PULLING THE TRUMP CARD…AND COMING UP DEUCES

8/15/15

So what is there to say about the “Donald Trump Phenomenon” that seems to be gripping the not only the Republican Party but also the time and imaginations of political junkies of all stripes?   Maybe nothing original, but, from the perspective of a self-described genuine conservative (a moniker that conveniently allows one plenty of leeway), I think Mr. Trump’s still quixotic quest for the White House can be summarized as follows:

Mr. Trump reflects and largely embodies some very legitimate views and some very understandable concerns about issues of vital importance to a large portion, perhaps the predominant portion, of the electorate.   His stances (or, more properly, attitudes regarding; Mr. Trump has no policy stances as far as one can tell) on, among other things, illegal immigration, economic nationalism, and the incompetence and pusillanimity of our preening politicasters are shared by legions of people who work, pay taxes, and vote, and who have a large measure of responsibility, and should take a large measure of the credit, for keeping this economy and country running.

Mr. Trump’s problem, however, is at least two-fold.   First, he is a decidedly imperfect vessel for addressing the problems he highlights.  He is neither trustworthy nor as competent as he seems to think.   He has a history of stiffing creditors and taking a scattershot approach to his business endeavors along with showing incredibly poor judgment in those with whom he does business and in those frivolous activities with which he chooses to fritter away his time.   Note his being a paid cheerleader for dubious multi-level marketer ACN and his beyond fatuous “The Apprentice” show.  Those with solid judgment and a sense of integrity don’t associate with the likes of ACN and those who place any value on their time don’t squander it on trendy piffles like “The Apprentice.”

Second, Mr. Trump has a habit of saying stupid, ill-informed, and gratuitously insulting and demeaning things about people he doesn’t like or merely disagrees with.   Everyone likes spirited debate and, truth be told, we all like to aim a zinger at our opponents and feel a usually short lived shot of satisfaction when such barbs find their marks.   But one should at least be clever and pointed in one’s insults.   Comments about the manifestations and origins of the anger of previously largely unknown anchor people and the desirability of seeing certain women on their knees are not only demeaning and gratuitously insulting; they are also pathetic, uncouth, puerile, and reflective of an inability to control one’s urges or to effectively express one’s opinions.  

By making such inane pronouncements and graceless, thoughtless, misogynistic attacks, Mr. Trump delegitimizes the legitimate views and concerns for which he is acting as a herald.  He defeats his own purposes…assuming that Mr. Trump has purposes that transcend gratifying his own ego.

(SAME SEX) MARRIAGE: THE WORLD CATCHES UP TO YOURS TRULY

7/5/15

For those of you who are even the least bit interested in the issue of marriage, gay or straight, ought to read the article entitled “Chicago priest protests same sex marriage, won’t sign civil marriage licenses,” on page 4 today’s (i.e., Sunday, 7/5/15’s) Chicago Tribune:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-orthodox-priest-refuses-marriage-licenses-met-20150702-story.html#page=1

Father Reardon (which strikes one as an odd name for an Antiochian Orthodox priest, but the article explains that) has a terrific idea.   But the article points out that the Reverend Tony Jones, who supports same sex marriage, has had about the same idea since 2010.

However…

Long time readers of mine are completely familiar with Father Reardon’s, and Reverend Jones’, brilliant solution to this controversy.   Back in 2012, I wrote the following Insightful Pontificator piece, which referred my readers to a letter I wrote to Steve Chapman, who is surely one of the best columnists in the opinion business, back in 2006:

“…AND IF THERE’S NO OTHER BUSINESS TO DISCUSS, I’D LIKE TO ATTEND MY DAUGHTER’S WEDDING.”

2/8/12

The lead story on many news outlets yesterday was news that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriages in the nation’s largest state.   The Ninth Circuit’s decision thus set the stage for the Supreme Court to rule on the legality of gay marriage, or at least on the right of states to ban gay marriage, perhaps as early as next year.

Why this story should have been the lead story anywhere, on a day when Syria was almost literally on fire, Americans were effectively being held hostage in Egypt, the Congress continued to wrangle over the payroll tax break, which directly affects every American who works and which will expire in three weeks, and the Catholic Church and the Obama administration were duking it out over a mandate for contraceptives, is beyond me.   Gay marriage is a very important issue for gays, and especially for gays who would like to marry, and for those who consider gay marriage an abomination before God and man.   Both groups feel very passionately about this issue, and understandably so.   But, for most of us, this is not a non-issue but not a burning issue, either.   While all of us care, or at least should care, about the rights of others and all of us have moral and/or religious sensitivities and sensibilities, most of us are not gay and don’t really care all that much about the sexual orientations of other people.   Whom people choose to sleep with is none of our business and we prefer to keep it that way…please.   So why the brouhaha over this story?  One supposes the media think anything even remotely connected with sex (and it’s hard to imagine many things more remotely connected with sex) sells.   And, in our increasingly strange and superficial society, they may be right.   But I digress.

Gay marriage has been an issue for a number of years.   Back in November, 2006 (and the issue was not new then), I sent a letter to Steve Chapman, who writes for the Chicago Tribune, is one of my favorite columnists, and shares my libertarian tendencies.   In it, I proposed a solution to this controversy.    Here is a reproduction of that missive:

11//5/06

Hi Steve,

I enjoyed your observations on gay marriage in your 11/5 column and have a hard time disagreeing with any of your arguments.   However, I have another take on the gay marriage issue.

Why should the government be involved in the institution of marriage?   Shouldn’t marriage, which many, if not most, Americans consider a sacrament, be the exclusive province of churches, leaving civil unions and the legal rights that would attend thereto, to the government?    The government would then decide legal rights and obligations and the churches would decide sacramental rights and obligations.   Why should the government have the right to decide who conforms to religious rules and parameters?  Why should churches decide who conforms to legal rules and parameters?   Those who belong to a religion and wish to proclaim their fidelity before their church could opt for both civil unions and marriages.  Those gays and heterosexuals who have no religion, and who don’t care to abide by the current hypocrisy exhibited by many who are completely unfamiliar with the interior of a house of worship but go through a church marriage  strictly for appearance’s sake, could opt only for civil unions.

With the government’s having lost its role in dabbling with religious definitions, at least in this application, gays who wish to have all the legal rights currently reserved for  married people in most jurisdictions would encounter less, albeit still considerable, opposition to achieving those rights.   Those gays who wish to marry, in addition to being granted civil unions, would surely be able to find a church who will marry them, and it will be strictly their business and the business of that church and its congregants.

More importantly, however, the government will have been removed from an area in which it should never have had any business:  deciding who is married before God and the church.

Mark Quinn

To clarify this proposal, under such a system, everyone who wishes to enjoy the legal rights and privileges that now attach to marriage would apply for a civil union, which would confer such rights and privileges.   Those who, in addition to obtaining a civil union, wish to marry inside their church, synagogue, mosque, temple, etc., would get married according to the rules and guidelines of that institution.   The marriage would confer no legal rights and the civil union would not have to conform to any religious rites.  

I suppose, by the way, that one could have a religious marriage without a civil union if one wished to proclaim his or her marriage before God but cared nothing for the legal rights of a spouse, but one suspects that such circumstances would be rare.   Who knows, though?

The solution I proposed in 2006 has withstood the test of time on at least three fronts.   First, it preserves the sacramental nature of the institution of marriage and a faith’s right to determine who is, and can be, married before God.   Second, it respects and furthers the rights of gay people to access all of the legal and familial rights that society formerly, and, in many cases, still, reserves for heterosexuals.   Third, it keeps government out of the business of telling faiths on whom they must confer the rites of matrimony (Think it can’t happen?   See today’s other post, “IT’S THE BISHOP!”) and faiths out of the business of telling government on whom they must confer legal rights.

WSJ: THE MAGAZINE FOR PORTENTOUS POPINJAYS AND POLTROONS

6/28/15

As a (long time; I think since about 1982) subscriber to the Wall Street Journal, every couple of months I receive something called WSJ, which is a slick “lifestyle” type magazine of the type one normally finds stuffed in the back pockets of airline seats.   I don’t read this rag and wish that the Journal did not feel compelled to publish it; perhaps the price of my subscription could be brought down commensurately if the publishers didn’t put money into WSJ…or perhaps I’m being hopelessly naïve, which is not a trait that I generally display.   But I digress.

As I was saying, I don’t read WSJ (the magazine, not the paper for which WSJ is the appropriate abbreviation); the day my life becomes so empty that I feel compelled to become a regular reader of such a publication is the day when I’ve overstayed my welcome in this mortal coil.   But I wanted to write something and I have the time to do so with my wife visiting her family in New York, my daughters being in their respective college towns for the summer or the weekend, and my son hanging out with his buddies.   I figured that this issue of an estimable publication like WSJ would provide plenty of grist for a point I’d like to make; it didn’t disappoint.

This issue (July/August, 2015) of WSJ features ads for the following, which is only a small sampling of the figurative large intestinal product that fills the magazine:

• $395 Ralph Lauren swim trunks
• $1,095 Gabriela Hearst chilton blouse
• $4,000 Louis Vuitton bag (which I presume is what women used to call a purse; a bag is something into which one puts groceries…or so I thought)
• $2,795 Chloe wool and silk knit poncho
• $4,895 Burberry Prorsum cashmere poncho
• $4,491 Berluti blazer, worn in the magazine by a model who has some deep seated problems that manifest themselves in his assuming the appearance of a man whose recent receipt of very bad news has compelled him to don a wardrobe five sizes too large and to lose any vestige of skin pigment
• $4,000 Salvatore Ferragamo coat
• $12,320 side table designed to look like a bird’s silhouette.   Don’t ask; I’m sure I won’t know the answer.

Three thoughts come to my febrile mind:

First, this is a joke, right?   People, especially people who are seemingly clever and smart enough to earn the money necessary to expend such sums, don’t excrete $4,000 on purses, $4,491 on blazers, and $12 grand on tables that look like birds but otherwise serve no purpose, right?   And, on the off chance that people do blow a middle class worker’s monthly wage on some overpriced bauble simply because it bears a designer name, the whole idea behind WSJ Magazine is to ridicule these imbeciles.  In any case, WSJ isn’t a serious bid to hawk expensive manifestations of outright silliness; it’s all a joke, a good laugh on a summer’s morning at the expense of the hopelessly cowed and sheepish.  Right?

Second, assume for a moment that the availability, and the apparent successful hawking, of such “goods” is not a joke.  If this is indeed the case (It can’t be, right?   Please tell me this can’t be serious!), those who have made the money necessary to pee it away on such fluff are not helping their cause when they argue for, say, a flatter tax code or against, say, massive government social programs ostensibly designed to help the “poor” but really designed to enrich the pols and the hangers-on who, one supposes, read and buy the products featured in WSJ Magazine.   The point is that perfectly legitimate arguments for enabling the wealthy to keep a greater share of the wealth they generate are undermined when those of great wealth (or perhaps (probably) only great income, uncontrollable urge to spend, or great willingness to go into brobdingnagian amounts of debt) squander their wealth on such utter figurative intestinal detritus.   To put is bluntly, people who spend so lavishly, pointlessly, and gormlessly help make the case that the rich are just a bunch of idiots who deserve to be punished…usually by those who will get rich punishing the rich, but that is grist for another mill.

Third, if such spending is a manifestation of the judgment of those who have attained power and wealth in this country, we are in big trouble.   No matter how clever a trader one might be, or even how smart an innovator or business mind one is, one is a complete moron if one spends his or her money on $12,320 side tables designed to look like birds.   One would be far better off buying a sensible table for a small fraction of that amount and donating the difference to, say, the Salvation Army or the Retirement Fund for Religious, or, if one is not of the giving proclivity, putting the money in the bank or into an index fund.  (Come to think about it, one would be far better off buying a cheaper, more sensible table and tossing the difference out the window; some of the unfortunates who inhabit the streets could then blow the money on cheap, rot gut hooch, which is no match for a donation to a worthy cause or further wealth accumulation but still beats a useless table designed to look like birds.)  Yes, one can be ostensibly smart but not at all wise, indeed, utterly bereft of good solid judgment.   If WSJ Magazine is any indication of what those of great wealth and power are thinking, we are being led by a pack of portentous poltroons and popinjays...and one quickly develops a good idea whither they lead us.

But WSJ Magazine is a joke, right?   Right?  

DENNY HASTERT AND H.L. MENCKEN

5/31/15

When I first learned of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s problems with federal law enforcement, my first thought was “Good.  Glad they nailed the SOB.”   These perhaps uncharitable thoughts arose not only from the schadenfreude that, to varying degrees, afflicts us all, but also from my never having liked Mr. Hastert.   From the get go, I considered him a complete lackey, a toady, a Bush lapdog whose role in getting our once great country involved in the Iraq fiasco was, if such a thing were possible, nearly as heinous a crime as those that were driven by Mr. Hastert’s (hopefully) erstwhile enthusiasm for young boys and the glaringly misplaced hubris he displayed in his clumsy attempts to cover up the disgusting, vile consequences of his perverted propensities.  

After briefly enjoying the guilty pleasure that arose from Mr. Hastert’s having his taste of karma, my thoughts quickly turned to one of my heroes, H.L. Mencken.   As some of you might suspect, I have been told on numerous occasions that I am a modern version of that late great Baltimore Sun scribe.   While that might sound braggadocious, it is an occasion not only for great pride but also great fear; can I possibly be that cynical?   But I digress.

Mr. Hastert’s sudden and well deserved defenestration immediately brought to mind what is perhaps Mr. Mencken’s greatest, though far from his most celebrated, utterance, to wit…

“All men are frauds.”  

The “aw, shucks, I’m just a wrestling coach from a small town west of Chicago” Mr. Hastert is the living embodiment of what, frightfully, may be an entirely true statement by Mr. Mencken.   There is hope, though, that this condition exemplified by Mr. Hastert is not universal; those of us not caught up in the hype that surrounds the professional narcissists who inhabit our governing class knew all along that Mr. Hastert was a fraud.   So maybe at least some men who appear not to be frauds indeed are not frauds.   At least we hope so.

Quickly, though, I asked myself where Mr. Hastert was getting all these spondulicks to pay off the former object of his misguided lust.  Again, Mr. Mencken has the answer:

“Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

There’s a lot of money in public service; the selfless public servant, the big hearted Mr. Hastert was cashing in on his years of good works for the people.   No wonder he was in such a hurry to hit the jackpot that he resigned as Speaker, and exited Congress, in what looked like mid-career; he wanted, and as it turned out, needed the money.

Finally, Mr. Hastert’s particular manifestation of perversity is not, at least we hope, nearly universal among the barnacles on the ship of state that inhabit Washington, D.C.   But his clearly misplaced hubris, his grossly inflated opinion of his craftiness, and his unrelenting thirst for the boodle that accompanies public service are indeed universal, firmly planted in the DNA of those who go to Washington brimming with messianic certainty that they have all the answers to all the problems that afflict the benighted folks back home who yearn for the wisdom that these modern day Olympians deign to impart to us.   So, again, Mr. Mencken comes to mind…

“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”

Thank you, Mr. Mencken.   Good riddance, Mr. Hastert.  One down, (at least) 535 to go.

RAHM EMANUEL AND ELECTRONIC TESTING: GOOD GOVERNMENT REALLY IS GOOD POLITICS, EH?

10/24/14

City of Chicago Human Resources Director Soo Choi said Thursday that she wants to convert all tests for city jobs from paper exams to electronic exams.  This is being touted by the Emanuel administration’s toadies in the media as a sharp blow for fairness, against corruption and the evils of patronage.  (See my nearly instantly seminal comments on patronage and its effect on governance, PATRONAGE, THE SHAKMAN DECREE, THE CITY THATONCE WORKED…AND DAVID COPPERFIELD, published 6/16/14 at Rant Lifestyle.) 
In its eagerness to embrace the veneer of reform, the local cheering section for Rahm Emanuel that calls itself the City Hall press corps has it wrong.  Mr. Emanuel’s plan to replace paper tests with electronic tests is not a blow for clean government but, rather, a concession to the modern reality of politics and yet another move to drop the peanuts and grab the golden nuggets.
The precinct captains and the armies of patronage workers of which they were once part are effectively dead as devices for getting out the vote and winning elections.   Federal pressure, largely in the form of Shakman enforcement, has made disciplining the troops nearly impossible.  Maybe more importantly, voters are too busy (Some gullible types say too informed, but that is another issue.) or insouciant to take the time to listen to their neighbors’ pitches for candidates.  The modern voter, even in the remaining supposedly Machine bastions, decides how to vote based on idiotic 30 second ads that interrupt his or her nightly viewing of the schlock we call prime time television.  Over the last 30 or 40 years, the television has steadily replaced the ward organization as the key to winning elections; the television is the new precinct captain and has been for years.   Some of us think this is not an entirely favorable development (See the aforementioned post.), but I digress.
The precinct captain can’t do the pols much good, so why bother fighting Shakman and other federal attacks on patronage?   Why not go the good government route and make moves, such as replacing paper exams with electronic tests, that will further wow the already completely in the tank press and, more importantly, yield an enormous dividend itself?  
What is the dividend this latest goo-goo maneuver will yield?  The electronic tests will involve millions of dollars in contracts for consultants, vendors, lawyers, facilitators and God only knows who else.  Do you suppose that those on the receiving end of this largesse will not show their gratitude by making generous contributions to the various political funds of the mayor and his minions?   If you don’t suppose so, you are hopelessly naïve; make no mistake; something is expected from those who do business with the city, and such expectations, of course, didn’t start with Rahm Emanuel.
Why bother defending patronage when it is impotent in the modern political era?  Why not actually join the fight against it when doing so can generate the money that can be used to buy the inane 30 second ads (and employ relatives, friends, and other hangers-on in the political apparati) that actually win elections in this era of the frighteningly low information voter?

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics. 

MORTGAGE LENDING: “LET’S TAKE IT NICE AND EASY, IT’S GONNA BE SO EASY…”

10/22/14

Two developments on the mortgage regulatory front warrant serious consideration and spawn one insightful observation and draw two conclusions.

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt announced yesterday that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will guarantee mortgages with down payments as low as 3%.  Previously, though there were exceptions, Fannie and Freddie required 20% down payments on mortgages they guaranteed.

At the same time, the Dodd-Frank requirement that banks retain 5% of the risk in the mortgage loans they originate and sell to investors or require a 20% down payment on such loans was watered down.  Under the new rules, banks can avoid retaining risk in the mortgages they originate and sell by merely “verifying a borrower’s ability to repay” and ensuring that their debt levels remain below certain predetermined thresholds.

Both moves are part of a general thrust toward easing home lending requirements and are seen as a response to a continued sluggish housing market that is characterized by home sales’ being down 2% from last year and still below pre-recession levels of seven years ago.

One can make one observation and draw two conclusions from these regulatory developments.

First, the observation:  At the expense of sounding like a heretic in the church of new age financial innovation, when you have put down only 3% of the value of “your” home, you don’t own the home; your lenders do.  Many have pointed out that only a slight change in housing prices would wipe out one’s equity under such a structure, and that is true.  But even more fundamentally, one doesn’t have to be as atavistic as yours truly to realize that you don’t own anything when you have borrowed just about its entire purchase prices.

Now, the first conclusion.  Wall Street must have gotten to the regulators.  Mortgage backed securities issuance is down 50% year to date from last year.   This of course hurts the trading profits of banks and other Wall Street institutions.   The regulators and their political masters are following their usual “Yes, sir, you’re right sir, what else can I do to make your life easier, sir?” approach to Wall Street and to anybody else capable of writing brobdingnagian “campaign” checks and providing other sources of lucre to our selfless public servants.  That the taxpayers and others not within the vortex of Washington may wind up with the bill for such service is inconsequential to the political class.

Finally, the second conclusion.  Regulators have to have concluded that our Potemkin housing market, and maybe our Potemkin economy, cannot survive without massive debt extension and creation.  That a large chunk of such debt may be unserviceable, and thus will have to be picked up by the taxpayers is, again, inconsequential to the political class or to the special interests it services.

“LOOK AT THAT CADILLAC!”: GM TRIES A GEOGRAPHICAL CURE AT CADDY

9/24/14

General Motors announced yesterday that Cadillac will move its headquarters to New York, part of a larger move to establish Caddy as a separate business unit.   Part of the rationale for abandoning the city whose founder gave Cadillac its name is, as new Caddy boss Johan de Nysschen, put it

“There is no city in the world where the inhabitants are more immersed in a premium lifestyle than New York.”

Mr. de Nysschen thus outlines about as good a reason as any not to live in New York, but I digress.

Will this move to New York work?  Caddy has to do something.  Year to date through the end of August, its sales were down 5% in a strong car market.   Making the story even worse, Caddy’s SUVs, the SRX and especially the behemoth Escalade, are selling quite well.  Sales of Cadillac cars, however, were down 15% as of 8/31/14.  Dealer lots are teeming with CTSs and ATSs that simply won’t sell.

So is moving to New York going to change Caddy’s fortunes?   Employing a little uncommon common sense, one suspects not.  But the move to the Big Apple is at least consonant with Caddy’s pricing strategy; i.e., Caddy vehicles definitely are listed at New York prices.  Therein, one suspects, lies the problem; Cadillacs are simply too expensive.  

The ATS starts in the low $30s, which yours truly thinks is a lot of money but apparently no one else does.  But try finding an ATS at that price point; walk around a dealer lot and you will notice that most of the stickers on this cramped car sport a $40 handle, and many are priced in the high $40s.  The CTS starts in the mid $40s, which gives yours truly apoplexy, and can easily reach the high $50s and low $60s.

C’mon!   These aren’t Mercedes or BMWs; they are Cadillacs, for Pete’s sake.  Yes, the current Caddy products are, in many aspects, as good as the European fare to which they aspire.  The handling of the ATS, which is at least as good, in many knowledgeable people’s opinions, as that of the BMW 3 Series comes immediately to mind.  And it is possible to argue with a straight face that the Cadillac cars are as good as or better in totality than their German competitors.  But that misses the point.

People who spend these brobdingnagian amounts on cars are buying, as much as they will never admit it, an image, not a car.  And while Caddy may be as good as BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Lexus, Infiniti, or what have you, it doesn’t have the image of those “luxury”(whatever that means) marques.  And therefore Caddy can’t charge BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Lexus, and Infiniti prices; those who buy such cars will not stand for it.   And old time Cadillac buyers are not used to paying such prices.  But Caddy doesn’t seem to care much for the traditional Cadillac buyer; in fact, Caddy seems to treat its traditional buyers like something it would like to scrape off the bottom of its shoe.  That also is a big part of the problem.  Older, largely self-made, people have money and are willing to spend it on expensive products that deliver value.  Caddy used to know that, but now seems to be tossing such customers over the side while fixating on capturing the attention of the insecure types who fancy themselves the nouveau riche and seek to prove it, perhaps to themselves, by the accumulation of showy and glittery yet ultimately useless gimcracks and trinkets.

So Caddy can tell its hometown to screw itself.  But as long as it charges prices commensurate with those that prevail in its new HQ town, and tells its traditional buyer base to also do the aforementioned anatomically impossible, it will have problems that far transcend geography.