The search for good decisions continues

Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honorpalooza, on the anniversary day and location of one of the 20th century’s most famous speeches, seems a fitting last act to the summer of our great mid-term discontent. Depending on which of Mr. Beck’s many ringing defenses you heard . . .

• It was an incredible coincidence: The date was open and he had nothing planed that day.
• Black people don’t own Dr. King (so by implication does that mean white people do?) so what’s the big deal?
• The civil rights movement was really about white people (he actually says all people which is another way of saying that it wasn’t about black people which by process of elimination means white people).
• Dr. King’s big message was about personal responsibility and character and that’s what he wants to celebrate.

Among the many ironies is that Beck and Palin, in the name of taking back the country, are celebrating and honoring our service men and women. While that’s never a bad thing, recall that the famous MLK speech came on the heals of uniformed men shooting, gassing, and beating black people who were . . . wait for it . . . trying not to take back their country but just get a piece of what they were promised. Or in Dr. King’s words “cashing a check.” Recall as well the date of the original speech . . . 1963.  This was the same year (and just two months after) a Buddhist monk named Thích Quảng Đức famously set himself on fire in Vietnam (not something you could imagine Glenn Beck doing). Just two years later there will be 200,000 GIs in Vietnam fighting an undeclared war that haunts us to this day.

While we’re noting ironies, here’s another. In the same season where the screaming right throws fits over the calumny of placing an Islamic cultural center two blocks from the former WTC (ignoring the fact that there already is a mosque just four blocks away), they take issue when others question the wisdom of the exact same group holding a white wash of one of the seminal moments of the civil rights movement.

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Does that seem harsh? Betting that few people have actually read the famous speech, here is the complete text of I Have a Dream. You decide if Mr. Beck, along with Rushbo and Sean the collective Father Coughlin of our time, is right: That the speech and the day was not about race and was not about black people. You decide if Dr. King’s enduring message was about taking back the country from the evil progressives.  You decide if Dr. King had a Tea Party dream of personal responsibility, personal ownership of gold coins, lower taxes, and free markets run amok.

History is how we remember it. Meaning is what we make of it. Mr. Beck, you are the wrong man at the wrong place at the wrong time.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

I have been in a running debate with a friend and colleague generally about the topic of whether or not our elected officials are able to vote knowledgeably given the large number of bills they need to track, the size of their staff, and the competing need to raise money and attend to constituents. It got me to wondering about what kind of numbers are we really talking about so I went looking.

Here are the raw numbers for the 111th Congress according to the Library of Congress:

• House Bills: 6097
• House Concurrent Resolutions: 100
• House Joint Resolutions: 95
• House Resolutions: 100
• Senate Bills: 3751
• Senate Concurrent Resolutions: 71
• Senate Joint Resolutions: 38
• Senate Resolutions: 100

That’s a lot of bills and resolutions, particularly given our legislators spend only about 140 days a year on the business of the people. Obviously there is a big difference between the number of things that are introduced and the number that our elected officials need to pay attention to. So let’s check out a couple of those.

One of the bills that has gotten a lot of attention lately is H.R.4173 – Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act: “A bill to promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end “too big to fail”, to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices, and for other purposes.”

Bills go through a number of iterations from the time they are introduced to the time they get passed. Checking in over at OpenCongress here’s what we find:

The big health reform bill is H.R.3590 - Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. As passed it weighs in at 327,911 words. Keep in mind that both of the bills cited contain vast tracts of language the direct the relevant regulator or agency to promulgate hundreds of thousands more words in the form of rules and regulations to sort out what those original 700,000 words really mean.

Just as an aside on this one, check out this link if you want to see the stunning amounts of money that were given to various of our elected officials, I assume in order to influence their votes (could there be another explanation?). The one I like the best is Senator Scott Brown from Massachusetts. He managed to be on the job for a few weeks before role call. That didn’t stop him from taking in $997,923 from parties specifically interested in this bill.  But I digress.

Those seem like pretty heft numbers to me.  All those bills. Two big ones adding up to 700,00 words all by themselves. But surely our elected officials have a big staff to help? So off I went to check out one of my senators, Patty Murray.

Displaying salaries for time period: 10/01/09 – 03/31/10

Keep in mind that this is half the term so the payroll for a fiscal year is roughly double. A couple of things stand out on this one.

Ms. Murray spent nearly $4 million in one month in her campaign for reelection. Not to worry, she still has another $3.2 million in the bank. If I were more ambitious I would go looking for her total campaign spend but those two numbers are impressive enough . . . and they’re trivial in comparison to some of the big bucks campaigns going on in California and Connecticut. Juxtapose that against her total pay of $174,000 and her entire payroll of about $2.6 million. Representative Scott Murray of New York took in half that amount of money just from spenders with an interest in one bill relating to health care reform.

On purely dollars and cents basis, Senator Murray spends considerably more money to get the job than she does on doing the job.

Of the 55 names I count just 15 with the word “legislative” in the title. The highest paid is the Legislative Director who is raking in $145,000 which is less than a first year associate makes at a front line law firm.  There are a couple of others who make $80,000ish, and the rest are making less than $20 an hour. The staff of the various House and Senate committees are paid similar (low) dollars and are stretched every bit as thin . . . the ones I know work punishing hours, don’t take vacations, and don’t get outside nearly enough.

I’m not picking on Senator Murray. She is no worse than representative of the other 99 Senators when it comes to the size of her staff, what she pays, how much money she raises, and how much she spends on her own election as well as those of her Democratic colleagues. In fact, she probably comes off as cheap.

Maybe it’s just me, and I say this with all due respect to the smart, motivated, hard working members of our legislators’ staffs, but this doesn’t seem like the kind of firepower you need to deal with the blizzard of bills and resolutions yet alone face off against all the big money players who are trying to influence the direction, course, and outcome of legislation.

Beatle fans may already be humming  . . .

You say you want a revolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know you can count me out

Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright
Alright, alright

You say you got a real solution
Well you know
We don’t love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well you know
We’re doing what we can
But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait

Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright
Alright, alright, al…

You say you’ll change the constitution
Well you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow

Don’t you know know it’s gonna be alright
Alright, alright

As I write this the 2010 election marathon has taken another step forward, echoing yet another cultural touchstone, with “something old, something new . . .”  I’m not sure which is which but it’s impossible not to notice at least two features of the current season of discontent:

1. The reappearance of the perpetual dog whistle (currently most loudly blown by conservatives) of the need to amend the Constitution: Often around balanced budgets, recently about marriage, and now about birth rights.
2. The palpable populist anger on the right in the form of the Tea Party (you decide if it’s coherent or not).

There are many lenses to put on the current political doings, mine is decision-making. One of the important thoughts in decision quality is giving yourself a good set of choices.  Another is to separate out the consideration of choices from values (another word for preferences, criteria, or what you want).  Only then can you make rational trade-offs. An important feature of modern political discourse is to do the opposite of both of those things: frame decisions as polemics with only two “choices,” one of which is a value masked as a choice, the other of which is framed as patently evil and therefore not a choice.

The US Constitution is a study in brevity and in the history of the Republic, there have been only 27 amendments, 17 depending on your point of view on the Bill of Rights (part of the original?).

The first 10 amendments fall broadly into the “oops” category (more accurately, they were the punt required to get the original 13 states to ratify the Constitution): The Bill of Rights was clearly and demonstrably meant to round out the Constitution, so “oops, we didn’t get this right the first time.”  Depending on your point of view, there are other amendments that fall into that category. Here is the cheater’s guide to the first ten:

1. Freedom of  Religion, Press, and Expression
2. Right to bear arms
3. Quartering of soldiers
4. No unreasonable search and seizure
5. Rights relating to trials, punishment, takings, and compensation
6. Right to a speedy trial and to confront your witnesses
7. Trial by Jury in civil matters
8. No excessive bail, cruel and unusual punishment
9. Construction of Constitution doesn’t deprive you of rights retained by the people
10. Powers not delegated by the Constitution to the United States reserved for the States and the People

Personally I find the first two especially interesting.  Why is it that Liberals fight for the broadest possible interpretation of the First and the narrowest possible of the Second (if not total disregard) and Conservatives do the opposite?  One polarity thinks the establishment clause was an “oops” while the other parses commas and wants a militia mulligan. What’s bad for the goose is bad for the gander. Just wondering.

Amendments 11 and 12 have a similar “oops” clean up element, one dealing with election of a Vice President and the other with limits of jurisdiction.

The next three specifically relate to the Civil War. The 13th abolished slavery.  The 14th is a doozy: The first paragraph deals with citizenship rights of people born here (and is the subject of much chest beating in the current poisonous political season). The rest is a serious smack down aimed at secessionists. The 15th states that race is no bar to voting.

Of the rest, two deal with booze (18 and 21), a total of nine, so more than half of the remaining 17, deal with voting rights  (12, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26), one creates an income tax (16), one deals with Presidential succession (25), and one with Congressional pay (27).

Temperance and the abolition of temperance is the clear outrider. It came and went for two reasons: The federal government needed the tax revenue and sensible people realized that enshrining religious morality in the Constitution was a bad idea. The other 25 define and clarify the rights and obligations of the people and the people that act in our behalf.

People spend careers studying and litigating the Constitution and I’m not one of them. But I think I’m safe in saying the following . . .

1. That’s not a lot of ammendments
2. Getting an amendment across the finish line is a big, big deal. It doesn’t happen very often, BY DESIGN.
3. The Constitution is fundamentally an exercise in making clear the rights of the people and the limits of the people acting on our behalf. Our rights are natural, not granted by a sovereign or by a non-terrestrial power, and everything flows from our consent.
4. The Constitution is no place for imposing one group’s religious beliefs or morality on another. Lots of people have tried, they succeeded once, and their success was an abject failure. It is not a document meant to tell the people what we can or can’t do.  It is a document designed to tell the government what it can and can’t do.  That is a massive and important distinction.
5. Any politician who campaigns on the idea of amending the Constitution is doing little more than pandering. It almost certainly won’t happen, and if it does, not in a time frame that matters. Remember the Equal Rights Amendment?  It passed, right? No. After 70 years of trying it died. Talking about amending the Constitution is a smoke screen to avoid talking about something real.

In every Congressional session presumably well meaning people from both ends of the political spectrum propose buckets of changes to the Constitution.  Some of these proposed changes show up every session like a bad penny.  Here’s the current list if you care. Here’s a list by recent sessions of Congress. Some of them will scare you. Many fall into the category of saving the people from the manifest inability of our elected officials to act like adults. Others follow in the path of the temperance movement, looking to do through legislation what apparently can’t be done through moral suasion. Many others seek to undo the previous 27 leaving me to wonder if amending the Constitution is the act of a conservative or a radical followed by the inverse question, is undoing a previous amendment an act of a conservative or a radical?

In these times of discontent, lots of people are mad about the decisions made by others.  The Tea Party populists think the current crop of legislators have made bad decisions when it comes to spending our money and telling us what to do.  Cultural conservatives think the rest of us make bad decisions when it comes to the thoughts we think, the prayers we do or don’t say, who we have sex with (and how), and whom we want to marry. Gun controllers think the rest of us make bad decisions when we seek to exercise our Second Amendment Rights.  Liberals are mad at the President for not being liberal enough. Many are now mad at the ratifiers of the 14th Amendment. It seems we’re all mad about something.

And the answer:  Use the Constitution as a cudgel to force people to do (or not do) what laws, codes, promises, ethics, and church edicts obviously can’t do (why else revert to constitutional thermonuclear war?). It’s another sad example of magical thinking . . . if we can just fix this one thing, if we can just invoke a power higher than ourselves (in this case the Constitution), all our ills will be cured.

In general, I buy the thought that if we want people to make different decisions, we need to do one of two things: Change the question and/or change the values they use to make trade-offs. In this case, the values that the fixers want to tinker with aren’t the small kind.  This is the founding document of the Republic. It belongs to the people.  Not just to the people who are alive today, but to our ancestors dating back to the 1700s and the generations that will follow us.  The good news is that the fixers won’t prevail any time soon or at all. In the mean time, may I ask as politely as possible that the fixers, whoever you are, put down the bong, step away from the ledge, and leave our Constitution alone. There are plenty of opportunities to mess around with laws and regulations to attempt to do what you want to do. If you can’t get it done that way, maybe that’s a sign.

Always nice to see when one of the champions of the little guy turns into the lead cheerleader for scamming the little guy.  You go Glenn.  Quoting from one of my favorite guys, Barry Ritholtz and his excellent Big Picture blog . . .

Goldline International is under investigation by the Santa Monica City Attorney’s office, jointly with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, as well as being the subject of a separate investigation by Congress into the possible criminal practices. The firm has been the subject of an ABC Nightline News Exposé, as well as an investigation by NY Congressman Weiner).

Jess Bachman, who did several of the fantastic illustrations for Bailout Nation, turns his graphic expertise to the Glenn Beck/Goldline endorsement scheme:

Infographic by The Big Picture

I went walking with a friend last night and we got to talking about Obama’s polling numbers and the general uselessness of trying to project forward to 2012 and his political fortunes. So I went looking.

John Woolley and Gerhard Peters have an excellent site where they publish their work on The American Presidency Project. It’s an absolute treasure trove.  To the subject of approval ratings, we find that Obama’s numbers have moved from a high of 69 points early in his administration to the mid 40s 19 months in (currently 44%).

And what of W?  He entered office with much lower approval numbers, due in large part to the legal fracas surrounding his losing the popular vote but winning the Supreme Court vote: 9/11 handed him a popularity coup sending his approval ratings soaring to 89%.  19 months in his approval ratings had settled back to 68% and by the mid-term elections were closer to Obama’s current numbers at 48%.  At the end, only 34% approved of Bush’s performance.

Clinton, despite his manifest personal troubles entered office with a 58% approval rating and left with a 66% rating, astonishing given the rise of the conservative attack machine during his administration. Only Reagan and Bush the Elder managed the same trick. 19 months in his approval rating had also dropped, oddly to 42%, essentially the same as Obama’s.  At the time of his re-election, his approval ratings stood at 58%.

Bush Senior’s popularity curve looks like a roller coaster.  He entered office at 51% and left at 56%.  As was true with his son, his ratings soared to 82% during Desert Storm, seemingly proving that America loves a tough guy, at least for awhile.

And what of the Lion of the Right?  Reagan took over from a President suffering 34% approval ratings, due to many things not the least of which was the Iranian Hostage Debacle.  Despite the fact that Reagan won the electoral vote going away, he entered office with an approval rating of 51%.  At the 19 month mark his approval ratings stood EXACTLY where Obama’s do, 44%.  At his re-election, his popularity stood at 61%, roughly the same as Clinton’s.

Conclusions?  The first is what investment prospectuses always tell you: Past performance is not indication of future performance.  This has to be one of the most common, most insidious decision-faults going: looking at data about the past (data, by definition is always about the past) and using it to project the future.  Project is actually an apt descriptor, as it is an exercise in projecting our hopes, dreams, fears, fobias, and preconceptions on the future based on what we see in the past.

A second possible conclusion is the lesson of Bill Clinton: It’s the economy stupid.

At the risk of beating a dead horse . . . Yesterday I blogged on what I regard as the craziness of spending billions of dollars on Afghanistan.  My lens on the problem was primarily the math but mostly it was about the impossibility of success given the frame on the problem.

Low and behold the always entertaining GOP Chairman Michael Steele was thinking the same thing.  Sort of.

The story everyone is focusing on his yet another Steele-gaffe.

Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, drew fierce criticism on Friday after declaring at a party fund-raiser that the United States was on the wrong side of history with its conflict in Afghanistan, a military fight he called “a war of Obama’s choosing.”

“This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in,” Mr. Steele said in a speech on Thursday evening in Connecticut in which he offered a strong critique of President Obama’s military strategy.

“It was the president who was trying to be cute by half by flipping a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be Afghanistan,” Mr. Steele said, according to a video of his remarks that was circulated by Democrats on Friday. “”Well, if he’s such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?”

Wow.  Really? More than enough people have piled on this one so I won’t bother to comment beyond wondering when the spaceship is scheduled to return to the planet Mr. Steele comes from. No, the part that gets me spouting is what comes next.

Mr. Steele, seeking to clarify his remarks, issued a statement on Friday afternoon, saying, “There is no question that America must win the war on terror.”

And this . . .

“For the sake of the security of the free world, our country must give our troops the support necessary to win this war,” Mr. Steele said. “As we have learned throughout history, winning a war in Afghanistan is a difficult task. We must also remember that after the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, it is also a necessary one.”

He added: “That is why I supported the decision to increase our troop force and, like the entire United States Senate, I support General Petraeus’s confirmation. The stakes are too high for us to accept anything but success in Afghanistan.”

I have a good friend named John who always kindly reminds me that politicians aren’t to be listened to, especially when they’re talking to the true believers as was the case with Mr. Steele. Notions like telling the truth (in all its forms) are really only suggestions in these instances. My issue is more pedantic: You can’t solve a problem when you define it like . . .

“There is no question that America must win the war on terror.”

“The stakes are too high for us to accept anything but success in Afghanistan.”

“As we have learned throughout history, winning a war in Afghanistan is a difficult task. We must also remember that after the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, it is also a necessary one.”

Can someone please tell me what “winning the war on terror” would look like?  I mean really, how would we know?  Who would keep score? How would we verify? How would we enforce it? For how long would the win have to be won for it to be regarded as a real win? This isn’t meant to be an exercise in rhetoric, but really, words do matter.

The same line of inquiry applies to the concept of “success.”  For example, we have successfully burned through nearly $300 billion dollars and 1,000 American war dead.  If that was the objective, and clearly it was not, we succeeded.  Can we go home now?

And “necessary?”  Really?  How necessary?  Necessary enough to consider genocide?  That would do the trick.  There would be no more Afghans and by definition, none could engage in terrorist-like activities.

I get it, I get it.  This is political-talk, not decision-talk.  Mr. Steele is in the business of raising money from the faithful and scoring political points, not actually governing or solving real problems. Given the low standards of the job description he can be forgiven for his less that helpful words and thoughts about the trillion dollar black hole that is our foray into Central Asia. As a matter of public policy it would be nice if someone could offer we the people a problem definition that was useful, understandable, and achievable.  Not that I think anyone in Washington is in danger of doing that.

On a smaller scale, think about how you frame the decisions you make on a daily basis. Pay particular attention to the big ones.  Make sure you’re not declaring the equivalent of war on [fill in the blank].  You’ll never get there.

For the past decade I have made a living helping people and corporations make smarter decisions.  I say that by way of disclosing my bias when I think about nearly everything.  Yesterday I blogged about General Petraeus’ testimony before the Armed Services Committee in advance of his taking over as the overlord of the “not war” in Afghanistan.  You should read it.  It is a marvel of circumlocution.

Good decision making begins with an exam question: The entire rationale for making a decision in the first place; a statement of the problem we’re trying to solve. Use your favorite search engine and see if you can figure out the answer to the question of why we’re in Afghanistan. I figure the President’s own words from his State of the Union are as good as any . . .

As we take the fight to al Qaeda, we are responsibly leaving Iraq to its people. As a candidate, I promised that I would end this war, and that is what I am doing as President. We will have all of our combat troops out of Iraq by the end of this August. We will support the Iraqi government as they hold elections, and continue to partner with the Iraqi people to promote regional peace and prosperity. But make no mistake: this war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home.

So basically the point is to “take the fight to al Qaeda” or more broadly to “fight terror over there so we don’t have to fight it here” or something like that.  I’m sure that there are more precise thoughts than that but basically that’s the mission the American people have been sold for the past eight years by two different administrations.

There are lots of ways to think about this, so let’s pick one: The Math

From the State Department, here’s what we know about Afghanistan:

Area: 652,230 sq. km. (251,827 sq. mi.); slightly smaller than Texas.

Population (July 2009 est.): 28.396 million; slightly smaller than Texas.

GDP (2009 est., purchasing power parity): $23.35 billion.

GDP growth (2009 est.): 3.4%. GDP growth average between 2004-2009: 11.25% (est.).

GDP per capita (2009 est.): $800.

Keep in mind that GDP has been inflated by the US presence since we tossed the Taliban.

So how much have we spent to date on the “not war” in Afghanistan.  That’s a moving target, but here are some numbers that might help you understand. According to the site, Cost of War, the number to date (depending on when you read this) is $280 billion dollars. Add in the cost of the Iraq “not war” and we the people have spent about $1 trillion dollars “taking the fight to al Qaeda.”  To get a sense of some alternative uses of $1 trillion dollars, spend some time on the Cost of War site.

Keep in mind that these numbers don’t include the costs associated with the Obama surge of an additional 30,000 troops.  So what do those cost? One source I found put the figure in 2008 at $500,000 per year.  A more recent source puts the figure much higher.

The cost of sending one U.S. soldier in Afghanistan for one year is $1 million versus an estimated $12,000 for an Afghani soldier, according to Steve Daggett, a specialist with the Congressional Research Service. Those numbers fall within the calculations that the Obama administration has been using. The Obama administration is calculating $1 billion per 1,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan.

To put the cost of the surge in a different light, US tax payers will spend the entire GDP of Afghanistan to send 30,000 troops there to achieve what?

And how much does it cost the Taliban / Al Queda to fight back? It’s hard to put a number on that but a simple metric might be the cost of an AK-47.  It turns out that fighting Americans is a growth business.  A few years ago you could get a locally made knock-off for the equivalent of a few hundred dollars . . . so half a year’s pay.  Today, the price in Pakistan has bloomed to nearly $1,500. Throw in some ammunition and a year’s pay and call it $3,000 per annum, half that if you assume the person holding the gun is a variable cost.

This is the time when you need to stop and think about the mission and the math: $1 million vs. $3,000.  One bullet kills either one.

We have been in Afghanistan eight years.  Every year, on average, we spend the entire GDP of Afghanistan chasing after a couple of thousand bad guys that can be equipped and paid for less than one of our soldiers.

The war is unwinable for three reasons, all math related.

1. It only takes one bad guy to do the thing we have spent $1 trillion dollars to prevent: commit a terrorist act on the homeland.  Call it 100.
2. The other side can replace them faster and cheaper than we can kill them.
3. We’re going broke.  The other side can wait.

The problem here is the problem statement. It’s like the war on drugs.  ”Taking the fight” to the bad guys never ends.  There is no end zone. There is no way of knowing that you’re winning.  More importantly, the cost of the other side to stay in the game is orders of magnitude lower than what we spend. The other side ALWAYS WINS for the simple reason that all they have to do is stay in the game.  Eventually the high cost player is bled dry. The only way out is to change the question.

Finally, a reminder.  The people voting to keep us in this mess work for us.  You voted for them (or failed to). It’s time to speak up.  It’s time to stop the madness.

Opening Statement
General David H. Petraeus
Confirmation Hearing: Commander, ISAF/US Forces–Afghanistan
29 June 2010

Mr. Chairman, Senator McCain, Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. And thank you for the rapid scheduling of this hearing.

I am, needless to say, humbled and honored to have been nominated by the President to command the International Security Assistance Force and US Forces in Afghanistan, and to have the opportunity, if confirmed, to continue to serve our nation, the NATO Alliance, our non-NATO Coalition partners, and Afghanistan in these new capacities.

[Yesterday I had a completely different job and I'm still stunned that we're even having this conversation, but that's the way these things go.]

At the outset, I want to echo your salute to the extraordinary service of Senator Robert Byrd. With his death, America clearly has lost a great patriot.

[I can already hear people sharpening their knives.]

[Read more →]

So my wife and I were driving from point A to point B last Saturday.  Just a regular day running errands and spending time with each other.

Honest to God, no kidding, I have not been thinking at all about getting a new car . . . though I have to confess that I never loved the Camry Hybrid we have been driving and always felt like I made a mistake selling the Acura TL. Anyway, I say to my wife, “Do you ever think about getting a new car?” Gloriosity, she has!

There is an Audi dealer about five blocks from where we are so we go and poke around and drive an A5 coupe. Stunning to look at and very nice but pricey given the performance level. The one with all the goodies costs as much as a small town. There aren’t any used ones.

Very much out of character, we leave without buying one (as it turns out, this is the third time in the past ten years that we went to look at an Audi and bought something else which is weird and too bad because I really like Audis and would very much like to be like Jason Stratham).  Instead, we wind up home looking at everything we can think of on the web.

It turns out we actually have some decision criteria . . .

• Coupe: We think that means two doors and an emphatic statement that we are now a) Empty nesters for sure, and b) Too cool for school.
• All wheel drive: Well you never know, it might rain in Seattle, and it is always possible that after a 30 year hiatus, we might just decide to head to the snow and do some skiing. It could happen.
• High fun factor: Antithesis of the Camry Hybrid.
• Good economics: We don’t need to do this so there needs to be something compelling (like free money).
• Good story value: If there isn’t a good story in here, what’s the point?

Basically something more fun that a four door hybrid (a very low bar to step over I might add).

There aren’t that many coupes out there at all if you think about it.

Audi A5
Infinity G37
Hyundai Genesis
Jaguar XK
Aston Martin
BMW 3 or 6 series
Mercedes CL
Ford Mustang
Chevrolet Camaro
Dodge Challenger
Cadillac CTS (coming soon)

There are probably some others (Bently comes to mind) and there are some four door coupes as well (we’ll get to that in a minute), but that’s what we looked at on our dueling iPads.

A bunch of those you can just cross right off the list for cost reasons. This is a car, after all, not a vacation home. The Ford, Dodge, and Chevrolet never made the list.  Too retro, too boy racer, too much. I didn’t want another Corvette or anything in that category either.  Cars like that are a hoot to drive three or four times a month for several miles without a break.  We also looked at other AWD cars not in two doors, kind of. Never for a second did we think about a SUV.

Basically it was looking like a two horse race between the A5 and the G37x.

There are almost as many Infinity dealers in the US as there are BMW motorbike dealers and they are slightly less convenient. We motored up to the one in Kirkland and low and behold they had a nice collection of G37x’s right out front. Very nice car it is.

For those not in the know it is a two door coupe with a stupidly powerful V6 engine, all wheel drive, and enough computing power and navigational gear to launch a first strike. I think there is a Predator Drone option as well. Various buff books have called it the best this and the most that.  It’s a fine, fine ride. In a pinch you can put your pet gerbils in the back assuming your luggage needs don’t exceed a laptop, credit card, and toothbrush.

We drove one.  We looked at all of them in detail. I really wanted to love it but I didn’t. Not really sure why. Just like I really wanted to love the A5 (a beautiful car with abusively priced options).  In the end, the dream of the racy coupe with two gigantic hard-to-egress doors and go-fast ergonomics got trumped by my creaking bones and sybaritic tendencies.

Meanwhile, I kept looking over at the G37 sedans . . . essentially the same car with two more doors, lots more headroom, and the possibility of transporting two more bipeds in relative comfort.  By this time my wife was talking with the sales guy about a Coupe with a particular interior color she fancied and I finally suggested that we go over to the sedans because they had a couple just like that.

For about the fifth time, one in the lineup kept whispering to me: A G37x in Lakeshore Slate with Stone interior, all wheel drive, Navigation package, and upgraded wheels and tires that come up to my waist. Our sainted car salesman (Ken, who just this week sold his 1000 Infiniti working at this dealer which is something indeed) tossed us yet another set of keys and off we went. We barely made it out of the lot and kind of looked at each other and it was done. The car had us at 2500 rpm.

Being a well known expert at decision-making I would give this about a six on a scale of one – 10. We had a decently clear idea about our preferences. We had a solid frame on the problem. We gave ourselves interesting choices. We did some research. The fact that we changed one of the major preferences at the last minute (expanding coupe to include the four door variety) brought other cars into play that we didn’t then go test drive, but what the hell. Ken made us an offer that was not insulting (remember we’re trading in a Camry Hybrid, the 2010 Torts Award Silver Medalist, tossed from the top step by British Petroleum).  Robert, the F&I guy made us a smoking deal on stuff to keep the paint and interior spiffy and then papered the whole thing in about twelve minutes. Bye-bye Camry, and hello rocket ship.

One day of ownership later, I can say with complete confidence the following:

The people at Kirkland Infinity were just superb, led by Ken.  It’s all part of the brand, but the difference in customer experience shopping for a luxury car and anything else is stunning.  Ken has been at this same dealer for eight years which is even more remarkable than the thought of Sarah Palin shooting a moose.  This sort of thing just doesn’t happen.

Ken, and people not named Ken, continually make an effort to a) communicate that “you’re family now” (in a really good way), and b) are constantly trying to figure out how to do something helpful. I was only sorry I hadn’t brought our laundry to be done.  I know I’m going to get a survey but let me cut to the chase and say that the folks at Kirkland Infinity get a 10.

Infiniti has ridiculously cheap money these days (there was a free option actually).  It’s like I couldn’t afford not to.

The car is all kinds of fun to look at, sit in, and drive.  I. Must. Drive. Slow.