The View from Right Field

Happy Birthday, Mr. Cub

Happy 78th birthday to Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks, who was born in Dallas, Texas, on January 31, 1931. Let’s play two!

The Blagojevich Chronicles – Part 5

Rod Blagojevich has been impeached, and Lt. Governor Pat Quinn has been sworn in as Illinois’s new governor. So everything will be fine now, right? Pat Quinn is man of the people, he’s a good government guy, and he’ll do right thing, right?

Well, sure, except for the fact Pat Quinn went around during the 2006 campaign defending Rod Blagojevich and saying Governor Blagojevich was just trying to do a good job. And Pat Quinn said that at a time when Governor Blagojevich was already under investigation by Patrick Fitzgerald for the same kind of things he is now being charged with. And at a time when there plenty of reports in the media about not just investigations but real things Governor Blagojevich was doing. Did Mr. Quinn think those things I mentioned here were the only two things out there? Or did he just want to get re-elected, so he would say what he had to say to get re-elected – because he was running as part of a team with Rod Blagojevich and the only way he could get re-elected was if Rod Blagojevich got re-elected?

I’m having a little bit of a problem reconciling Mr. Quinn’s alleged good government reputation with this. But let’s see what Mr. Quinn does now. I am sure the PR will be there, but what about the substance? How much is Governor Quinn going to let Mike Madigan raise our taxes? Raise taxes in a recession. There is a plan to not let things get better.

Also, how about those monies set aside each year for legislators to dole out in their districts? Little pork barrels for each state representative and each state senator. What is Mr. Quinn going to do about them? How about the special college scholarships that each legislator can pass out to whomever he or she wants to? Is Mr. Quinn going to try to get rid of those and give the money to the state scholarship commission to help the kids who really need it? Or is he going to just let politics as usual keep on keeping on?

There is not a lot of money involved in these two situations, but there is a symbol. A symbol of change. Are we going to see change? Or is just going be business, and politics, as usual? We will have to wait to see, but if I were a gambler, I know which way I would bet – because it wouldn’t be much of a gamble.

Vocation

I owe this to Rev. Phil Blackwell of the Chicago Temple (a United Methodist Church in downtown Chicago). This is from one of his recent homilies during the Wednesday noontime service (on 1 Samuel 3:1-10):

"God calls each one of us; do we hear it?

For about 1500 years that statement might have been considered blasphemous. It was thought that the only true vocation, that is, ‘calling,’ was to the religious orders, to be a priest or a nun. But, Martin Luther insisted that God wanted a priesthood of all believers, and if so, then every person was called by God. …

So, how do we hear God’s call in our lives today? … Parker Palmer … uses a Quaker term as the title of his small book on this very topic, Let Your Life Speak. … Where are your passions? What matters most in your life? …

[H]e quotes Frederick Buechner … who says that we find our vocation where ‘our deepest gladness meets the world’s greatest needs.’ We find our vocation where our deepest gladness meets the world’s greatest needs."

The Obama Stimulus Plan – and Doug Flutie

A few comments on President Obama’s stimulus plan.

1. I hope it works. The logic of the plan is plain. The economy is suffering a slowdown. People and companies are spending less. Therefore, in order to get things going again, government needs to spend more. That will boost economic activity. It will provide jobs. It will get the economy moving.

2. The concern, however, is whether the stimulus plan will really work like it is supposed to. One of President Obama’s own economic advisers has done research that indicates stimulus plans such as the one President Obama is proposing haven’t worked in the past.

3. One of the problems with this kind of stimulus plan is that the money is not spent fast enough. The economy needs spending now, but that is not what tends to happen. In the case of the Obama plan, the Congressional Budget Office has said that, of the money for infrastructure and discretionary spending, less than half will be spent by October 1, 2010; i.e., 20 months from now. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when government was trying to fine-tune the economy, they would pass stimulus packages when the economy slowed down. What tended to happen, though, was that most of the stimulus spending would not kick in until after the economy was already recovering. At that point, the extra spending stimulated the economy too much, so that the government would then try to cool things down. Speed it up, slow it down, speed it up, slow it down. It didn’t work well.

4. Another idea would be for the federal government to give money to state and local governments which are being forced to either raise taxes or cut jobs and spending because of lower tax revenue. Raising taxes in a recession is not a good idea, no matter what level of government does it. Private businesses are already laying people off. It would be really unfortunate if state and local governments have to do it, too. If the federal government could get money to these state and local governments so they could keep their spending up and keep people employed, that would be a big help. Of course, things aren’t that easy. The money couldn’t just go to those state and local governments which would otherwise have to raise taxes or cut spending/jobs. It would have to go to all of them. And once they get used to getting money from Washington, it would be really hard to cut it off, even after the economy got going again. (Remember revenue sharing under President Nixon. It was really hard ending that program.)

5. Maybe a tax cut would help, but it would be better for it to be a permanent thing, not temporary. Also, it ought to be a cut in rates, not just another rebate like last summer. People complain about the banks who got money in the bailout last fall and then did not lend it. Well, many of the people who got the rebates last summer did not spend it. They saved it. Another rebate or other temporary tax cut for individuals would probably result in the same thing. In any case, any kind of a significant tax cut is probably a non-starter given the current political alignment.

6. Actually, however, none of this matters. The stimulus plan is going to pass. It is going to pass because the economy is in terrible shape, and Congress has to do something, and the stimulus plan sounds like a logical idea. (See point #1 above.)

7. In other words, the stimulus plan is sort of like that Boston College–University of Miami football game back in 1986. With just six seconds left in the game, Boston College trailed Miami 45-41. As time ran out, Boston’s quarterback, Doug Flutie, scrambled, eluding Miami tacklers. Finally, in desperation, he threw the ball as far as he could from his own 37-yard line. And the ball came down in the end zone into the hands of a Boston College receiver for an incredible Boston College win, 47 to 45. The play probably shouldn’t have worked, but it was the only thing they could do. They just threw it and prayed.

In final analysis that seems like what the Obama administration is doing with its stimulus plan. Time is short. They have to do something. So they are going to throw a "Hail Mary" pass and hope it works, like Doug Flutie did back in 1986. I hope the stimulus plan works as well for the United States as Doug Flutie’s pass did for Boston College.

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Note: Tyler Cowen at MarginalRevolution.com called the Obama stimulus plan "a kind of Hail Mary pass." (See here.) For more information on the Boston College-Miami game, see here. For a clip of the famous pass, see here.

Update (1/25/09 2:45 p.m.):  Here is the source for the Congresssional Budget Office report mentioned in point #2 above. 

Rove on Bush: He Was Right When It Mattered Most

In Thursday’s Wall Street Journal Karl Rove wrote an op-ed piece entitled "Bush Was Right When It Mattered Most". Some of Mr. Rove’s comments need a response or two.

"To start with, Mr. Bush was right about Iraq. The world is safer without Saddam Hussein in power."

President Bush was right about Iraq, but he was right about Iraq because he thought, as almost everybody else did at the time, both here and abroad, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Given what had happened on September 11, neither the world nor the United States could take a chance on somebody like Saddam Hussein having WMD. Saddam was not involved in the 9/11 plots, but he was doing other things, like paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, starting a war with Iran, invading Kuwait, using WMD on his own people, etc. The risk of him having WMD could not be allowed to continue; it was too dangerous. Bush was right to go in for that reason. The fact WMD were not found does not mean the decision was wrong. There did not need to be another justification for the invasion once WMD were not found. The decision could only be based on the facts available at the time it was made. And it was right on that basis – period.*

"And the former president was right to change strategy and surge more U.S. troops."

President Bush was right about changing our strategy in Iraq and, therefore, needing to send more troops, but it took him too long to figure it out. The change in strategy should have happened six, nine, even twelve months earlier. And the failure to figure it out and do it earlier was a huge mistake. Without an incompetent foe like Al Qaeda in Iraq, that delay might have cost us the chance to win. Being right too late doesn’t count as being right.

"Mr. Bush cut income taxes for every American who pays taxes. He also cut taxes on capital, investment and savings."

President Bush was right to cut taxes, but he and the Republicans in Congress were wrong to play games with how the tax cuts were passed. Because of some silly Congressional budgeting rules, these tax cuts (or at least most of them) were structured so they would automatically expire in 2010. That means that unless the new Democratic Congress passes a law to continue them, they go away. That may have made it easier to pass the tax cuts in 2003, but it is not looking like a good idea now. Instead of playing budgetary games, President Bush and the Republicans in Congress should have locked the tax cuts into place when they were originally passed.

"Mr. Bush was right to match tax cuts with spending restraint. … Bill Clinton's last budget increased domestic nonsecurity discretionary spending by 16%. Mr. Bush cut that to 6.2% growth in his first budget, 5.5% in his second, 4.3% in his third, 2.2% in his fourth, and then below inflation, on average, since. That isn't the sum total of the fiscal record, of course -- but it's a key part of it."

I don’t know what Mr. Rove means by "domestic nonsecurity discretionary spending," but this doesn’t reflect the reality of what happened during President Bush’s first six years in office. Once again, it was not all President Bush. Republicans in Congress were complicit, too. But the spending excesses of those six years are hurting Republican credibility now when we try to warn of overspending by the Obama administration. Why should people listen to complaints about wasteful spending from the party that originally brought you the Bridge to Nowhere?

"He was right to have modernized Medicare with prescription drug benefits provided through competition, not delivered by government. The program is costing 40% less than projected because market forces dominate and people -- not government -- are making the decisions."

While the competition part was good, it was wrong to pass the biggest expansion of the welfare state since the Johnson Administration before addressing the funding problems of Medicare and Social Security. Also, let’s see how many of those competition provisions survive the new Administration and the new Congress.

"Mr. Bush was right to pass No Child Left Behind (NCLB), requiring states to set up tough accountability systems that measure every child's progress at school."

No, President Bush was not right to get the federal government so deeply involved in elementary and secondary education. Education is a state and local responsibility. President Bush was President of the United States, not president of the school board. The president’s responsibilities are huge. He has enough to do without taking on other jobs, too. For example, President Bush needed to get Iraq right, not worry about fourth grade social studies scores.

President Bush did get some things right, but not as many as Mr. Rove claims. Also, too much of what President Bush did has cost the Republican Party its credibility and some of its principles. How can you support fiscal responsibility and pass that many earmarks? How can you claim to believe in federalism and pass NCLB? How can you worry about the size of government and pass the senior drug program? People may have thought that doing these things would help Republicans stay in office. They didn’t. And in any case, if that is what you have to do to stay in office, why would you care?

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* The question of whether we should have gone into Iraq in 2003 if we had known that Saddam Hussein did not have WMD is another question, and it is beyond the scope of this post. I hope to get to that question someday.

President Barack Obama

Let us all hope that President Obama’s policies will help turn things around. It seems to me there will be at least two groups that will not be as helpful to him as one might think. The first is the Democratic Congress. I wish President Obama luck trying to control them.

The second is a Federal Reserve that seems better at creating the conditions in which bubbles grow than managing them or even cleaning up after them once they have burst. (See here.)

Because a president needs not only to decide but also, at times, to persuade, perhaps President Obama’s ability to communicate will help him - and us.

P.S. I note that 44 was also Hank Aaron’s number.

24th Annual Cubs Convention – 2009

It was below zero all day Thursday, so of course that meant Friday was the start of the 24tn annual Chicago Cubs Convention.

Friday’s highlight is always the Opening Ceremonies, with all the players, both new and old, being introduced and a video of highlights from the prior season. As has been happening recently, Ron got the most applause during the introductions. It used to be Ernie, but now it’s Ron. Way more cheers than even Big Z.

Susan commented, though, that the crowd seemed a little subdued this year. Maybe it was the cold (I doubt it); maybe it was economy (unlikely). In any case, the enthusiasm did not seem as high. During the video highlights, I cheered for Woody when I saw him throw the pitch that was hit to Jim Edmonds for the final out of the Central Division clincher. Lots of people cheered when the video showed Mark Grace singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game".

Each year the Cubs bring a couple of promising minor leaguers to the convention so they can see what it is like. During the Autograph Hunt Friday night (you go around to various locations to get autographs from various players), we got autographs from the minor leaguers there this year, Darwin Barney and Brandon Guyer. They seemed excited and a little overwhelmed with all the attention.

The big panel Saturday morning was "Meet Cubs Baseball Management". I was shocked how easy the questions were. Even the obligatory Mark DeRosa question wasn’t confrontational. Hendry said DeRosa had to go because the cubs needed some left-handed bats in the lineup and the only places for them were second, right and center. And nobody objected. Hendry said Wood had to go for money room (and because of a history of injuries). And nobody objected to that, either. It was much friendlier than you would have expected given the three-and-out performance last October.

Hendry explained the Kevin Gregg-for-Jose Ceda deal (wherein the Cubs will soon discover they have once again been taken by the Florida Marlins) by saying that, while Ceda has a great arm, he is a couple of years away, and the Cubs can’t wait.

When you check in for the Convention, you get a scratch-off card to see if you win an autograph from one of the really big stars. Susan won an Ernie Banks autograph. While they allotted an hour for each star to sign, they wound up having to start a whole new line for the Alfonso Soriano winners (he was coming after Ernie) because Ernie was taking so much time. Ernie was talking and singing and just being Ernie. It wound up taking him two hours, instead of the one hour it was supposed to take. Susan even found out that Ernie and his wife have a new little daughter. Amazing.

While I skipped "Meet Cubs Business Management" Sunday morning, a woman I was talking to while we were in line for a Rick Reuschel* autograph said that they mentioned retiring number 31, which would be a two-fer, Jenkins and Maddux. According to the papers, when the idea of a Jumbotron was raised, the fans booed. (Makes you proud to be a Cubs fan.)

"Down on the Farm" finished up the Convention, as it always does. I really like Tim Wilken, the scouting director. (He came over from the Blue Jays several years ago.) Tim made a couple of interesting comments about drafting players. First, he said a couple of years ago the Cubs decided to try to draft more athletic pitchers. Pitchers tend to lose athleticism as they go through their careers (one would assume Greg Maddux is an exception here), so it is good for them to have as much athleticism as possible when they start. Second, the Cubs want to draft hitters who make contact, who hit the ball. If a kid is swinging and missing when he starts, that is not good, even if he has power. It is hard to fix two or three holes in a swing, especially as a player is moving up the ladder in the minors.

Wilken was asked to name a couple of prospects (one pitcher, one hitter) who would definitely make the majors: He mentioned pitcher Andrew Cashner (our first round pick in the 2008 draft) and Ty Wright (an outfielder from Oklahoma State who was picked in the seventh round in 2007).

Finally, Oneri Fleita, VP of Player Personnel, was asked for the Cubs’ plans if the Cuban embargo is lifted. He said his plan starts with a beachfront condominium for him.

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* Little known (and even less important) baseball fact: Of the four players in major league history whose last name starts with "Reu", three of them were pitchers for the Cubs: Rick Reuschel, Paul Reuschel and Ed Reulbach.

Update (1/20/09 8:50 a.m.): Fixed a typo.

Iraq: The "Surge" Was Not an Increase In Troops

David Ignatius’s article on "[Ryan] Crocker’s Heroic Service" and Peter Beinart’s op-ed piece, "Admit It: The Surge Worked," both need a comment. Both articles talk about how "the surge" worked in Iraq, about how Bush’s decision "to add more troops"/"to increase America’s troop presence" was the right thing to do.

But those comments are misleading. What made the difference in Iraq was not the increase in the number of troops; it was the change to a counterinsurgency strategy led by General David Petraeus. If we had merely increased the number of troops while continuing to follow the strategy of we had been following, of staying on big bases while trying to train the Iraqi forces, making rather clumsy strikes at terrorists, and ignoring the security of the local population, we would have lost.

We won (and the Iraqi people won) because we changed strategies. We put population security first and implemented a proper counterinsurgency strategy. We needed more troops to implement the counterinsurgency strategy, but it was the strategy that made the difference, not the number of troops.

This is important for a couple reasons. First, knowing why we won in Iraq can help new policymakers know what they need to do to keep the victory.

Second, and more importantly, it helps us know what to do in Afghanistan. Understanding what worked in Iraq helps us understand that doing better in Afghanistan is not just a matter of sending more troops. The first thing we have to do is make sure we have the right strategy. Then we need to make sure we have enough troops to implement the correct strategy.

We have two things going for us in Afghanistan. First, as new chief of CentCom (i.e., Central Command), General Petraeus has responsibility for Afghanistan. Second, for reasons I do not entirely understand (some perhaps principled and many probably political), President-elect Obama and other Democrats have been calling Afghanistan the good war, the war we should have been fighting. Now they can’t abandon Afghanistan. They need to succeed in the war that Bush was losing. And if they listen to General Petraeus, they just might do it.

The Blagojevich Chronicles – Part 4

Sunday’s Chicago Tribune had op-ed articles by both Lt. Governor Pat Quinn and Dan Seals (Democratic candidate for the 10th Congressional District in 2006 and 2008) claiming that the Blagojevich scandal shows the need for all kinds of reform laws in Illinois: campaign finance laws, a constitutional amendment allowing recall of elected officials, new ethics laws, etc.

Actually, Illinois voters already have all the power they need to stop corruption. It’s called the vote. All the laws in the world aren’t going to solve the problem of corruption if political parties keeping nominating people like Rod Blagojevich and the voters keep re-electing them.

There was plenty of information out there about Rod Blagojevich before the election in 2006. As I said before, look at the Chicago Tribune website for 2006. See the list here. Also, let me mention two examples I remember from 2006. First, there was the woman who wanted a state job in DuPage County. There weren’t any openings in DuPage, but there was one in Whiteside County. So the woman got the job in Whiteside County and was transferred to DuPage County – without ever showing up for work in Whiteside County. And the woman’s husband gave a $1500 present to Governor Blagojevich’s younger daughter for her baptism. Just a friend; just a coincidence.

Also, there was the tens of thousands of dollars (or was it hundreds of thousands of dollars, I don’t remember) of real estate commissions that Patti Blagojevich "earned" in deals where she "represented" the politically-connected. When the Chicago Tribune reported the story in 2006, Governor Blagojevich said that his wife had a right to earn a living and that the charges were "Neanderthal".

And what did Illinois Democrats do with all this information? They ignored it. I don’t know specifically about Dan Seals, but I do know what Pat Quinn did when he had a real chance to stand up and do something about Rod Blagojevich in 2006: He ran for re-election with him.

Democrats like Pat Quinn can talk all they want about laws to stop corruption and reform. But we don’t need new laws. We just need to stop voting for corrupt politicians – and the people who tolerate them.

The Blagojevich Chronicles – Part 3

As Rick Morrissey did in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune (see here), the media often talks about Rod Blagojevich being a big Cubs fan. He is pictured wearing a Cubs hat; he is quoted as saying how much he likes the Cubs, etc., etc.

Well, I disagree. He may claim he is a Cubs fan, but a real Cubs fan wouldn’t go to a White Sox World Series game – like he did in 2005. And a real Cubs fan definitely wouldn’t take his daughter or his son to White Sox World Series game – like he did in 2005.

Rod Blagojevich, a Cubs fan? Yeah, just like he’s an honest politician.