October 10th, 2011 by John Feehery
Christopher Columbus
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
That was a long time ago.
It used to be that Christopher Columbus was a big deal in America. In 1892, the worlds fare in Chicago celebrated the 400th anniversary of the Italian sailor’s “discovery” of the new world.
These days, we don’t even get Columbus day off.
There is still a connection, of course, between the two.
Columbus was born in Italy, petitioned the Spanish monarchs to get money for his trip to the new world, and competed fiercely with Portuguese explorers. He reportedly also spent some time in Ireland.
If I could somehow find a direct connection with the Greeks, we would be all set with the PIGS meme.
Columbus traveled west in hopes of finding a quicker path to to the Indies. What he discovered was that the world was a lot bigger than he initially thought. When he made landfall in the Caribbean, he wasn’t in
India at all. He still had half a world to go.
What we are discovering today is that the world is a helluva lot smaller than we initially thought. When the Greeks, the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Irish go bankrupt it greater increases the chances that
we will go bankrupt. Read more...
Tags: 1492, Christopher Columbus, Columbus Day, Irish, Italian, Politics, President, Spanish
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, Government, History, Politics, Theory, taxes | No Comments »
October 7th, 2011 by John Feehery
The Senate majority leader moved last night to cut off republican amendments to a Chinese currency bill, calling the amendments dilatory. In doing so, he changed Senate rules and caused a firestorm in the halls of the world’s greatest debating society (or so it thinks of itself).
I was in the Senate press gallery as this kerfluffle was unfolding, drinking beer at a going away party for Carl Hulse, the New York Times reporter who is moving off the hill beat and up the management chain at the old gray lady.
Had I been a Senate staffer, I probably would have really cared about this break in precedent, but I am now a civilian, and like most Americans, I now look upon the Senate as a vast wasteland of wasted opportunity, which leads me not to anger, but to ennui.
The upper body, as some call it, has put the fun in dysfunction. Well, not really. There is nothing fun about it. It hasn’t passed a budget in two years, it hasn’t passed an appropriations bill all year, it won’t pass a jobs bill that will actually create jobs, and right now, it doesn’t look good for any progress on the Super Committee, which was created precisely because the Senate is so completely dysfunctional. Read more...
Tags: Carl Hulse, Congress, House of Representatives, jobs bill, Politics, Senate Majority Leader, super committee, The American people, the Senate
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, History, Politics, Theory, spending, taxes | 1 Comment »
October 6th, 2011 by John Feehery
I had a chance lunch with the founder of Crate and Barrel yesterday at the Washington Ideas Forum. Gordon Segal asked if the empty seat at my small table was open, and me, having no idea who Gordon Segal is, said sure.
He told me if he was from Chicago, and I immediately (in my usually obnoxious straightforward way) asked him if he was a Cub or White Sox fan.
I noticed that his name tag said Crate and Barrel, and asked him about it. Yep, he said, he founded the company with his wife in 1962 with one other employee. They were newlyweds who had travled through Europe in 1961, and they noticed all the neat furniture stores over there that would have looked cool in American living rooms. The Crate and Barrel name comes from the crates and barrels from which all of their products arrived, initially from European countries, and now from all over the world. Read more...
Tags: Aspen Institute, Atlantic Magazine, Bill Daley, Conservatives, Crate and Barrel, David Bradley, Dodd-Frank, Gordon Segal, Government, Marco Rubio, spending, Tom Brokaw, Washington Ideas Forum
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, History, Politics, Theory, bad news, housing crisis, spending | No Comments »
October 5th, 2011 by John Feehery
Apparently, Radiohead couldn’t get its schedule straight with the Occupy Wall Street protesters and they didn’t play for the grungy crowd last week. I am not hip enough to know exactly what kind of music the band plays, but I do know that a couple of years ago, the members of the band came up with a brilliant marketing strategy to sell one of its albums. “Pay what you want or pay nothing at all if that is what you want to do.” The band never released how much money it made by letting its fans name their own price, but they chose to not pursue the same strategy for their next album.
Despite the scheduling snafu, Radiohead still has endorsed the protest movement that seems to be gaining strength every day. For example, all of the government employee unions are now on board with Michael Moore and assorted other left-wing radicals to protest the money that Wall Street financiers make every day.
These Wall Street financiers and their other colleagues, known collectively by the collectivists as “the rich” or the “one-percenters”, pay about 30 to 35% of the taxes collected by the Federal government. Having the government employee unions protest against these prodigious tax-payers is somewhat akin to the protesting against the goose because he is not producing golden eggs fast enough. Read more...
Tags: America, anti-capitalist, Barack Obama, Capitalism, Democrats, Federal government, immigrants, Jobs, Mexicans, Michael Moore, New York Times, Occupy Wall Street protestors, Old Gray Lady, Politics, Radiohead, spending, taxes, Wall Street financiers
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, GOP, Government, Politics, bad news, spending, taxes | No Comments »
October 4th, 2011 by John Feehery
Originally posted on THE HILL – October 3, 2011
It might be too early to start analyzing what went wrong with the Obama administration in its first three years, but I am going to do it anyway.
Here are seven turning points that led to the president’s decline and fall, seven places where Obama or his Democratic allies made critical errors that forever altered the course of his presidency. He hasn’t done everything wrong, but he has made enough mistakes to make his reelection extraordinarily difficult.
1. Failed to veto the initial stimulus package: Imagine for a moment if Obama had vetoed that initial stimulus package. Imagine if he insisted that Democratic leaders take out all the pork and cleanse the bill of unworthy projects. Imagine if he had insisted that congressional Democrats work with Republicans to include their ideas, because we are all in this together. He would have immediately branded himself as a different kind of president, as someone above the fray, as a leader who cares first about the country, not the Democratic Party. And if he had done that, he would have had the Republicans hopelessly divided. Of course, he didn’t take that step, congressional Democrats were able to walk all over him and Republicans stiffened up their resolve and presented a united front against the president and his plans. Read more...
Tags: America, Barack Obama, Bush’s tax cuts, David Plouffe, Democrats, dollar, election, George W Bush, Government, healthcare, House Republicans, Nancy Pelosi, Obama Administration, Obamacare, olympics, Politics, Republicans, spending, White House
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, Politics, Presidential election, election, health care, medicare, national security, spending | 1 Comment »
September 29th, 2011 by John Feehery
It used to be that waivers were a bad thing.
It was bad to be put on waivers if you were in the NFL or played Major League Baseball. That meant you were out of a job.
Now, waivers are a good thing.
The Obama Administration announced that it was going to give waivers to the states of No Child Left Behind.
Too many states can’t meet the requirements of NCLB, so they are begging the Feds to give them a break.
If there is one thing that Mr. Obama and all the Republicans running for President agree on, it is that they don’t really love that landmark law legislated by John Boehner and Ted Kennedy and signed into law by W.
It’s too hard. Let’s give the states a waiver.
That, of course, begs the question: If the law is so bad, why don’t you just repeal it. Good question.
Mitt Romney promised that the first thing he would do if elected President would be to give waivers to all 50 states to the health care law signed by Mr. Obama. Read more...
Tags: America, Barack Obama, Congress, Congressional laws, Democrats, Government, John Boehner, Major League Baseball, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, NFL, No Child Left Behind, Obama Administration, Obamacare, Republicans, Rick Perry, Social Security, taxes, Tea Party, Ted Kennedy
Posted in Bad Decisions, Bailouts, Economy, Financial Crisis, GOP, Government, Laws, Presidential election, Promises, Theory, election, taxes | 1 Comment »
September 28th, 2011 by John Feehery
I was talking to a Democratic friend of mine this morning, and he told me to expect the President’s people to go after Mitt Romney on the jobs issue. “There is a lot more that hasn’t come to the surface,” he told me confidently.
I’m sure there is. There is always more on just about everybody. I wish we knew more about Obama before the American people elected him three years ago.
The issue that my friend talked to me about had to do with Romney’s time at Bain Capital.
Bain Capital is a private equity firm that buys undervalued companies and turns them around so they can become profitable. They have had a lot of success. You can wake up with a Bain Capital company (Sealy), check out the weather (they own the Weather Channel), get a cup of coffee and a donut (Dunkin Donuts), go to the store and buy some running shoes to work off the donut (Sports Authority), buy some office supplies (Staples), grab a burger (Burger King), buy a present (Brookstone), catch a movie (AMC Entertainment), and then get home in time for dinner (Domino’s Pizza). Read more...
Tags: America, Bain Capital, Barack Obama, Congress, Democrats, Economy, election, Government, Mitt Romney, Politics, Presidential election, private sector, public sector, Republican, Republicans, spending, taxes, Ted Kennedy, Washington, White House
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, History, Laws, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, Theory, election, spending | No Comments »
September 26th, 2011 by John Feehery
Ping-Pong is a wonderful game, requiring skill, finesse, great hand-eye coordination, and at times, power.
Ping-Pong is a different game in the Congressional sense.
When one legislative body ping-pongs back a piece of legislation to another legislative body (like the House jamming the Senate) it can be both exhilarating and frustrating at the same time.
Last week, the House served up a continuing resolution plus some additional disaster assistance money to the Senate before leaving for its break for the Jewish holidays.
The Senate, which hoped to also break for the week, is not at all happy with what the House served up.
But to be successful in jamming back the House, the Senate has to act as one. The rules of the Senate make it awfully hard for that body to act quickly on anything if there is a disagreement between the political parties.
And on this package, there is intense disagreement.
The Republicans want to pay for disaster assistance. The Democrats don’t like how the Republicans paid for it, especially their efforts to isolate a particularly bad political scandal that is currently afflicting the Obama Administration. Read more...
Tags: America, Barack Obama, Congress, Conservatives, Democrats, House of Representatives, John Boehner, Obama Administration, Ping-Pong, Politics, President, Republican, Republicans, Senate, Senate Minority Leader McConnell, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Senate Majority Leader, White House
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, GOP, Government, Laws, Politics, spending | No Comments »
September 22nd, 2011 by John Feehery
It has been a long time since the girl from Ipanema captured the imaginations of the American people. But Brazil these days is more than just a bunch of pretty women and nice beaches. In fact, for American workers (especially those in the aerospace industry and helicopter manufacturing) Brazil has been a jobs life-line.
Among the top ten American trading partners, Brazil stands as the only country that the United States has had a trade surplus with for the last two years. Of the top ten products that have been sent to Latin American countries from the States, three of them have been component parts for either aircraft or helicopters.
To say that Brazil is on a roll would be an understatement. “Rio”, a new animated movie put out by Fox Pictures, is not only a hit; it also puts the iconic Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro in a flattering light. Rio beat my hometown of Chicago for the right to host the Olympics in 2016, a coup for all of South America, and Brazil will also play host to the World Cup in 2014. Read more...
Tags: America, Barack Obama, Boeing, Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, Economy, Embraer, European Debt Crisis, Forbes Magazine, Honeywell, Ipanema, Politics, President Obama, QGA Public Affairs, Rio de Janeiro, Tim Geithner, U.S. Air Force, United Nations, United States, World Cup
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, Government, Politics, Theory, national security, spending | No Comments »
September 21st, 2011 by John Feehery
I was working out at the gym this morning (I know, miracles never cease), and I looked over briefly (I know, you don’t believe me), at the television and saw one of the hosts interviewing Rachel Maddow.
I am not the biggest Rachel Maddow fan in the world (ok, I am not really a fan at all) and I immediately assumed that the topic of conversation was on the President’s decision on “don’t ask, don’t tell”, an issue that apparently is important to the MSNBC host.
According to the headline blaring at the bottom of the television screen was “Is Obama losing his base?”
Interesting question, given that the previous day, the President struck a blow for some of his most passionate supporters by going through with change in a long standing military policy.
I will make this observation.
The President is not losing his base (if that is true) because he is moving to the middle. He is losing his base for largely the same reasons that he is losing the middle and losing the rest of the country.
Sheer incompetence. Read more...
Tags: America, Barack Obama, Conservatives, Democrats, don’t tell”, Economy, election, Gibson Guitar, Government, Msnbc, NRLB, Obama, Obama Justice Department, Obamacare, President Obama, Presidential election, Rachel Maddow, Republicans, Ron Paul, Ron Susskind, Sarah Palin, the Obama Administration, “don’t ask
Posted in Bad Decisions, Bailouts, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, History, Liberal Media, Media, Politics, Promises, Theory, Unemployment, bad news, election, health care, spending, taxes | No Comments »
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