BOBBY HEENAN: THE BRAIN, OR THE WEASEL, WHO WAS PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

9/24/17

As most of my loyal readers know, pro wrestling was one of my guilty pleasures from early childhood nearly into middle age, when the sport transformed from entertaining into just downright silly and soap operatic under the Vince McMahon monopoly.   The sport died years ago but the man who made the sport passed only last week.

One can talk about all the greats of grappling:  Dick the Bruiser, Bruno Sammartino, Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Johnny Valentine, Bobo Brazil, the Crusher, Gorilla Monsoon, Big John Studd, Moose Cholak, Jesse “The Body” Ventura, the Iron Sheik, The Road Warriors, Big Cat Ernie Ladd, Bob Backlund, Verne Gagne, Nick Bockwinkel…the list goes on and on and doubtless would have to include some of the heavily muscled leading men who have emerged in the last 30 or so years after yours truly lost all interest.   None of these gentlemen, however, would have achieved his greatness without Bobby Heenan; Bobby Heenan was professional wrestling.

Every hero needs a heel…and just about every heel needs a manager.   There were managers before Bobby Heenan, but he perfected the art of managing and every manager who followed him…Captain Lou Albano, Jimmy “Mouth of the South” Hart, Classy Freddie Blassie, et. al., patterned himself after Mr. Heenan.  

Yours truly first witnessed the Heenan script at the age of 8 or 9 when Mr. Heenan managed the original Assassins.   Throughout the considerable span of my wrestling fandom, Mr. Heenan was the only constant and the story was always the same; only the actors, with the exception of Mr. Heenan, changed.  Mr. Heenan would come out with a new member (or usually members because he preferred working with tag teams) of his stable, which he referred to as the “Heenan family,” and gin up a conflict with a hero or tag team of heroes.   Heenan’s boys, despite being beaten to a pulp, would win the first match, or maybe the first two matches, with the intercession of some foul tactic on Heenan’s part involving distracting the referee and introducing a “foreign object,” usually a folding chair, a championship belt, or a pair of brass knuckles, into the ring.  Mr. Heenan unfailingly escaped the retribution he had garnered from the barely scratched, yet technically vanquished, heroes by effecting a quick and cowardly exit from the arena.   Ultimately, though, the heroes would demand and get a match in a cage or some other device that would keep Mr. Heenan in the ring, preventing him from weaseling out of the beating that he was certainly due.  (This amazing ability to escape unscathed led to Dick the Bruiser’s assigning Mr. Heenan the alternative title Bobby “The Weasel” Heenan, a moniker that stuck.)   Under those conditions, not only were the heels beaten to within an inch of their lives, but fans’ bloodlust was finally satisfied when, his charges disgraced and unconscious, Mr. Heenan was left alone in the ring with, say, Dick the Bruiser, who delivered a punch that, judging from Mr. Heenan’s reaction, must have been delivered with the power of an atomic bomb; Mr. Heenan would fly through the air backwards for what looked like five or six feet, land and flail about as if his entire nervous system had been destroyed and Mr. Heenan was thus experiencing his last bout of frenetic neural activity.  Mr. Heenan, his bleached blonde hair now crimson with blood, would stumble to his feet, futilely begging for mercy, only to experience yet another closed fisted blow from the other hero tag team partner, say, the Crusher.   Nobody, but nobody, took a punch like Bobby Heenan.  The fans went wild.

Then the process would start all over again.   Mr. Heenan would find another heel, or pair of heels, and gin up a conflict with another, or perhaps the same, set of heroes.   The key was Mr. Heenan’s considerable interview skills; with the possible exception of the Crusher, Mr. Heenan was the best interview in the history of pro wrestling, insulting the heroes, the interviewers, the fans, various ethnic groups, the United States of America, and anything that was considered good, holy, consanguineous with the fan base, or all of the above.

Perhaps the greatest rendition of the Heenan script involved his management of Nick Bockwinkel and Ray Stevens against Dick the Bruiser and the Crusher, largely because Mr. Heenan was still a young man at the time, the scenario was still being developed, and all five people involved were legends of the mat.  Further, in Nick Bockwinkel, Mr. Heenan found a match for his heeldom; the fans hated Mr. Bockwinkel as much as they hated Mr. Heenan.   Both were portrayed as elitists completely out of touch with the average wrestling fan who clearly identified with the blue-collar Bruiser and Crusher.   It was fine white wine and the opera vs. beers at the “saloons on Halsted Street” when “Halsted Street” meant “south Halsted Street,” a completely different place from the trendy Halsted Street north of North Avenue that we know today.

Later in his career, Mr. Heenan expanded the scope of his insults to even those he managed.   What wrestling fan can forget his introduction of one of his latest charges as a man of “limited size, limited strength, limited ability, limited intelligence” who would nonetheless become a star because of the wise tutelage of the, in Mr. Heenan’s own words, “great Bobby the Brain”?   Funny, though, that I cannot remember the actual wrestler to whom Mr. Heenan was referring, which, one supposes, was the point.

Like Mr. Bockwinkel, as Mr. Heenan aged, he maintained the role of heel, but that role evolved from despised heel to respected, nearly beloved, heel.   The insults continued, but they were far from the scripted racist, homophobic, misogynistic insults that got Mr. Heenan literally shot at on at least one occasion in the ‘70s.   His late career “observations” were more (Remember that most things are relative.) subtle than his early shotgun blast of generally gratuitous insults and thus were more biting than the all-out assaults of his earlier years.   He, like Mr. Bockwinkel and Jesse Ventura, became somehow even more entertaining as an elder statesman color commentator, and foil to Gorilla Monsoon, with the WWF than he was as the young ultimate heel of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Bobby the Brain Heenan is doubtless playing the heel, perhaps managing the likes of Mr. Bockwinkel and Macho Man Randy Savage (Why not?   One of Mr. Heenan’s early charges was Mr. Savage’s father, Angelo Poffo.) in that great Squared Circle in the Sky and begging for mercy not from the Almighty, Who has already taken care of that, but from Dick the Bruiser and the Crusher.   And the fans are loving it.

God bless you, Brain…all wrestlers, and wrestling fans, owe you a huge debt of gratitude.

THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS ELIMINATES THE WAR CHANT: CAN POLITICAL CORRECTNESS RUN RIOT OR WOULD THAT BE POLITICALLY INCORRECT?

9/10/17

I wrote the following note to both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times in response to my alma mater’s eliminating the war chant at football games and other athletic events.    One would think that the way the state of Illinois is being run, this greatest of universities would have other things with which to concern itself, but one supposes that nothing is more important in the modern world of academia than “cultural sensitivity,” as defined by people whose most salient characteristic is the Brobdingnagian amount of time they have on their hands...generally courtesy of the taxpayers.  

Neither paper published the letter, but my readers should not therefore be deprived:

8/26/17

Kent Brown, a U of I athletic department spokesperson, says, apparently with a face especially hard to keep straight while his nose is growing, that my alma mater’s elimination of the “war chant” at football games is only partly due to “cultural sensitivity.”   Mr. Brown says that fans haven’t responded to the war chant as vigorously as they have responded to, say, prompts from video boards.  

Space requires that I limit my comments to the three most salient:

First, how low is the athletic department’s assessment of the University’s academic rigor?   Do Mr. Brown and his colleagues on the southwest end of the campus think that the Big U is producing student so naïve that they believe this claptrap about “cultural sensitivity’s” only being part of the decision to eliminate the “war chant”?

Second, having majored in the apparently culturally insensitive field of accountancy, I am no expert on native American history, so, as dangerous as it can be to defer to the experts on anything, I have to defer to those more learned in such things than I am on this matter.   Are we to believe that native Americans never, under any circumstances, engaged in war chants?   If so, history has surely changed in the many years since I roamed the quad and its environs.

Third, to whom are we being sensitive when we display such laughable genuflections to “cultural sensitivity”…actual native Americans or self-appointed guardians and enforcers of all that is moral and correct in their, and generally only their, estimation?

Such nonsensical actions as eliminating the “war chant” are troubling because they reflect the preoccupation of the modern academy in general, and, in this case, U of I in particular, with the latest half-baked ideas germinating in the addled minds of the political correctness vigilantes who hold so much sway on campus.   Beyond that, however, such actions are simply silly.   No wonder people are fed up with paying small fortunes to avail their children of the nonsense that now so permeates higher education.

THE MERITS…OR MERETRICIOUSNESS…OF “STUDIES”

9/10/17

I wrote the following letter to the Wall Street Journal last month in response to an Andy Kessler piece on the value of studies.    While the letter was not published, my readers will enjoy it and my students will nod knowingly as they repeat, perhaps to themselves but hopefully to others, “Yeah, I remember Quinn telling us that.  And he was right…as usual.”

8/14/17

I will have to keep a copy of Andy Kessler’s Opinion piece (“Studies Are Usually Bunk, Study Shows,” 8/14/17) for use when my Fall classes start in a few weeks.  Mr. Kessler’s observations lend credence to my long held, and oft-stated, contention to my students that I can tell them the conclusion of any study without so much as reading the executive summary; all I have to know is who paid for the study.

My students need a dose of realism, which some insist on calling cynicism, to counter the nonsense that permeates all of the political world, much of academia, and, especially sadly, growing segments of the business world.   I would be doing my students a disservice were I not to administer this antidote to the silliness that would otherwise go unchallenged.

BECKY ANDERSON WILKINS IS RUNNING FOR CONGRESS. HERE’S WHY THE DEMOCRATS SHOULD SUPPORT HER.

7/28/17

Becky Anderson Wilkins, a Naperville City Council member and the long-time owner of the venerable Anderson’s Bookshops in Naperville, Downers Grove, and LaGrange, has decided to run in the Democratic primary for the 6^th District Congressional seat in Illinois.   

Yours truly would very much like to support Becky in her race for a number of reasons.   The Quinn and Wilkins families have been friends for years.   Given where I grew up and the many years I have been observing politics, I have come around to the idea that, in politics, friendship means a heck of a lot more than ideology.   Most politicians, and just about every successful politician (See the now seminal POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND POLITICAL PRAGMATISM:   SO A DRUNK WALKS INTO A BAR AND STARTSCRITICIZING THE CROWD FOR DRINKING… (5/19/17)), treats ideology like a Kleenex, i.e., something to be used briefly to achieve a necessary end and then quickly and unceremoniously discarded.  

Further, Becky was very helpful to me when I first wrote my two books, The Chairman and The Chairman’sChallenge.  Very few things in life are as important as returning favors.   So, given that Becky is a friend to whom I owe (though she would not use the term “owe” in this context) a favor or two, I would very much like to support her.   But I can’t for a number of reasons.  

First, the ideological gulf between us is just too wide, so wide that it transcends the relative importance of ideology and friendship.   However, my not being able to support Becky for ideological reasons is probably reason enough for any Democrat to support her.

Second, even if I were to transcend the vast ideological divide between us, I would not support Becky’s campaign financially because I have not given money to politicians or political campaigns since 1998, when I sent a (almost literally) few bucks to the campaign of Peter Fitzgerald for Senate.   While there have been plenty of candidates I could have supported since, though none as worthy as Mr. Fitzgerald, I have decided as a matter of principle that it is not my responsibility to finance the lifelong ego trips politicians call careers; just about any charitable cause is more worthy than the campaign of even the most worthy politician.   Mr. Fitzgerald, by the way, did not disappoint his supporters; he served honorably and then, after one memorable term, returned to real life rather than squander his family’s money on what probably would have been a quixotic attempt at re-election, but I digress.

Third, even if I could vote my friendship rather than my ideology, I haven’t taken a Democratic primary ballot since 1975, when I voted for the late, great Richard J. Daley for mayor of Chicago and for the briefly insurgent Jerry Joyce for alderman of the 19^th Ward.   At this point in my life, I’m not about to change my habit of refraining from taking a Democratic ballot, especially in DuPage County.

So, no, I won’t be supporting my friend Becky Anderson Wilkins for Congress, but every Democrat should.   And, no, I’m not engaging in the old practice of undermining the opposing party by supporting its weakest candidate; if I were a Democrat and wanted to achieve what now just might be possible, i.e., beating Peter Roskam in the 6^th District, I would whole-heartedly support Becky for Congress for a number of reasons.

Ideological agreement is not the main reason Dems should support Becky.   Indeed, it is hard to pin down Becky on the finer points of ideology, other than that she is a liberal Democrat, and I certainly don’t know much about what she thinks; throughout my life, I have assiduously followed the axiom that one should not extensively discuss ideology with friends one would like to keep who share opinions widely divergent from one’s own.   From the rhetoric that Becky has released in her initial foray in the campaign, talk of “rip(ping) health care away from millions of people,” “putting our children and grandchildren’s futures at risk,” and the like, one would get the impression that Mrs. Wilkins hails from the Sanders/Warren wing of the party, which, given the general mood among more fervent Democrats, should help her in the primary.  However, the very difficulty of pinning her down philosophically enhances Becky’s viability in a general election against Peter Roskam.

The main reasons the Democrats should support Becky Anderson Wilkins, however, lies in her background.   She is not some wooly-headed academic (says the guy who, late in his career, has become something of an academic, though a decidedly not wooly-headed one, certainly not literally), a “community organizer,” or, saints preserve us, an ACLU lawyer.   Becky is a very successful businessperson who has run a business that is virtually synonymous with Naperville.   She can’t be accused of “never having met a payroll” or “never having signed a payroll check” by Republican ideologues who have themselves done neither.   For what it’s worth, Becky’s husband Chuck is a successful developer, who has the now rare distinction of having developed a non-regional mall that, instead of following the recent custom in that business of coming to resemble a gap-toothed ghost town, is actually thriving, filled with blue chip tenants and crowded almost all the time.   Both Chuck and Becky have been extensively involved in the community, as anyone who has lived in Naperville for more than a month or two knows.    Further, Becky consistently brings world-class authors and celebrities to Naperville, either to her store or to larger venues around town, for book signings, lectures, and the like.   She has also been involved in various local, regional, and national trade associations for independent book sellers, has developed a national reputation in that business, and thus has cultivated contacts that would help her, and her district, in Washington.

Finally, just about every politician trumpets the virtues of his or her family and especially his or her virtues as a family man or a devoted mom.   Most of us have no means of determining the veracity of such claims and, if your degree of cynicism even approaches that of yours truly, you question whether some of these pols even know the names of their children.   But we’ve known the Wilkins family since our daughters, both of whom just graduated from college, became friends in kindergarten.   At the risk of using a trite expression, the Wilkins family is the real deal.   Even a brief conversation with one of their kids makes abundantly clear that Becky and Chuck are great parents.

So Becky Wilkins Anderson has an ideological footprint, or lack thereof, that should help her in both the primary and general elections.  She and her husband have successfully run businesses, employed people, and served customers rather than following the custom, popular in some quarters of her party, of tossing rhetorical bombs from the comfortable quarters of the media or academia at the very notion of free markets and capitalism.  This renders her immune from the often hypocritical accusations of some GOP spin doctors and professional ideologues of being unfamiliar with, or even hostile, toward the free market.   She has a history of public service and community involvement that goes back years rather than to the day she decided she wanted to run for office.  She is enormously respected in the western suburbs, throughout the Chicagoland area, and across the entire country, as an advocate for the independent bookstore, a concept and a business that, like many retail businesses, is holding on by a thread in the face of the Amazon onslaught but that holds tremendous respect in the hearts and minds of the American public.   She and her husband Chuck have raised a beautiful and successful family.

I don’t like to be a cheerleader in any contest not involving the Hawkeyes, Illini, Hoosiers, or Cornhuskers, but if I were a Democrat, I’d be backing Becky Anderson Wilkins for Congress in the 6^th District.  If I were a Republican, I’d be seriously concerned about Peter Roskam’s prospects for re-election should Becky’s party wise up and nominate her.

ILLINOIS STATE BUDGET “COMPROMISE”: IN THE LAND OF LINCOLN, THE CARNIVAL COMES BEFORE THE STATE FAIR

ILLINOIS STATE BUDGET “COMPROMISE”:   IN THE LAND OF LINCOLN, THE CARNIVAL COMES BEFORE THE STATE FAIR

7/7/17

A number of people have asked over the last few weeks why I haven’t written on the Illinois budget shenanigans.   The answer is that yours truly doesn’t have much to say that hasn’t been said already and I try to keep my perspectives original.   Here are a few random, and hopefully, original thoughts:

·         The Governor got most of what he wanted and the Democrats in the legislature (read “Mike Madigan”) got most of what they (he) wanted.   The way politics works, one would think that no one would be happy with such an outcome; at least for appearances’ sake, the prevailing attitude would be one of grudging acceptance.   However, it sure seems like the Democrats aren’t anywhere near bereavement mode, so one suspects that the big winner, at least from a legislative/policy perspective, is a certain Democrat from the southwest side who has been around awhile and thus knows how to play the game with an aplomb at which his GOP opponents can only gawk.   This relative abundance of joy, or at least lack of lugubriousness, on the part of the Democrats might have something to do with the genuineness of the spending cuts in the legislation.   It would be nice if these reductions were real; it would also be nice if each of us were to suddenly develop hollow bones and wings, which would enable us to fly.  

·         Another related source of concern is the couple billion dollars or so set aside to service the debt the state will take on to refinance the IOUs currently being held by state vendors.   If history is any guide, this money will not be held in reserve to service new debt, but will prove an irresistible temptation to the politicasters in Springfield who see their role as prodigiously plowing through the populace’s purse.   Soon, we will see discussions on the floor regarding how to spend these “surplus” funds to meet “urgent needs” that, mirabile dictu, only became apparent when the money suddenly became available.   The state of Illinois will still borrow the money and pay off some of the IOU holders, but debt service will have to come out of, say, new taxes because, after all, the state has obligations to those who depend on it.

·         Yours truly been away from managing institutional fixed income for a long time, so I might be wrong here, but I suspect too much has been made of Illinois’ bonds potentially being downgraded to “junk” status even after passage of this budget deal.   The bonds already trade like junk, though it’s hard to say what “trad(ing) like junk” means since there are currently no states that have a junk (Ba1, BB+ or below) rating and there have been no junk rated states in recent memory.  

Further, and perhaps by way of explanation of the point made in the prior paragraph, municipal bonds (of which, through a quirk of tradition, include those issued by states even though the adjective “municipal” is derived from a Greek word meaning “city,” but I digress), due to their federal tax-exempt status, are held primarily by individuals rather than by institutions.   Most institutions (e.g., pension funds, insurance companies) have clauses in their investing rules that forbid, or severely limit, their exposure to junk rated bonds.  Hence, these institutions would, in most instances, have to sell all, or large portions of, their newly rated junk paper and, in almost all instances, would have to curtail or halt further purchases of such paper.    But since the overwhelming majority of the municipal paper, including Illinois paper, is held by individuals rather than institutions, these institutional restrictions are not a consideration.   Certainly, most municipal bond mutual funds are limited in their holdings of junk and thus might have to sell and/or curtail or end new purchases of Illinois paper should it be downgraded, but one suspects that the impact would be minimal because the holdings of Illinois paper by conventional municipal bond funds are probably limited at this juncture.   “High yield” municipal bond funds would, if anything, see their interest in Illinois bonds pick up in the wake of a downgrade.   “If anything” is the operative term here; again, the paper already trades like junk so high yield muni funds probably already hold as much Illinois paper as they want to hold.

Will Illinois bonds be downgraded to “junk” even after the budget deal?   Yours truly suspects the answer should be “yes” but will probably be “no” due to political pressures, but I can’t get inside the heads of the rating agencies.   In any case, however, too much has been made of the damage a potential downgrade would wreak on the state’s finances.

That is about all yours truly has on the budget proceedings, or at least all I have that you can’t read somewhere else.

HOW WOULD MR. TRUMP HAVE DONE AGAINST, SAY, DICK THE BRUISER OR BRUNO SAMMARTINO?

7/3/17

One would have thought that yours truly would be delighted that two of my lifelong enthusiasms, politics and professional wrestling, have been saliently wed by President Trump’s shenanigans on a doctored old WWE tape now showing Mr. Trump pummeling a villain with “CNN” electronically plastered over his face at ringside.  (Point of digression, but at least a parenthetical one… “lifelong” is no longer an appropriate adjective for my enthusiasm for pro grappling; my interest waned about 20 years ago when the evolution from mindless entertainment to male soap opera for the intellectually indolent had completed its course.   Now my interest is limited to reading the sad news of the deaths of the titans of the mat from its golden ages, most recently those of George “The Animal” Steele, Nick Bockwinkel (whose first match as a young man was against Lou Thesz…talk about a blast from the distant past!), Dusty Rhodes, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and Verne Gagne.  By the way, while Dick the Bruiser left this mortal coil over twenty-five years ago, this post’s other titanic title character, Bruno Sammartino, still walks among us.)   However, I am, like most of you, disgusted by Mr. Trump’s latest antics and, perhaps not like most of you, surprised by the depths to which the President has sunk.  After all, as most of you know, I voted for the guy and predicted his victory when he was left for dead; see the instantly classic TRUMP WILL WIN,AND WIN BIG, ON TUESDAY, 11/4/16 and, no, I will not cease reminding my readers of that particular bout of prescience.   Like most of the people who voted for the guy, I was prepared for plenty of silliness in the Trump era, but this is getting ridiculous.

One of the “would be hilarious if it weren’t so important” aspects of this latest development is the reaction of Mr. Trump’s minions to this story.    They seem to have that increasingly familiar “What has this buffoon done now?” look on their visages and then, reluctantly and routinely, launch into some canned explanation along the lines of “The American people knew what they were getting; this is a president who hits back.”

  

Well, yes, we knew what we were getting but, as I said above, the depths of this trip down the rabbit hole are getting genuinely troubling.   Further, I completely understand hitting back; protecting the dignity of the office, and refusing to dignify salvos from the vast peanut gallery we call the press, does not require the president to become a punching bag for every two-bit media hustler trying to become, or stay, relevant by taking cheap shots at the man.   But does Mr. Trump have to hit back with all the aplomb and maturity of an eight-year-old?   Surely Mr. Trump is smarter, more savvy, and more mature than to resort to doctoring old films from a particularly embarrassing period in his show-biz life and calling people the same names we employed on the playground (parking lot, really) of St. Walter School circa 1965.    Isn’t he?

All that having been said, the assessment of most of the media that, by this latest bout of not even sophomoric silliness, Mr. Trump is inciting people to violence against the press is yet another example of Mr. Trump’s opponents’ taking things, and especially themselves and the not all that surprising non-cacophonous bleating that they call reporting, entirely too seriously.   These either disingenuous or, more troubling, serious expressions of concern doubtless also spring from the popular impression among sophisticated media types that all Trump supporters are knuckle dragging, gap toothed back woodsmen just waiting for the go-ahead to wreak violent havoc on their perceived opponents.   Judging from very recent history, it appears that the violence against which the media aristocrats so piously warn comes from the nether regions of their portion of the ideological spectrum, but I digress.    In any case, the denizens of the media, and of most of the Democratic Party, ought to get out more, and by “get out more,” I don’t mean take a limo ride down Pennsylvania or Park Avenues.   Mr. Trump’s supporters display fine dental hygiene and arms that reach only about a hand’s length below their waists.   Perhaps their only mutual identifying characteristic is their disgust with the way business is done in Washington, D.C. and the laughingly myopic view of the world displayed by the Washington establishment’s mouthpieces in the popular media.   In fact, those who voted for Mr. Trump are so disgusted that they were willing to elect a carnival barker like Mr. Trump, and every outlandish bite that Mr. Trump figuratively takes of the chicken’s head is a further indication of how fed up people were by the way things have been done in Washington by the Democrats, the Republicans, and the media.

Happy, blessed, and grateful Independence Day to each of you.

AMAZON, WHOLE FOODS AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THE DEAL

5/16/17

The big news in the markets today is the purchase of Whole Foods (WFM) by Amazon (AMZN).   This potential deal has roiled the entire retail industry, and hence I watched this development with more than the usual attention because I am a holder of Target (TGT).   I have been a holder of TGT for the last six months or so; with the little money I invest in anything but index funds, I like to buy stocks that have been beaten up, pay large dividends, and have been, in the case of TGT, increasing those dividends annually for the last 47 years.   While this strategy has not heretofore worked out with TGT, especially today, I intend to stay with what has worked for a long, long time for me rather than abandoning it in the wake of a one day, or several months, disappointment.  But I digress.

Yours truly is no expert in retail; as I said in the last paragraph, I bought TGT because it looked attractive based on some financial parameters I apply to stocks in any industry.  So as a non-expert, I have very little to say on the merits, or lack thereof, of the AMZN-WFM deal.  It does seem like AMZN paid a high price for distribution centers in an environment characterized by square miles of empty retail space across suburban and urban America.  Further, AMZN’s heretofore foray into food retailing has not been a raging success.    But Jeff Bezos is a heck of a lot smarter than yours truly and it’s easy to assume he knows what he’s doing.    Further, by buying Whole Foods, the kind of store that is regularly patronized by the Wall Street and Wall Street wannabe crowd, he has certainly garnered the enthusiasm of the crowd that can make his stock move up rapidly in the short run.  So far, this deal has been a success, but that is not the point of this musing.

What really got yours truly’s attention was the commentary on the deal by the learned experts on CNBC and in other quarters of the financial media.   On this morning’s episode of CNBC’s 11:00 (central time) trading show, we were told by the brilliant commentators that

·         Nobody shops offline any more.

·         The only reason that people go to grocery stores today is because they are either driving by a grocery store or need fresh produce, and

·         Investors don’t care about profitability; look at the relative performance of AMZN, which has only begun to be profitable in the last year or so, and TGT, which struggles to maintain single digit earnings growth.

Hmm…

I am far older than most of the experts on the panel on CNBC and, judging at least from appearances, am not nearly as successful financially as any of them.   But the notion that people don’t like to go to stores in a nation whose national pastime is neither football nor baseball but, rather, shopping, strikes me as preposterous.   Yes, “brick and mortar” retailing is in decline, but people don’t like physical stores anymore?   C’mon!   Equally silly is the notion that people don’t go to grocery stores unless they happen to be in the neighborhood or need fresh produce.   Even sillier is the notion that profitability doesn’t matter, but, again, it was a trading, rather than an investing, show on which these sages are appearing.

The larger point is that such notions are yet another manifestation of Wall Street’s tendency to see the world through its eyes and its eyes alone.   Swashbuckling, 7 figure Wall Street types who only began shaving in the ‘90s may buy everything on their electronic balls and chains, pay twice retail for fresh produce, even though it will spoil twice as quickly, because it is labelled “organic” or whatever the latest trendy characterization is, and “don’t have the time” to go to grocery stores, presumably because there is a tweet or a Snap or some other manifestation of technology inspired brain rot that demands an ever growing chunk of their time.   But ordinary people still like to shop in person and still go to grocery stores to buy items other than fresh produce.   And profitability or, more specifically, the ability to generate cash flow, is the only thing that ultimately matters to investors.  

Most Wall Street types suffer from profound and seemingly untreatable cases of myopia; they assume the whole world lives in a high rise in Manhattan, a trendy brownstone in Brooklyn, or a massive McMansion in Greenwich.  They assume everyone has the disposable income to buy what s/he wants rather than what s/he can afford.   And they tend to approach disposing of their massive incomes with the mindset of a yet to mature sheep.   When there are flaws in their analysis and the resultant trading calls they make, they usually arise from this very limited world view.

Does the AMZN/WFM deal make sense?   I don’t know and I don’t presume to know.   But the justification for some of the enthusiasm behind this deal makes me leery because it emanates from people who are completely out of touch with the typical American consumer.  

AMZN   $995.17

WFM     $43.27

TGT        $51.65

FORD MOTOR COMPANY AND THE TUNNEL VISION OF WALL STREET

6/16/17

I sent the following letter to the Wall Street Journal last month in response to a very insightful column by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.   It was not published, but I thought my readers would appreciate the points, which certainly transcend Ford, that I made in this missive:

5/24/17

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. (“Ford’s Turmoil is Not About Tesla, Opinion,” 5/24/17) rightly asserts that Ford’s future lies not in gee-whiz adventures like autonomous vehicles and new visions of urban mobility but, rather, in its “enduring strength in designing and assembling complex, consumer ready machines” while being ever mindful of capital efficiency and rationally maximizing shareholder value.

One can only hope that all the yammering from Mark Fields and Bill Ford about the whiz-bang technologies of the future was merely an unsuccessful attempt to appeal to Wall Street.   The analysts that populate Wall Street largely come from a narrow stratum of society that shares enthusiasms with all the introspection of sheep and assumes, incorrectly, that the general public thinks just like it does.  In an effort to please these types, car companies devote a little capital and lot more breath at shareholder meetings and ink in annual reports to things like autonomous vehicles.  Likewise, fast food giants boast of their efforts to improve the “natural” and healthy nature of their new menu choices.   Successful companies, however, realize that their typical customer doesn’t give a rat’s hindquarters about things like bespoke burgers made from exclusively organic ingredients, $100,000 third cars, and other trendy piffles that capture the imaginations of those who work on Wall Street for annual pay packages that exceed the net worth of the typical American.   These alert managements throw a bone to the Wall Street crowd and then go about the business of allocating capital to those products and services that actually sell and generate profits rather than capture rave reviews among the denizens of Wall Street.  Much to the amazement of Wall Street, this strategy usually works; look at the progress of McDonald’s stock once it de-emphasized sprouts burgers, or whatever the Wall Street crowd was panting about, and started serving calorie and fat laden breakfast throughout the day.  Look at the stock of Fiat-Chrysler, which has vastly outperformed its Detroit peers and the S&P this year while giving the faintest of nods to the latest science project daydreams of the Wall Street crowd and getting down to the business of building the Jeeps and Rams that capture the enthusiasm of people who don’t regularly drive to $20 burger joints in $100,000 Teslas.

One can only hope that the new strategy at Ford is to throw the crowd on Wall Street a bone by emphasizing the mobility aspect of Jim Hackett’s background while having Mr. Hackett do what he did at Steelcase…rationally allocate capital in the interest of delivering returns to shareholders today, not twenty years from now.  The danger for Ford shareholders and employees lies in the distinct possibility that Messrs. Ford and Hackett really believe that waiting for Ford’s science fair projects to pay off long after many of their shareholders are gone is a rational strategy.

Full disclosure:    I own some calls on F.

F              $11.15

YOU PAID TO SEND YOUR KID TO COLLEGE? THANKS FOR THE LEXUS, CHUMP

5/19/17

Regular readers know that it doesn’t take much to get yours truly hot under the collar, but the growing movement to reduce, and ultimately forgive, student loans is a particular sore point.   This sorry movement to punish the responsible and reward the irresponsible, while perfectly consonant with the trend in our society, will surely prove to be a vital artery on the road that leads to our society’s financial, ethical, and moral downfall.

Here is a letter I sent to the Wall Street Journal on this topic in response to a page 1 article of nearly a month ago.  It was not published but my readers should enjoy it:

4/25/17

The Wall Street Journal’s 4/25/17 page A1 article “Parents Are Drowning in College-Loan Debt” is only the latest in a constant drumbeat of articles the end of which is obvious—the forgiveness of all student loans, perhaps starting with those granted under the Parent Plus program.   The Journal does its part to sustain the incessant pounding by citing as its examples of Parent Plus loan recipients the least blameworthy of those who took advantage of, or were victimized by, this program…elderly people with little or no income or assets who are dealing with other daunting problems, such as multiple sclerosis.  

The Journal did not cite those borrowers who are doing fine, in fact, who are living much better than those of us who pursued the clearly misguided course of sacrificing in order to put our kids through college without debt.   We were not like the “clever” ones who maintained their unsustainable lifestyles and passed the bill along to their kids and, ultimately, they hope, to the taxpayers when the endless parade of student loan hard luck stories leads Congress to demand that all college loans be forgiven in the interests of “creating an educated workforce,” not “burdening future generations,” or some such drivel.   The bill for this demonstration of compassion by our public servants will, of course, be presented to the fiscally responsible of us who somehow had the silly idea that we, not our fellow taxpayers, are responsible for financing our kids’ educations, the cost of which has been grossly inflated by the easy availability of student debt and other forms of aid to those who could afford their, or their kids’, education, if they were willing to give up a few of those things to which they feel somehow entitled.   But why should they make any kind of sacrifice when the “public servants” who inhabit the beltway always stand ready to subsidize their lifestyles…with their frugal neighbors’ money?

The wide availability, and ultimate forgiveness, in one way or another, of student loans is just a long line of government policies that punish the responsible and reward the irresponsible.   And people wonder why so few choose to be responsible.  

Given the developments, or the degeneration, in our society over the last generation or so, none of this is surprising.   One wouldn’t have guessed, however, that the Journal would be party to advancing this “What the hell?   Let the chumps who insist on being responsible pay for the lifestyle to which I feel entitled.” mentality that is increasingly permeating our society.

POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND POLITICAL PRAGMATISM: SO A DRUNK WALKS INTO A BAR AND STARTS CRITICIZING THE CROWD FOR DRINKING…

5/19/17

When Del Marie Cobb, a Chicago Democratic political consultant, castigated Governor Rauner for being “politically expedient,” yours truly didn’t know whether to laugh or to congratulate Ms. Cobb on being so craftily disingenuous.   I did, however, know I had to send the following letter to the Chicago Sun-Times.   Surely Ms. Cobb knows that successful politicians are not ideologues; ideology, ironically, is a formidable impediment to political success.   For a brilliant elucidation of what successful politicians think about ideology, by the way, read my two books:

The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics

Here is the letter I sent to the Sun-Times nearly a month ago.  It was not published, but I thought you might enjoy it:

4/24/17

In the Sun-Times 4/24/17 story about Governor Rauner’s planned veto of an abortion trigger provision, DelMarie Cobb, a political consultant and former Hillary Clinton spokeswoman, criticizes Mr. Rauner for doing what is “politically expedient, not what he believes ideologically.”

It is ironic that Ms. Cobb, who worked for Hillary Clinton, should criticize Mr. Rauner for doing what is politically expedient rather than being guided by his ideology.   Mrs. Clinton has rarely, if ever, been guided by ideology; nor has her husband or her opponent in the 2016 election.   Successful politicians are not ideologues; they are driven by power, by what works, by what will get them elected and allow them to continue to accumulate power.  Consider the most successful politicians of relatively recent history…FDR, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Richard J. Daley, Bill Clinton.   Can anyone put an ideological label on any of these political titans?  Each was attacked, from the left and right, by ideologues in his own party and in the opposing party.  But these men were guided not by some theory about the way things ought to be but, rather, by what would work at the moment in furthering their goal of gaining, accumulating, and securing power.   Ideology, to a successful politician, is just an egg-headed stumbling block to the real business of politics:  amassing power. 

Further, in an era when people decry gridlock in Washington due to politicians’ having to pander to their ideological bases, perhaps we shouldn’t be criticizing pols for ignoring ideology in the interest of pure power politics.   Maybe we need a few more politicians who defy ideological labels and simply want to get things done, regardless of whether we consider their motivation noble.

SCHALLER’S IS GONE

5/1/17

Upon learning of the sudden and tragic demise of Schaller’s, Chicago’s oldest continually operating bar/restaurant and one of my favorite places in town, I was, first, stunned and, second, prompted to recall an old song, an old post, and nearly a lifetime of memories.

The song is “Daley’s Gone” by Steve Goodman; it’s one of Mr. Goodman’s best and I encourage you to google it or even to buy it on I-tunes or whatever medium you use to purchase music.   Why did Schaller’s demise remind me of that all but forgotten Goodman classic?   First, the sadness that permeated that song is close to the sadness that permeates yours truly, and most of the Quinn household, on learning of the demise of that great old neighborhood place.   Second, Richard J. Daley (aka Richard I or the real Mayor Daley) lived a few blocks from the place and our path from Schaller’s to whatever they call Comiskey Park nowadays ran right past the old bungalow on 35^th and Lowe.  Furthermore, Schaller’s sits (or, I guess now, sat) directly across from the 11^th Ward Regular Democratic Organization headquarters, where the late great Mayor Daley plied his trade for so many years.  Whether Mr. Daley, or any of his progeny, ate or drank at Schaller’s I don’t know, but I’d be surprised if he, or they, didn’t.

The post if which I am reminded is DINING OUT SHOULD MEAN NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE HUNGRY:  AN INADVERTENT REVIEW OF KEN’SON WESTERN AVENUE, which I wrote in November, 2015.   I mentioned Schaller’s only in passing in that piece, comparing it favorably to Ken’s, a similar restaurant in my old neighborhood, Beverly, broadly defined, a neighborhood doubtless known by the denizens of Bridgeport, where Schaller’s was (sigh) located, as “that other Irish neighborhood.”   But I digress.   What I didn’t explicitly say in that post is that Ken’s, a decent enough place, simply doesn’t compare to Schaller’s for prices and character and, in most cases, for food.

Schaller’s is one of those places that I’ve gone to often enough but not often enough.   Over the last twenty or so years, our visits to Schaller’s have been limited to pre-Sox game dinners.   Not only is the food good and the company better, but one of the perks offered by Schaller’s was free parking for the Sox game for those who ate at the place before the game.   Those who know yours truly well can imagine my dismay at now having to pay to park for a Sox game, even at the discounted $10 rate charged in neighborhood lots.   One supposes it could be worse; I could have to pay to park at a Cubs game, but, again, I digress. 

Despite going so rarely over the last few years, I can remember both my first visit to Schaller’s and my last visit to Schaller’s.   The first was with my dad when I was eight years old after, ironically, a Bears game.   We drove straight down Halsted Street (My dad “knew some people” and hence we were able to park at the police station on the corner of Halsted and Addison for Bears games, the only occasion at the time that would bring us to Wrigley Field.) the 73 blocks from the station to Schaller’s and enjoyed a meal of butt steak, which has long been a favorite of the original “real food” lovers who frequent places like Schaller’s and the aforementioned Ken’s.   The formal name of Schaller’s is “Schaller’s Pump.”   When we got home after eating there, my eight-year-old self proudly told my mom that dad took us to “The Pump Room” for dinner after the game.   My mom was appalled and retorted with something like “Dick, you took Mark and Dick to the Pump Room?   You never take me to the Pump Room!”   As many of you know, the recently closed Pump Room was, at the time, probably the swankiest restaurant in Chicago and thus not a place frequented by the Quinns.   My dad tried to calm the situation by explaining “No, Gen…we went to Pump, Schaller’s Pump, not The Pump Room.”   Whether my mom believed him or not I don’t know, but my dad thought my confusion about the similar names of eating establishments was pretty funny, especially given the contrast in the atmospheres of the two similarly named places.   Many years later, when I was making some good money, I took my parents out to the Pump Room and related that story to them.   Neither remembered it, but at least my dad thought it was more than mildly amusing.   Neither one liked the Pump Room much, though; they thought it was too much money for what you got (The apple apparently doesn’t fall far from the tree.) and I could tell that they, and my dad especially, thought their hot shot son was getting a little too fancy.   They were, of course, right; we should have gone to Schaller’s four or five times for the same money.   A few years later, when I was dating the woman who would later become my wife, I took her to Pump Room.   While she liked it, her reaction was somewhat similar to that of my parents.  It was probably at about that time that I was convinced that I had to marry this woman, which turned out to be the best decision I’ve ever made.    She now is a big fan of Schaller’s; man, do I love this woman!   But I digress.

My last visit to Schaller’s, appropriately, was with my son, a young man of whom my Dad was especially proud.   Mark, Jr., and I have made a practice of going to a Sox game every year and dropping some serious coin (about what one would spend for the cheap seats at Wrigley) for some really good seats at whatever they are calling Comiskey Park at the time.  One time we were sitting within a few rows of the owner of the visiting Houston Astros and those types don’t sit in the bleachers.   Another time we were sitting right next to the Sox dugout, about where Mayor Daley used to sit at Comiskey Park, which is what they called Comiskey Park at the time, and he had the best seats in the house.  The point is that the seats Mark and I get are terrific seats by any measure.   We made a habit of going to Schaller’s before these games in order to get a great meal at a great price among great people and to take advantage of the free parking perk.    So we found ourselves there last summer, Mark enjoying the butt steak dinner and I diverting to the corned beef and cabbage special, which, as you might guess, was outstanding.   Our waitress was fantastic, as usual, very congenial and helpful and referred to us as “gentlemen,” as in “What will you have tonight, gentlemen?,” “Are you ready for the check, gentlemen?”, etc.

The particular game we saw that evening was rain delayed…very rain delayed.   While I would have left when it was clear that restarting the game was hopeless, Mark insisted on staying.   We had a great time exploring every nook and cranny of whatever they called Comiskey Park at the time.   I have to admit it is an impressive place.   By the time they officially called the game, it was after midnight and Mark and I were among the, oh, dozen or so people remaining at the park.   Having been forced to leave, we made our way west on 35^th Street in the now waning rain.   Proceeding south on Lowe, we walked west on 37^th.   Who did we meet at the corner of 37^th and Lowe?   The waitress who had waited on us six or so hours ago and now greeted us with “Gentlemen, you too are real fans!”   We offered her a ride to wherever she was going, but she lived only a block away, closer to home than the three blocks to the Schaller’s parking lot.   Not having eaten for such a long period of time, we stopped, for the first time, at Johnny O’s hot dog stand on 35^th and Morgan and picked up a few dogs for the ride home.   We loved the dogs, but didn’t think that the admittedly terrific Johnny O’s might have to replace Schaller’s as our pre-Sox game dining spot.

There are other memories of Schaller’s, like

•  The time, when Mark got up to use the bathroom, that our waitress made a special point of coming over to the table in his absence to tell my wife and me what a polite, respectful young man we had raised.   You NEVER forget things like that.
•  The occasion on which, on our walk from Schaller’s to the game on a beautiful summer evening when I was regaling our daughters with tales from Chicago’s political history as we walked north on Lowe, approaching the Daley bungalow, our girls commented that the neighborhood was “cute,” a term that I had never heard used to describe Bridgeport in my many years of acquaintance with this neighborhood.   I could not wait to call one of my old Bridgeport buddies the next day and tell him “Hey, Pat, my girls think your old neighborhood is cute!”   He was not amused.   But things change.

Things indeed do change.   It looks like Schaller’s will never re-open.   The papers talk about the property tax problems the place faces after Jack Schaller died and hence was no longer able to claim senior citizen and homestead exemptions on the bar and the apartment upstairs in which he lived, a practice that may have been questionable even when he was alive.  But the tax numbers that the papers talk about are not all that huge, though no one knows the magnitude of such problems, if they exist at all.  One could also imagine dark conspiracies involving Rahm Emanuel’s dislike for Bridgeport, and places like it, and his vision of a “new Chicago” in which old neighborhood places like Schaller’s are replaced by trendy “night clubs” with big covers, fancy drinks, and food best characterized by small portions and inedible “organic” ingredients.    But such flights of fancy are a little too out there even for the likes of yours truly.

No, one suspects the demise of Schaller’s has more to do with the inevitable generational change in family owned places like Schaller’s and the place’s real estate value in a rapidly “gentrifying” Bridgeport than with anything else. (I’ve always thought that only formerly run down, poor, and/or crime-ridden neighborhoods gentrified.   Bridgeport never met any of those criteria, so how could it gentrify?   I suppose when one looks at things from the Chicago media’s perspective (i.e., never venture south of Congress unless you’re headed to Hyde Park or to Midway to catch a flight to one of the coasts), any neighborhood on the south side needs gentrifying, but I, again, digress.  At least I do so parenthetically this time.)  Perhaps we’ll never know.    But why Schaller’s closed is not as important as that Schaller’s closed.   And the shame of that event transcends Schaller’s.   The city of Chicago, as we once knew it and as embodied by neighborhood saloons like Schaller’s, is dying.   Some people call this progress; they prefer the trendiest, “just gotta go there” chi-chi establishments, or embarrassments, that now characterize the city.  And some people consider a tofu dog with arugula trimmings to be the new Chicago dog.

O tempora, o mores!

LATE NOTE:

Between my writing the first draft of this piece and editing it for publication, my wife and I listened to the local ABC evening news.  On a report on the closing of Schaller’s, anchor Kathy Brock referred to Schaller’s as “…the legendary south side dive bar…”  (Emphasis mine) Dive bar?   Dive bar!  I’ve been in plenty of dive bars over the years, and Schaller’s was decidedly NOT one of them!   I rest my case on the Chicago media.

“MY DADDY SAID ‘SON, YOU’RE GONNA DRIVE ME TO DRINKIN’ IF YOU DON’T STOP DRIVIN’ THAT HOT ROD LINCOLN.’”

4/7/17

I sent the following letter to Car & Driver in response to its review of the reincarnated Lincoln Continental.   Car & Driver published the letter in its current (i.e., the May, 2017) issue.   I have reproduced the letter for those of you who don’t read that best of the car magazines:

2/6/17

You conclude your February review of the new Lincoln Continental by stating

“We’re convinced that a slight change in focus and another stab at tuning could produce the first Continental that’s truly at home in a car enthusiast’s driveway.”

Why would Lincoln want to make such a change in focus after seeing the miserable job Cadillac has done competing for sales on the enthusiast playing field with the German marques?   Cadillac’s efforts at wanna-be BMWism has resulted in its generating about half the sales of the luxury market leaders.   In the Continental, Lincoln wisely has eschewed this failed formula in favor of creating an upscale sedan in the classic American tradition:   large, powerful, quiet, and luxurious.   Perhaps this approach will prove more effective than the Cadillac formula, which seems to be building more cramped and less capable imitations of German luxury sedans while turning its back on its traditional customer base…and those who aspire to join that base.

THE TOMAHAWK ATTACK ON SHAYRAT AIRFIELD: FOREIGN POLICY BY IMPULSE…AND LESSONS FROM THE BALKANS, CIRCA 1914

4/7/17

While virtually the entire U.S. political establishment, and much of the world, is heaping praise on the Tomahawk cruise missile strike on the Shayrat airfield near Homs, Syria, perhaps a few cautionary notes are in order.

First, President Trump is an impulsive man and this strike looks like a manifestation, and a dangerous one, of that impulsiveness.   During the campaign, and even since assuming the presidency, Mr. Trump decried U.S. meddling in the Syrian conflict.   Upon getting news of the horrific chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun, though, Mr. Trump quickly reversed his position and ordered the strike on the Shayrat airfield from which that attack was launched.   The impulse that led to this 180 on Mr. Trump’s part was doubtless a generous and admirable one; who doesn’t want to bloody the nose of a tyrant like Bashar Assad who inflicts such horrendous suffering on his own citizens, including the youngest and most defenseless among them?   President Obama had such generous and compassionate impulses as well, but wisely, if awkwardly, kept them in check.   While Mr. Assad is a very bad man, the world is full of very bad men in positions of power who think nothing of killing and torturing anyone who is construed as even remotely threatening to them.   Mr. Assad is only the currently most highly visible of these.   But we don’t exact retribution on all of these abominable men because we can’t exact retribution on all these horrible men.   We do not have a limitless capacity to wage war, a lesson that seems to have escaped Mr. Obama’s predecessor but that since has been learned at great cost, perhaps not by Mr. Bush but by those who have had to bear the costs of his adventurism.

Further, Syria is an especially dangerous place to act on even one’s most generous impulses because of Syria’s alliances with the likes of Russia and Iran.   The former, while a third-rate economic power, is certainly a military and geo-strategic player of immense proportions with enormous stakes, including its only overseas base outside the old Soviet Union, in Syria.   The latter is capable of concocting all kinds of mischief in all corners of the world.   It is indeed ironic that such big power politics and calculation is being played out in Syria during the same month, 100 years ago, that the U.S. entered World War I, a geopolitical and humanitarian disaster that resulted from similar miscalculation in the context of big power alliances.    Doubtless all the players in that fiasco thought they were doing the right thing, just as many people seem to think Mr. Trump is doing the right thing now.   But actions seemingly taken to address humanitarian horribles led to even more unimaginable humanitarian horrors in Europe in the early part of the 20^th century.   Could the same results arise from Mr. Trump’s seemingly beneficent gestures in the Middle East in the early part of the 21^st Century?  

Mr. Trump’s seemingly impulsive action against Shayrat may even make things more complicated in Syria than they were in the Balkans in 1914, is such a thing is indeed possible.   By launching this attack on a Syrian government base while continuing to battle their main, but fading, antagonists, ISIS, Mr. Trump has put us on both sides of the Syrian war, a war that is, ostensibly, a religious war, with Sunni rebels of all stripes fighting an Alawite (Shia) government.   When one is on both sides of a war, and especially of a religious war, one ironically rarely winds up on the winning side.

Second, one hopes the intelligence regarding the origins of the chemicals that killed so many so horrifically in Khan Sheikhoun is correct or at least better than the intelligence that assured so many that Saddam Hussein was swimming in weapons of mass destruction.   Syria, along with its Russian patron, is claiming that the chemical weapons that made real such nightmares for the civilian populace had their origins not with the Syrian government but with the rebel groups.   According to this line of argument, the rebels were stockpiling chemical weapons and the air attack from Shayrat disturbed those chemical stockpiles, releasing them on the populace.  The Pentagon and our best intelligence assures us that this story is so much claptrap and claims there is no doubt that the chemical weapons released on the civilians of Khan Sheikhoun were part of the Syrian government’s cache of these horrifying weapons…and I tend believe them.  But we shouldn’t dismiss out of hand even the lying, scheming Syrian government’s attempts at a seemingly diaphanous defense.   That the rebel groups in Syria are fighting a monster in Mr. Assad does not make them good guys; even the “moderates” among them have al-Qaeda ties.   Does anyone think al-Qaeda is above using chemical weapons on civilians?

Again, in this case, the intelligence is almost certainly right; the Khan Sheikhoun attack was a vicious chemical weapon attack largely centered on a hospital used by al-Qaeda linked rebels, not an attack on a chemical weapons depot that resulted in a release of those chemical weapons to wreak havoc on the population.   But let’s not assume that the rebels we are supporting are latter day Middle Eastern Jeffersonians and adjust our intelligence to support that myth.   Most of the rebel groups fighting Mr. Assad are much more similar to him than they are to us.

Third, one of the oldest political tricks is to start or intensify a war, or otherwise concoct or stir up a foreign bogeyman, when one is in political trouble.  The mullahs in Iran regularly trot out the “Death to America” demonstrators when the economy is lousy or young Iranians start to yearn for such subversive diversions as the internet.    Vladimir Putin’s foreign adventures have seemed to coincide with periods during which oil prices were under pressure and having desiccatory impacts on the Russian economy.   In diverting people’s attention away from domestic incompetence to foreigners at the gate, he is only following the example of his predecessor Tsar Nicholas II, who led his country to Serbia’s defense in 1914 not so much to defend Orthodoxy and the Pan-Slavic movement as to divert his people from their flagging economy and their dalliances with the rising leftist movements throughout Mother Russia.   Even leaders in democratic countries use the foreign bogeyman dodge; recall the Spanish-American War or our “liberation” of Grenada.    One hopes that the Tomahawk strikes on Shayrat weren’t an effort on Mr. Trump’s part to score a “win” during a several weeks period of bad news for his administration.

All that having been said and written, there are positives to Mr. Trump’s actions in Syria.   For a change, the world now gets the sense that we have a president who means what he says, not a faltering, self-doubting Hamlet of a man who draws unnecessary lines and quickly erases them when his bluff is called.   We don’t have a faker in the White House, at least not in this application.   That the world now has more reason to respect the man in the Oval Office, or even to think he is a little impulsive or crazy, is not a bad thing.    One just hopes that Mr. Trump can control his impulsiveness and/or that he is crazy like a fox so that such aspects of his personality can redound to our benefit rather than to our ruin.

SOME ADVICE FROM YOURS TRULY THAT PRESIDENT TRUMP PROBABLY WISHES HE HAD READ

3/29/17

The Washington establishment of both parties, along with the scribes who so slavishly do its bidding, was positively gaga about the failure of President Donald Trump’s “Repeal and Replace” health care “plan.”   The plan was, if such a thing is possible, stillborn from conception due to its fundamental flaws that arose from improper preparation and lack of appreciation for the complexity of the subject matter.  Yours truly’s thoughts on Mr. Trump’s approach to health care were contained in a 1/23/17 post (IS A SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IN YOUR FUTURE?) that I am now convinced will, for better or worse, prove even more prescient than most of my posts.  Today’s post, however, is not about the substance of the deeply flawed Trump health plan but, rather, about the politics of the plan.   Yours truly thinks that Mr. Trump handled this aspect of his first major failure in office quite well; he admitted defeat but didn’t dwell on it and proposed moving onto the next issue and revisiting health care at a later, more opportune time.   He handled it like a businessman, rather than a politician.   That is not such a bad thing and it is unlikely that the political damage done by the health plan’s failure will be nearly as dyspeptic as Mr. Trump’s opponents (i.e., virtually all of official Washington) suppose.

The major point, though, is the wisdom of a post I wrote in nearly the immediate aftermath of Mr. Trump’s election, which, loyal readers will remember, yours truly predicted; see TRUMP WILL WIN, AND WIN BIG, ON TUESDAY, 11/4/16 and, no, I will not stop reminding my readers of that particular bout of prescience.   Back to the point, though…on 11/13/16, I wrote the below reproduced piece on term limits and the futility of taking on such a big issue early in the Trump presidency.   The last paragraph of the post contains the piece most relevant to the current discussion:

He (Mr. Trump) ought to first push for the easy things, the things on which he can gather bi-partisan support, like corporate tax reform and infrastructure spending.    Go for the relatively easy stuff, accumulate power and chits, develop a sense of inevitability and the pointlessness of resistance, then go for the big things.  

While I was addressing the mega-issue of term limits in dispensing the above advice, the same could be said on the more immediate, though not as large, issue of health care and one suspects that Mr. Trump, in the wake of this latest setback, wishes he had read the above piece and followed the advice contained therein.    Why Mr. Trump decided to start with this huge and seemingly intractable issue, repeating the very same mistake of President Obama that did so much to cripple his presidency, is a mystery to me.   But most of what Mr. Trump does is a mystery to me; I hope he is crazy like a fox.

THAT WHICH DONALD TRUMP MUST DO HE MUST DO LATER

11/13/16

Of all the things Donald Trump said he would do when he became president, far and away the most important was the institution of term limits for Congress.   Term limits would forever alter the thinking of those who get elected to Congress and never find their way back home.  If a House member knew that he would eventually have to live with the laws that he passes, perhaps he would look at those laws and their consequences more carefully.   If a Senator knew that a career in politics were just about impossible, perhaps that career would not be the foremost thing in her mind and she would not be so desperate for the cash needed to sustain such a career…and not so willing to make the compromises with one’s principles that come attached to that money.  

Term limits would break, even destroy, the political careerist mindset, and it was the rejection of, and the revulsion at, the professional politicians and their condescending and usually misguided way of thinking that made Mr. Trump President-elect Donald Trump.   Therefore, the most important thing that Mr. Trump must do to deliver on his promises is not tax cuts, a border wall, a war on ISIS, renegotiation of trade deals or a sweeping reform of the regulatory structure in Washington.   Mr. Trump must work ardently and incessantly for term limits to be true to his candidacy, to those who made it successful, and to his political reason for being.

However…

Mr. Trump must wait, perhaps longer than any of us would like, to make the big push for term limits.   There are two reasons that Mr. Trump must move gingerly on what should be his most important policy initiative.   First, the chances of his actually achieving term limits are close to nil because such limits would have to be passed by people who would be voting themselves out of a job, certainly the best job they could ever have; it’s hard to beat making a highly remunerative living getting one’s hindquarters smooched.   Even if one were to grandfather all existing officeholders in a term limits proposal, the pols still would not go along with such a proposal; note the opposition among senior citizens to proposed changes to Social Security despite their being grandfathered in every serious Social Security reform proposal that has come down the pike.

Second, pushing for a term limits amendment, either through the Congress or through a Constitutional convention, would certainly antagonize the Congress.   While most of us have little problem antagonizing Congress, doing so makes no sense from a practical perspective if one wants to get things done.   If the Congress knows, rather than merely suspects, that Mr. Trump would like to throw them all out of office, their enthusiasm for working with him would doubtless wane.   Why antagonize people you will need, especially if antagonizing them is, from a practical perspective, pointless?

So as much as those of us who voted for Mr. Trump would consider his presidency a failure, and our votes as misguided, if he were to abandon term limits altogether, he ought to put such limits on the proverbial backburner.   He ought to first push for the easy things, the things on which he can gather bi-partisan support, like corporate tax reform and infrastructure spending.    Go for the relatively easy stuff, accumulate power and chits, develop a sense of inevitability and the pointlessness of resistance, then go for the big things.   The biggest of all the big things is term limits.   Achieving this goal may ultimately prove impossible, but making an honest, forthright, and vigorous pursuit of this perhaps quixotic goal would point out to many of us that Mr. Trump is indeed not a closet member of “the club” and has heard the calls and cries of those who are simply fed up with the political professional’s mindset and all the damage it has one to our once great nation.

Term limits, Donald Trump’s health care plan, ACA, ACHA, political inevitability, Social Security, professional politician, infrastructure spending, corporate tax reform, crazy like a fox

SAVING ILLINOIS TAXPAYERS’ MONEY? DIDN’T REPRESENTATIVE MARK BATNICK GET THE MEMO?

3/29/17

I wrote the following letter to the Chicago Sun-Times a few weeks ago, and it is safe to conclude that it will not be published.  Nevertheless, it is worthy of consideration by thinking people and hence I have posted it here for my readers.  

It is almost too challenging to believe that we have people “serving” in Springfield who haven’t figured out the true nature of politics in our once great state and hence go along their ingenuous ways, insisting on things like saving taxpayer money and the like.

3/16/17

In arguing against a proposal by Rep. Silvana Tabares (D.,Chicago) to spend up to $1.5 million to translate portions of the House legislative website and in favor of using Google Translate to do the same thing at no cost, Representative Mark Batinick (R., Plainfield) asked a question that was silly even by the standards of the Illinois House:

“Why are we against a great free bipartisan solution?”

Just how naïve is Mr. Batinick?    Doesn’t he realize that government in Illinois has nothing to do with serving constituents and keeping a vigilant eye on the public fisc?   Is Mr. Batinick such an ingénue that he fails to see that the sole purpose of government in Illinois is to deliver a return on the investment of the people who buy the politicians their offices?   Why would an Illinois pol choose to do something for free when he or she could spend taxpayer money on a contract that would benefit his or her financial backers?   Why pass on an opportunity, any opportunity, to dig into the taxpayers’ pockets?  Do something for free when other people’s money can be spent to solidify one’s position at the public trough?   Has Representative Batinick taken leave of his senses?

Am I being too cynical here?   How can one possibly be too cynical after spending nearly 60 years following the criminal enterprise otherwise known as Illinois politics?      

 See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics. 

JOHN SHIMKUS AND HEALTH “INSURANCE”: A RARE POLITICIAN WHO KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT THE SUBJECT HE ADDRESSES

3/29/17

I wrote the following letter to the Chicago Sun-Times in response to the flack that Representative John Shimkus was getting for having the temerity to suggest that it makes no sense for men to be required to buy coverage for pre-natal care.  The Sun-Times published the letter on 3/15/17.

My major point in this missive is that as long as we insist on maintaining the charade that what we are dispensing is health insurance, we are obligated to follow the patterns and practices of effective insurance.   This entails realistic assessment and spreading of risk and effective allocation of costs to those subject to those risks.  If we ever get around to admitting that Obamacare, any alternative thereto, or health “insurance” as we have known it in this country for years is, in reality, pre-paid health care, then we can expand the discussion to universal coverage and reasonably universal spreading of the cost:

3/13/17

Representative John Shimkus (R., IL) is under attack from, among other, the Sun-Times, for his perfectly logical contention that a health insurance policy that covers a man should not be expected to provide coverage for pre-natal care. 

Opponents of Mr. Shimkus’s reasonable contention predictably start their attack by screaming “Unfair!”, which is nearly always a canard wholly grounded in one’s perspective.   More interesting is Mr. Shimkus’s detractors’ follow-up argument, made as if they were suddenly imbued with a profound understanding of how insurance works, that insurance is about spreading risks and costs and that men should therefore pay for women’s prenatal care and women should pay for men’s prostate cancer treatments.    That can almost sound reasonable until one considers the nature of a risk.   A risk exists only if there is a chance of something unexpected taking place.    There is no chance of a man getting pregnant and needing pre-natal care.  Similarly, there is no chance of a woman developing prostate cancer and needing the appropriate treatment for that malady.  Yes, insurance is about spreading risks but only among those who face the particular risk being spread.   A man faces no risk of getting pregnant and a woman faces no risk of developing prostate cancer.   Therefore, to argue that a man’s insurance policy should cover pre-natal care and a woman’s insurance policy should cover prostate cancer is akin to arguing that those who don’t drive should be required to buy car insurance and those who don’t own a home should buy homeowner’s insurance.   After all, according to the “logic” of those who so decry Mr. Shimkus’s reasonable assertion, insurance is about spreading risk. 

I almost hesitate to bring up the car and homeowner’s insurance analogy for fear of giving these newfound experts on the nature of insurance any ideas.

ON TRADE DEFICITS, CAPITAL SURPLUSES, AND WORSHIPPING AT THE ALTAR OF “FREE TRADE”

3/27/17

Yours truly is a free trade enthusiast, not a free trade dogmatist.   The editors of the Wall Street Journal and most of the Republican Party, however, are largely defined by their blind devotion to the latter, scrupulously adhering to the jots and tittles that they have somehow decided are the essence of a sound free trade policy.  As the incense burning on the altars of the free trade gods began to smolder in the face of the cold winds of reality, the Journal, in a 3/10/17 lead editorial, tried to reignite the flames by trotting out an argument in favor of free trade that is technically true but flawed not far beneath the surface.  I attempted to call out the Journal on this argument in a letter, but, alas, the missive was never published.  I thought I’d share it with my readers.   While this might not be the most entertaining of my pieces, those of you who share my enthusiasm for economics should enjoy it:

3/10/17

The Journal is right (“How to Think About the Trade Deficit,” 3/10/17) when it states that the national payments must “balance” and hence that a trade deficit must be accompanied by a capital surplus of the same size.   However, the Journal makes it sound as if the capital surplus arises because our trading partners are falling all over themselves to invest in U.S. businesses, real estate, and other hard assets.   The Journal gives short shrift to the reality that the bulk of the capital surplus is invested in treasury securities and mortgage and other asset backed securities.  It’s no accident that the era of huge trade deficits has coincided with the era of huge budget deficits; while, as the Journal says, “foreigners are not forcing Washington to borrow,” all those foreign held dollars looking for a safe place to park surely make it easier and cheaper for the politicians to borrow and spend.  The Journal is also correct when it states that “Americans are making millions of individual decisions about how much to save,” but households’ being freed from the necessity to save, and facing less incentive to save, by all those foreign held dollars looking for a home surely skews those individual decisions in favor or more spending and less saving.

To argue that a trade deficit is merely the flip side of a capital surplus does not make the trade deficit a salubrious contributor to the nation’s economic vitality.  The trade deficit and its companion capital surplus have intensified two troubling trends of the last 30 or so years:   a rapidly growing government and an alarming drop in the savings rate.   The former is expensive and detrimental to the principles of freedom on which this country was founded.  The latter is reflective of a deterioration in the national character.   Both necessitate the importation of capital.  Those who think being dependent on foreign oil is dangerous ought to contemplate the perils of being dependent on foreign capital.