Farewell, Connie...

A month ago today, my grandmother passed away.  She had stage 4 lung cancer, which she fought tenaciously for over 18 months, and this was the third time she was diagnosed with cancer over a 30+ year span (her first – breast cancer – came in her early 40’s).  I could use a huge number of sometimes conflicting terms to describe her: smart, tough, determined, devious, loving, delusional.  She left me with a love of cooking and a head for numbers.  She was 76 years old.  

Despite all of the headaches she would give me, all of the trouble she’d stir up in the family, all the inappropriate things she’d say, I miss her more than words can describe.  But it’s been weighing heavily on my heart for all of these weeks, so I wanted to share some stories about my grandma that I will always remember her by.  And, before I start: these aren’t always flattering, but they are all classic Connie.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned from her, it’s to accept people for who they are, not who you want them to be; she wasn’t always (ever?) a saint, but she always tried to be the best grandmother she could.

I apologize in advance for any racism in these stories.  I also apologize for being a terrible writer, because I’m sure that’s going to make this hard to read (for all zero(?) of you reading this).

1.   When my parents first got married, my grandparents both didn’t like my dad because A) he was Irish and B) he was Irish (my mother’s family is Italian).  Over the years, though, my dad gradually grew to become grandma’s favorite (not surprising; he’s everyone’s favorite).  Now let’s fast forward about 30 years.  I drove out to grandma’s house with my sister for Sunday evening dinner.  As we were finishing up, my sister casually asks, “Hey grandma, why is it that you’re always so much nicer to dad than you are to mom?”  Her response?  “Well, if I don’t treat your dad well, he’ll bring your mother back home.”  That’s pretty fucked up.

2.       For my grandparent’s anniversary one year, my parents decided to take them out for a fancy dinner.  I was in college, but was commuting to school from home.  I didn’t have anything to do that particular Saturday night (commuting to college kind of sucks if you want a social life), so I decided to hitch a ride and come with.  At dinner, grandma ponders aloud (paraphrased), “What kind of loser 20-year-old has nothing better to do on a Saturday night than eat dinner with his grandmother?” This kind of loser, grandma.  Thanks for the pick-me-up!

   

3.      I start dating the woman I eventually marry and, being the family man that I am, I feel that it’s important for her to meet my extended family very early on.  Part of this ritual involves a Sunday dinner at grandma’s house.  Dinner itself was phenomenal – I helped grandma prepare a sauce and manicotti.  As we’re sitting around the table, grandma and grandpa are reminiscing with my parents about the early years of mom and dad’s marriage.  I’m not sure how the conversation veered this way, but they were talking about how mom and dad were always very generous, even though they never had any money.  That’s when grandma let out this winning statement: “Your parents spent every dime they had as fast as they earned it.  They were real ‘n-word rich.’”  At this point, she raises one had to the side of her mouth, as if she was leaning in to tell you a secret.  To counteract any volume dampening effect her hand might have, she proceeded to talk 5 times as loud: “The ‘N’ stands for ‘Nigger!’”  Keep in mind, for the duration of this conversation, she was sitting next to my new girlfriend at the time, who I was very much in love with, and who she was just meeting for the first time.

4.       An aside on my wife: she generally goes by Sam, which is obviously short for Samantha.  So, after we get engaged, when I’m taking with grandma about the wedding prep, she lays this amazing number on me: “How is Samantha doing?  I know she goes by Sam, but that’s a man’s name, and grandma can’t deal with that.  You may not have known this, but grandma is very homophobic.”  Apparently you were, grandma.  Oh, another fun fact you may have gleaned from this: grandma LOVED talking in the third person.

For all of the ridiculous and inappropriate comments like the above, there were dozens of counteracting moments where she was the greatest grandma I could ever ask for: the hugs she would always sneak in, the way she taught me to cook like a pro, the way she’d send me a card for the stupidest of holidays (no 20+ year old man needs a Halloween card, grandma – but it did make me smile).

I certainly have no regrets in my relationship with grandma.  I always tried to be the man she could be proud of.  I was the best grandson I knew how to be, and I’m glad I spent as much time with you as I did, even if you didn’t always appreciate it.  My only regret is that my son and daughter won’t know you like I did.  They’ll never know they smells and tastes of your kitchen or the heartiness of your laugh.  But I will tell them all about you.

I do not fool myself into thinking that you still exist somewhere.  So I won’t spout some bullshit about, “Wherever you are, grandma….”  I no longer have a grandma to talk to, and for that, I am deeply saddened.  But I can only hope that while grandma was here, she enjoyed her time with me as much as I enjoyed my time with her.

A Disappointing Show in Denver

The first presidential debate came and went, and it was awkward.  On one hand, I was pleasantly surprised; there was more policy and detail in this debate than in the preceding 9 months.  On the other hand, there’s more water in an empty cup than there are details in the Romney or Obama campaigns.  Maybe America doesn’t think it deserves better than this?  I deserve better.  I am disappointed mostly because I didn’t see a competent debater on the stage.  I’m pretty sure I could have done better.

Near the beginning of the debate, Obama tried to pin Romney to his own policy suggestions by brining u the $5 trillion in tax deductions.  Romney countered deftly, saying, “I didn’t recommend that kind of tax cut.”  If I were Obama, I would have counter-punched: Mr. Romney, you have said repeatedly that you would stay revenue-neutral, but you never gave the slightest hint as to how.  I took the liberty of calculating the fiscal impact of what you did specify, not the impact of things you did not.

The real problem is that, in 2008, two candidates took to the podium, having enumerated their ideas and policies in detail on the trail previously.  They defended these positions against each other and gave America a clear choice.  In this election, Romney plays the judo-master: he moves in and out of positions before his opponent can even throw a jab.  From this, I find it hard to trust Romney.

Stephen Colbert made the joke once: George W. Bush will believe the same thing on Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday.  I would say that Obama will still believe the same thing Wednesday, unless some major new details emerged Tuesday.  With Romney, it feels like the only thing he can be certain not to believe on Wednesday are the things he professed his love for on Monday.

That was quite a tangent.  But there are other points to be made!

Talking about Economics, I can’t help but feel like both candidates are clueless.  Maybe it’s just me, a guy who has taken a few economics classes in recent years, but I don’t think taxes are killing jobs.  Do businesses really spend all available cash to hire workers?  Not even close.  In fact, these days, profits are at record highs across all publicly traded companies (and small business, like, uh, every single hedge fund or sports team).  Sure, hiring is up slightly as of late (or so says the headlines; employment figures have yet to show any evidence), but most of the cash is sitting in company coffers, not paying for new talent.  There are some legitimate reasons for this, though, lest I be called an uninformed, anti-business radical.  Businesses face tremendous amounts of uncertainty from fiscal policy and regulatory policy.  Mitt Romney wants to attack Dodd-Frank?  Why not start with the tremendous number of “TBA’s” written throughout the legislation.  Obama wants to win economic points?  Talk about how he will steer us off the fiscal cliff and balance the budget.  Without these things, the business environment remains hopelessly unreliable, making large cash commitments (in the form of salaries and benefits) untenable.

Getting any legislation to pass is practically impossible these days, though.  Partisanship is a cancer infecting the capitol.  Both candidates should try to use the bully pulpit to fight it into remission.

Obama could present some fairly compelling arguments to damn his Republican colleagues in the House.  My argument would be as follows: Today, the positions and attitudes presented in congress are remarkably similar to terrorist regimes world-wide.  There is no compromise, only destruction.  There is no conversation, only warfare.  From the first day of the Obama presidency, numerous senior Republicans explicitly called him a failure (in the case of Romney himself, he called the Obama presidency a failure within the first two weeks).  Obama also went out of his way to bring Republicans to the table for health care and debt talks, even when they were overly combative.  He needs to build public pressure for compromise.

Romney, on the other hand, finally talked up his governorship as evidence for his leadership.  He says he worked with a majority Democratic assembly to push through health care in Massachusetts.  This much is absolutely true.  What he omitted, though, was that he was a center-left governor (despite how often he proclaims himself as “very conservative” now) with a left-leaning assembly in a liberal state.  It’s not hard to see where there’s room to maneuver.  However, in Washington, we have a center president (possibly even center-right; a liberal Obama is not [see the numerous policies and officials that Obama carried over from Bush as evidence]), a left-leaning Senate and a hard-right House.  There are no more true centrists in Washington, only various levels of extreme.  Even if Obama can get agreement from the House, he would fail with the Senate, and vice versa.  It makes governing impossible.

Lastly, on healthcare, Romney’s claims that it is a state issue seem untenable at best.  Massachusetts, as a wealthy, liberal state, was the exception when it took on such a monumental task.  However, especially in light of the current economic climate, states are poorer than ever, and overburdened with vitally important legislative objectives.  Health care wouldn’t make the cut.  Furthermore, why should health care be a state issue but not social security or Medicare?  Oh, right.  Because, like state pensions, various governors would raid their trust funds to pay for other items on the legislative agenda.  People would retire into disease and poverty.

There’s so much more, but I can’t keep going on like this.  I am developing an aneurysm  or maybe an ulcer, or both.

Maybe my next post will finally be about something other than politics.

The Sorry State of American Politics in 2012

In 2008, in the wake of Barack Obama’s nomination, Michelle Obama declared that she was more proud than ever of America.  In 2012, I have never been more disappointed.

This should be a year where the grand ideas of Republicans and Democrats meet in the open and are debated on their merits.  The American people were to weigh the costs and benefits of health care, entitlement reforms, tax reform, and more, and decide which party, and which candidate, has the vision that they believe in.  Instead, we have two candidates with a grand total of zero ideas, biting each other in the knee caps, hoping to be the least dirty by November 6.

On the democratic side, Barack Obama has gone to great lengths not to run on his legacy as a president, despite some of the large legislative accomplishments that defined his presidency.  Instead, he slings mud at Romney, hoping to hang the man from the rafters based on his wooden personality and unbelievable personable wealth.  Romney, Obama says, doesn’t understand you.  His friends don’t sit around playing baseball or watching Nascar; they own baseball and Nascar teams.  His policies will help line the pockets of the Romney family first and foremost, then those of Bain’s principles, and then the remainder of his Wall St. brethren (though, probably not me).  However, Obama doesn’t say what he’d do better, aside from the incredibly vague promise of not raising taxes on “the middle class”.  He acknowledges the seriousness of the debt crisis and the necessity of entitlement reform, but he doesn’t show what policies he would propose in a second term to alleviate the building pressure or, more importantly, how he would sell these ideas to his Republican colleagues in congress.

This last point is probably the most important one.  Obama entered the scene in 2008 with a tremendous lead in the popular vote and electoral college, giving him a clear mandate to follow through with his campaign promises – certainly more of a mandate than George W. Bush could claim in 2004 (and, yes, he did claim a “mandate” to follow his “conservative” principles).  Obama took this mandate and pushed forward with health care reform , along the way seeking to find a common ground with the Republican minority (and attempting to fulfill his second campaign promise of a more united government).  Obama was hopelessly naïve, though.  Through health care, financial reform, and the debt ceiling, Obama approached the table ready to play a game of “Solve America’s Problems”.  The naivety of this was that the Republicans were not playing the same game; they wanted to play “Kill the King”.  And, because of this, Obama couldn’t maneuver around the Republicans at all, since their  only concern was guaranteeing the failure of the democratic president and paving the way for a republican successor.  Now, this is less of an issue in a second term – in 2004, this was a repeating game for Obama, assuming a second term; in 2012, it’s Obama’s last term, and he doesn’t have to worry about meddlesome repercussions as much.  That said, Obama didn’t demonstrate his strength when his party was at the height of their power, with clear majorities in the Senate and House; I have doubts that he will grow bolder, stronger, and more forceful in a second term.

Now, for the Republican side, we have Willard “Mitt” Romney (hey, if the Republicans could spend all of 2008 screaming “BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA”, I can call Mitt by his given name, Willard) and Paul Ryan.  This should be the team I am routing for, to be honest.  Romney was a successful businessman and governor, and showed tremendous leadership throughout his career.  Ryan proved to be the intellectual leader of the Republican party over the past several years, reinvigorating an ailing party.  However, since becoming the presumptive nominees, both men have shown an astounding lack of specificity in there plans and lack of intellectual integrity in their arguments.

For Mitt, the question is, why aren’t you running on your record?  Romney isn’t talking about a single specific thing he did as governor, head of the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee, OR as the CEO of Bain Capital.  How can I possibly believe that your business and government experience give you the right skills to be president when you won’t talk about what you have done, what you have learned, and how you can apply these skills to fix America’s vast problems?  I have to believe that his record as a corporate raider is significantly less attractive than his bullshit line of “I created hundreds of billions of jobs” would have you believe.  I also believe that his record as governor was neither as impressive as it should be for a potential commander in chief nor as conservative as it needed to be for a modern Republican candidate.

With Ryan, we have a man who attacks Obama for (1) ideas that Obama doesn’t actually support but (2) Paul Ryan actually does.  For example, Obama never cut $700+ billion in spending from Medicare through lower benefits, though Ryan’s own budget suggests dollar cuts of this magnitude without specifying where they come from (implying that it could be services, instead of lower negotiated prices, as seen in Obamacare).  Ryan promises a bold new future where everyone pays less tax, keeps more money in their bank account, gets better social services from the government (something that every voter wants, no matter how “conservative” they are), and yet the government pays down its debt faster.  Perhaps Ryan and Romney are distinguished students from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (and perhaps Romney’s name is actually Wizard, not Willard).  If that’s the case, I say “bravo” for creative use of magic in solving your country’s financial woes.  If not, I have to say: are you kidding me?  Because, using anything short of magic, this plan doesn’t add up.

Budgetary issues isn’t the only place where Romney shows an alarming lack of specificity.  In fact, for his entire 59-point economic plan, he doesn’t provide a single law which he would change, specific tax loophole that would broaden the tax base (though he does push a rather large tax cut despite the looming deficit), or even a specific social policy that he would push for (or a plan to get the Senate democrats to acquiesce to any of these ideas!)  Instead, his only ideas are to repeal every single thing that Obama did over his entire presidency on “day one”, pushing the country back to Bush-era policies.  And, isn’t that what Obama had a clear-cut mandate to change in 2008?  I doubt anyone wants to return to 2007-2008, when the economy was a falling knife (which both Obama and Bush cut themselves on while trying to catch).  With that said, what the hell are you going to do as president, Mitt?  Because, seriously, you’re asking us for the keys to the car without even saying where you want to drive to.  My car may be a piece of shit, but the last thing I want to see is my car careening off the Grand Canyon.

So, what can we do?  I think my only option is to get into politics myself.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring myself to constantly beg for money to run and pander to the most attractive demographic.  It looks like all I can do at this point is swallow one of these candidates’ faults and cast my vote – and pray for better in 2016.

An Introduction

I haven't posted to a blog in over ten years.  My last blog was a poorly designed website hosted by my undergraduate university, where I tried to play off my unfocused frustrations as the brilliant thoughts of a brooding and mysterious genius.  This time, I hope to be a bit more humble, while retaining an equally poor readership.

I hope to use this space to post essays about my passions: philosophy, finance/economics, television and movies, video games, and maybe the occasional cooking post.  Hopefully my posts won't be too sporadic; then again, I suspect that there will be few readers chomping at the bit for more.  If I am wrong, by all means, let me know.  I hope to have my first essay posted tomorrow, though I have yet to start it, so good luck to me.