Negotiating Over Dinner?

Rand Paul took the rare and risky measure of filibustering in an effort to illicit an answer from the Administration on a critical stray from the Constitution – drone strikes on American citizens in America.  In a show of solidarity with Paul’s historically lengthy (almost 9 hours), and audacious move, twelve Republican Senators went to dinner with President Obama.   Alright, so there may be another term more appropriate than “solidarity” to describe their exit stage left – still, surely they must have wished him well while out dining and pretending to be negotiating spending cuts with Obama.  Or, perhaps they were more inclined to demonstrate solidarity with Obama than with Paul.

What were they really doing?  The media is painting a rosy picture of this momentous dinner and sells it as proof of effort from the President, and evidence of how far he is willing to go to make a deal and be accommodating, or reasonable.  Adulation from the Washington Post is typical, “The GOP’s tax orthodoxy remains too strong, and the fear of conservative primary challenges too fresh, for a bit of outreach to wildly change the odds. But at least the president will have done everything he can, and everyone — including many Republicans — will know it.”

Obama goes to dinner with 12 Republicans and this is going to accomplish the goal of an agreement on real spending cuts? Not a chance.

Lindsey Graham SC
Bob Corker TN
Kelly Ayotte NH
John McCain AZ
Richard Burr NC
Saxby Chambliss GA
Dan Coates IN
Mike Johanns NE
Pat Toomey PA
Tom Coburn OK
Ron Johnson WI
John Hoeven ND,  and Barack Obama, WH,

. . . . all collectively accomplished exactly what?

1. A crowd does NOT negotiate anything.
2. A meaningful negotiation is held between two or three, not a baker’s dozen and its entourage.
3. Over dinner  that baker’s dozen might as well be a throng treating itself to a pointless Party on the taxpayer’s dime.
4. A dozen Republicans showing up for dinner shows pandering, not reasonableness in negotiating.
5. A dozen Republicans showing up for dinner gifts the tax-and-spend President the photo op he needs.
6. A dozen Republicans showing up for dinner lets Obama off the hook and out of the corner he’s in, providing him fodder for more tales he can then tell to the media which is more than willing to applaud.

Does anyone really believe this dinner will lift gridlock and move Obama from his ideological stance? . . . . Well, other than the media? It seems more and more of the public is disbelieving.

Dinners are used for stimulating or promoting familiarity.  These 12 don’t know who Obama is yet? Four years and this bunch is still not clear? Serious and meaningful negotiations are done in a boardroom in private, or in a cave in the hills, but not over a lavish dinner with a parade of limousines and security agent Escalades putting on a very public exhibition of extravagance.

ABC views this particular performance as marking a new approach for Obama.  Really?  How insightful is that? Some hard negotiations are mandatory, not just necessary, to bring spending under control.  We shall not hold breaths for fear of turning blue on the outcome of this new outreach.

.... Read more!

• OBAMA, A SOCIAL PHENOMENON?

Pundits in every media are tripping over themselves to explain the dearth of Republican votes in the current primaries while the Democrats are apparently showing up in droves. It is perplexing that the media isn’t deciphering and proffering why a man with little experience, and little national recognition prior to just a few months ago, is making a bee line for the White House.

We are witnessing an unusual confluence of events. The American economy is slowing while the vast percentage of Americans are coming to a realization that the opportunity they’ve believed in, is not turning out as professed. As I’ve noted previously in these articles, the most consequential element unconditionally required for the long term health of a society is broadly available education. It all starts there. An educated society understands its needs and how to meet them. It is capable of achieving what is required for its own long term harmonious, and reasonable, well being. An educated society also understands its values, aspirations, and culture within the context of the broader global community. An educated society has a sense of evolution and remains sanguine in the preponderance of its opportunities. When greater and greater numbers are unable to achieve education to the maximum of their capabilities, hope evaporates. When such numbers reach significant percentages of the population, that society strains. Evaporation of opportunities accentuates any resentments that may be simmering.

We have all accepted that our free market system will produce prosperity for the greatest number. If any such system is to function adequately and serve the greater good over the long term, balance and reason should, and must, prevail. Today’s America faces a rapidly spreading divide between the proverbial “haves” and a much too large segment of the population struggling each day to achieve sustenance and shelter. While the burden of through-the-roof medical care costs is literally breaking families, and an avalanche of mortgages are sliding into foreclosure, and cars are being repossessed in unprecedented numbers, national headlines tell the newly displaced that the Head of America’s largest oil company has paid himself $400 million. He did it, not because he was smarter or more talented than millions of others, but because he could. His board members are in on the game and endless others at the top of the financial food chain are abusing their positions like the hedge fund manager who paid himself $2 billion in compensation last year. It is accepted because it would be inappropriate to say anything against such abuse, since that would imply denigration of the sacrosanct concept of “free market.” Unfortunately, there is nothing “free market” about such abuse. When the head of one the world largest internet based companies, who after receiving almost a billion dollars in company stock, proceeds to take shares in different new public offerings, adding another hundred million or two to the personal pot, something is rotten in the system. The fact that “others did it” is hardly a proper or moral rationalization, yet the media stayed silent. There was absolutely nothing free market about this abuse of position. No abuse is reasonable and rampant abuse only serves to break the system.

During the coming election voting booths will see millions of faces the booths won’t recognize. The Democratic candidate will likely be Obama, and he could become the next President, not because of his track record, but because he has been able to deliver speeches that resonate with millions who are feeling left behind in the opportunity sweepstakes. His addresses actually promise very little and provide little insight into the man. Their delivery evokes an unsettling sense reminiscent of proselytizations déja-vu. There is something discomforting about someone appropriating the power of the Presidency with so little experience and obscure intent, yet it is his appearance of “detachment” from the imperious top of the food-chain that is creating such broad based support amongst those feeling disenfranchised. Although one hopes that he takes this trust seriously and meets the monumental expectations, the national debt of over $9.2 trillion and the total U.S. combined debt at over $50 trillion provide almost overwhelming constraints to the restoration of broad based opportunity.

.... Read more!