November 5, 2004
The Republicans Take Control
While I was thrilled to have President Bush stressing privatizing social security and overhauling our tax code in yesterday's press conference, I couldn't get this quote by P.J. O'Rourke out of my head:
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
Speaking of O'Rourke, he recently interviewed Secretary of State Colin Powell in the The Atlantic. Here's an excerpt:
SECRETARY POWELL: ...But our great strength is the image we still convey to the rest of the world. Notwithstanding all you read about anti-Americanism, people are still standing in line to come here, to get visas and come across our borders.
P. J. O'ROURKE: Voting with their feet?
SECRETARY POWELL: Voting with their feet. So there's something right there.
P. J. O'ROURKE: Back in Lebanon in 1984, I was held at gunpoint by this Hezbollah kid, just a maniac, you know, at one of those checkpoints, screaming at me about America, great Satan, et cetera.
SECRETARY POWELL: Then he wanted a green card?
P. J. O'ROURKE: At the end of this rant, that's exactly what he said: "As soon as I get my green card, I am going to Dearborn, Michigan to study dental school." And he saw no disconnect.
SECRETARY POWELL: He's there now. He's not going back to Beirut.
P. J. O'ROURKE: He hated America so much and wanted nothing more than to be an American.
SECRETARY POWELL: They respect us and they resent us. But they want what we have.
Posted by Peter Mork at 4:30 PM | Comments | TrackBack
November 2, 2004
Markets & The Election: Part III
Or maybe not...
Posted by Peter Mork at 10:22 PM | Comments | TrackBack
Markets & The Election: Part II
Speaking of markets... this from Tradesports.com makes it look like Kerry has it in the bag.
Posted by Peter Mork at 4:57 PM | Comments | TrackBack
Markets & The Election
This morning, polls released on Ohio made it look like Bush was strengthening his lead in the state. But around 2:30 EST Drudge and other internet sources showed that the first round of exit polls were pointing towards Kerry. Think Wall Street was paying attention?
Posted by Peter Mork at 2:18 PM | Comments | TrackBack
November 1, 2004
Limping To The Finish Line: A Last Minute Election Commentary
Here is my last minute rambling take on the tomorrow's presidential election. I for one will be glad when this thing ends in the next few days.
As I believe the majority of my friends will be casting their ballots for Sen. John Kerry tomorrow, I thought I'd pay special attention to some of his stances on the issues. There are certainly many reasons to cast your vote against Bush. If you need any evidence you need look no further than the first paragraph of this post, which actually turns into an endorsement for the President.
But while I'll concede there are many reasons to vote against the President, that doesn't necessarily mean that Kerry is proposing ideas that are worthy of voting for. Below I've highlighted some of the key issues:
The War in Iraq: If Bush loses the election tomorrow, the deciding factor may very well be public opposition to the war in Iraq. Using the military preemptively is a contentious issue to say the least and very worthy of debate. My problem with Kerry and the Democrats is I don't see them taking a principled stance against the war.
To start off with, I personally believe that if 550 votes would have swung the other way in Florida in 2000, we still would be in Iraq today. Sound ridiculous? Gore himself campaigned on the importance of removing Saddam from power and it's not that farfetched to think that after 9/11 he might follow-up on his promise in the name of U.S. security. In this parallel universe we would currently have Republicans complaining that Gore didn't have enough troops while Democrats would be defending the war effort in hopes to get Gore reelected. Looking at it in this context one realizes that much of the debate today is really about political gain, not policy decisions.
But back to reality. Gore didn't get elected and Bush did make the decision to invade Iraq. The debate today focuses on the existence of WMDs and whether or not we had a proper coalition. My problem is that I do not believe this was the true thrust behind invading Iraq. In my opinion, the Bush Administration knew full well that countries such as Iran and North Korea posed more serious threats than Iraq in its previous state. Iran is clearly a larger state sponsor of terrorism than Saddam ever was. In terms of WMDs, you have to ask yourself, why is it that a country with oil so readily accessible takes such an interest in nuclear power?
Why then did we go after Iraq first?
First, there was no need to sell Saddam Hussein as a bad guy to the American public for we already knew all about him. The public was already convinced Saddam was a psychopath at the helm of an oil rich country. It doesn't take a genius to realize that removing him from power and in his place leaving a democratic government of free individuals would be a good thing for not only the people of Iraq, but for the safety of the U.S. and the world as a whole. Secondly, I believe this administration felt that a free-Iraq was a way to deal with Iran without firing a shot. They believe in the domino theory with regards to freedom, a point Bush has stressed throughout the campaign.
Obviously these positions are debatable. I for one believe the military should be used as a defense against an attack on our country or to thwart an eminent threat. And of course you don’t just snap your fingers and presto… a democracy appears that respects individual rights.
These are issues that need to be debated, but where does Senator Kerry stand? I couldn't tell you.
Kerry is now against the war in Iraq as he feels the President rushed to war without a strong coalition and "without a plan to win the peace". I’m still trying to figure what that means. It’s all the more confusing though when you realize Kerry supported the war in the Balkans even though the UN Security Council wouldn't give it a seal of approval. More recently Kerry criticized Bush for not sending more troops to Haiti. Bush to his credit defends his decision to go into Iraq on the basis of national security. No such claim can be made for the Balkans or Haiti so the question remains unanswered: By what standard would Kerry send our troops into harms way? He hasn’t answered that question.
What I don't believe is the Republican claim that a Kerry administration will be a disaster in terms of our security. But if you plan on voting for Kerry on the basis that war is such a serious issue that our military should be used as a last resort, to put it plainly, you have the wrong candidate.
Social Security: No one denies that Social Security is going bankrupt except politicians running for office. The country would need an extra $11 trillion dollars today in order to make up for the difference between what Social Security has promised to pay out in bennefits and what it will take in through taxation. To put that into perspective that is nearly three times as large as our national debt. Luckily for today's politicians these unfunded liabilities are allowed to be kept "off balance sheet" and are not reported in the federal budget. Yeah... kinda like Enron if you were wondering.
The reason we are in this mess is that the money young workers are currently paying into the system is not being saved. It is immediately getting paid out to current retirees. Any excess tax revenues are put into government bonds. Unfortunately when the government buys a bond from itself there is no real savings going on. It is for this reason that you will hear that the Social Security Trust Fund is full of IOUs that the government has written to itself.
If a private business were to set up such an operation it would be called a ponzi scheme and the CEO would end up in jail. Politicians, for some reason, don't want to hold themselves up to the same standard. Go figure.
President Clinton laid out the available options years back when he said we had to make a choice. I'll paraphrase but in essence he said we can raise taxes, cut benefits, or allow younger workers to invest a portion of their taxes in private accounts. The final option allows these younger workers to rely upon their own savings when it comes time to retire, not on the future tax payments of their children.
What is Kerry’s response to this looming disaster? He’s stated he won’t raise taxes, he won’t cut benefits, nor will he privatize in any way the current system. What that means is he’ll leave the system as is for someone else to deal with. During the next four years trillions more of unfunded liabilities will be run up by the government, making it all the more difficult to solve the problem in the long run.
Bush to his credit has addressed this third rail of American politics and has promised to tackle it in his second term. A current bill sitting in Congress would allow workers to invest 10 percentage points of their payroll taxes, applying to the first $10,000 of income, in a private account. Thereafter the rate would drop to 5 percentage points. What that would mean is that even someone making as little as $10,000 a year would now have $1000 in a 401K type account every year. It is my belief that once this would be in place it would change the landscape of American politics permanently.
Can you imagine if Kerry was campaigning on the premise that people shouldn’t be allowed to invest in their own 401Ks, and that the government should own these accounts so people don’t gamble their savings away on the stock market? Additionally the money currently in 401ks would be liquidated and paid out to today’s senior citizens, many of whom are in fact very wealthy. This election would have been over before it started. Now imagine that if every worker today, instead of seeing hundreds of dollars taken out of their pay checks for FICA, instead saw this money being placed in their own private account. As I said there would be no turning back.
For some more reading see here.
Trade & Outsourcing: Kerry had a strong free trade voting record until he started running for Senate. Now he betrayed this record in order to shore up union support. Yes, there is a good chance that, like Clinton, Kerry for the most part would promote free trade and help us down the road to a more integrated global economy. Still it’s hard to support a candidate that runs a campaign based on the fact that Americans have some sort of rights that the rest of the world’s citizens do not.
For more see here.
Jobs, the Economy, & Taxes: The real benefit of Bush's tax cuts was the leveling off of the playing field in term of how corporations distribute their earnings. Many have written this off as a tax cut for the rich but it clearly benefits the economy to have companies making decisions on a basis of what’s best for business, not what’s best for tax purposes.
Here are two charts that show some of the effects. The first chart is a graph of annualized GDP growth. I’ve included the last two quarters of the Clinton Administration just to point out that the first quarter of negative growth did not come on Bush’s watch. The columns turn red after his tax cuts were fully implemented. As you will notice we’ve had 6 consecutive quarters of strong growth since that date.
It’s also good to put the jobs debate in perspective. Here’s a graph of the unemployment rate over the last few decades. As can clearly be seen, this has been a relatively shallow recession.
For more reading on the subject I suggest this piece by Edward Prescott, co-recipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics.
Healthcare: Often when politicians talk about controlling healthcare costs what they are actually talking about is controlling healthcare prices. They can do this through price controls (importing price controlled drugs from Canada) or by picking up the tab themselves (ala Kerry’s healthcare proposal). To control actual costs you have to either increase supply or decrease demand, it’s that simple.
Bush’s Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) get insurance covering what it is supposed to be covering: unexpected and rare events. Insurance isn’t supposed to cover routine medical expenditures but due to bizarre tax laws that is exactly what it has become. Bush’s HSA accounts allow individuals to set up tax free accounts for common medical expenditures (antibiotics for the example) while leaving insurance to cover rare and expensive items.
This has two main benefits. First, it gets patients asking the all important questions: “how much is this going to cost?” (For example if a doctor charges you $150 for a routine visit but your insurance covers the entire cost, it doesn’t affect you one way or the other. However, if you are paying for the doctor out of your own private account, you are most likely are going shop around to get more bang for your buck.). Two, it makes your healthcare insurance portable. Just as 401Ks have made company pension plans less attractive and have given employees the freedom to change employers without losing retirement benefits, HSAs will have the same effect. People often fear leaving a job as they lose their company provided health insurance, but employees own an HSA themselves and it will move with them from career to career. These are two big improvements over the current system.
Kerry’s plan involves a huge government expenditure which does nothing to change incentives.
A more detailed analysis can be found here.
Education: Kerry once had some pretty radical ideas for education which I support. But running for president you can’t be for school choice and expect to be endorsed by the NEA. As president, he most likely would veto this bill which was supported by fellow Senate Democrat Diane Feinstein. No candidate that puts politics over principles when it comes to educating children would ever get my vote.
Immigration: Kerry is in favor of an amnesty which I support. For those who feel that this would be rewarding those who broke our countries laws I'll refer you here. Unfortunately, I don't think that Kerry could get this through a Republican Congress and in four years we'll be in the exact same position we are in now. Bush has the political capital to get his immigration package though the Congress and, while not perfect, I believe it's a good plan.
That all said, it is always tough choosing between the lesser of two evils.
On election day 1996 I sat in my apartment living room in the late afternoon waiting to see who would get my vote for president. Republicans Bob Dole & Jack Kemp had perked my interest with a plan to cut capital gains taxes in half, which I saw as a way to unlock a tremendous amount of capital that was currently not being transacted due to the high rate of taxation. President Clinton had ridiculed this plan as a tax cut for the rich. I was a junior in college and it was my first time voting in a presidential election. If it was a close race I planned on casting my vote for the Republicans. When the news announced that Florida had gone to Clinton I walked out the door and across the street to the polling place and voted for the Libertarian candidate Harry Browne.
A little over a year later, contrary to his campaign rhetoric, Clinton himself slashed taxes on capital gains to 20% helping to put a bull market in motion. During that term he also helped in reforming welfare, eliminated taxes on the first half-million dollars of capital gains of residential real-estate, and put together a task force to begin the privatization of social security. It is rumored that he felt privatizing social security would be his legacy that would be remembered for generations to come. Unfortunately, a fling with a certain intern named Monica threw a monkey wrench in those plans as Clinton had to return to his base to fight off impeachment.
Could Kerry be saying one thing now just to get elected, while he would be pleasantly surprising me in just a few short years? Possible... but from watching this campaign I'd have to say it is doubtful. The best thing that's going to come out of a Kerry Administration is gridlock, which truthfully might be better than the alternative.
And what if on Wednesday morning we find out that Senator Kerry will become President Kerry this coming January? If this is to come to pass, I ask of my friends who will be rejoicing in his victory just one request: do not turn on your principles for the sake of party loyalty. Over the last four years I've had intriguing discussions with various friends criticizing Bush for his wreckless spending, the pork laden farm bill, steel tariffs, a bloated Medicare giveaway, the Patriot Act, and of course for the war in Iraq.
However once the Democratic primaries started the mood changed. All of a sudden free trade wasn't quite as appealing, outsourcing suddenly became ever so worrisome, and while Bush's Medicare reform was still awful... what could be so bad about nationalizing healthcare?
In a way it reminded me of coming back to the States after nearly a year in Spain. During the months preceding my departure the U.S. was bombing the Balkans like there was no tomorrow. There was news footage of the destroyed Chinese embassy and Gen. Wesley Clark was caught defending the bombing of a passenger train using military footage that was played at three times the normal speed. My European classmates and co-workers were outraged. Once I returned to the U.S. however, nobody really seemed to care except for a few lefty wackos (but who listens to them). If a Democrat starts a war it must be a good one... right?
If politicians know that the party loyalists will ignore principles just to keep their guy in office, they certainly will take advantage of it. Republicans may have lost this election by trying to keep a smile on their face while being stabbed in the back on issues such as free trade and spending restraint.
If Kerry is victorious I hope his supporters will learn this lesson quickly. I don’t know if I can handle four years of a partisan defense of his administration.
Posted by Peter Mork at 11:19 PM | Comments | TrackBack
The Day After Tomorrow
This Wednesday, with any luck, we should know who will be occupying the White House for the next four years. Unfortunately, my internet connection went out last night so I'm a little late getting up a post on tomorrow's presidential election. Look for it later on this evening.
In the meantime the Cato Institute has posted a piece by Doug Bandow in favor of John Kerry, and another by Dan Griswold which makes the case for Bush. Both are worth a read.
"The deficit can be cut in half if Congress "is willing to make tough choices," says President Bush. But GOP legislators are likely to make tough choices only if he is replaced by a Democrat. History teaches us that divided government equals fiscal probity, so vote Democratic for President if you want responsible budgeting in Washington."
"Meanwhile, Kerry and his party have proposed huge increases of their own in federal spending. Their chief criticism of Bush on health care, education and just about everything else but defense is that he has not been spending enough. And they want to underwrite their own spending spree with higher taxes on, you guessed it, "the rich." Kerry and much of his Democratic base want to slow the advancement of free trade and accelerate regulation of the economy. They criticize Bush for his conduct of the war in Iraq but do not challenge it on principle."
Posted by Peter Mork at 6:20 AM | Comments | TrackBack
October 29, 2004
GDP and the Election, Part II
Here is the headline: "GDP growth weaker than expected"
3.7% is a very strong number. But the forecasts were so high that, like I said yesterday, this isn't going to give Bush or Kerry a boost one way or another.
Posted by Peter Mork at 6:53 AM | Comments | TrackBack
October 28, 2004
Are Liberty and Democracy Equivalent?
Earlier this week Cox & Forkum published this cartoon:
The cartoon was a reaction to Bush's response to a question on what would happen if Iraqi elections produced a fundamentalist Islamic government. As Bush was quoted:
"I will be disappointed. But democracy is democracy," Bush said. "If that's what the people choose, that's what the people choose."
What's disturbing about this quote is that it leaves the impression that Bush is unaware of what makes this country great. It's not simply that we practice democracy, it lies in the fact that we are republic based on a constitution that enshrines individual rights. This is a point that is lost in much of today's political debate, but is captured in the editorial cartoon superbly. Democracy is not an end and of itself, it must be limited by laws that protect the individual from the majority vote. Friedrich Hayek highlighted this issue in his classic The Constitution of Liberty:
"The dogmatic democrat feels, in particular, that any current majority ought to have the right to decide what powers it has and how to exercise them, while the liberal regards it as important that the powers of any temporary majority be limited by long-term principles."
Bush has stated that he views the job of the U.S. should be to "spread freedom". If he envisions leaving Iraq in the hands of a simple majority rule he is not even living up to his own debatable standard. Without a proper constitution, whose to say that Iraq won't vote in a regime that is even more hostile to the U.S. than that of Saddam and his Bathist party? I agree with the President that people across this globe want to be free, but there is a serious debate in how to best accomplish this noble goal. If his version of freedom is democracies that are not limited by a respect for the individual's right to his or her own life, it won't make this world a safer place.
Update: After writing this I found Bush's full quote and to his credit he does mention the word "constitution". Still though, the post above remains valid.
BUSH: I will be disappointed, but democracy is democracy. They have now got a - the beginnings of a constitution, the TAL, which sends a different message, that there will be tolerance and an open society. But people - if that's what the people choose, that's what the people choose.
Posted by Peter Mork at 11:47 PM | Comments | TrackBack
GDP and the Election
Tomorrow morning the first reading of GDP growth for the 3rd quarter will hit the wires. A consensus of economists are forecasting a 4.3% annualized growth rate while Briefing is forecasting a scorching 5.0% rate. These are high estimates. Since the release is the Friday before the election, the number could definitely have some political implications.
Truthfully though it might be a wash. I think the likely scenario is growth coming in at a strong 3-4% range, followed by headlines in the press such as: "Economy Grows in 3Q... Yet Slower than Economists Expected". Both sides could use this as ammunition and it won't swing voters one way or the other. Tune in tomorrow morning to see how this plays out.
Posted by Peter Mork at 11:15 AM | Comments | TrackBack
October 26, 2004
Libertarians Of All Varieties
Last week when I calculated the percent going to each candidate from a Reason poll of prominent libertarians, I was surprised by Nader's relatively strong showing in 2000. While he is a great spokesman against corporate welfare, he is also the biggest proponent of regulating those same corporations. Not a quality I associate with a party of limited government.
In the same vein, when Lawrence N. Allen described his politics on the front page of the WSJ this morning as "to the left of the standard Democratic candidate", thoughts of nationalized health care, higher taxes and protectionism start flying through my head. For this reason his vote in 2000 was an initial surprise:
To prepare for next week's election, Lawrence N. Allen taught himself the Matlab statistical programming language and built a database of 1,700 state polls pulled off the Internet. His program runs a "likelihood analysis" on 15 closely contested battleground states. It takes 50 minutes to run on an old computer he got in return for a bunch of parts from a broken laptop.
The unemployed computer programmer in Oakland, Calif., identifies his politics as "to the left of standard Democratic candidates" and says he flirted with voting for Ralph Nader in 2000 before opting for libertarian Harry Browne. His calculations, made on Oct. 20, give Mr. Bush a 78.1% chance of victory.
Posted by Peter Mork at 8:06 AM | Comments | TrackBack
October 21, 2004
The Libertarians Decide, 2004
Dan Drezner links to "Reason’s revealing presidential poll" of prominent libertarians. Reading through it I was surprised by the many of the answers so I threw them into excel to make this table. (NV=Not Voting, NS=Not Saying, Total of 47 Surveyed)
Comparing the 2004 numbers to 2000 the big losers look to be the Libertarian Party and Nader. Big winner is clearly Kerry and the Democrats. There is some room for interpretation here as when people would say they were still deciding between, say, Kerry and Badnarick, I'd give them each a half vote. If anyone is interested in looking at the excel sheet send me an email and I'll zip it over.
As usual P.J. O'Rourke was pretty funny:
P.J. O’RourkeO’Rourke is H.L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute and author, most recently, of Peace Kills (Atlantic Monthly Press).
2004 vote: George W. Bush, because I don’t want Johnnie Cochran on the Supreme Court.
2000 vote: George W. Bush. (I always vote Republican because Republicans have fewer ideas. Although, in the case of George W., not fewer enough.)
Most embarrassing vote: A 1968 write-in for "Chairman Meow," my girlfriend’s cat. It seemed very funny at the time. As I mentioned, this was 1968.
Favorite president: Calvin Coolidge -- why say more?
Posted by Peter Mork at 10:42 PM | Comments | TrackBack
October 20, 2004
The Dirtiest Election of All Time
The election is less than two weeks away, and for many it’s not coming a second too soon. Combining the normal partisan fighting among the two major political parties with a hotly contested election in 2000, many have concluded that this is the dirtiest election in our history.
Not so fast says Paul Johnson on the pages of today’s WSJ. Those who claim that this is the most divided the country has been need to take a look back at our own history, starting in 1824:
John Quincy Adams's election in 1824 was a landmark because it accelerated the move toward choosing electors by popular vote. Out of 356,038 votes cast, Andrew Jackson emerged the clear leader with 153,544, Adams being 40,000 votes behind. Jackson also had the most electoral college votes, 99 to 84, with 78 for other candidates. But under the 12th Amendment, if no candidate got a majority of the college, the election went to the House, which picked the winner from the top three, voting by state. This put the choice effectively into the hands of Henry Clay, the all-powerful Speaker, who gave it to Adams, on the secret condition Adams made him secretary of state. Jackson denounced the election as "a corrupt bargain," and there was a growing feeling that future presidents must be chosen by the voters.
In reaction to an upwelling of Jackson support, negative campaigning took on a whole new meaning for the 1828 election that again pitted Adams against Jackson:
Adams's supporters retaliated by the campaign poster known as the Coffin Handbill, listing 18 murders Jackson was supposed to have committed. Those who claim the current election is the dirtiest know little about 1828. An English visitor, shown a school in New England (where Adams was paramount), put questions to the class, including "Who killed Abel?" A child promptly replied "General Jackson, Ma'am." An Adams pamphlet accused Jackson of "trafficking in human flesh," another accused his wife of being a bigamist and adulterer. After seeing it, she took to her bed and died shortly after the election. To his dying day Jackson believed his political enemies had murdered her. On his side, pamphlets accused Adams of fornication, procuring American virgins for the Tsar while serving as ambassador in Russia, and being an alcoholic and sabbath-breaker. A White House inventory listing a billiard-table and a chess-set led to the accusation that Adams had introduced "gambling furniture." (His most curious presidential habit, of taking a daily swim in the Potomac stark naked, went unnoticed.)
It makes what’s going on between Kerry and Bush look like child’s play.
Posted by Peter Mork at 10:54 AM | Comments | TrackBack
October 15, 2004
10,000 Germans Can't Be Wrong
In a debate that was supposed to cover domestic policy this week, the two candidates still found ample time to talk about the war in Iraq. Throughout the three debates, when the subject turned towards Iraq, Bush and Kerry often sparred over whether or not we had a proper coalition prior to invading the country. For instance, in the first debate Kerry said:
We know that he promised America that he was going to build this coalition. I just described the coalition. It is not the kind of coalition we were described when we were talking about voting for this.
Bush in the same debate stated:
My opponent says we didn't have any allies in this war. What's he say to Tony Blair? What's he say to Alexander Kwasniewski of Poland?
How does one define a proper coalition in the first place? More importantly, can a proper coalition (if defined) justify going to war? Perhaps it is clearer if we pose the questions in a different manner:
The point is a standard of right and wrong, not popular support, must be used to evaluate something as serious as a war.
To put this in the context of Iraq, it seems Kerry's main concern is that we went to war without the support of our Western European allies Germany and France. Yes Russia and China, members of the U.N. Security Council, opposed the Iraqi war as well. But one should note that these two countries also failed to support using military force against Yugoslavia in 1999, a war Sen. John Kerry supported.
So if Germany, for instance, had supported the war in Iraq this would seem to diminish Kerry's stance that we did not compile a proper coalition. As such, the war would be justified in the eyes of many.
Such a situation was less than 10,000 German votes away.
In 2002, as the world debated the use of military force against Iraq, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany was in an extremely tight election race with challenger Edmund Stoiber. Stoiber made clear he would back the U.S. on Iraq and even went so far as to say that Schroeder's opposition to the war reflected "isolationism". As I stated above, this election was decided by 10,000 votes. Did this slim margin determine whether it was right or wrong to send U.S. troops into harm's way?
Rights and wrongs are not defined by the majority. There are plenty of reasons to oppose the preemptive use of military force. However, if one uses the lack of international support as the foundation of their argument, it gives them almost no ground to stand on when the pendulum swings the other way. As history has shown this can often happen quicker than you think.
Posted by Peter Mork at 5:41 PM | Comments | TrackBack
September 15, 2004
Stock Talk
Kerry makes his case for the Presidency in today's WSJ. Without getting into his proposals, I just thought the tone of the op-ed was hilarious. He starts off with:
As I travel across this country, I meet store owners, stock traders, factory foremen and optimistic entrepreneurs.
I wonder how many times he has used "stock traders" in stump speeches across the country this year. My guess is not many. Anyway, moving on to the end of the first paragraph:
...American businesses will do better if we change our CEO.
and then concludes with:
On Nov. 2 we will have a national shareholders meeting. On the ballot will be the choice to continue with President Bush's policies or return to the fiscal sanity and pro-growth polices that proved so successful in the 1990s. You will choose.
Thanks Senator for putting that in terms us Wall Street guys could understand.
Too funny.