Jim Keenan is a Senior Sales Executive, Enterprise 2.0/Web 2.0 Connector, an Entrepreneur still trying to get it right, and a PSIA Certified Ski Instructor for Vail Resorts. Husband to Big E and father to four great kids. In a nut shell, I'm a Sales Guy. Life is good!
After further reflection upon my previous post Congratulations Mr. President I’m struggling. What have the detractors lost with Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? What do they gain by so vehemently bashing the decision? What do they get by taking such a negative position surrounding, what is traditionally a positive event. What is the threat? Why the anger?
I’m thinking this is what the book I just finished reading (Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me) would call cognitive dissonance.
I think all this comes down to self-preservation. For those who are opposed to Obama and his policies, any event that puts him in a good light threatens their position that he is no good for the country and must be removed. Any evidence suggesting Obama might be good for the country implies their opinion or position may be wrong. Any insinuation their opinion or position may be wrong is completely unacceptable to their view of self. Therefore, they HAVE to denounce it as vehemently and decisively as possible.
The sad part is this award does little to hurt the opposition or his detractors. It doesn’t make the Republicans less right on health care or taxes or immigration. It doesn’t make Obama the right choice either. It just makes him the Nobel Peace Prize award recipient of 2009.
I don’t think Obama’s detractors lost anything with the award being awarded to him. They lost when they so bitterly challenged the decision. What is gained with this behavior? I’m not sure too much of anything?
That is all that needs to be said regarding his award of the Nobel Peace Prize. There is absolutely NO need to say anything else if you don’t agree with the Norwegians choice. The decision of Obama’s detractors to speak out against the choice and openly challenge it as undeserved is just stupid. I am a huge advocate of debate and discourse. For those of you who read this blog often you know I love the contrarian, those people who challenge the staus quo. But openly denouncing this choice shows little class or commitment to our country.
Quotes like that of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is the perfect example.
“The real question Americans are asking is, ‘What has President Obama actually accomplished?’ It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. One thing is certain – President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.”
There is no redeeming value or benefit in this statement. There is nothing beneficial in it to anyone except Michael Steele. It’s just conservative angry sour grapes, with Republicans looking to create even greater partisan dissent and discord. Rush Limbaugh called it a greater embarrassment called it a “greater embarrassment” than losing the Olympics. Is it really?
A few other conservatives took a lighter approach such as Mike Huckabee who said;
“There will be an outcry from those on the right who will say that Obama’s nomination, made two weeks into his Presidency, is impossible to justify, but I think such an outcry will sound like right-wing whining,” Huckabee said in a statement. “The better response is simply to allow those on the left to explain what he did in his first two weeks as President that merited such recognition.”
Even this moderate statement begs for conflict and confrontation, in forcing those Americans who are in favor of it to defend the decision. I find all this sad.
To me this is an award all of America should be proud to support. Republican or Democrat it has been awarded to a sitting American President. Obama didn’t apply for the award. He didn’t lobby for it. He didn’t ask for it. He accepted it with humility and grace even saying he didn’t feel he was deserving; “To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize —
Trying to promote yourself or your cause by tearing down others has never been a noble approach. I’m tired of all the vilification, and tearing down of people to promote a political agenda. There is no controversy here. It’s an honor to our country and the only appropriate response is congratulations Mr. President. There is a time to show discourse and debate, this is NOT the time.
It is disheartening to think that such wonderful honor can’t unite us for 1 day. It makes me wonder, if any of our leaders can put the countries best interest over their own. The data is telling me no.
I’ll start. Congratulations Mr President. I’m proud to have such an honor bestowed on an American.
I think we all learned as kids to be respectful. Although I’m beginning to wonder if anyone cares anymore.
Yesterday the House of Representatives voted on a “resolution of disapproval” against Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) for yelling “You Lie” during Obama’s joint session speech. It was passed by 263 Dems and only 7 Reps. Only 7 Repubs found it to be inappropriate. I don’t care what your take on health care reform is. I refuse to believe over 170 republicans felt his outburst was OK.
Our belief systems are not justification for shitty behavior. I recall when George W. was president there was an outcry for what the Repubs called lack of support for the President during war time. It is amazing how quickly the worm turns. There was absolutely no excuse for his outburst. It was disrespectful, rude, unnecessary, AND against the rules. To vote against the resolution is putting party over decency and Repubs should be embarrassed. This isn’t about health-care reform, it’s not about Obama, it’s not about illegal immigration, it’s not about socialism. Simply put its about respect for the system, varying opinions and the rules. Somewhere along the line we have begun to lose site of that. More and more we justify our inappropriate behaviors as being OK, rather than take accountability for them. There is no justification here. It was just plain wrong. There is no excuse for bad behavior.
Respect is non-partisan.
When I was kid, if I were to yell out like that in the middle of class, I would have been sent to the principle. If I were to do that during a company function, I would be fired. I find it hard to believe that 170 republicans and 7 democrats see it different. Respect is a value you have or you don’t. It’s not conditional.
Don’t sell out your values for your beliefs. Your beliefs rely too heavily on them.
I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while. I saw this article in the NY Times back in April, and it really got me thinking.
What struck me the most was this quote:
“Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world leader in electric cars and buses after that.”
It sounds very familiar to this quote:
“I believe that this nation should commit itself, to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” JFK
When people, teams, companies or countries make bold commitments like these, things happen. Our country is in tumultuous times. We need another bold commitment. Despite the good efforts of many, we are terribly inflicted with partisanship and bureaucracy. I feel we are skating to where the puck is, not to where it is going. We are consumed with protecting big dying companies, curbing immigration and stabilizing the markets we’ve forgotten how to look ahead.
I’d like to see us pick up our heads and make a new bold commitment. I’d like to see us make the sacrifices required today to win tomorrow. I fear that if we don’t we will eventually pull our heads out of the sand just in time to buy a fantastic new electric car from China and run it on wonderfully clean energy from Europe.
We have the talent. We have the skill. We have the capability to commit to another bold effort. Do we have the guts?
RoadKill Refugee, is a voice for the left. A well articulated, well researched blog. Roadkill was an excellent spot for news during the election. A little quiet lately, he is still a great place to get a Sunday Morning dose of democrat coffee.
The Sales world learned a long time ago, that you incent the behaviors you want. If you want your sales team to sell a certain product, increase the commissions on that product. If you want to increase gross margin, commission the sales team on gross margin not revenue. Sales people will chase the money. People have an amazing ability find the benefits that best suits their wallet.
Knowing this I am confused with Obama’s new budget. I doesn’t incent the right behaviors.
Obama’s new budget is proposing some interesting and arguably unaligned incentives.
His plan proposes:
1) Raising capital gains taxes from 15% to 20%. for those making over 250K
2) Capping the mortgage and charitable deductions, at 28% down from 38% currently
3) Taxing “carried interest”, the income earned by executives at hedge funds, private equity firms as regular income rather than at the 15% capital gains.
4) Do nothing about “losses”. Today, an average investor will pay 15% tax on all capital gains (money earned through an investment) but can only write off $3,000 a year in losses. In other words, if a person invests $10,000 and makes $1,000 they only get $850. However if that investment goes bad and they loose the $10,000 they can only write off $3,000 of it a year, taking 3.5 years to write it off.
This all seems counter intuitive to me. The incentives aren’t aligned. We are spending billions trying to open up the credit markets and get banks to lend more. The economy is in desperate need of liquidity. If the banks, can’t, won’t or are unwilling to lend we are going to need another source of capital. This source will be private money. Obama’s proposed capital gains increases do nothing to incent the behaviors of private investors, large or small, to take risk. We need to get money off of the sidelines and get it working. There are two to types of capital; debt and equity. If the banks (primarily debt), aren’t going to fix the problem then we need to incent private equity to help out.
I say we . . .
1) Have a 12 month moratorium on capital gains for non institutional investors. We need to offset the risk of investing in this environment by increasing returns
2) Increase the amount in losses non-institutional investors can right off to 10k a year or 20% of their taxable income which ever is greater.
3) Reduce the capital gains tax for Institutional investors to 10% for the next 12 months and 0 capital gains for investments deemed strategic to our economy (Alternative Energy,etc.)
4) Create a new investment class to identify and categorize “Angel Investors” and create unique tax incentives to increase their willingness invest. Angel investors are a critical part of start-ups as they can act as the bridge between mainstream V.C. money and the founders investment.
We need to get capital into the markets. Obama seems to be looking at only one side of the equation, the debt side. The cost of a capital gains moratorium pales in comparison to the cost of trying to shore up the banks to get them lending again.
Obama is making a classic sales manager mistake. He wants to sell more tin, but he’s incenting the team to push the extended warranty. He’s gonna get some tin, but a whole lot more warranties and right now there is no money in a stinking warranty.
Half of my friends are Republicans. For the last eight years we have had some interesting debates, and playful banter. Now that things have changed and Dems have accomplished the trifecta their rhetoric has changed. With the economy in the shitter, bailouts HARP, TARP, and the stimulus package front and center the conversation is becoming increasingly louder. Socialism, taxpayers bailing out those who bought homes they couldn’t afford, universal health care, increased spending, big government are destroying the country and the dems are leading the way, are increasingly irritating my friends and their rhetoric is getting angrier and angrier. Their tone is increasingly dire and negative. You’d think we are the beginning of the end.
I find it all pretty funny,
Sean Quinn at FiveThirtyEight wrote an insightful post on why a person becomes a Republican and it got me thinking. Being Republican is a convenient philosophy during good times. When people are doing well and the idea that they would ever need a handout is miles away, being Republican is the easy choice. It’s a self centric ideology. It validates their identity of being successful and self-made. It makes them feel they are protecting their efforts and all they believe they created on their own. When times are good, people can have a tendency to take ownership for things that aren’t really theirs to take credit for.
We are in different times now. Things aren’t going well. People aren’t doing well and the Democrats are NOT the only ones whose homes are being foreclosed. Dems don’t own the market for being over-leveraged, and credit burdened. Dem’s aren’t the only ones who are struggling, who didn’t save enough and are one paycheck away from not being able to pay their mortgage.
Irresponsibility is NOT a Democratic problem. It’s a United States problem. As HARP is doled out Republicans, as well as Dem’s will be there with their hands out trying to save their home. Republicans are no more resistant to a hand out than a Democrat.
Being a Republican is convenient. When the money is rolling in and times are good, only the irresponsible are broke, only those who made irresponsible decisions are looking for handouts and so why should responsible, hard-working, god fearing people pay for others mistakes? When times are bad, well that is a different Republican story.
Is there a Republican out there who is about to lose their house, or their car, or can’t pay their bills who WILL NOT TAKE ANY MONEY FROM THE GOVERNMENT? I got to know!
Being a Republican is convenient. If only those people who are responsible, or don’t want government protections, or would refuse a kidney transplant to save their life because the couldn’t afford it were Republicans, there would be no Republican Party. Needing help, whether it is government, corporate, family or religious welfare is universal. It is not a Democratic problem.
Being Republican is far too convenient when times are good, but it is now appearing to be a little less convenient during the tough times.
Luke 6:38
Give, and it will be given to you . . . For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
