Category Archives: Politics

Taxes are the Same for Everyone: Marginal Rates vs. Millionaires and Billionaires

I was watching some of the coverage of the ongoing fiscal cliff mess and I heard one of the people being interviewed talking about how the “Bush tax cuts” are going to be extended for 98% of Americans. This. Is. So. Wrong. I’d like to assume that the people on TV informing the nation know that they’re wrong or that they’re misleading, but I don’t know — maybe they don’t know. Regardless, they’re unintentionally perpetuating myths that have long since been debunked.

To flesh this out: it’s not that once you make a certain amount of income, your rate is completely different for all the money you make, NO! The USA has marginal tax rates, so the first $250,000 you make will get taxed at one rate and any money you make above that gets taxed at a different rate. So, when pundits or talking heads or anyone talking about this fiscal cliff mess tells you that the Bush tax cuts are being extended for 98% of Americans (or any number less than 100%) — they’re wrong.

A Quick Note on the Argument FOR Guns in Schools…

Since the events of last Friday, there have been a number of arguments put forth to curb the incidence of mass shootings. Some folks seem to think that lowering the number of guns in circulation will lower the number of gun deaths. A logical inference. Other folks think that raising the number of guns in circulation will lower the number of gun deaths.

In fact, some folks argue — specifically — that if the teachers were armed, they would have been able to prevent what happened in Newtown. There’s already been a great deal written in contrary to this belief, so I won’t address it. There is one thing I do want to address: more guns in schools.

I couldn’t find the exact statistics, but there are *x* number of gun deaths in America as a result of gun accidents. That is, the guns weren’t properly stored and then kids find them, play with them, and tragedy ensues. My point: if we can’t eliminate accidental gun deaths in the home, do we really think that there wouldn’t be accidental gun deaths in schools? And, couldn’t these gun deaths in schools be worse (by way of having more people die)?

Something to think about this morning.

 

If I were the CEO of CNN… (Part 2)

In yesterday’s post (Part 1), I went down a bit of a tangent and really focused on CNN’s potential to become the “go-to” network for fact-checking. Today, I wanted to revisit the idea of being the CEO of CNN and take a closer look at CNN from a strategic standpoint.

Yesterday, I mentioned that one of CNN’s resources was its plethora of international journalists. This is certainly something that needs to be considered when developing a new strategy for CNN. Although, also as I said yesterday, Americans are known for not caring about what’s going on in the world.

Another one of CNN’s resources (intangible, mind you) is their brand. I couldn’t find any hard data, but my guess is that CNN has a better reputation for reporting impartial and accurate news than MSNBC or Fox News. (Aside from some slip-ups, of course.)

As some critics have said, CNN grew in popularity when it was showcasing, “hard-hitting investigative reporting.” One could postulate that this strength grew out of the two resources above. By having lots of international journalists, they’re able to report on the day-to-day news, while still researching/developing investigative reports. Similarly, their brand equity gives them an “in” because people around the world recognize CNN as a news organization that is watched by many people. As a result, someone may be more likely to tell CNN their story.

When examined from this perspective, it certainly seems that this kind of reporting is one of CNN’s core competencies. Why is it a core competency? It’s certainly a unique strength and it is embedded deep within CNN. It also allows CNN to differentiate itself from its rivals. Unfortunately, it seems that CNN has strayed from this core competency.

So, in addition to yesterday’s conclusion about CNN expanding its “fact-checking” programming, it seems that CNN would be well-served to, as some critics have said, “get back to its roots,” and bring back the hard-hitting investigative reporting that brought it brand awareness.

[Note: I’ve barely scratched the surface on the tools that one can use to analyze/develop strategy. Notably missing are things like a SWOT analysis, Porter’s 5 Forces, the BCG Matrix, McKinsey‘s 7S framework, and the list goes on. This two part-series on CNN’s strategy was meant to provide a taste into some of the things that upper-level management would need to consider when developing strategy.]

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If you liked this paper/series, you might want to check out some of the other papers/series I’ve posted.

If I were the CEO of CNN… (Part 1)

A few weeks ago, I was stuck in traffic so I flipped on NPR. As it was the 6 o’clock hour, Marketplace with Kai Ryssdal was on. To my delight, they were talking about the impending shift at CNN. That is, earlier this summer, the current CEO of CNN announced that he’d be stepping down at the end of the year. Recently, CNN announced that Jeff Zucker would be replacing Walton as the President of the company.

Anyway, on the Marketplace broadcast, Ryssdal was speaking with someone who argued that CNN was going to redefine itself:

But that may be tougher than it sounds. With Fox News cornering the political right, and MSNBC owning the political left, the question is, says Sherman, “How do you define yourself, if not by politics?”

Indeed. Fox News is most certainly known as the network that favors the opinion of political conservatives and MSNBC certainly seems to favor the opinion of political liberals. In today’s cable TV marketplace, that certainly leaves little room for CNN. It would be silly of CNN to try to compete with MSNBC in its market (liberals) and it would be foolish of CNN to try to compete with Fox News in its market (conservatives).

Since I just finished up a course on strategy, I thought I’d use some of the tools I learned about to analyze CNN’s current situation. Keeping in mind that this is meant to be a cursory or 30,000-foot view, as I didn’t do a great deal of research, (which is what would need to be done to have a thorough analysis).

The first thing that comes to mind is one of CNN’s resources: international journalists. I remember hearing at one point that this was one of CNN’s distinct advantages (over MSNBC and Fox News): they have a number of journalists worldwide, whereas the other two networks don’t. This allows them to compete in other markets than the US and probably helps lead to CNN’s extensive name recognition worldwide (over MSNBC and Fox News). This is certainly a resource that CNN should try to incorporate into their strategy moving forward.

Though, I have also read that while this is a key resource for CNN, it doesn’t necessarily help them with the US market. Why? While Americans know that it’s good for them to know what’s going on in the world, a great deal of the population doesn’t care. Since the US is the most coveted market, CNN’s going to have to do something to try to pull away viewers from Fox News and MSNBC — or attract new viewers.

After reading about some of the things that Zucker has said, it certainly seems like he doesn’t want to continue to compete just with MSNBC and CNN. It seems like Zucker might also consider other cable networks like Bravo and TLC competitors of CNN.

I tend to agree with some of the critics who think that CNN should return to the kind of programming that made it successful: “hard-hitting investigate reporting.”

But more than that, I think there’s a real opportunity for CNN to create a new market or at least add-value to a different market: fact-checking. As can be seen from Google trends, searches for fact-checking really seem to peak around the time of a presidential election. My thought: CNN could try to capitalize on this by creating programming (not just around election season, but all the time) where they fact-check other news organizations. That is, they could almost do what Jon Stewart and The Daily Show do, but without the satirical/comedic element. That is, CNN could inform viewers how the other two networks are distorting the facts. I remember seeing some programming like this on CNN recently, but my idea would be for more of this programming. Maybe the majority of its programming would be fact-checking.

It’s possible that the networks have already market-tested this idea and found that it won’t work, so that might be why we haven’t yet seen a plethora of this kind of programming, yet, but it’s also possible that no one had considered it or that it was considered and top management didn’t like it.

Maybe my naïvety and wish for this kind of a public service is clouding my strategic thinking, but something tells me that this could work.

[Author’s Note: When I read through this post just now after having written it a couple of days ago, I realized that I didn’t really talk too much about some of the fundamentals of strategy. Look for Part 2 on Sunday.]

Stephen Colbert: Political Satirist and… United States Senator?

The Junior Senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint, is retiring. By retiring, DeMint will vacate his Senate seat before the term is up. Meaning, there will be an opening for a United States Senate seat in South Carolina. As a result of this opening, the Governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, can appoint someone to the seat to serve the rest of its term.

There’s a certain South Carolina son who a number of people think would be a great person to fill that seat: Stephen Colbert.

This wouldn’t be the first time that Stephen Colbert ran for office. Back in 2008, he made a push to be President of the United States of South Carolina. His bid was often thought of as not serious, but Colbert contended that he was serious.

Appointing Stephen Colbert to the seat wouldn’t be that absurd, would it? A reputable polling firm, Public Policy Polling, asked South Carolinians who they wanted to fill the seat. Topping the list: Stephen Colbert. Although, the Governor has poured water on that fire, stating that she wouldn’t appoint Colbert to the seat.

I have to say: this is a little disappointing. I understand that, politically, this probably isn’t the best thing for Haley to do, given that Colbert is a satirical Republican. But when I think about Colbert in the Senate, it gets me excited. Think of the possibilities! Colbert does an excellent job of satirizing the issues of the day — can you imagine what it would be like if he did this in real-time — in the US Senate!?

[Note: I thought that the Comedy Central clip of Colbert would embed properly — guess not. I found the same clip on Hulu, though.]

http://www.hulu.com/watch/433905

The Psychology of the Petraeus Affair

I’ve had this link on my list of things to write about for a few days and even though it’s not the most compelling thing to write about right now, I wanted to make sure I wrote about it before it got to be too far away from the incident. The link is a panel discussing the motives behind the Petraeus affair.

The only thing I’ve written so far is my bafflement with Petraeus’ forced resignation “because of possible blackmail.” When I heard about this discussion, I thought I should also add something to the discussion. Some of the reasons that were discussed in the video/article:

  • Invincibility
  • Self-sabotage
  • “God made us this way”
  • “Men are simply no good”
  • Opportunity
  • Risk-seeking behavior (paired with the first one, invincibility)

While those are all plausible explanations, some carry more weight than others. Better yet, I think that there is an important one missing from this list: drive.

As the panelists tell us, this is not the first time that we’ve seen high-profile people and infidelity. In fact, this isn’t even something that’s limited to politicians — athletes do, too. Both Kobe Bryant and Tiger Woods come to mind as two very high-profile athletes who’ve publicly admitted to infidelity. (I say publicly admitted because who knows how many other accounts of infidelity there have been that the public has not been privy to.) In researching for this article, I came across a good summary of the literature on infidelity in a post about Tiger Woods:

The precursors to cheat could be summarized as:

  • Significant, ongoing, unresolved problems in the primary, long-term relationship or marriage
  • A significant difference in sex drive between the two partners
  • The older the primary relationship
  • A greater difference in personality than perhaps the partners realize
  • And to a far lesser extent, perhaps some theoretical, evolutionary remnants that may have reinforced multiple partners over monogamy (although this is just a hypothetical argument that would be difficult to disprove)

While these are some helpful (in understanding) precursors to cheating, there’s still one more I want to discuss — personality. Yes, personality is named in this list, but I don’t think that it adequately gets to the point I’d like to make.

File:Triangular Theory of Love.svg

Think about the kind of personality required to make it to the levels that Petraeus, Woods, and Bryant have. It takes quite a bit of discipline, dedication, and perseverance. These men didn’t just wake up one day at the pinnacle of their professions. They worked hard for it. While, of course, talent plays a big role in being able to make it to the upper-echelon, drive also plays a big part, too. It is this drive that I think plays a large part in infidelity. It’s almost as if we could theorize that there’s a triangle.

In fact, it reminds me of Sternberg’s triangular theory of love (pictured above-left). I would argue that drive is one of the vertices of a triangle, invincibility is another, and opportunity is the third. Without these three things present, one won’t necessarily cheat. Similarly, with these three vertices present, one won’t necessarily cheat. Though, when these three vertices are present, I would bet that the incidence of cheating is elevated.

The Lincoln Memorial and Civil Rights

This past weekend, I had the quintessential DC experience. Even though I’ve lived in Metro DC for over a year now, I hadn’t been to many of the monuments/memorials. On Saturday, I went to just about all of them. As a side note, I never realized just how big they were. There was one monument in particular that made me think — the Lincoln Memorial.

On my way to the bathroom (at the Lincoln Memorial), I noticed a tiny museum of sorts that had a number of Lincoln’s quotes on the wall. There was also a history channel (I think?) documentary-like movie playing in one corner of the museum. In the place where the video was playing, there were more things on the wall. One of the things on the wall that caught my eye was of someone holding a sign opposing civil rights. To me, it seemed an odd thing to find in a museum about the Lincoln Memorial. It also reminded that there was opposition to civil rights.

After I left the museum and continued my exploration of the other Memorials/Monuments, it made me think: what’s “today’s” version of what happened then? Is it marriage equality? Is it something else? More than that, what will be the next generation’s version of that? Or the generation after that? It’s a question I’ve wrestled with before: what are we doing today that will be thought of as ludicrous by the generations that follow.

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I’m really glad I had the chance to check out the Lincoln Memorial this weekend because I’m planning on watching Lincoln tomorrow afternoon. My plan on watching it in the afternoon is that I’ll be more “alert” for what I’ve read is one of the best movies of the year. I’m certainly excited for it because I’ve wanted to read Team of Rivals for some time. In fact, when I borrowed a bunch of books a few months ago, I had Team of Rivals on my list!

Is There No Easier Way To Choose a President?

I think this cartoon — while meant to be funny — also has a good point. The USA just went through one of the longest and most expensive campaigns — isn’t there an easier way to do this?

I understand that some folks think that there might not be and I really don’t have a definitive answer to the question. I would look to some of the European countries like France where the campaign/election takes a fraction of the time as it does in the US. Or, there are the US’s neighbors to the North — Canada. An election is called and 6 weeks later, there is voting! I realize that the US has quite a larger population than Canada, but I wonder how much more productive the policymakers of the US would be if campaigning/elections were only 6 weeks long.

Think about all the time that lawmakers spend at fundraisers or campaigning. Just about all of that time could then be reallocated to creating public policy! One would think that things might move along quicker, but who knows, maybe they wouldn’t.

If you have an idea for how you think elections should run in the US, I’d love to hear. Let me/us know in the comments! On the face of it, there certainly seems to be a need to reduce the time it takes to choose a President in the US. If we start counting the time all the way back to the primaries, it takes over a year to pick a President in the US. That certainly seems like a long time, especially given that some of these same people are also tasked with running the country.

Canadians CAN be President of the United States

I came across an article yesterday that talked about Ted Cruz‘s (Senator-elect for Texas) intentions of running for President. When I first saw the line talking about Cruz’s intentions, I had to re-read it a couple of times — and then I had to double-check the source — it all checks out, which I found as weird: I thought you had to be born in the United States in order to run for President.

Apparently not.

Here’s something I found on Amazon’s Askville:

Here is the exact language of the federal Constitution, Article II, Section 1:

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States. http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Article2

That is all that the constiution has to say on the subject. The reasons for this provision are a bit obscure.

It is thought the origin of the natural-born citizen clause can be traced to a letter of July 25, 1787 from John Jay to George Washington, presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention. John Jay wrote: “Permit me to hint, whether it would be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.” There was no debate, and this qualification for the office of the Presidency was introduced by the drafting Committee of Eleven, and then adopted without discussion by the Constitutional Convention.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_born_citizen

The issue hasn’t been litigated, so there isn’t any meaningful case law to help our analysis.

All Presidents since and including Martin Van Buren were born in the United States subsequent to the Declaration of Inde pendence. The only issue with regard to the qualifications set out in this clause, which appears to be susceptible of argument, is whether a child born abroad of American parents is ”a natural born citizen” in the sense of the clause. Such a child is a citizen as a consequence of statute. 94 Whatever the term ”natural born” means, it no doubt does not include a person who is ”naturalized.” Thus, the answer to the question might be seen to turn on the interpretation of the first sentence of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, providing that ”[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States” are citizens.95 Significantly, however, Congress, in which a number of Framers sat, provided in the Naturalization act of 1790 that ”the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond the sea, . . . shall be considered as natural born citizens. . . .” 96 This phrasing followed the literal terms of British statutes, beginning in 1350, under which persons born abroad, whose parents were both British subjects, would enjoy the same rights of inheritance as those born in England; beginning with laws in 1709 and 1731, these statutes expressly provided that such persons were natural-born subjects of the crown. 97 There is reason to believe, therefore, that the phrase includes persons who become citizens at birth by statute because of their status in being born abroad of American citizens. 98 Whether the Supreme Court would decide the issue should it ever arise in a ”case or controversy” as well as how it might decide it can only be speculated about.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/article02/03.html#1

Bottom line:  It seems that the phrase in question means that you were a citizen at the time that you were born, rather than acquiring it later.

So — if I understand this correctly, even though I was born in Canada — I could run for President of the United States. Who knows what the future holds…

Democrats Get More Votes Than Republicans — Still Lose The House of Representatives

I’ve written about politics a great deal in the last couple of weeks. Part of that is because it’s one of my interests (and one of the categories that I write for) and part of that is because the US just had a presidential election. I do have some other posts in the coming days that won’t be about politics, but this will be another one about it.

In the US, every two years, Congress is up for an election. That is, all the seats in the House of Representatives are up for election every 2 years. The Republicans had a majority in the House going into the election and were expected to keep that majority (they did). Though, something intriguing did happen during the election — there were more total votes cast for Democratic Representatives than there were for Republican Representatives. According to ThinkProgress:

Although a small number of ballots remain to be counted, as of this writing, votes for a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives outweigh votes for Republican candidates. Based on ThinkProgress’ review of all ballots counted so far, 53,952,240 votes were cast for a Democratic candidate for the House and only 53,402,643 were cast for a Republican — meaning that Democratic votes exceed Republican votes by more than half a million.

For those people who follow American politics, it’s quite understandable as to why this happened. Every 10 years, there’s a Census in the US and as a result, an update on the population of the states. By extension, those states are then responsible for redrawing the districts [areas of representation]. Since the 2010 election was one where there was a great deal of Republicans swept into office, it made it easier for them to redraw the districts in a way that made it easier for members of their party to keep their seats. This is known as gerrymandering and it’s not unique to the Republicans. had the Democrats won, they most certainly would have done the same thing.

Lost in this discussion is the apparent “will of the people.” I realize that taking a straight popular vote can silence minorities (and was one of the primary reasons for the Electoral College), but it does seem a bit strange that there will probably be 1 million to 2 million more votes cast for Democratic Representatives than Republican Representatives and yet, the Republicans will maintain a 35- to 45-seat advantage.

Redistricting (called redistribution outside of the US) isn’t a problem that Americans have to deal with — it happens in other countries, too.