Ricochet Podcast #115: Dog Eat Dog
The podcast has gone to the dogs this week: Rob has trust issues with his Mac, Romney's electability, econ/tax journalist Jim Pethokoukis (follow him on Twitter and read his indispensable blog) talks Buffet rule, Obama's vulnerability on the economy, and later, the definitive conversation on Mitt's dog Seamus and the anti-canine left.
Music from this week's episode:
- Is That Clear by Nick Waterhouse
- Hound Dog by Little Richard
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The Ricochet Podcast is proudly sponsored by Encounter Books. This week's pick is No Matter What...They'll Call This Book Racist: How our Fear of Talking Honestly About Race Hurts Us All by Harry Stein. Available for $16.31 at EncounterBooks.com and Amazon.com.
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Comments:
May '10
Re: Ricochet Podcast #115: Dog Eat Dog
Eliminating departments sounds and feels good but the more politically savvy path is to first cut wasteful/useless department budgets; then to, perhaps combine certain departments, then eliminate them: the screaming will be less, and the scare-headlines will be smaller if we just cut (at least at first).
Apr '11
Re: Ricochet Podcast #115: Dog Eat Dog
I wholeheartedly agree, but have been persuaded that HUD might be an exception. There've been some great secretaries (George Romney, Carla Hills, Jack Kemp, Mel Martinez), but even the best don't seem to make the department appealing. It just seems so obviously something that should be done by the states. If you're gutting almost all of its programs anyway, why not make the banner cut and move the remaining staff into Interior, Transport, and Commerce?
Jul '11
Re: Ricochet Podcast #115: Dog Eat Dog
If Romney's really interested in separating himself from the perceptions already in place by undecideds in the middle, he can start and end with the tax code. He can compare the size of the federal tax code (some 4,300 pages or so, and gets bigger every year) with the size of the Obamacare legislation (some 2,300 pages, I think, at its unsanctified inception), and not that each of these federal bureaucratic behemoths directly impacts the individual daily, yet no one expert or panels of thousands of experts can truly understand the Byzantine rulemaking in either. Obamacare will just get bigger, more convoluted, and confusing, which is very likely to mean that people will wind up receiving care in the same way that they receive "treatment" from the IRS, i.e. bent over.
Romney's private sector experience should provide ample fodder for him to explain why these models don't work, have never worked, and never will work, because they are inherently political creations, and politics only serves to complicate in service to a political desire - re-election. Take politics out of the tax code entirely, and this conversation goes away entirely.
Jul '11
Re: Ricochet Podcast #115: Dog Eat Dog
Romney's innate strengths as a businessman, one used to dealing with numbers on a very large scale, and being able to pitch what he thinks is good or bad, and why, is something we haven't seen on the campaign trail that much - but it's there. When he down-slapped the question a month or two ago about people getting "free" things from the government, and his saying, basically, "then vote for the other guy", sets exactly the right tone between two points of view. He knows like anyone who doesn't sit on their ass waiting for a check from someone else that everything has a cost - everything. One person's "free" is another person's overtime income taxed at a higher rate because of additional earnings - which presents the oddball reality where the desire to work more is penalized by the all-knowing Leviathan, yet the beneficiaries of someone else's desire to work longer hours, and harder, don't care where it comes from - they just want their check.
Because 1/2 the country basically doesn't pay income taxes, we're past a critical point.
Jul '11
Re: Ricochet Podcast #115: Dog Eat Dog
Chris Campion:
Because 1/2 the country basically doesn't pay income taxes, we're past a critical point. · 0 minutes ago
(continued): It's rather astounding that Obama has pitched BarryCare as getting everyone into the same insurance pool to reduce costs, yet he won't invite everyone into the tax pool to get some skin in the game - literally. He counts on the half that don't pay taxes to demand more, because it costs them nothing, and they are happy to oblige. Not because they are necessarily selfish or bad people - my Mom is often found to be referring to getting things from the gov't as "free", until I correct her (politely) - but because they've simply gotten used to it. When you have generations raised into maturity expecting that someone, somewhere, will fix things for them, and pay for them, well, that's an enormous pile of negative that all the economic education in the world might not be able to overcome.
And that's where we are right now. We're at the end result of decades of indulgence, and it will take heart and courage to repair. Let's get started.