 4th primaries. My forecast was wrong in that Clinton barely held off Obama’s advance in Texas. But Clinton continues to weaken as Obama rolls into Wyoming on Saturday and Mississippi on Tuesday with no real chance of strengthening before the August convention season. Thus I remain more optimistic about the long range forecast for positive impacts from political climate change in the US than for progress on ecological climate change.
In my columns a few weeks ago I said that the number one US Presidential election issue was not going to be the war in Iraq, universal healthcare or global warming, rather it would be the sad state of the US economy. This does not bode well for Senator John McCain, the likely Republican Presidential nominee, and Republicans running for Congress since he and other Republicans in Congress are closely tied to our lame-duck President and his short-sighted economic and irresponsible fiscal policies.
Our current President seems to be increasingly irrelevant and hopelessly out of touch with the economic malaise that is enveloping the United States. Americans are now getting their first good hard look at the bills which are coming due for our President’s ill fated war in Iraq and failure to reign in government spending over the last seven years. He and his Republican cohorts in Congress still try to tout their 2001 and 2003 tax cuts as having been a boon for the US economy but more and more Americans are starting to realize that the economic prosperity of the last 6 years was actually a false prosperity financed by easy bank credit and irresponsible mortgage lending practices.
President Bush recently returned from a week long tour of Africa where he attempted to draw attention to one of the few good things that his administration has done during his two terms in office, which was to increase humanitarian assistance to many of the impoverished countries in this region. Unfortunately even these positive contributions have become lost in the chatter surrounding the President Bush’s numerous failed economic and foreign policies. Worse still is the impact those policies are now having on future aid to African countries.
As I write this the U.S. Agency for International Development is drafting plans to reduce the number of countries and or the amount of humanitarian aid it provides them because of a 41% increase in the price of wheat, corn and other grains over the past year. This food price inflation can also bee seen in the cost of bread and cereals by consumers in the US, Ireland and the rest of the world. While rising demand for theses grains in the booming economies of China and India is a factor in food price inflation, it is by no means the only or the biggest cause.
Another factor has been the drive to produce more alternative bio-fuels which reduce CO² pollution, an admirable but short sighted attempt to address the one of the causes of global climate change. Bio-fuel production is rising quickly in part as a reaction to the soaring price of oil which at $103 last Monday surpassed its1980 peak price of $38 a barrel before inflation adjustments. Surprised? Don’t be. The wisdom of using bio-fuels as an alternative to oil and gasoline for transportation needs was a subject under serious discussion at the Berlin environmental conference I attended two weeks ago. I will devote a separate column to a more in-depth discussion of this issue at a later date however.
That is because I want to discuss the biggest factor driving food inflation, which is the declining value of the dollar that has caused the prices of all commodities to soar in recent years. Most commodities and contracts for them around the world are priced in dollars because for decades the US dollar was the most stable and reliable currency in the world. But the huge US budget deficits (caused by the Iraq war and other irresponsible fiscal policies) coupled with trade imbalances due to US consumer demand for imported goods (which was fuelled by easy credit and inflated housing prices) has led to a drastic reduction in the value of the dollar compared to all other major currencies in the world.
Oil producers have raised the price of oil because the dollars oil prices are quoted in have lost value while demand for their oil production has held steady or increased. Thus much of the price increase for oil has not been driven by increased demand or a shortage of supply, but rather by a need to reflect the weakening value of the US dollar.
Producers of food grains use oil to transport their production to market and as their transportation costs have increased with the price of oil, so has their need to raise the price of their food stuffs. It usually takes a couple of years for a weaker dollar to translate this weakness into higher prices for oil and other goods that consumers buy and that is what US consumers are now beginning to grapple with. Only now are the true costs for President Bush’s use of the federal government’s credit card becoming apparent.
The good news in all of this is that by the time Election Day rolls around eight months from now, the US economy should be well into an Iraq war and budget deficit induced recession, one that Bush and his Republican cohorts will not be able to evade responsibility for. This may lead American voters to not only elect a Democrat named Barack Obama as their next President, but to do so in a landslide election that also ushers in a bigger Democratic majority in Congress as well as many state legislatures.

A negative effect of Global warming we can relate to

2008-03-13T14:17:00.000Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on March 6th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

Last week I discussed political climate change in the US and by now Metro Eireann readers will also know how accurate I may or may not be at providing political climate change forecasts. As such this provides me with a lead-in to this week’s column which deals with the ecological version of climate change.
Last week, I had the privilege of being invited to present a paper based on my Masters dissertation at the 2008 International Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Climate Change which was being held in Berlin this year. This conference brings together many of the top environmental researchers and scientists from around the globe for a series of plenary sessions as well as specific discussion panels dealing with all facets of global climate change, not just the increasing levels of CO² emissions which are the main cause of global warming.
Some of these other global climate change issues that research scientists are also grappling with include problems like deforestation, desertification, melting glaciers and polar ice caps, rising sea levels and costal erosion as well as coral reef destruction and plant and animal species extinctions. But the many negative impacts of global climate change that those of us involved in this research can validate as facts are very difficult for the average man, woman or child in the industrialised world to grasp because they don’t really experience any negative consequences from them. At least, not yet they haven’t.
Here in Ireland we have all had some recent exposure to one of the more benign consequences of global warming and by that I mean our increasingly mild winter seasons. While China has received a great deal of media attention this winter because of the unprecedented winter snows that disrupted its annual Lunar New Year holiday celebrations, the trend worldwide over the past decade has been towards warmer, milder winters, particularly in the countries in the Northern Hemisphere. In fact 9 of the 10 warmest years on record in both the US and the UK (the countries with the oldest meteorological records) have occurred in the past decade.
Mind you as a resident of Ireland for the past year and a half, I am not complaining about the warmer winter weather. In fact I must confess that I rather enjoy it as I suspect many of you do as well. But having said that I also think you should be aware of some of the less benign consequences that attend the issue of global climate change. I will begin by pointing out a couple of the downside risks to the milder winters we have been experiencing in Europe and in North America due to the warmer temperatures.
The warming of the more temperate land areas in the Northern Hemisphere has expanded the growing range and season for some of the plant species we depend on for food like wheat, corn, barley, rice and oats to name a few. But it has also extended the range, life cycle and habitable areas for certain insect species such as the pesky mosquito. With friendlier and larger habitats for mosquitoes there also comes an increase in mosquito borne infectious diseases like the West Nile virus from Africa.
Unknown in North America before 1999, in just four years the US death toll from the West Nile virus went from 7 people in 1999 to 284 in 2002 and it can now be found in every state except for Hawaii and Alaska and in all of the southern Canadian provinces except for British Colombia. This century’s more frequent summer heat waves in North America appear to increase the number and rate of infections because they contribute to mosquito activity and breeding. So why should people in Ireland be concerned about infectious African tropical diseases given the fact that the West Nile virus appears to be confined to North America and Africa?
Because closer to home here in Europe there are African immigrants spreading a different tropical disease called chikungunya, which is normally found in the Indian Ocean region of Africa. But the immigrants spreading this disease, which is a less debilitating relative of the much more dangerous dengue fever, are not humans. These African immigrants are mosquitoes, more specifically tiger mosquitoes, which thanks to global warming have been expanding their range north across Europe. Since its arrival in Italy three years ago, the tiger mosquito has now spread out across Southern Europe into countries like France and Switzerland and it is now thriving in a warming Europe.
Last summer in a town in Northern Italy called Castiglione di Cervia, over 100 villagers suffered for weeks with high fever, excruciating bone pain and physical exhaustion. These are the symptoms of chikungunya, a disease that had previously been seen only in the tropics near the Indian Ocean, and by the end of September chikungunya had been diagnosed in nearly 300 Italians in the areas around this village of 2000 people. My concern for Ireland and those of us who live and travel in Europe is that if chikungunya and the tiger mosquito that transmits it can now survive and spread in Europe, there is no reason why much more devastating tropical diseases like malaria and dengue, cannot as well. Global warming doesn’t sound quite so benign now, does it?
In the US we also have seen the range of the fire ant expand from the south western US to the north and east so they can now be found throughout the southern US and into the lower portions of the mid west. Warmer temperatures are also aiding the spread of aggressive and dangerous Africanized bees northward across the US, which is having devastating effects on the domestic bee population which pollinates many of my homeland’s orchards and gardens. In future columns I will discuss other aspects of global climate change that I believe readers might be able to relate to because they are more likely to experience the effects of them within the next decade.

Charles Laffiteau is a lifelong US Republican from Dallas, Texas who is now completing his University of Texas MA dissertation in Dublin following his graduation from DCU( on March 29th) with a MA in Globalisation. He will begin a PhD research programme in Environmental Studies in October.

The March 4th primaries

2008-03-03T18:33:00.001Z

Here is a sample of the spin the Irish and American ex-pats get over here in Ireland. Following is a quote from an half page political analysis piece speculating about Hillary's chances for a "Third Lazarus-like rebound" that ran in the Weekend Irish Times and was written by their Washington correspondent, Denis Staunton:

" She was counted out before New Hampshire and again ahead of Super Tuesday, when polls predicted huge losses in key states including California, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Clinton won all those states slowing Barack Obama's march towards the nomination."

EXCUSE ME PLEASE! Did anyone else in the US see the polls Denis is refering to. The ones that predicted HUGE LOSSES FOR CLINTON IN CALIFORNIA, MASSACHUSETTS AND NEW JERSEY. Hillary likes to complain about media bias but believe you me, she doesn't have a clue what true media bias is really like.

Anywho I plan to mention Denis's LACK of credible polling analysis when I am on the air from 10-12noon on Ireland's national radio broadcaster RTE Radio 1's Today with Pat Kenny tommorow in a preview of Tuesday's primary for the folks here in Ireland.

Here is the link if you want to listen http://www.rte.ie/radio1/todaywithpatkenny/

The show is on at 10am GMT which is 5 hours ahead of New York and 6 hours ahead of Dallas time so try the podcast if thats too early for ya. I have also done my part by voting absentee for Barack in the Texas Democratic primary. First time ever to vote in a Democratic primary so this joins the list of things I swore I would never do, but have.

BTW In my newspaper column last Thursday and on the radio tommorow, I am predicting a win for Barack in Texas and Vermont and a close finish if he doesn't win in Ohio and Rhode Island. I am also predicting that he widens his delegate lead over Clinton when all the votes are in even if Hillary does win Ohio and Rhode Island.

Now lets get out the vote and make my predictions stand up. Go Barack Obama!

charles

Hillary's SNL appearance

2008-03-02T16:00:00.000Z

Was it just me or did you notice that after having McCain's all but finished opponent "Huck" on last week, (a guy who is funny with his sense of self-depracting humor) Hillary was paired with Giuliani on last night's SNL. Both were viewed as the likely nominees and were leading all national polls just 3 months ago. SNL is only asking the "losers" to appear on the show.

The cartoon was just a semi-humorous way of pointing out the truth in that Obama excludes supporters from campaigning with him who symbolize the divisive politics of past years. I saw last night as SNL's endorsement of Barack as the winner and Hillary as the loser. The show also featured a popular band (Wilco) that is well know as bigtime Obama fans. Read between the lines.

Political climate change forecast for March 4th 2008

2008-02-29T16:32:00.001Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on February 28th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

Today I want to discuss the weather forecast for next Tuesday March 4th in the states of Texas and Ohio as well as Vermont and Rhode Island. The month of February started out stormy due to the collision of a strengthening Obama warm front with an entrenched but rapidly weakening Clinton cold air mass, but ended with spring like conditions across much of the US brought about by the powerful Obama warm front.
This collision of the Obama warm front with highs averaging in the 60s and the chilly Clinton air mass with highs only in the 30s to 40s, led to a lot of stormy weather from coast to coast across the United States in early February, with the weakening Clinton cold air mass withstanding the push from the warm Obama front along a line stretching from Massachusetts through New York and New Jersey, down into Tennessee and across the south-western states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona before it reached the Pacific coast in California.
But the rapidly strengthening Obama warm front pushed through the bitter Clinton high pressure system along the entire length of the Atlantic coast following a line from Maine to Connecticut, then down through the Chesapeake Bay peninsula area of Delaware, Maryland, Washington DC and Virginia before moving south and west across the states of Georgia and Alabama and then finally across the state of Louisiana.
This strong Obama warm front also pushed aside the fading Clinton high pressure system’s nippy air mass across the entire mid-west from Illinois through Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah and back across the upper mid-west from Washington State on the Pacific coast through Idaho, North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin as well as the northernmost state of Alaska and the most southern and western state of Hawaii.
These two opposing warm and cold fronts will be colliding in Texas and in Ohio (a state that 200 years ago was part of Virginia) as well as across the northeast in Vermont and Rhode Island where the once dominant Clinton cold air mass has weakened in recent weeks. Now the question is; will spring also come early to the rest of these north-eastern states along with Ohio in the mid-west and Texas in the southwest thanks to the onslaught of the Obama warm front?
Most veteran forecasters are extremely hesitant to make anything beyond the most tepid predictions about what is likely to happen on March 4th if they are willing to make any predictions at all. Their hesitancy to make predictions about these colliding air masses in Texas and Ohio is due to several factors.
The biggest single factor has been the strength of the Clinton cold air mass which has dominated the United States political climate for the better part of the past 16 years. It appeared to be a strong as ever for almost the entire year in 2007 until it finally started to show signs of weakening at the very end of the year in Iowa, right in the middle of the country. While all of these veteran forecasters will readily acknowledge that the Clinton cold front has weakened dramatically across the entire country since the beginning of 2008, they still have a healthy respect for the long standing history of dominance over the political climate this Clinton cold air mass has shown through the years.
Another factor which gives these veteran forecasters cause for pause is the fact that almost all of them failed to predict the sudden strengthening of the Obama warm front. They had all observed this relatively weak low pressure system circulating on the national forecast map throughout 2007 but they had not detected any appreciable strengthening of the system throughout the year. This led most forecasters to predict that this Obama low pressure system would never gain enough strength to dislodge the massive Clinton high pressure ridge before summer and its August convention season.
There are several other factors that have added to the unpredictability of forecasting the weather on March 4th. The first of these has been the influence of tropical waves which originated in the African continent hundreds of years ago and which appear to be strengthening the intensity of the Obama low pressure system. Countering this development has been the movement of another high pressure ridge into the south-western part of the United States from Mexico. This ridge of high pressure appears to be combining with the Clinton high pressure system and reinforcing the strength of the Clinton cold air mass.
The other difference between these two high and low pressure systems (which also helps to explain the long standing dominance of the Clinton system) is the fact that the Clinton high pressure system’s cold air mass is actually a combination of two strong high pressure ridges. This is a marked contrast with the Obama low pressure system’s single warm front which makes its rapid strengthening over the past two months both unpredictable and also quite remarkable under the circumstances. Given all of the aforementioned factors, I think the reader can now understand why so many weather experts are hesitant to make a weather prediction for March 4th much less provide a forecast for the weeks and months that follow.
I am no expert when it comes to predicting political climate change. However, I will make a forecast for March 4th as well as for the weeks and months that follow into summer (which ends with the convention season at the end of August).
I predict that the Obama low pressure system and its attendant warm front will continue to gain strength and will dislodge the Clinton high pressure system and its cold air mass from Texas and Vermont and will show surprising strength in Rhode Island and Ohio. While the waning Clinton high pressure system may still hold its position in Ohio and or Rhode Island, I foresee it continuing to weaken over the course of the spring. We’ll see how accurate I am next week.

My newspaper editor's idea not mine

2008-02-20T18:20:00.003Z

This was the newspaper staff's idea to insert the Obama for President banner into my weekly column, not mine. Too bad I'm the only one eligible to vote in the election.

2 part column on the number 1 issue in the US Presidential election

2008-02-16T15:53:00.001Z

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on February 14th in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

Ok now that Super Tuesday is behind us where do I stand as regards the respective Republican and Democratic US Presidential candidates? On the Republican side I hope that Senator John McCain will emerge as the Republican nominee even though I disagree with him strongly on several issues, most notably the war in Iraq.
While I often disagree with the editorial board of the New York Times, the following statement neatly summarizes my thinking about Senator McCain. “Senator John McCain of Arizona is the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe. With a record of working across the aisle to develop sound bipartisan legislation, he would offer a choice to a broader range of Americans than the rest of the Republican field.”
On the Democratic side I hope and believe that a majority of Democratic and independent voters will see through the Clinton campaign machine’s attacks on Senator Obama and the obvious distortions of his statements and positions on various issues (by the two-headed Billary machine) that characterizes the Clinton presidential campaign.
The New York Times editorial board even makes a note of these divisive and highly partisan Bush-Rove Republican campaign tactics in their editorial endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination saying that “we urge Mrs. Clinton to take the lead in changing the tone of the campaign. It is not good for the country, the Democratic Party or for Mrs. Clinton, who is often tagged as divisive, in part because of bitter feeling(s) about her husband’s administration and the(ir) so-called permanent (presidential) campaign. (Indeed, Bill Clinton’s overheated comments are feeding those resentments, and could do long-term damage to her candidacy if he continues this way.)”
The New York Times published a letter from President John F. Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline which I will now quote; “Over the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.”
But rather than dwell on Presidential candidate endorsements, today I would like to begin discussing where the 5 remaining candidates stand after Super Tuesday’s primaries and then begin discussing what I believe the major election year issues will be for the US presidential candidates.
On the Republican side McCain now has a large lead in delegates but lost several southern states to Huckabee and several western states to Romney. Conservatives pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter continue to attack McCain and their conservative followers in the south and west continue to split their votes against McCain between his two remaining opponents. Huckabee has no chance to win the nomination but I think he remains in the race hoping to end up as McCain’s Vice Presidential running mate. Time will tell if this ploy works, but I think it just might.
On the Democratic side Billary won in 8 states including big states like New York and California but Obama emerged with only 10 fewer delegates overall thanks to strong wins in 14 other states including America’s bellwether state of Missouri. Billary still has strong support from white women and Latinos but Obama has cut Billary’s margin among Hispanic voters down to a two to one advantage and garners more votes from white men in addition to his overwhelming advantage among younger voters. Obama will erase most or all of Billary’s slim 76 delegate lead by capturing all of the remaining 10 states voting during the month of February. This lead is due Billary’s support from 211 UNELECTED Super-delegates (Democratic political establishment leaders) because Obama has actually won 7 more ELECTED delegates in the 26 states that have voted so far in 2008.
As for the major election issues the number one issue is NOT the war in Iraq. While the war in Iraq is still an issue for the US electorate it is not the only example of gross incompetence on the part of the Bush administration and the President’s Republican allies in Congress. Have you ever heard the phrase “IT’S THE ECONOMY STUPID”? A long recession now looms for America thanks largely to President Bush and Republican Congress members’ complete repudiation of Republican economic and fiscal responsibility values. But I expect Republicans will attempt to blame the Democratic majority for the economic downturn and claim credit for quick action on Bush’s economic stimulus package which I believe is useful, but flawed and simply not enough.
That is my assessment as well as the view of a number of respected economists on the $150 billion emergency spending plan agreed to by President Bush and Congressional leaders in a bid to stimulate consumer spending in the US economy. Given that a lot of Americans are so deeply in debt, (due to the consumer spending boom of the last 16 years spanning the terms of both Clinton and Bush administrations) many of these consumers won’t use this money to buy new goods and services.
Since the tax rebate checks won’t reach consumers until this summer at the earliest, they won’t be able to spend the money until the end of the third or during the fourth quarter of 2008. By that time I expect a change in consumer psychology and attitudes will have already taken hold and a combination of fear and economic insecurity will lead them to save this money or use it to pay off debts rather than spend it.
I strongly believe the so-called prosperity of the past 16 years was a mirage. But before agreeing to a compromise with Democrats on tax rebates for middle and lower income workers, Bush was still promoting tax cuts for businesses instead of rebates, arguing this would coax companies to expand. Most economists question that assumption, asserting that if consumers lack money to spend, then businesses will stand pat or cut back and fire people, (whatever their tax rate) further deepening and prolonging any recession. Desmond Lachman, a respected economist at the American Enterprise Institute said; “Breaks in taxes for corporations are unlikely to make a difference. There’s waste in it.” Next week I will conclude my discussion about the number one issue in the upcoming US presidential election.

Republican Politics, American Style
Published on February 21st in Metro Eireann By Charles Laffiteau

Last week I began a discussion of my views about the number one issue in the upcoming election which is the US economy. For the past 16 years, American consumers have increased their overall spending every single quarter, which is almost twice as long as any previous streak. Now I’m afraid it is time for the payback. Martin Feldstein, the dean of Republican economists, says he thinks that the economy “could slip into a recession and that the recession could be a long, deep, severe one.” In the South Carolina Democratic presidential debate, Barack Obama made the same argument: “We could be sliding into an extraordinary recession,” he said.
Feldstein and Obama see the economic reality the US is facing, a reality that the other Republican and Democratic candidates or members of Congress don’t want to acknowledge much less address because doing the right thing to address America’s long festering economic shortcomings will be painful for everyone. But I and others in both parties contend that continuing to propose partisan half measure solutions, in an attempt to win elections or re-election, only postpones and increases the length and intensity of the painful measures America will eventually have to take to address its economic ills.
Ever hear the phrase “NO PAIN, NO GAIN”? There is a reason why this phrase has become a cliché in our language. That’s because whether we want to acknowledge it or not, there is a whole lot of truth in it. Unfortunately only Senator McCain on the Republican side and Senator Obama on the Democratic side appear to have the good sense, judgement and insight to realize that it is time to “face the music” and stop telling Americans what they want to hear (so they can get themselves elected to positions of power) and start telling them the harsh but honest truth so they can begin fixing things.
For many Americans a psychological barrier has already been broken and where you can see it is in the actions and sentiments of people who don’t live pay check to pay check. People with lots of disposable income, good jobs and money from investments in cities from New York to San Francisco are cutting back on their dry cleaning and hair salon expenses even though they are not actually being pinched financially.

People in New York are not that different from people in other US cities. In other parts of the country people are buying less expensive bread and skipping dessert when they go out for dinner. Business economists get nervous whenever consumers start pulling back. They know this pruning of daily expenses has a domino effect, setting off a chain of events that actually contributes to an economic slide and more fear. Consumer psychologists say that increased fear then leads to further belt tightening, deepening the economic slide and increasing fear in a seemingly endless cycle that feeds on itself.
Indeed, for the first time in many years retail sales in the US were down over the holidays, leading economists to debate whether the country could experience a rare decline in personal consumption, a sure sign of a recession that has already begun. The respected Pew Research Center says its polling shows that consumer confidence has plunged and that consumer satisfaction with the economy is now at a 15-year low.
But this is not why I believe the US is facing a prolonged and deep recession which will last for at least four or five years. The reason why this will be a very nasty recession is because the US housing market is only in the early stages of a downward spiral. Florida serves as a prime example of what is and will continue to be a looming financial disaster for many middle class US homeowners for the foreseeable future.
In the Fort Myers area of southwest Florida, the local News-Press regularly advertises auctions of homes built to sell for $250,000 with minimum bids of $50,000 and small condos are offered with opening bids of $25,000. $250,000 houses are now selling for $100,000, (when they sell at all) and most of the properties that are selling are “short” sales, where the debt and closing costs exceed the sales value of the house.
The consumer spending which buoyed the US economy for the last 16 years was (and still is) dependent on Americans feeling optimistic about the value of their assets. For most Americans their homes are their primary assets and these homes have and will continue to lose value for the next couple of years. When the decline in home values eventually slows and prices stabilize, this will be followed by at least a couple more years of stagnant prices before the market value of homes in the US begins to climb again.
When home values do eventually start to rise again, it will take another year or two for consumers to adjust psychologically and begin to spend more freely on consumer goods and household durables like furniture and appliances. If you do the math, 2 years for home prices to stop dropping + 2 years for home prices to stabilize + 1 or 2 more years for consumers to become optimistic about the underlying value of their primary asset = 5 to 6 years of economic recession in the US.
In an increasing globalized world economy it is foolish to think that the EU and Asian economies will not be adversely impacted by this prolonged slump in the US economy. It is also foolish to think that governments or central banks can do anything more than cushion the fall or mitigate some of the worst consequences. One of the unfortunate realities of free market economics and capitalism is that long periods of growth and prosperity are always followed by periods of contraction which, although shorter in duration, can be quite painful for a large number of citizens.
Whoever is elected as the next US President will be confronted with paying the bill for many years of deficit spending and financial mismanagement on the part of the current Bush administration and the failure of Congress and both the Bush and Clinton administrations to effectively confront the rising costs of the US entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare over the past 16 years.
The solutions to these and many other problems such as universal healthcare and global warming will require bi-partisan solutions which have been few and far between in American politics over the past 16 years. A continuation of the partisan politics which dominated the Bush and Clinton administrations for the last 16 years is not the answer.