Pro Commerce

Communications problem?

Where did this notion of a communications problem come from? 

I've heard it for years in the gender wars.  "He doesn't communicate" is considered a complete denunciation of a male partner, date, father, brother or roommate.

For decades it has been the trope that fully explains why a couple is no longer a couple: "He didn't communicate".

For the past three months it has been a common explanation from the White House, in the Huffington Post and from Politico for a year of stalemate on Health Care Reform 'the President has been unsuccessful in communicating his policy ideas for national health care.'

Now, the failures of the Obama foreign policy are being explained by the State Department as a case of "poor communications".  You don't believe me? Read this State Department internal report.

The obvious meaning of communication (he DOES communicate) is that good communications make all sexual relations satisfactory, make everyone agree on fundamental issues, make sure there are no core differences in living habits, eradicate all differences of personal hygiene, odor or neatness..... and most of all good communications make all Obama domestic policies totally supported by the American people and make sure that all Obama foreign polices generate cooperation from Iran, China, North Korea and Russia.

Do I understand communication now? Its pixie dust.

Healthcare and finance

These are two systems.  A  system can not be reformed by an ideological fix.  The core problem is: the imagination of man is not easy to control.

The systemic failure of the healthcare system is that doctors and patients can conspire to get whatever treatment (five tests, two exploratory surgeries, etc) they want and the hospitals and insurance providers, in the medium term, have no choice but to cover it. 

As long as that system is inherently open ended, the additional element of human imagination enters the system.  Humans will never stop inventing new treatments, interventions and drugs to supply the market of doctor/patient collusion. The price of medical care will keep going up, except where institutions, such as Wal Mart, are big enough to put a cap on it and make the patients pay for part of it.

Look at Medicare.  When we old folk on medicare want more treatment, we demand it, our doctors give it to us and we put in the time to fight the bureaucracy until we get it paid for. No one has figured out how to control medicare costs effectively.

The same is true for the finance system. Wall Street financial sales organizations never stop inventing new financial instruments (human imagination is unlimited), usually on the back of the back of an existing instrument so it can be sold a second and third time.... (1) a package of bank generated loans, (2) traunched (3) with puts and calls around them and (4) insurance on top. Other investment institutions keep buying these imaginative instruments and regulators never understand what is happening to the stability in the system.

The stability of the financial system is supposed to be controlled with capital minimums and market reporting. But the market price of the new instruments becomes invisible and the relationship to capital becomes unknown.

These two systems can only be fixed by separating off the open-imaginative part from the core functioning part.

Tom Campbell and zebras

Here in California we have a candidate who decided to switch from running for Governor to running for Senator.  I didn't care before now I do care. Governors have no foreign policy impact, Senators do.  His name is Tom Campbell and he seems to be anti-Israel and is probably a Jew hater.  Not what I want in the U.S. Senate.

When Campbell was a Congressman he twice introduced a bill to cut aid to Israel. He also stood in the way of the U.S. moving our embassy to Jerusalem.

Does that make him anti-Israel or a Jew hater? 

American aid to Israel has three purposes: 1) to subsidize the sale our top of the line military equipment to Israel, because we can't sell it to anyone else for fear they will use it against us, 2) the U.S. wants mutual access to the outstanding Israeli military equipment which is often ahead of ours and 3) Israel is an ally with the best military in the world and we want influence; as the two times we went to war in Iraq and we begged Israel not to attack at the same time.

America gives comparable amounts of aid to Egypt and the Philippines.  Where was Campbell on those two countries?  Nowhere.  Only denying Jewish safety needs to be a political issue for Campbell.

As for Jerusalem being the capitol of Israel, where an Embassy should be, that issue is simple.  Jerusalem has been the Israeli capitol for 2,800 years (yes that number is right) and has never been an Arab capitol.  But the Saudis want Jerusalem as a capitol for Palestinian Arabs; so their leverage keeps the American embassy in Tel Aviv.  Neither Campbell nor his constitutents have a reason to back Saudi Arabia.  I think Campbell does it out of simple Jew hate.

In the current campaign Campbell says he is a friend of Israel.  Does a Zebra change its stripes when it runs for the U.S. Senate?

History and Americans sympathize with David

When I listen to some of my friends about the way the Republicans foiled the Obama-Health-Care bills, that America supposedly wants, I am reminded of Goliath and his Philistine Army.

For the past year the Democrats have had a 3 to 2 advantage in the Senate and the House. That is Goliath vs David.  Here is the story of Goliath and David:

"The Philistine army marched into Judah to make war on the Israelites, but instead of immediately engaging in battle, went into camp in the Valley of Elah.* The Israelites under King Saul made camp nearby. Goliath, who is described as a "champion" in the Biblical text, positioned himself between the two armies and challenged the Israelites to send out a warrior to challenge him. If that man won, the Philistines would become the subjects of Saul's army. If Goliath won, the converse would occur. For forty days, in both the morning and evening, Goliath issued his challenge."

David was 1.5 cubits tall and he defeated Goliath, 3 cubits tall, with one river stone.

I would, if possible, politely remind my ObamaCare loving friends that history remembers David favorably, remembers Goliath as a big buffoon and uses the word Philistine to imply boorish, unthinking, automatons.

*Archaelogy supports much of the story.

Tribal world

There is no way that 97% of Americans could understand that we live in a tribal world and how relevant it is to our lives.

The 3% I have left out of my number includes American Indians, immigrants, the Hatfields and McCoys and a few international travelers who have spent time in third world countries. These people understand a tribal world.

Here are two articles that discuss this issue in a powerful and convincing way.  The first is an interview of Lee Smith by Michael Totten.  Michael is the truly free lance journalist whom I trust most in the world.  I send him money (you might want to too) to support his free lance Middle East reporting. It is better than anything the State Department or the CIA gets.  Lee Smith is Michael's good friend so that gives Smith credibility.  They discuss how the tribal nature of the Arab lands created the 9/11 attack on New York and D.C. as well as the roots of anti-Americanism, the permanent roots.

I have said that our problem in the Middle East focuses on Arabs not Islam.... see what these gentlemen say.

The second is by a wonderful friend, Robert Strauss, who has spent much of his adult life in the third world.  Robert was the Peace Corp director for the Cameroon.  He tells about showing the movie Hotel Rwanda to his staff and many Cameroonians and finding agreement that inter-tribal genocide shown in the movie was one match away from ignition in the Cameroon at all times.  The same is true for all of Africa. 

I have said industrial commerce has no future in much of the world, regardless of the institutions we try to build... see what Robert has to say.

Farewell Air America

I haven't seen a good analysis of the reasons Air America disappeared last month after nearly six years of existence.

Air America started in April 2004 with great fanfare, months of coverage by the mainstream media and aggressive support from Al Gore.  Shortly after it ran out of its first $100 million it filed for bankruptcy in 2006 and was bought six months later by the Green brothers of New York city who kept it on life-support until their money from the New York real estate market ran short.

I see the reason for the failure of Air America, it is an important lesson of commerce.

Very few businesses in the history of commerce have been top down and succeeded.  Top down means looking at an existing market and saying 'we can enter that market with enough money'.  Microsoft has tried this a dozen times and barely succeeded a few of those times with $billions invested. The list of failures is hundreds of pages long.  GM tried to get into computing as did Boeing. 

The most common approach of the big bucks guys is to buy an existing successful firm in the field and pour money into it.  This approach has a slight chance because the small firm that is bought sometimes knows the field they are in.

 Air America looked at the field of nationally syndicated talk radio that was 98% conservative and believed there was room for a $100 million investment to start a new syndicate with Lefty radio hosts. 

Top down doesn't work and in this case there are three specific reasons it failed: 

First conservative talk radio was a bottom up growth success.  The reason it grew was organic.  Local radio personalities who attracted a growing audience in one area had the style, topic and personality that was appropriate to the newly emerging audience. That is how commerce works.  You find a market and get more refined as you learn, expand and grow.

Second, commerce is an empiric world.  You only succeed by fine tuning, refinement and experimentation.  Top down doesn't have that potential.  The example that confused Air America's investors was the historically unique success of Rupert Murdoch creating a de novo TV network: Fox.  Murdoch had two advantages that were clearly missed.  (A) He had the advantage of a rapidly growing field of cable not the static field of radio that Air America tried to enter.  (B) Murdoch bought the equivalent of an existing business in the form of Roger Ailes as head of Fox.  Ailes knew the empty market space of conservative TV because he was deeply embedded in the conservative world.

Third, and most importantly: the market for conservative ideas, policies and voices is new and growing. The market for Lefty ideas, policies and voices, the market chosen by Air America, is stagnant and dwindling.

To understand how serious this issue is take a look at this list of the top 25 pro commerce journalists, all of whom have large and growing followings.  The same is true for a few key academics not on the list: John Podhoretz, Max Boot, Bill Kristol, Victor Davis Hansen, Thomas Sowell, and Greg Mankiw.

Moral codes and coding

On Facebook I regularly get a notice to send a message to Gary or write on his blackboard.  Gary has been dead for 8 months.  It would certainly be rude for a human to make the suggestion to me that Facebook makes.

That evokes the title of this blog: moral codes and coding.  Facebook is a set of computer codes that we use to intervene in our morally grounded relationship world.  The two don't quite jibe.

Facebook will certainly change its coding, in time, to more accurately reflect our moral codes.  In the meantime, those of us who are active users of the Internet can see clearly that we will live long after our hearts stop pumping blood.

Sea level predictions retracted

No surprise to my blog readers: predictions of sea level rise retracted by Nature Geoscience Journal because it is based on faulty math and faulty historic temperature data.

Retraction is a very strong response.

Not symmetrical

The Israeli Foreign Office has regularly complained about jew-hate television shows in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Palestinian territories.  Of course the Palestian jew-hate is most commonly on children's programs.

I see a problem with this issue in International Affairs, similar to the Danish cartoon issue. 

We have an asymmetric issue.

Most Arabs and Turks have media and press that are directly under the control of the government.  They assume the rest of the world is the same way.

  So when Israel complains about jew-hate programming, the Arab and Turkish world wonder what the alternative is.

Israel and most democracies assume that most media and the press should not be controlled by the government for malicious purposes. 

Talking across this abyss seems futile.

Easy=true

This study shows that easy corporate names are more successful in the stock market. The study is making the rounds of the Internet.

I only have three comments.

First, true is a hollow word, philosophically speaking. I have no idea what true means in this context. The only truths are syllogisms and physical constants (listed on these pages).

Second, here is my blog about the 11 companies that survived in the global 100 corporations from 1960 to 2008.  What is easy about these corporate names?  Berkshire Hathaway, J. P. Morgan, McKesson, and Proctor and Gamble. Nothing.

Third, it is my guess that nearly all of this research was based on samples of college students. College students live in a world of high anxiety, no responsibility and no connection to ordinary life.  They are terrible subjects for any study as many good researchers have shown.

America in recession

I have been a fraction off in keeping my readers informed on the nature of the economy.  Below is a chart that shows the year, quarter, GDP of the U.S. and the inflation adjusted GDP.  I have been living in San Francisco where business was steady in late '08 and started growing in '09 for the entire year.  I called the rise in the stock market correctly in February '09 and the turn around of the economy at the same time.

One of my errors was looking at the GDP in current dollars.  The economic peak was August of '08 and the bottom was February '09. The drop was less than 3% over half a year. Insignificant by historic standards.

Trouble is, when we adjust for inflation, the downturn began in June '08 and lasted to the same February '09.  The drop, inflation adjusted was 4% over 8 months, still not much.

2007q4	14,337.9	13,391.2
2008q1	14,373.9	13,366.9
2008q2	14,497.8	13,415.3
2008q3	14,546.7	13,324.6
2008q4	14,347.3	13,141.9
2009q1	14,178.0	12,925.4
2009q2	14,151.2	12,901.5
2009q3	14,242.1	12,973.0
2009q4	14,463.4	13,155.0

As for the whole picture, I came across these charts in Forbes. which calls to my attention what we all know, that employment fell off more than in past recessions and has risen at a much slower pace (if it is rising at all) than in past recessions. Particularly slow for younger people, men and blacks.

 That tells me what I have been saying for some time.  We are now reaping the rewards of astounding increases in productivity that occurred in the past 15 years, which is why people with fewer skills are the ones who were laid off first and are being replaced last. 

The chart on fixed capital investment says two things: the same thing, major productivity gains occurred in the past, there aren't many highly productive investments available.

And, most importantly, the Federal stimulus package, which passed in mid-February 2009, passed after the bottom of the recession had happened....  the stimulus certainly used Federal dollars to compete with private dollars.  In short and in plain English, which we don't hear from the current liars in Washington,the stimulus package made the economy worse and the labor market much worse.

New business: auto accidents

My readers know I occasional post new ideas for businesses.  You are free to use them, I've started enough businesses to satisfy myself (most failed).

I would like to go on an auto crash ride.  It would have a steering wheel, foot throttle, brake and a screen with a moving image just like the kind we now have in game arcades.  However it would have a standard seat belt, a steering wheel safety air bag and two side air bags. 

The video image would have several situations where I could avoid a crash and several with cars hitting me from the side and back, where I couldn't.  The air bags would deploy with baby powder just as real bags do. 

The crash would be simulated but it would be a shocking experience that most drivers need.

Inflating bags could be activated with a simple, inexpensive pneumatic system. Not the real, expensive, explosive system.

Go to it, folks.

No permanent life to corporations?

For a few weeks there, on Facebook, my Lefty friends were posting some article about taking away perpetual life from corporations.  I also get mail from Ralph Nader on the same subject.

I don't read this stuff for two reason:

1) It will never happen.  It is a complete waste of time to contemplate such a move.  Corporations are state chartered entities, some state will always create them.  The Marbury-Madison Supreme court decision would never let that power move to the Federal government. The reason corporations are here to stay is that corporations have created the modern world.  Progress is not from science; Russia has science but is a hell hole without private corporations.

Only a few unthinking twits want to go back to 1825 when starvation, disease and disease were daily problems, when child birth meant death and a short lifespan were our lot.

2) Limiting corporations to the lifespan of say, human males, 79 years would do no harm to America, but might do a little harm to Europe and Japan.  Why?

Take a look at my list of top 100 global corporations in 1960 compared to 2008.  In that 48 years only 11 corporations survived at the top. A shortened corporate lifespan would be harmless and irrelevant.  Corporations die at a very high rate and usually some sentimental bones (the name) are bought by a younger corporation.

What about Europe and Japan?  There there is a difference.

Europe and Japan have the few really old corporations on the planet: Siemens, Royal Dutch Shell, Société Générale, Deutsche Post, Nestle, ThyssenKrupp, Mitsui, Matsushita and Sumitomo.  Limit corporate lifespan and you impact Europe and Japan.

How important is the Internet to commerce?

There is a website that keeps tract of Internet statistics. 

 To understand the importance of the Internet to commerce you need only look at this Webpage of numbers.  Here is a sample:

* There were 20 trillion emails sent last year, excluding spam

* There are a quarter of a billion websites

* Nearly 40% of all adult humans on the planet are now using the Internet. (6.8x.66x 1.8)

* And there are more than 12 billion YouTube videos viewed every month.

Commerce probably can't avoid looking those numbers square in the face.

The Greek problem

What is the Greek problem?  The Greek government are freeloaders, trying to pay government employees more than the private market is willing to pay the government in taxes.  The government supports its freeloaders by deficit spending. 

Usually a nation of freeloaders can only hurt themselves, such as the Argentinians do regularly where freeloaders find that the value of their currency, Argentinian Peso, steadily declines in value and they can't readily  buy products from other countries .

But Greece uses the Euro, so the Greeks can't be punished by a decline in their currency.  All of Europe gets punished as the Euro falls from $1.48 last month to $1.36 this month.  The Europeans have to decide what to do.  Nobody is in a good position to lecture the Greeks.  The Germans were the first to break the rules on deficit spending eight years ago.

Will this effect you or me?  No way.  Financial problems can be solved 1) if they move slowly and 2) are understood. Both apply in the Greek case.  And the Spanish, Italian and English cases.

This is unlike the summer 2008 financial crash in the U.S. which happened rapidly and no one understood what was happening.

Old Europe doesn't have much future in the first place. The handling of the Greek Crisis will determine if Old Europe has no future.

Google is rich but powerless

What recently happened in China with Google goes to the heart of the core Lefty dogma.  Lefties believe that people or corporations with significant amounts of money exercise undo amounts of power in the world.  Hence the rationale for progressive taxes and taxes on corporations to create a more equal power playing field. 

The Google predicament is a wonderful counter example.  Google's private files (the gmail accounts of Google's anti-Chinese activist customers) were hacked by Chinese hackers, apparently with skill levels only available inside a government agency.  When Google asked the Chinese government for assistance in stopping the hacking the Chinese government told Google to go to hell.  All of which made Google a potentially worthless business in China.

We don't know the end of the story yet.  Google has used the only tool it has, the threat to stop doing business in China.

Now think about the power of Google, a $170 billion company,  larger than the GNP of two-thirds of the UN members. It has no power at all, except its ability to persuade the U.S. State Department to defend Google's private rights.  No amount of money can buy the U.S. State Department,  many wish they could.

Lets put it another way.  A dozen despots with GDPs, worth a  tiny fraction of Google's, have infinitely more power than Google. 

 * Kim Jong Il can get results from China by threatening to let 200,000 starving North Koreans walk to China.  The same with Vietnam's PM Nguyen Tan Dung.  

* The top leadership of South Vietnam or Japan can order the sinking of a Chinese sailing vessel and beg forgiveness but get quick access to Chinese officials. 

* Almost any terrorist group, with permission from the local government in Turkey, Libya or Kenya could fire a rocket at the local Chinese embassy and get prompt attention from and access to Chinese officials.

But Google can't.

Put simply and clearly, power, state power, political power in general, far exceeds any importance money can provide.

Secrets of marketing research

I've read that some large companies are using Twitter as a source of customer feedback. They search Twitter or other social media for mention of the company or product name...and respond when appropriate.

That gave me the idea embedded in this blog title, writing about the secrets of marketing research.  I thought about writing several blogs on the subject that would be helpful to businesses.

The more I thought about it the more absurd the idea became.

Marketing Research is a state of mind, a worldview, requiring extensive learning and experience... no different and certainly no less complex than being an electronic engineer, a neuro-surgeon or a gas turbine designer.

Marketing Research is a technical discipline based on several tent-pole concepts: 

1) The designer(s) of any marketing research project is filled with biases.  Most biases will be embodied in the final product but every effort must be made to think about and identify the most serious biases that will distort the value of the final product. (You can't be a pacifist and interview combat soldiers.)

 2) Research subjects: Any group of humans, who are strangers to one another, will have a wide variety of attitudes, opinions and experiences that can not be probed reliably.  The best research outcome is one that is repeatable, stable over time and easy to interpret. Most surveys tools need to be tested and tested again to learn what they mean to respondents. (Think how long it takes many juries to reach a verdict.)

3) The individual mind is generally inadequate in making reliable predictions about its own planned behavior, its own future actions or future reactions to events.  Actual measures of past behavior are significantly more reliable than statements about future behavior. (Insofar as people can remember, which they often can't.)

Back to Twitter comments being used by large companies.

It is difficult to know why someone comes into your store or doesn't, why someone reads your whole Web page or doesn't, but when they tell you freely and spontaneously, you need to listen.

It is always worthwhile in business to get as much feedback on any subject as you can.  Notify customers, former customers and potential customers of your Twitter, Facebook, 800 phone number and email contacts.  Welcome comments especially complaints, which are the best source of product improvements. It is sometimes worth paying your customers to give you complaints, but make sure they can give you unsolicited advice.

New world of apps

I won't define the word apps.  The definition is still in flux. It is generally a software application that runs on any computer platform.  But the most common meaning in early 2010 is the term associated with the 100,000 apps that run on an Iphone and are available on Itunes.

I've talked to people in the business and they have a sense that apps are extremely important in our common future.

Let me go further: apps are changing everything in commerce, including brick and mortar retail stores.

I think of an app as an update of a product.  Any product that currently uses electricity or batteries will accommodate apps.

Most of the consumer and much of the commercial market is made up of product updates and will accommodate apps. 

Think of a refrigerator as an example.  With a refrigerator designed to take new apps, you could plug in sensors that would tell you when you left a refrigerator door open, when items inside were too old or past their 'use by' date, when you were taking out more calories than you had previously planned, what you might want to buy as replacement food items, and when you are gaining or loosing weight.  These plus 10,000 other more imaginative food, eating and storage related refrigerator activities would come as apps.

We will rarely buy a new model refrigerator, just buy new apps.

For brick and mortar stores that only leaves a few surviving categories of store: clothing, fashion related, hardware stores, restaurants and a  range of stores where you need to touch and feel products.

I expect this movement from new product models to product app platforms, to be rapid... like a hundred such categories of products in two years.

Stewart Brand Generation

We are now past the end of the entire hippy era.  The hippy era began in 1964 and ended in 2009.  It is hard for most people to recognize what I call the hippy era as a coherent social period. 

I think it would be more understandable if I call it the Stewart Brand Era.  The Stewart Brand Era is over.

I pick 1964 because that is the first year I was being surrounded by friends who were doing drugs (in San Francisco, the center of this era).  Salli Rasberry (later my co-author) had already moved to San Francisco and started the hippy movement in the Haight-Ashbury. Mario Savio was giving his "fuck" speech at U.C. Berkeley (Mario had been my Treasurer a previous year when I organized a Graduate Students Assn.)

By the time I finally met Stewart in 1966 he had begun his campaign to ask NASA for pictures of the whole earth which became the cover of the iconic Whole Earth Catalog.

The Stewart Brand Era includes all the drugs especially pot and LSD, environmentalism, ecology, anti-Vietnam War marches, communes, free love, rock music, everything in the Whole Earth Catalog, environmental Armageddon, small business revival, organic food, Birkenstocks, home schooling, water beds, tie dye, blue jeans, beards, long hair, the women's movement, personal computers, hacking and much more.

Folks, the Stewart Brand Era is over for three reasons: 1) new natural gas technology has ended any rational thought of resource scarcity, (2) Climategate ended a twenty year hysteria about global warming and 3) the slow death of Obama Healthcare in 2009 was the end of a functional Lefty, feminist, minority, urban coalition.

I was a central player in the Stewart Brand Era and I'll miss it, greatly.  But it is over.

At the dentist

I was recently at the dentist office and the hygienist said to me: "Michael, your teeth look really good, have you been doing something different in the past two weeks?"

Now I wonder if an experiment it did in the mid-1970s is being passed around the hygienist world.

What I did was wonder why hygienists would comment on the state of my teeth (gums tender, bleeding and plaque build-up) when I knew that the only thing effecting my teeth's appearance was what I did recently.  So I ran a test on the several hygienists in the dental office I went to. 

The test was simple. Over several years, with four cleanings a year, I would alternate (a) vigorous cleaning for all four months, (b) virtually no cleaning and (c) vigorous cleaning for the last two weeks before the cleaning appointment.

All the hygienists were accurate in distinguishing (a) and (c) from (b), the no significant cleaning option. But none could tell the difference between (a) and (c).  I never told the hygienists but I've told my dentists and several of my friends. 

I think word of my experiment has gotten back to the world of hygienists.

Hide the terror attacks?

There seems to be a new strategy among international State departments:  hide an airplane terror bombing.

The Ethiopian Boeing that crashed on take-off from Beirut two weeks ago was blown-up by a bomb inside according to Debka, which in this case appears to be totally reliable. 

What is the benefit of hiding a terror bombing?  Too many reasons to list and no compelling one.

Don't lie about money

The correct phrase is "Don't lie to me about money, I will never trust you again."

The Obama administration budget, like all budgets has a baseline based on previous budgets and additions.

The budget presented last week to Congress showed two items that were passed as explicitly temporary items in the previous year's stimulus budget; they were shown as part of the current permanent baseline budget.   

The two items were the expansion of the child tax credit and the expansion of the earned income tax credit. These were explicitly temporary items. They are not part of the baseline.

You are lying to me.  I will never trust you on budgets again.

I hope the 50% of Democrats in Congress who are lusting after their 3rd term in order to get lifetime pension and medical care, don't trust you either.

Anti-AARP

Did you know there was a rapidly growing anti-AARP organization?  Yes, it is called American Seniors Association.

Once the AARP backed the Obama Healthcare initiative the anti-AARP organization began to grow. 

I once planned to start such an opposition to AARP because the management is often at odds with the membership.  This has happened in several categories.

* One category is the products the AARP sells which are often high priced and inadequate.  The AARP are simply greedy and without concern for their members well-being.

* The second category is the regular political posture that supports increases in Social Security and related taxes on young people.  Old people can not blithely disregard the next generation.  Older Americans are not selfish, hard-hearted fools oblivious to the concerns of their children and grandchildren.

* Third, the management of AARP is Lefty Fundamentalist.  The AARP has no valid membership based reason to support the Obama health package, especially when it included massive reductions in senior Medicare.

If you are an AARP member, it is time to send them a strong note, quit and join the American Seniors Assn.

I can't find any facts on membership numbers but AARP has admitted losing over 100K members last year over Obamacare and ASA has been attributed 200K members. These are piddling numbers compared to AARP's 40 million members.

Peres' words to Germany

If you want to hear what Israeli President Shimon Peres said to the German people on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it is here. 

The speech is making the rounds of the Internet very rapidly.

I recommend the speech to you, which is long, moving and comprehensive.

I have a particular interest in this speech because my client and great artist, Galya Rosenfeld created the gift that President Peres brought to the German People. 

Galya, the art and Peres are on the right.

Galya works with small modular geometric forms that are often mathematically complex. Her art is in many of the major museums of the world.

Tolerance and shuls

For my tens of thousands of non-Jewish readers, a shul is the word for synagogue in Yiddish.  It is the common term used by Orthodox Jews.

I only want to make one point which is relevant to Jews and non-Jews: nearly everywhere I look I see non-orthodox synagogues failing, for sale or barely hanging on.  I see exceptions too.

The one significant phenomenon I want to point out that I see around me, in urban areas,  is the development of the new informal shul.  In San Francisco the biggest gathering of Jews I know of is call the Mission Minyan. Hundreds of people attend weekly with no rabbi, no formal structure and most importantly: No Judgment.  Some people walk to services, some stay for the whole service, others drive and stay for part, some are kosher, some only avoid pork and shrimp, others are not kosher. 

What makes the informal shul work with the current generation is the non-judgmental association of Jews.  Most formal congregations are politically intolerant, despite the quiet gentle pseudo-humble tone of voice of the rabbi. Most Reform and many Conservative congregations are political... against Israel.  That combination is poison for the younger Jewish population. They can't understand why Jews, in a modern temple, don't identify with the country Jews have been praying to return to for 2,000 years.

I watched the entire mainstream of Christianity nearly disappear from 1960 to 1970 as the Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian churches began to demand anti-Vietnam-War politics as a religious dogma.

The same seems to be happening in modern American Judaism. Only the new informal, tolerant shul, will provide a home for the non-orthodox who aren't political Lefties.

Politics 101-Murray Chotiner

You are unlikely to know about Murray Chotiner.  He is and was probably the greatest political strategist in the last 50 years.  I knew Murray because I worked on Richard Nixon's losing California Gubernatorial campaign in 1962.  Murray was the campaign manager. He won two subsequent presidential campaigns for Nixon.

I ran two local political campaigns in the following years (winning both) and gave a talk to a national Republican campaign conference on my various techniques, some learned from Murray Chotiner.

The relevance today is two recent campaigns: Gov. Bob McDonnell's overwhelming unexpected win in November in Virginia and Sen. Scott Brown's astounding, historic, win in Massachusetts.

Murray said that you must defeat your opponent in the opposite party in the primary... you must never use attack material in a general election, the public hates the attacker.

The reason you probably don't know this rule is that in many general elections, in close races, both sides are slinging mud. 

However, as widely reported, and as heard by those of us who follow these things closely, in both the McDonnell race and the Brown race, the Democrat spent the entire general election period attacking and slinging mud, while neither Republican paid any attention to the attacks.

Murray was right. The public hates dirty campaigns and will vote against an obvious one-sided attacker.

PS. By the way, if Meg Whitman, who will be the Republican candidate in the California General election, had Murray on her team, we would be hearing the rumor about her future Democratic opponent, Jerry Brown, right now. We would hear that he is an old pot head, so stoned that he isn't out campaigning now.  This of course is not true, Brown is a brilliant and honest campaigner but the rumor has to run now, if ever, to be effective, not after he wins the Democratic primary.

Anger is bad -- 03

This is the third in the anger is bad series.  I needed two blogs to show that the anger on the political stage is nearly all on the Left and that it arises from the fact that for the first time in generations the Left has to confront a real alternative political view point.

Now we can get to the point I've wanted to make all along: anger is bad... I mean political anger is bad.  I have two examples.  Almost opposite examples.  The first is Germany post WWI.

* After a humiliating defeat in WWI and intentional humiliation by the anti-German WWI victors, all Germans were angry at the French, British and American victors.  The Germans divided into two angry groups.  One was the German Reds who favored joining with the victorious Communist Revolutionaries in Russia and finding revenge with that Russo-German alliance.  The other were the Browns who were anti-Red and anti-Jew and favored a strong re-armament to repulse the French-British-American overlords and exterminate the Jews.  As many of my readers know, the angry Browns won.  They called themselves the National Socialist Workers Party and all my readers know the consequence of that anger.

* Less well known is the anger of the British Browns in post WWI England.  These Browns were angry at the horrific loss of the elite class in England who died as officers in WWI, a war they blamed on the British Reds and the British Labor Party.  The British Browns (largely upper class) were pro-Germany, pro-appeasement with Hitler, ferociously opposed to re-armament of Britain and were anti-Jew. 

The consequence was the near physical destruction of England (because Germany became so strong during the appeasement period), the consequent loss of the British Empire after WWII (because America and the USSR made the post war settlement terms)and the establishment of a socialist state in England under the Labor Party (as unions and the working class rejected the elite Brown pre-war world).

The English Brown anger survives to this day, it has kept England a third rate economic power, it has driven half the Jews out of England and assured England of a trivial role in the Middle East with bad relations with Israel.

Anger in politics is bad.  I fear the anger on the American Left, roughly 20 million people. It could be a long term threat to America in ways I can't imagine.

Anger is bad -- 02

Where does the anger on the Left come from? 

I have one simple and persuasive answer.  The Left never had any real opposition before now. 

If you were an ordinary Lefty anytime before 1993 (meaning you are over 30 years old) you grew up never having dealt with any national media or academic environment other than the Left.  The first prominent medium to present a non-Lefty position was Rush Limbaugh, the father of modern talk radio. Limbaugh went national in 1993. By 1996 Rupert Murdoch started the first non-Lefty TV network.  That still leaves all the major mainstream newspapers and all of academe in the Lefty camp but Americans could finally find a non-Lefty medium if they made an effort. Of course, America did find them and Limbaugh and Fox have the biggest listenerships and viewerships.

 Over the past 20 years international news has also filtered into public discussion. To the humiliation of the Left.  Communism failed in the USSR and China. Every freed East European country chose free market commerce as did China, Viet Nam and formerly socialist India.  The facts on the ground suggested that the whole Lefty 20th Century enterprise was a failure. The first Lefty century of experiment was a horrible murderous failure.

Today there still isn't much non-Lefty media in America, but talk radio and Fox are sufficient to drive Lefties to their peak of anger.  You doubt me?

Witness the White House that spent the first month of the new 2009 administration attacking Rush Limbaugh and the 8th through 11th month of 2009 attacking Fox News.  I'm not making this up. This is the source of Lefty anger... the mere existence of opposition.

The anger on the Left comes from the fact that a non-Left voice now exists in America and anyone who wants to hear it can.

Intelligence and political party

In a blog I wrote nearly three years ago, I announced that I had figured out a way to measure the relative IQs of Republicans and Democrats.  I'm pretty sure Republicans will come out higher.

That blog has gotten pages of comments and still gets more comments regularly.

I love this opinion contest (about my blog on IQs) because the facts could be known if any researcher really cared. 

In any case a blog at the University of Minnesota has examined the academic level of President Obama's State of the Union speech.  This supposed great orator comes out near the bottom of the list as a complex thinker, at the 8th grade level, below George W. Bush and below the average for American presidents. 

The only excuse a Lefty can give is that Obama was directing his speech at Congress.  That makes sense since Congress is overwhelmingly Democrat.

Anger is bad -- 01

I am often asked about the level of anger I see on the American political stage.  Unfortunately what people see is entirely based on their political position. The Left only sees anger on the right and vice versa.  I think there is a factual case to be made here. Take a look at this Keith Olbermann tirade.  Now show me anything that even comes within 50% as nasty from anyone on Cable or Network TV.  I don't believe there is symmetry.  The Left is always angry. 

Try a proof test about Lefty anger.  Just try a five letter word on any Lefty and see the depth of the Lefty anger, P-l-n, ( female former governor).  Or try a four letter word B--h combined with Cheney and see the anger.  President Obama has tried to use the four letter word to deliberately arouse the anger of his hard Left followers.  President G.W. Bush never, never once, mentioned his predecessor in order to arouse anger, he actually liked his predecessor.

Does that convince any open minded person that nearly all the anger is on the Left?

Time to celebrate

Right now we have the fastest GDP growth in several decades and the worst unemployment.  Is that bad?

Hell no!

Both the GDP growth and the high unemployment arise from the same source: 15 years of the fastest gains in productivity in American history (to be truthful, measurement of productivity doesn't go back very far).

We are going to have very healthy economic growth for many years (unless Congress creates unnecessary new burdens) which will mean much higher wages and faster economic growth for everyone.  Today's unemployed will be coming back into the workplace with better, more interesting and more rewarding jobs.

The comparable analogy would be having lived with a cracked tooth, having it removed and being able to eat with more gusto and pleasure.

On top of this, the future means no more end of the world gloom, no more Pollyanna complaints about "too big", "too wasteful" and "too bad for the environment".  We are in the era of abundant global natural gas and the Middle Eastern oil-dependence-nightmare is coming to an end. Screw Saudi Arabia.

Many reputable scientist are finally coming out of the closet and saying that global warming is a theory with little substance.