Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Will They Learn?

My post earlier about election predictions was inspired by some conversations I had with my wife.  She was being encouraged by friends to vote for Mitt Romney.  Most of the people we know are conservatives.  My question to her was this.  Why would they push?  We live in Michigan.  It's a foregone conclusion that Obama will win Michigan.

Not according to these conservative friends.  Romney's probably going to win, and he could win Michigan as well.

Frankly I didn't care who my wife voted for because I was confident Michigan would not be close.  My belief was that Obama would win overall, but I wasn't super confident.  I thought Krugman had the right idea.  Seems Obama is up in the polls, so we should expect he would win, but there's a chance he won't.

Why would people like Dick Morris and Newt Gingrich make such confident predictions when so much of the evidence is against them?  I first thought maybe it's just manipulation.  They think this will help get out the vote better.  Maybe they don't believe what they say, but they just want to improve Romney's chances.

But I don't think that's it.  I was checking Dick Morris' twitter posts.  He really seemed to be thinking Romney could win.  He sounds surprised to discover that it isn't happening.  He's a guy that is being ridiculed rather intensely today.  It's surprising to see him risk his reputation just in a last ditch get out the vote effort that probably won't work.  You know what I think?  I think he believed what he said.

Here's my overly simplistic generalization.  Conservatives are just much more capable of believing what they want to believe rather than what the facts show.  Start with religion.  I mean, come on.  Talking donkeys.  Talking snakes.  Floating axe heads.  Jesus rising from the dead for their salvation if they would just believe, floating up to the sky in resurrection.  I loved that story and I really wanted to believe it.  But I can't.  You know who can?  Conservatives.

What about global warming?  You think I want to be convinced that we are headed towards disaster?  Do I want to struggle to reduce my meat consumption, feel guilt for my own excessive consumption, foresee a bleak future for my children?  Pretending it's all a liberal conspiracy so there's nothing to worry about is very comforting.  I can drive a gas guzzler, live in a huge house, maybe just pretend that none of it matters because Jesus will come back and clean it all up anyway.  Who is capable of believing that?  Conservatives.

There's this comfortable bubble that Dick Morris and George Will helped create in preparation for the election yesterday.  Paul Krugman would certainly have loved to believe it was all pretty much over and Obama would win.  But he didn't say that.  He said what he thought the data was capable of showing.  Obama should win, but he might not.  No prediction of landslide.  That's why Krugman is such a better predictor than Cal Thomas and George Will.  For these guys they believe what is comforting.  Their delusions yesterday didn't hurt anybody, but their comforting delusions regarding environmental catastrophe affect us all.  Will some conservatives, once again misled by the same people that told them Saddam had WMD's or tax cuts would spur economic growth, will they finally recognize that these pundits just sell comforting delusions rather than what the data show?  That's what I'm hoping.

19 comments:

Examinator said...

Jon,
Did you see the Rove's melt down on Fox I heard about it on Democracy Now's coverage(?) last night Aus time.

I care about how every one votes I just don't ask. Including my family.
Have you seen this Ted
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YL3LT1ZvOM
interesting and it can be extrapolated to the conservative belief structure. There is evidence that like most basic instincts they are 'influenced by genetics etc'
I guess it explains how come I was raised in such religious and cultural biases yet I've rejected them all for ME>
to refresh memories
I have a Jewish hippy Daughter.
I have a fundy mom (adventist)
a lapsed Catholic wife
a charismatic catholic Nun sister in law.
A sort of Buddhist son
a daughter is is an environmentalist who works for a coal pit.
and a son who doesn't care but will argue with anyone.
A son in law who is a conservative
As you can imagine Family get-to- gethers are ...well interesting.

Chad said...

We (Conservatives) ask the same thing of the Left.

You see being a Conservative, having Conservative Values and a belief in a God and Savior is the much harder and difficult road to take. Being a Liberal - dismissing God for science, embracing Socialism and choosing free stuff over freedom is the easier road to travel and takes very little discipline to obtain. Getting up, working 3 crap jobs and going to school without expecting a handout to accomplish goals by drive, determination and winning - that is reserved for just a few select folks in this world and in most cases those folks are on the Conservative side.

Someday our bodies will fail us - if I am right then I will meet my maker and God willing He will allow me into the kingdom for all eternity to live by his side. If I am wrong, things go dark forever and I have no recollection what's so ever and the people on earth love, die and turn to dust making my run here irrelevant. On the other hand, if your wrong and you find out the hard way that God does exist then I suspect at that moment you certainly will wish you had kept that deep belief that starts in your heart and ends in your soul - something you can't see, something yoi can't touch, but something that requires a deep deep faith that defies science and logic in some cases. God meant for it to be difficult, he meant for us to question, he meant for us to face non believers and to have pain, struggle and loss along the way - this is our practice, the pre-game to the final eternal life game, but you already know that so that is something you'll have to face on the day of judgement.

Your doing what Liberals/Progressive have been successfully doing since before the ink was dry on the Constitution. Find what it is you don't like, speak out in tongues to attract others who might be persuaded to believe as you do. If the path is too hard then find the easier path, get supporters to make you feel good then find another staple, another foundational pier to attack until they are all gone.

It's certainly a burden sir to follow a harder and now a far less traveled path, but that is what will make it more rewarding at this finish line!

These pundits make predictions, is Kirk Herbstreit any less knowledgeable aout college football because he picks the wrong winning team every single Saturday? I think I read somewhere that he gets 60% of the headliner games right - so is he any less knowlable? Is a prediction not a career ending position.

You can't help Michigan folks - for the most part the State is full of Union employees brainwashed by the non believers (see above - harder to choose freedom over free stuff). However I am here visiting the real hard working Michiganders who are propping up this state withe their hard work and their labor and they are sick, they are hurt and they are scared. At least 2 companies are working on their exit strategy to Indiana and 2 more are planning layoffs in the next 30 days - only 1 is looking to expand. The mill I work with (Union as of today, but there is hope that is changing) got their notices for layoff. Many voted union and many of those same guys got their notice - congrats. The only shock to me is how the Conservatives have been able to hold off this movement for so long. Just think nearly 50% still voted Repulican - that must mean that 80% plus or more of non union, non contributing students, non public employee and non government assistance people voted Republican. It's a sobering wake up call to know that the actual contributors to the economy at the starting line - first level of taxation/capitalism to create and pay for public jobs then public assistance has been trumped by the other half - good times to come.

Jon said...

I'm curious why you would think belief in God and Savior is hard. I used to think that. Notice though that I've been on both sides of the fence. What polling data shows is what I experience today. No identifiable social group is hated more than atheists. You think you have it tough, but I think if you could spend some time in my shoes, or the shoes of another atheist, you might be surprised.

http://newsjunkiepost.com/2009/09/19/research-finds-that-atheists-are-most-hated-and-distrusted-minority/

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=in-atheists-we-distrust

And as far as your perception that you work hard, do you really think this on a world wide scale? Again I ask you to look at the world a little. In China at Foxconn they work 12 hour days and make about $15. They sleep at the factory. There's no time for golf and vacations. They work way harder than you in this capitalist country. In your view this must mean they are so rich. Working hard with drive and determination is winning. Is that what they are doing? Is that winning? Limited bathroom breaks, never ending rows of components to assemble. Liberals are doing something that conservatives won't. We look at the real world. We see that your ability to earn a living is a function of an accident of birth, not just a willingness to work hard. This conservative fantasy that hard work is the ticket to success is belied by universal worldwide experience. Rich Americans want to think that they deserve all the credit for their prosperity and can't imagine that the best thing they ever did was choose the right parents.

There's nothing wrong with recognizing this fact and trying to alleviate the problem a bit. You complain that liberals want to make life easier for people. Why should that be a bad thing? Yes, I think what happens at Foxconn (the line workers work with an intensity you can't imagine, and yet the value they create is sent to others that don't work nearly as hard) is wrong. We can disagree on this. But that's not what this post is about. It's about the ability of conservatives to look at the data and draw conclusions that cannot possibly be justified. They look at the polling data and say "Romney in a landslide." They look at the temperature data and say "The earth is cooling."

Or take health care. "The US has the greatest health care system in the world." Yeah but all the data show that we have a terrible system. "What data?" They've never heard of it. They listen to Fox News and they just don't know what the world really looks like. This election was another case where they just could not entirely secure the bubble. Real world facts came in, and my hope is that they realize that their sources of information are just misleading them. This is what the war in Iraq did for me. I had this view of the world, all nice and comfortable, verified by Fox News. They will treat us as liberators, Saddam has the WMD, we're going to see amazing progress as private industry rushes in there to make the place a utopia. When that didn't happen I realized that my sources were poor. I sought new sources, and found them. And now I no longer get surprises like the people that expected Romney to win on Tuesday. In fact I wasn't even disappointed with Obama's war on civil liberties and expanded war overseas. There are good sources out there and you don't have to just end up surprised like so many others. It's nice. And it's important that more people come to this realization.

Also, check out your old predictions, Chad. Just two months back. Romney wins the general by 6 plus. R's take the Senate. You got some bad sources. I hope you'll think about that.

http://bigwhiteogre.blogspot.com/2012/09/growth-is-problem.html

Jonathan said...

Jon,

I think you are half right on your Conservative faith and belief in the positive stance. I think that many Conservatives, especially Christians put more emphasis on faith and conviction than looking at the cold hard “facts”. I would consider myself in that camp as well. True, you can point to all the wonky claims on the Bible, and see that ok, if true then there’s a precedent for some crazy stuff going on in reality, but I think what Liberals often tend to overlook is the truism involved in faith and accomplishment. I think you guys are very put off by this idea of faith and optimism, and so try and strip it completely out of your world view, and then pat yourselves on the back on the times you are right, and Conservatives are wrong, which reinforces your view that it’s all about the critical thinking, cold and impassionate analysis of the numbers.

What you’re forgetting, is that humans have an amazing ability to impact both their direct environment, and those around them in amazingly powerful and unpredictable ways. Those who push humans to their physical limits, or even to their expected limits do not gauge their chance of success by scientific analysis alone. It’s the stubbornness and faith that they can overcome insurmountable odds, that they will be the special case, that they can and will defeat cancer, that they will win an election that drives them.

So in short, yes, you can say it’s a suspension of a belief in reality, but you’d be surprised how many times the perceived boundaries can be pushed back. This is one of the defining characteristics of many great leaders.

Do you want people to see real social change and get rid of capitalism as you know it? Think it’s going to happen by a bunch of number crunching pundits, scientists and bloggers? Or is it going to immerge only from those who are stubbornly committed to the cause, ideologically sold out to an all consuming vision. Your scientific analysis and historical survey to determine what we ought to do as a society or a country will not offer you the change you seek unless you take a page from the religious, the ideological, or the dreamers who stubbornly chose to believe and act on their convictions not because the odds seem in their favor, but because they believe in their cause, and cannot even image a world where their changes do not come about. I think the old adage those who believe they can, and those that believe they can't are both right is true.

Jon said...

One other thing to notice. I provided a source to you that offered election forecasts at the link where you said Romney wins by 6. This was my source.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

This is Nate Silver, a man that was excoriated by the right wing for looking at the data and telling us the truth. He didn't miss a single state. He called every single one and even told us which ones were close. My point is, having been burned by the right wing bubble myself I've learned to look for other sources, sources that we now know couldn't have been more right. Does that tell you anything?

Jonathan said...

Jon,

Perhaps the method one should employ depends on if you plan on being a spectator or an active participant. Show me a case study to analyze, then sure let's crunch the numbers, talk about reliability, root cause analysis for why one group seems to be right or wrong. That seems to me to be the way you're approaching say, the election prediction, and trying to answer the question "where's the most reliable data come from".

If however, you're trying to answer the question "what action should I take for a cause I believe in" and you have some real skin in the game (i.e. you want to be an active participant in trying to impact the outcome) I think you'll find people from all sides operating from a more optimistic framework, and you have to convince yourself you have a chance to get any traction.

If you want to sit outside the arena of action and talk, sure - I bet you'll find conservatives who are idealistic out there and don't have a good way to tease out reliable data. But so what? If you're trying to discredit an entire demographic on the basis of disillusionment and inept analysis, you're also undermining those from your own cause(s) who are required to impart this same change.

Jon said...

Jonathan, I have no problem with people of faith. I certainly don't discourage optimism, tell people to aim big. I do want to stand shoulder to shoulder with people of faith to change the world for the better. I think there's a place for everyone. People of faith can use their faith to inspire themselves and others. But there's also a place for historical analysis and facts.

Within the US bubble Jesus is some sort of capitalist crusader, building walls at the border to keep out the poor so we can remain rich and bombing Muslims to control energy resources. That's a very strange view of Jesus in the eyes of most of the world's population. You probably know this better than I do, having spent more time outside the US. But I have great admiration for who i think is the real Jesus of the Bible, a Jesus that they read about in Venezuela and Mexico. I actually feel quite a bit more in line with Jesus than I think people like Chad are even though I don't believe the more fantastical claims about him are true. So don't take me the wrong way. To my mind it is a little strange to believe in talking donkeys. I'm convinced people do believe it simply because they want to, and they contrive all these rationalizations about "faith beyond logic" and stuff like that to get there. This is just my opinion. I'm not trying to prove it. I think you have to admit that Romney supporters are more likely to accept these kinds of claims, and I just think it translates to other areas, like confidence that Romney will win or confidence that global warming is not something we need to worry about.

Chad said...

This might come as a big shock to you, but I honestly could care less what happens in China - never been ther, don't plan on being there and there is not a damn thing I can do about a single thing over there. If that is what it takes to survive in China then that is their problem - if they don't like it then they (the people) need to change it.

The data you say okay let's dive into the data for a minute shall we? $3 million less white people voted and both the Hispanic and Black vote increased by 2%. SlumObama captured 93% of the black vote and 73% of the Obama vote - a group of people who RELY on gov't to life. Over 70% of the black women are single mothers - over 30% with kids from different dads - Liberal voting block. Hispanics over 55% of kids born into a single parent family - Liberal voting block. Illegal immigrants coming to America ar every low skilled, very low educated people - 1 million per year - Liberal voting block. that is your Liberal America - Congrats to you so we should change our solid principals because your group has bred or allowed enough illegals to enter this society to tip the voting pool in your favor?

I know you don't listen to Hannity, but yesterday he had a segment with Juan Williams and Pat Buchanan. Buchanan has been warning the Republican party for years that the Liberal class was breeding itself into the majority, he has spoken about the fact that due to their core policies like not valuing a family dynamic (above stats) leaving single women with children and only gov't to pay housing, food and day care. A staggering 100 million freaking Americans receive some form of gov't assistance and by principal we want that to reduce or end, but they don't - that why Romney lost.

You can spin this all you want - the absolute truth is that the inmates now run the asylum. Those who take now out vote those who make.

Even Juan Williams on Hannity found himself in a moment of reflection when Pat Buchanan basically congratulated him on these fact - he shared the family dynamic numbers, shared the illegal tidal wave numbers, the voting break down numbers and then asked him a single question are you proud of YOUR Liberal base - are you proud that your voting group is mostly comprised of group with high unemployment, high divorce/single parent rates, highly dependent on government to live and your gleeful that you won? He asked him how he expects to take care of his new Liberal party?

Silence - so I ask you, are ou proud of your group? I am very proud of mine.

Pot, gays poking each other - all states right issues for me. As long as I don't have to pay for it them I don't care. With that said I read several companies in Colorado are looking to leave the state now so let freedom ring. If you don't like something in a state then leave. Like our company moving to biz friendly Indiana. Like Michigan companies (and others) laying off - they know Obama and the Libs want to tax them to hell and back so they will lay off people or raise the costs of goods for all of us - great job!

Jon said...

Here's what's ironic, Chad. I'm an atheist. But unlike you when Jesus says "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" I take it seriously. I care about others, even if I don't see them. I've never been to China either. But their suffering matters to me.

Your claim that you can't do anything about it is just wrong. You can do something about it. Not everything, but a lot. But like global warming I think this is the easy way out. Convincing yourself there's nothing you can do about it is very comforting and allows you to proceed on your merry way without guilty feelings. Facing the uncomfortable reality that we can make a difference and therefore should is difficult.

Regarding your belief that Obama voters are the unintelligent, data showed in 2008 that white men without a college degree favored McCain by 17 points, and those that had a college degree favored Obama by 7 points. There are other things going on here too. Blacks preferred Obama obviously as did Hispanics, and generally they have a lower level of educational attainment. But when you consider white people with college degrees and without you realize that the picture is a little more complicated.

Like I said, you are the one that predicted Romney by 6 and R's take the Senate. I am the one that tried to get you to look into sources that turned out to be correct in every single state. I am the one that told you to look at the money and recognize that Obama was going to be tough to beat. The R's are the party of WMD in Iraq, deregulated finance, Romney will win in a landslide. The US has the best health care system in the world. The US goes around the world spreading democracy. All of science is wrong regarding global warming. It's a huge conspiracy. Those that face the truth are the crazy ones? Maybe you are an inmate but you just don't know it.

Examinator said...

Jon,
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" in various forms pre-dates Christianity and Judaism it appears in many older and even geographically cultures and religions.

I think you'll find the word you are looking for in the context you used it is 'Contradictory' rather than 'ironic'
i.e. Christians generally don't use the term as code for the opposite behaviour. I would argue They simple don't see that it applies to others . This is particularly so in terms of racial. It could be argued that Muslim is more strict about aspects of this golden rule when applied to their own community that others.

Chad said...

I don't have to look across oceans to affect real change. I find it ironic that your more interested in other nations people more than your own right here. I sleep well at night for the generosity me and my family offers others starting with my immediate family and then my community. You appear to be the kind of guy that stares at the mountain way off in the distance instead of working in the hill right in front of your face.

Yes - you mean McCain received 17 more points from the WORKERS in American making the money the liberals steal. Education does not make anyone intelligent, in fact the larger the so called acedemic pedigree (in my experience) someone claims to have the further they are from reality and common sense. I am a perfect example - no degree, but earned through my hard work, street smarts and ability to lead others the VP title. Over mind you 2 others with heavy Acedemic Pedigrees they waived around. Just to give you some scope the owner of my company flys a hell of a college background graduating woth honors from Wash U. He said to me when he offered me the job, no amount of schooling makes a leader and it doesn't create winners just by having that paper.

Living in New York for a year there where so called intellects who couldn't change out a light bulb - not impressed with that stat at all. I wish we could actually see the breakdown in voting using only those of us paying income taxes - the workers of this country. Then I would love to see what the voting numbers look like if you strip out any person who is paid with the public money or I should say with tax money.

Yes I was convinced that Romney had done enough to win the election. What none of us on the Right accounted for was just how good the Liberals are at creating essentially a zero liability voting block. When 100 million people are on assistance so some kind and Dumbrocrats bus in loads of people who otherwise may not come out to pull a lever to keep their free stuff - that's hard to overcome. The individual responsible group is shrinking and their voice counts no more than the takers.

My community voted 86% Republican, my particular zone which is about 200 homes voted 97% Republican - we enjoy a Conservative community and we intend on keeping it that way. When looking at the electoral map there is way way more red - look where the blue areas are on that map - big cities, hot spots for Liberal mania, cities that are dying.

Jokingly of course - but 2 or 3 well placed plasma rays about 10 square miles around would wipe out about 50 million Liberals in the USA.

We are protecting our communities now and places like our town are drawing in like minded people. We know we can't change Cincinnati, but we sure as hell can take care of the boro.

Jon said...

Let me correct what I said Chad, because I think I misread your prior post as saying that Obama voters are the unintelligent. Maybe what you are really saying is they are loafers. I quite agree with you regarding education. A college degree can of course lead to a lot of knowledge, but others that don't go to college can pursue other interests or even teach themselves in a more efficient way. Most of what I learned that I consider useful I learned outside of college, including engineering skills. I learned more in a week of training outside of school than I learned in a whole semester in some of my classes. That's not an exaggeration.

But you can still take the college data and draw some inferences. People with a college degree have a much higher employment level. So that would suggest that large blocks of people with higher employment levels still prefer Obama. Or take comparisons between the Tea Party and Occupy. Occupy participants had a much higher employment rate. So I don't buy your claim that they are loafers. Go to any McDonald's in Arizona. It's all Mexicans. You want to see hard work? You should see my father in law (Mexican). He has like 6 siblings. Right down the line these people are incredible workers. They learned as migrant workers. I worked beside some migrants in the fields while in high school for just one day (I was trying to decide if I wanted to earn money or play football, I ended up going back to football). They put their white counterparts to shame. I was just on vacation and my father-in-law joined. He worked probably 6 hours a day, including weekends. The guy is a machine.

I'm sure you are the same way. People often assume that athletes are just blessed by God with abilities. I don't think that. I think they are just the ones that do the work. We see these Olympians and we say "Wow, it's like magic he's so good." But if we could see video of all the work they put in, slowly improving, we'd know there's nothing magical about it. They do the work. You did the work. You did it to attain what you've attained professionally.

Jon said...

But I think Ex is right when he says that you have this mode of thinking that is kind of wrong, and that's this very black and white either/or mentality. You know that people can succeed if they work hard because you've done it. I can absolutely agree that this is true to a large degree, but it's not completely true. And even if it were true, the fact of the matter is a lot of people through no fault of their own have sort of been conditioned to not recognize it. It's not like anybody is trying to hold them back, I'm just saying that a lot of people just think that they can't lose weight because they have a genetic problem, or they can't learn a foreign language because they don't have some sort of God given ability. That mistaken mindset leads them to not try really hard. It's difficult to motivate yourself to work hard and attain when you are convinced that the hard work will not produce the results in any case.

Here again we see your either/or mentality come out. I care about suffering in other countries. And so therefore I must not care about suffering here. Why should it be an either/or? I think anybody that reads this blog with an open mind can see that I care deeply about the suffering Americans endure and I do work to change it. But I also recognize that the Chinese are humans too. They may be on the other side of the world, but what they are put through so that stock holders in American can be rich is shameful. You talk about takers. Slackers that don't contribute but take the loot. Look at Foxconn and Apple stockholders. Who are the takers?

Romney doesn't work, gets most of the money, and pays the lowest amount of taxes. He's got you convinced that you should be grateful to him for that. Given that he has all the money it's not surprising. He and people like him own the media and they want the message spread far and wide that they should get the money, do none of the work, and pay the least amount of taxes. Seeing past the lies of his lackeys (Mike Church, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, even mainstream news) is the challenge.

Chad said...

Occupy'ers have a higher employment rate than Tea Party'ers? What crazy place did you get that information from? We know that Occupy'ers committed far more crimes, did far more property damage, did far more drugs and rapped far far many more women - we know that, but where and how did you get that information?

Shameful in who's eyes? Yours? So you would voluntarily give up all that we (Americans) have and live extremely humble to allow the Chinese to live as an equal? You can do that without forcing me and others to do that - you can Sponser a family and give them half or more of our wages so please feel free.

Are you kidding - we all should be grateful for Mitt Romney and Bain. They give life to good companies and bury bad ones allowing for new companies to be born. Have you ever watched "Shark Tank"? It's on Friday's and there are previous seasons you can watch on Netflix/Hulu. This is my absolute favorite show - Mr. Wonderful my favorite rich guy (real shock). Watch that show and you'll learn something valuable - you'll learn in a bubble what MR/Bain means in a nut shell. These investors make or break these people - sometimes the offers are based purely on money, sometimes the people connect on a human level and pull in a shark without a strong portfolio and other times the people screw it up or get embarrassed by the sharks.

Also - maybe a little dig here, but Mike Church and Andrew Wilkow are way out of your league. I would challenge you to give them a call and address any topic in the world - listening to them for years now I can tell you that there has never been a caller capable of breaking their arguement. These guys are the real deal and they use facts. Hannity, Rush and Beck - they use some facts, but they are more entertainers who offer more conjecture and skirt the fringes between fact based arguements and a talking head/smoke blowers. Church and Wilkow are genius - Liberals won't debate him in an open forum and I don't blame them.

Jon said...

Regarding my employment claims, any basic Google search reveals it. Here's the first result I got.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/11/most-occupy-protesters-have-jobs.html

You say we should be grateful to Romney and Bain and you just assert that they bring life to companies, but what you don't do is provide evidence of this.

I'd like you to explain in principle how a leveraged buyout helps a company. You take any company. Romney borrows sums on the order of a billion dollars to acquire a company. Most of the money used for the puchase is borrowed, not his own assets. He then saddles who with that debt and corresponding interest payment? The company. In what universe is this good for a company? You take a struggling company and add to their current struggles an enormous debt burden. This is his profit model. Now that he has control of the company and they pay the debt he extracts fees. This was a repeated method.

I think your view is basically unfalsifiable. If he moves in and the company shutters soon afterwards you just say that they were crap anyway and would have failed regardless. If they manage to struggle along despite Romney's debt burden you call it success. Why not assume Dunkin Donuts would be better off today if they didn't have to sell 2 million cups of coffee every month just to service the interest on the loan Bain saddled them with? It seems that $3.5 million dollars that they retain within the business rather than send to bankers in the form of interest payment would make them have even more success than they have now. For you the fact that they are saddled with those interest payments isn't a drag on them, and everyone should thank them. Thank you for giving us this debt. Thank you for requiring this interest payment, you job creator. How does this create jobs?

Mike Church may not have yet had to deal with a formidable opponent, but you recall my theory. His callers are conservative plants intended to make him look good, not real people. It's easy to look good when you are paying people to call in and pretend. I'd love to talk to him. He might block me though because I'm a real person, not an actor, so I would ask questions he might not expect.

Chad said...

Jon - Church and Wilkow beg for Liberal callers to participate and they go to the front of the line. I only hope that I am on the road listening when you decide to call in.

Thanks for the line - so you recognize that 32% of Tea Party members are retired - they put in their time so it the acutal state is that 88% (56% currently employed) of Tea Party members are and were productive members of society thanks for clearing that up.

In regards to the Occupiers - I am sure you forgot or simply have looked away - but lets take a look back at what each movement looked like on the ground shall we?

http://toddkinsey.com/blog/2011/10/10/tea-party-vs-occupy-wall-street-in-pictures/

If Dunkin D was so strong they wouldn't have needed Bain/MR.

Here is a for instance - Bain buried a bad company (GS Tech) which cost 750 jobs to help build up a company Steel Dynamics now supporting 6,600 jobs. Workers were offered buyouts, but you already must know that from all your research. Net is nearly plus 6,000 jobs.

Like all things Jon - sometimes business decisions don't work out and there are casualties. I am sure if you got the opportunity to sit in a room to talk to Mitt and whomever was on the committee handling GS/GST Tech there would be some recognition that things did not go as planned.

I can't spend hours researching things and that is why I offered you the show 'Shark Tank' as my reference - guys like Mark Cuban and Mr. Wonderful are investors - according you they offer absolutely nothing because they don't twist a screw on a nut, but what they do offer to many companies is so invaluable that it can not be measured some of the time - and I would say most of the time in fact. They offer business knowledge, they offer new avenues not previously thought of and most importantly they offer the captial necesary to give said company a fighting chance competitively in the market place.

During the show they have 'Updates' each week on deals that were made and where those companies are - its uplifting to hear those owners say they could not have done it without the investors. With that said there were plenty of deals made where investor and owners lost money. It is business - risk and reward.

Chad said...

For clarity sake - when I said shut down bad company I recognize that there was some investments made by Bain's direction that increased their debt as well.

Jon said...

We're talking about your characterization of Obama voters as loafers. Yeah, Tea Party has a lot of retired people, which is fine. I have no problem with retirement. I think it's great. But I'm not the one that criticizes the non-working as loafers. That's you. Remember your discussion of the 47% as "takers." That includes a lot of tea party people. People that are on pensions and Social Security often don't make enough to pay income tax. To get to 47% you have to include retirees. You are the one that is critical of them, not me. I just want you to recognize that this is the Tea Party world. Lots of elderly retirees. "Takers" and "loafers" in your mind. Not in my mind. Similarly I'd challenge you to try and keep up with migrant workers. Not that you couldn't do it. You probably could. But you couldn't do it along side them and then call them lazy.

Bain doesn't come in because anybody "needs" them. They come in when they think they can profit from it, whether you need them or not.

But the question is not whether a company subsequent to an acquisition added jobs. The question is did they add more jobs than they would have otherwise added. In the case of Dunkin Donuts, how did the addition of a billion dollars in loan obligations improve their financial picture and allow them to expand and create jobs? They may have added jobs since Bain, but did they add more or less than they otherwise would have? That's what you have to look at, and since you haven't looked at that you don't know if Romney is a job creator.

I think it stands to reason that when you saddle Kaybee Toys with $300 million in debt and extract $60 million in "consulting fees" you make it more difficult for them to succeed, not less. It's possible that Bain's insights and recommendations were just that good. It really was worth all the fees they extracted. The knew nothing of toys. Nothing of the industry. But they must have offered some recommendations anyway, and naturally they are going to tell you that what they did was amazing. Well worth the $60 million. But why believe it? There first order of business is to saddle them with a crazy debt burden. Doesn't seem so great, but they tell us it is. Why believe it?

Jon said...

As you know I love calling in to right wing radio and arguing and would be happy to call Church or this other guy you mentioned. I can test your theory that they put liberals at the front of the line. Probably they do because I'm sure there aren't a lot of liberal listeners. The one thing though is I like to record my calls. I suppose you have to subscribe to Sirius, is that correct? I don't subscribe, but I probably know someone that does that can record it for me.