Mixing Up The Numbers

Listen carefully. The news media and advertising agencies who make political ads have been doing this for years.

Which would you rather have, 25% or even 50% of $1,000 or 10% or even 1% of 10 million dollars.  The number, in communication, is the big thing or key element.  The media or speaker doesn't want you to focus on the element % or raw number.  If I want you to think it's no big deal I put in a modifier, like "only" or "as many as", or "over".  These are just clever communication/propaganda linguistic techniques. "Only" 1% of the population reads at least one book a year. Or, "Did you know that over 3 million people read a book a year or more in the United States"?  Fact: if that were actually  true that wouldn't be that many people when you consider the a total population of 307,000,000+.  But how about this:  "Only" 1% of the U.S. population reads at least one book a year compared to Canada where the rate is 3%"  With a population of "Just" 34,000,000 that means only 340,000 Canadians read 1 or more books a year.

So, the point is this: to really make ANY sense of media numbers, you need to have some idea what the raw number is or the base that the percent refers to*, and you have to listen carefully when the media presenters mix raw numbers and percent because when they do that you are being intellectually manipulated.

(* "...to which the percent refers.", for those of you who prefer correct grammar).

Silly Waste of Time

This whole Iowa straw poll business is an absolute silly waste of time in my opinion.

7 (seven) electoral votes, and the news media is making such a big deal about it. Give me a break!! Really?

Filtering out the noise: Rick Perry in the background

"Limit and simplify taxes, eliminate "one size fits all" Obama healthcare, get Americans working again, balance the budget, get tort reform in the legal system, work every day to make Washing, DC inconsequential, big government, spend faster than they can print money"

Super!! Sounds like what I heard Candidate Obama say, and candidate Bush, and candidate Clinton, and candidate Bush, and candidate, etc, etc.

Fact is ... the country is run by 544 folks in Washington. 100 Senators, 435 Representatives = 535, plus 9 supreme court justices = 544; and one (1) President (who can issue executive orders and conduct foreign affairs and a few other things)which makes it 545 if you count him/her.

Tell me again where is the POWER? WHO enacts the budget?, who passes the budget? who passes the spending bills?, who passes the laws?

Rick Perry, Barack Obama, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George Bush, all seem like OK fellas to me. I mean none of them eat babies.

But let's get REAL, OK? We aren't focusing on the right stuff are we? The news media, the thought shapers, are getting our attention focused on the least important electoral office in the nation. Why? You tell me.

The Advertisement below shows up on some of my personal pages.

"Stop Voter Suppression
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Republicans stole Florida for George Bush in 2000. Don't let the GOP steal another Presidential election. Sign the DGA petition today." <--- If you follow my blogs and thinking:

I'm all for "voter suppression". We have let too many people who only feed at the public trough have the vote. No wonder we keep voting in the congress we do. Why would I vote for someone who wanted to cut my public benefits and make me prove I was needy and wanted me to go to work. To keep the public trough full, we need to give the franchise (vote) to illegal immigrants, and anyone else who breathes. And let's make sure we have plenty of absentee ballots at the prisons, too and let convicted felons vote. <----- If you didn't understand this is sarcasm then you definitely need to go back to the beginning and read ALL of my bogs.

I understand how frustrating it is to try and turn around a big ship. It takes time and uncommon amounts of effort but it can be done. There is a new notion about how to elect a president that is beginning to float around. An old high school acquaintance of mine introduced me to it.

It is americanselect.org . I don't know if it will take root and live or not but I subscribed just to be able to stay in the loop. Frankly I have serious reservations about selecting a presidential candidate like this, but have no alternative to offer at the moment.

A process like americanselect.org would definitely get my attention at the local and state level. That is where I believe the change we need has to start.

At this level I have more faith in "democracy". Here's my logic: if a local community elects some slick talking snakeoil salesman to office then they deserve him/her. They can correct their mistake and not damage the entire nation. Still, I think this americanselect idea is a very interesting one and worth a try. Let's see what kind of a candidate we come up with for November 2012.

Ok, I'm looking forward to some comments on this post. js

Rick Perry in the Background

"Limit and simplify taxes, eliminate "one size fits all" Obama healthcare, get Americans working again, balance the budget, get tort reform in the legal system, work every day to make Washing, DC inconsequential, big government, spend faster than they can print money"

Super!! Sounds like what I heard Candidate Obama say, and candidate Bush, and candidate Clinton, and candidate Bush, and candidate, etc, etc.

Fact is ... the country is run by 544 folks in Washington. 100 Senators, 435 Representatives = 535, plus 9 supreme court justices = 544; and one (1) President (who can issue executive orders and conduct foreign affairs and a few other things).

Tell me again where is the POWER? WHO enacts the budget?, who passes the budget? who passes the spending bills?, who passes the laws?

Rick Perry, Barack Obama, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George Bush, all seem like OK fellas to me. I mean none of them eat babies.

But let's get REAL, OK? We aren't focusing on the right stuff are we? The news media, the thought shapers, are getting our attention focused on the least important electoral office in the nation. Why? You tell me.

Congress is where the lawmakers are, they are the important candidates.

WRONG, WRONG WRONG

What changed on Friday? NOTHING!!!

The American business economy is STILL just the same as it was on Friday August 5th.

The HIGHEST GDP of any single country in the world.

The US fiscal policy is not great but our economy is fine, fine, FINE!!!

We have a chance in a short while to deal with the fiscal policy. Vote in a new congress and 1/3 of the Senate.

A final thought; and here I speak of the "Tea Party". If you ACTUALLY believe in acting on your beliefs and principles then be prepared for pain. Personal pain. There are COSTS associated with standing up for what you believe in. So if you voted for "Tea Party" candidates then stop your whining about the drop in the DOW, and the downgrading of the US debt by Standard & Poors, because THEY are the ones who facilitated the happening of all of this. Argue if you want, but that's a fact.

So, in spite of the discomfort and pain, this MAY not be such a bad thing. Our fiscal house desperately needs to be put in order and if this is the pain we have to suffer, well, we'll just have to grin and bear it.

Is there reason within all of the noise?

Yes, I would say there is. Can we find it? Well, it's not easy, that's for sure.

Two reasonable people can have the exact same facts and arrive at completely different conclusions, wouldn't you agree?

We (the "baby boomer" generation) are the ones who created the situation we're in now and that is a fact, in my opinion. Oh, true the groundwork and infrastructure was in large measure laid by preceeding generations, but WE used it to create today.

So, how do you find sense in the noise. It seems to me the difficulty is not a lack of information or information resources but a lack of time on the part of the public. What I mean by this, is that I'm retired and have the inclination and TIME to seek out alternative and often disagreeing sources of information.

An example would be the rating agencies; Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch. ONLY Standard and Poor's has downgraded the US Bond rating. So let's see now; each day we see the DOW, the NASDAQ, and so forth. But NOT the Moody's and the Fitch: the other two dominant rating agencies. And Standard and Poor's was the agency that was giving AIG, Fanni Mae and Fanny mac the AAA ratings, etc just before the current financial crisis.

So why the big deal about the downgrade. "If it bleeds; it leads" and it's really that simple. "Debt Crisis" is news, "Political theater" isn't. Stating facts like the USA is the second largest economy in the world (Eurogroup is the first, that's all of the common market combined) China is third. Our GDP is only slightly less than that of the EuroGroup, and almost twice that of China (source, CIA world fact book).

I know some really, really smart and educated people and I'm EMBARRASSED when I see the sources they use to inform themselves. They are so far above my feeble attempts to inform myself I'm ashamed. Non the less, my attempts exceed those of many others.

TV is the worst place to look for news and information, in my opinion. I use it as a bellwether to signal to me where my attention is trying to be directed so I can focus it elsewhere.

So getting back to the "noise" and "reason". The noise was the "debt crisis". The reason was a fundamental difference between political parties. And the difference in my view was the one that has existed since the founding of your country: the difference between "Federalism" (the Federal Government controls the majority of affairs of all sorts for the citizens of the Nation), and "States Rights" (the states control the majority of affairs of it's citizens).

This is a difficult division to explain simply, without some historical and sociological background. Some forms of federalism make sense: provide for the common defense, foreign affairs, national treaties, common currency,etc, they're mostly enumerated in the US Constitution (original document).

As a culture we have collectively agreed to increase (gradually and over many decades) the amount of federal involvement into our personal lives.

Certainly, along the way there has always been disagreement. But the end result is what we have today and where we are. Still the fundamental disagreement remains and was framed it in it's latest iteration as the "Budget Crisis".

Ultimately MONEY is the issue, regardless of what the argument is.

Let me offer an example. In my business career I was responsible for employee health and safety programs. This effort is NEVER seen as any more that an "expense" or "burden" line in a business budget. The facts are over my career I saved the companies I worked for millions of dollars in worker's compensation expenses. These expenses were the most valuable money a company had because they came off the bottom line.

But I always saved much more than my programs cost. At some point it was essential for me to find out how much was "a lot" in terms of worker's compensation expense. Usually the company president would come to me and ask if the $$ number he/she saw was correct. I'd say yes. He'd say, "Damn Jack THAT'S A LOT". I'd say, thanks Bob, that was the missing information I needed to know. "How much is 'a LOT' in this company.

So if a lifting device we needed cost $15,000 and could be amortized and expensed, by preventing future $100,000 back injuries that caused the "a lot" number, then $15,000 pales in significance. It usually amounted to "pay me now or pay me later".

When I made my budget, it was always "a lot" and I'd be asked to justify it. My response was always the same. "Look, it doesn't matter to me, personally, what number you want me to have. Just tell my, what in my budget DON'T YOU WANT. All of the programs, devices, services, etc, work together as a system are responsible for the savings you are enjoying. Just tell me what you DON'T WANT.

Federalism, a large central government, costs a lot of money. The only place a government has to get money is through taxes.

And my case was made this morning on Fareed Zakaria's GPS on CNN.

One of the noteworthy comments was that "American citizens" want both, low taxes and more government programs.

Well, that's fine, but the fact that this is an untenable position is obvious, isn't it?

So, now we're beginning to filter out some of the noise.

Can you agree that PERCEIVED needs tend to outweigh functional reality when it comes to paying for a social program? We justify the perceived need for the social program in terms of "right thing to do", "it just makes sense", "how can we in good conscience NOT do it, and so forth. A large number can agree on the rhetorical case FOR. Few will agree on how to pay for it or WHO will pay.

But the most important point to get from this post is that: to NOT be honest and say the debate is about Federalism v. States Rights is just deceitful.

Without some sort of specie (gold, silver, or whatever) on which to base the value of a currency any country, the US, can always just print it's way out of debt. We've done it before, more than once.

The case against "printing" our way out of debt is really (IMHO) just as simple as realizing that at some point that "backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government" is just a hollow phrase that gets more and more diluted.

Fact Processing

How would YOU process some of these facts:

Social Security was never conceived as a retirement plan/system. What was it seen to be at the time?

The average life span has significantly increased in the U.S. since the initiation of Social security. Is it still sensible to have an eligibility age of 65?

The death rate has decreased.

Our economy has changed form Industrial to "Knowledge" based for the most part. How will we sustain a growing workforce and shrinking job availability?