What is up with Barack Obama?

Obama could be come the next JFK, minus all the womanizing. But he appears to lack a killer instinct, a syndrome quite prevalent among the current crop of likely Democrat presidential nominees. Recently he claimed he's going to take the gloves off and go after Clinton, but I suspect it may be too little too late. The time to attack, to distinguish yourself is right at the beginning. Making a formal decision to do it now makes me think they've realized that what they're doing isn't working.

Dems seem to be perpetually afraid of saying anything too controversial, despite the fact that polls indicate that the majority of Americans agree with them on the most important issues of the day. How is it that Republicans have no fear of uttering the most absurd statements imaginable (i.e. Romneys "double Guantanamo"), while Dems are biting their nails at saying they will end the Iraq war?

Obama's message is "hope" and a more positive politics. That's great, but it ain't gonna cut it in 2007. I would argue that the mindset of the electorate, the things they will respond to, is more receptive to a forceful message. He should be aggressively attacking the Republican party and their conservative ideology. He should NOT be attacking Bush, by the way. That would be a mistake, because Bush is out in 2009 and people will want to forget about him. Bush is most useful not as an individual, but as a shining example of conservative principles in action. He should be made to seem like he is the quintessential conservative. Why? Because conservatives are now trying to claim that Bush is not a conservative! That should tell you the correct strategy to use with Bush.

Want more wars? Vote Republican conservative. Want more debt? Vote Republican conservative. Hate children, and want them to be sick? Vote Republican conservative. The Republicans are a self-generating opposition research machine, but Dems just can't seem to make that connection.

Republicans are using fear as a central theme in their quest for the White House. Hope is not strong enough to combat fear, and it is not a primal animalistic emotion. What can counter fear? Anger. Make people angry. Really angry. And the rhetorical frame for that anger is the notion that the American people have been ripped off. People HATE to be ripped off. It combines the notions of theft, lying, and malice of forethought. That's what Obama should use his rhetorical gift for. Now, it is important for Obama himself not to appear too angry, he has to calibrate his level of outrage, lest the media pull a Howard Dean on him. But he has to speak forcefully, and make people pissed off with the Republicans.

Easy example. Flown domestically recently? The "security" theater at the airport is absurd. Take your shoes off, 3 oz. liquid limit, etc. It delays everyone, costs people money and raises your airfare so you can't afford to go see grandma on the holidays, it makes it hard to carry breast milk aboard so I guess it's also anti-child, anti-family, anti-mothers. And to top if off none of it has made a dime's worth of difference since the screeners miss ~70% of fake bombs carried aboard! This is conservative government in action. This is the best the Republican party can do. They raise prices, increase delays, and you get NO benefit. They say they improved security, but they're lying. They ripped you off.

Rinse and repeat.

Endowments for Cities

Big name Ivy League schools are well known for their large endowments. I believe Harvard has something like $30B and Yale about $20B. The person who manages the Yale endowment gets returns of about 18-20% annually.

Why can't cities do the same thing? Suppose we were to assess a one time only fee for every individual and business in a big city. I'll use NYC as an example. NYC has an anticipated tax revenue of $38B for the 2008 fiscal year. Now that's just from individual taxes of various kinds. Doesn't this put into perspective the enormous wealth of these Ivies?

Let's take a one-time 3% cut of this, and assume that buisnesses can come up with an identical amount. Six percent of $38B is $2.28B. That money will be the principle of the endowment, and will never be spent on anything. Let's assume a 15% return, which is clearly possible. At the end of one year we have a total of $2.622B, and the people of the city made $342M. We'll take $171M and put it back into the endowment (50% re-investment), and the rest can be used for....REDUCING TAXES! Make that the only purpose for this endowment. No infrastructure, jobs, salaries, nothing. Just for reducing taxes. Obviously the people who made the first contribution will get the least amount of benefit, but think about how much better their children will be?

Crazy idea? Maybe. But I don't see why the same principles and practices used by wealthy individuals can't be used to the benefit of everyone, rich or poor.

Relapse

Damn, had a relapse yesterday. Too much reading blogs, not enough of my own creative thought. I hope this blog helps me write better.

Alright, back to work. At least I wrote something down.

Distilling Your Life

When you write a resume or CV you're essentially distilling your accomplishments. It's a little disconcerting to condense years of work into several sentences or bullet points. What about all the stuff in between the lines? Well, no one cares about any of that, it's "just the facts ma'am". I don't like to talk about myself very much, so writing these things is a bit difficult for me. What you're really writing (or probably should be) is a kind of ad copy, where the product is you. Of course once you're done with that, there's the whole cover letter business, which is more of the same but even more salesy. This is why self promoters get ahead even if they lack certain qualifications, they have lots of practice.

Have you ever gotten back in touch with someone you haven't spoken to in a while? When the inevetiable "what have you been up to?" question arises, what do you write? I bet you don't write all the little details, just the big events: jobs, moving, children, marriage, etc. This is also a kind of resume, and it's just a little sad that once again you're bullet-pointing your life. I think this is one of the reasons family and friends are so important. They're around for all the between the lines stuff, a.k.a. life.

Inaugural Post

I just spent $4.95 on an e-book. I read it (mostly). One of the chapters in this e-book dealt with someone who read dozens of blogs each day, but at the end had nothing to show for it. That pretty much describes me. I think I'm a blogaholic. I consume vast amounts of information, but to this date have produced nothing. It's very addictive. Anyway, it spurred me to create this blog, which, if nothing else, will make me produce original content instead of passively gorging on information.