My Book More Relevant Now and Why Big Government!

Though the words Conservative and Capitalist are in the title, the booklet is non-political in nature. If you find my Memo efforts of interest and maybe even challenging , whether you agree or not with what I write and/or post, then consider this a personal appeal to support my effort to raise money for The Wounded Warrior project. Buy my book expressing my thoughts on raising children. Please make your check for $10.99/copy to Paul Laflamme for a soft cover version and deduct half the cost as a donation to The Wounded Warrior Project. (Add $2.50 for postage and handling.) If you want a pdf version you can download the cost is $5.99. Click on WWW.Brokerberko.com --- Misreading the election. (See 1 below.) More analysis by two pros. (See 1a below.) --- Wait til next time. (See 2 below.) --- As I have warned - I suspect there will be another outbreak in the Middle East. Watch this:http://www.businessinsider.com/idf-ahmed-jabri-video-2012-11 --- The new James Bond movie is out and people are raving, saying best ever. So let's take a walk down memory lane: http://www.buzzfeed.com/rsultan/37-bond-girls-then-and-now --- To Russia with? (See 3 below.) --- So you wanted big government? I have argued it is stupid for Democrats/Liberals to want big government because big government is more likely to fail than succeed and eventually failure leads to public disenchantment and lack of support. Ah, but Democrats/Liberals know they can buy more votes with big government because it can do more things for more people. So that is why government is likely to grow and grow and grow until even the wealthy will no longer be able to afford it. But that means years and a lot of bought votes with your tax dollars going to Democrats and liberals! (See 4 below.) --- Dick -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Misreading Election 2012 The GOP might be out of step with some voters, but Mitt Romney was an unusually unpopular party standard-bearer. By ANDREW KOHUT Postelection talk of "lessons learned" is often exaggerated and misleading, and so it is in 2012. A week after President Obama won re-election, two themes are dominant. First, that Mr. Obama kept his job because key elements of his base—notably young people, African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans—turned out for him. Second, that the growing size of these voting blocs represents a decisive challenge for the Republican Party. Both points are true, but most observers are overstating the gravity of the GOP's problem. In particular, they are paying too little attention to how weak a candidate Mitt Romney was, and how much that hurt Republican prospects. Here is what the exit poll found. Mr. Romney's personal image took a hard hit during the primary campaign and remained weak on election day. Just 47% of exit-poll respondents viewed him favorably, compared with 53% for Mr. Obama. Throughout the campaign, Mr. Romney's favorable ratings were among the lowest recorded for a presidential candidate in the modern era. A persistent problem was doubt about his empathy with the average voter. By 53% to 43%, exit-poll respondents said that Mr. Obama was more in touch than Mr. Romney with people like themselves. Mr. Romney was never fully embraced by Republicans themselves, which may have inhibited the expected strong Republican turnout. Pew's election-weekend survey found Mr. Romney with fewer strong supporters (33%) than Mr. Obama (39%). Similarly, a much greater percentage of Obama supporters (80%) than Romney supporters (60%) told Pew that they were voting for their candidate rather than against his opponent. Surprisingly, Mr. Romney proved unable to exploit Mr. Obama's biggest weakness: the economy. Seventy-six percent of exit-poll respondents rated the national economy "poor" or only "fair," and just 25% said their finances were better off than they were four years ago. Yet voters expressed roughly equal confidence in Mr. Obama's ability to handle the economy (48%) as in Mr. Romney's (49%). Mr. Romney was hurt by the perception—reinforced by Democratic attack ads and his secretly recorded comments about the "47%"—that he wasn't for the average voter. With 55% of voters in the exit poll saying they think the U.S. economic system favors the wealthy, a large majority believed that Mr. Obama's policies favor the middle class (44%) or the poor (31%). By contrast, 53% thought Mr. Romney's policies would favor the rich. Despite their weak candidate, Republicans increased their share of the presidential vote among many major demographic groups. Compared with 2008, they made significant gains among men (four percentage points), whites (four points), younger voters (six points), white Catholics (seven points) and Jews (nine points). Mr. Romney also carried the independent vote 50% to 45%. Four years ago, independents voted for Mr. Obama 52% to 44%. Republicans can take some solace from these gains. In addition, only 43% of voters this year said they wanted an activist government (compared with 52% in 2008), and 49% continued to disapprove of Mr. Obama's health-care law (compared with 44% approving). In short, the current American electorate is hardly stacked against the Republican Party. But Republicans should recognize that, on balance, Americans remain moderate—holding a mix of liberal and conservative views. They generally believe that small government is better and that ObamaCare is bad. But the exit poll shows that 59% believe abortion should be legal, 65% support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and a surprising plurality support legalizing same-sex marriage in their states. Threading the ideological needle with this electorate is vital for the Republicans in the future—and for the Democrats, too. — Mr. Kohut is president of the Pew Research Center.) 1a)Rove & Carville Analyze 2012 Election By Alexis Simendinger Karl Rove on Tuesday argued that President Obama won re-election despite his weaknesses with voters because Mitt Romney was a so-so candidate lured by the media into conservative positions during the GOP primaries. “I think that’s right,” he answered when former newsman Ted Koppel asked if Romney had been undone by that early phase of the presidential race. “I do think the primary was destructive to him.” Rove then added that he placed “blame” with journalists who hosted the debates. If reporters and TV anchors had not posed questions about abortion and other social issues during umpteen Republican jousting matches, things might have turned out better, Rove harrumphed. “Romney unwisely went to the right on immigration,” he told financial industry experts attending the Global Financial Leadership Conference organized by the CME Group at a luxury hotel here. Democrat James Carville, defending the other side of the aisle during a session of political forensics, cheerily rejected Rove’s analysis, arguing that Obama’s victory and the Democrats’ ability to win seats in the House and Senate were nothing more complex than “pine on skull. . . . You’ve just been hit upside the head.” Carville noted that 56 percent of voters believed the country was on the wrong track, according to polling, and unemployment hovered near 8 percent on Election Day, “and you honestly didn’t come close.” Republicans cannot win future elections if the majority of young people and non-white voters back Democrats. The question Rove and his fellow conservatives should be asking, Carville advised, is not what was flawed about Romney or the media but “is there something wrong with what you’re putting out there?” The audience applauded loudly. Rove, shuffling through a red folder of election data in his lap, agreed that the GOP in 2016 should nominate “a modernist” who can discuss an issue such as abortion by adroitly acknowledging the realities of the law and life while talking up alternatives to abortion. His message: “You better damn well stop being judgmental.” The pro-GOP super PACs Rove helped found, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, have been faulted by some Republican donors and various election analysts for spending a combined $175 million on advertising, with six wins and 16 losses to show for that investment. But Rove in public has sounded unbowed, and his group has announced it will expand its work into lobbying on policy issues and on GOP primaries in the next cycle. Looking ahead, Rove and Carville took stock of potential presidential candidates in 2016. The former close adviser to George W. Bush said the 2012 aspirants in his party are unlikely to be back four years from now, and attention will turn to new faces. Paul Ryan “has got to be considered,” he said -- a suggestion Carville thought less likely after the outcome in Wisconsin on election night. Nonetheless, Rove touted as possibilities Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. “There are going to be a lot more opportunities for people to emerge through the strength of their efforts,” he said. “It’s awful early.” Among Democrats weighing a run in 2016 following Obama’s two terms, Carville said potential candidates will seek to learn early what Hillary Clinton has in mind. Although she has said she will serve as secretary of state through the inauguration in January and then return to private life, her denials of presidential ambitions have not quieted speculation that she will run again. While Republicans need a primary in 2016 to shake out a direction for the party, Democrats would prefer to avoid “all that,” said Carville, the chief architect of Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory against a crowded Democratic field. “The pressure on Secretary Clinton is going to be enormous to run,” he said. “Whether she does or not, I don’t know.” Alexis Simendinger covers the White House for RealClearPolitics. She can be reached at asimendinger@realclearpolitics.com. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Don't cry now! By Noemie Emery Yes, it's all sad -- and grim, and depressing -- but is Election 2012 truly the end of the GOP universe? Perhaps. But before giving way to unseemly hysterics, here are some thoughts to peruse: * Timing is everything: This year, the Republicans needed new and appealing young talents to take on Obama, and that, as it happened, was just what they had. The upside was that in 2009 and 2010 they had a crop of new stars, all born to run on a national ticket. The downside was that they would be ready to start running in 2014 at the earliest. And so the most crucial of all nominations would go to one of a number of has-beens or retreads, whose experience was either old or irrelevant, and whose talent at best underwhelmed. Mitt Romney, the best, left office six years ago, and had a liberal past, a financial career that had netted him millions, and, as the son of another ex-governor, seemed the image of white and upper-class privilege, minus the military heroics, medical problems, or personal tragedies that humanized the Roosevelt cousins, the Kennedy brothers and the elder George Bush. Near the end, Romney became a good candidate, but he was always less than a good politician; a speaker in tongues that were not his first language, and a technocrat in a profession in which visionaries tend to win the big prize. His loss deprives the country of an effective executive, but it allows the next generation of the GOP, which would have been pushed aside for eight years or more if he had triumphed, to step forward now and make over the party -- a moment that can't come soon enough. * The country has changed, but the next Republican ticket will have at least one, and possibly two, brownish-skinned children of immigrants, with inspiring stories of rising from nowhere to live the American dream. He and/or she (and "she" must be seen as a real possibility) will never have fired hundreds of people, will not be rich, will not be dogged by multiple changes on issues, will understand modern conservatism from having run and won on it, and also will be a career politician, unlikely to make the unforced verbal errors that haunted this campaign just ended. There are few such "diverse" stars in the Democrats' stable. Hillary Clinton, if she runs in 2016, will be 69, and unlikely to get the nation's young in a tizzy. In the next cycle, the dynamic that worked this year in the Democrats' favor -- race, youth and gender -- may be turned on its head. * As I have noted before, Obama is brilliant at selling himself, but less good at selling his plans or his allies. This was his final campaign. In every run since his first, he has always won easily, but when his ideas face the voters without him, they tend to fall short. Coming off his huge win in the 2008 cycle, he was shellacked in the 2009-2010 off-year and special elections, shellacked even worse in the 2010 midterms, and smacked down again in the multi-election Battle of Wisconsin, which ended with Scott Walker exceeding his original 2010 win. Coming off a tougher, grimier, and much smaller win in this cycle, will the Obama magic transfer automatically to some boring white guy two or more years in the future? Before you start crying, find out. Examiner Columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of "Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families." -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3)Obama Plans to Visit Russia By DANIEL HALPER "US President Barack Obama has confirmed plans to visit Russia at the invitation of his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the Russian president’s spokesman said on Tuesday," the Russian outlet reports. "Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Obama made the statement when Putin called a second time to congratulate the US president on his reelection." RIA Novosti quotes Putin's spokesman as saying, "Obama thanked [Putin] for the congratulations and the invitation and confirmed his readiness to come to Russia at a date to be agreed by the two sides. ... Putin wished his US counterpart success in forming his new team," he said, adding that the two presidents confirmed their interest in "progressive development of bilateral relations in all spheres, including the economy." The White House has not announced plans for Obama to visit Russia since winning reelection. During the campaign Obama famously got caught on a hot microphone passing along a message to Putin. "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility," Obama told then Russian president Dmitri Medvedev. "I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir," Medvedev responded in the overheard conversation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4)-Is Obamacare too much work for the Obama administration? By Sarah Kliff By the end of this week, states must decide whether they will build a health-insurance exchange or leave the task to the federal government. The question is, with as many as 17 states expected to leave it to the feds, can the Obama administration handle the workload. “These are systems that typically take two or three years to build,” says Kevin Walsh, managing director of insurance exchange services at Xerox. “The last time I looked at the calendar, that’s not what we’re working with.” When Walsh meets with state officials deciding whether to build a health exchange, he brings a chart. It outlines how to build the insurance marketplace required under the Affordable Care Act. To call it complex would probably be an understatement: These marketplaces often get described as a Travelocity or Expedia for health benefits. While that might be the case for the consumer experience, experts say the underlying technology is hugely more complex, a maze of interconnecting computer systems meant to deliver health insurance to 30 million Americans. “The reality is, states and the federal government are building something new,” says Pat Howard, who runs state health issues for consulting firm Deloitte. “There’s a rough blueprint in terms of federal regulations, but there’s still a number of decisions that need to happen to operationalize this.” A health exchange’s first task is ensuring that those who are eligible for benefits know about them — right now, research suggests three-quarters have no idea. That suggests a huge outreach challenge — and one the federal government may not be ideally suited to completing. Evidence suggests that it works better when it caters to local markets. Massachusetts, for example, saw high enrollment after it partnered with the Red Sox to promote its health-insurance exchange. After people become aware of benefits, the health exchange faces its biggest challenge: Figuring out who is eligible for what. In many states those who earn less than 133 percent of the Federal Poverty Line are eligible for Medicaid — except if the state has already extended benefits to an even higher level, as 35 states have for children. “There may be different family members eligible for different programs,” says Sam Gibbs, vice president of sales at eHealthInsurance. “There needs to be a technology system that can support that activity, and look at multiple programs for multiple people.” A state can’t figure out how much an individual earns on its own. For that, it needs to ping a federal data hub that does not yet exist. The federal government recently contracted with the healthcare IT firm QSSI to build that data hub, and they plan to make it available to both the exchanges that states run and those that the federal government sets up. It will determine whether individuals are eligible for Medicaid, subsidies or no benefit at all. The challenge here is for states, which may have complex Medicaid rules or old computer systems, to actually plug into the federal hub. “In many states, the Medicaid system is the best technology that the 1980s could offer,” says Bruce Caswell, who runs the health-services segment of Maximus, a firm that works on large government data systems. “As a consequence, they might have brittle interface capabilities.” An old Medicaid system, for example, may only have the capacity to send large batches of data each night. That was fine back in the 1980s, when most applications happened by mail. It’s less desirable when you have a law that would like to see real-time application processing. At the same time, Caswell describes these interfaces as “super critical.” They make sure the Affordable Care Act actually works and individuals receive the health benefits to which they are entitled. After eligibility determinations, exchanges need to present a shopping experience. This might be the easiest part for the federal government, as the same consumer interface could work decently well in different states. Nonprofit groups have also been at work on building a model for the shopping experience, which could potentially be plugged in. There is one part of the shopping experience, however, that will be more difficult to scale: Customer service. Buying health insurance is a lot more difficult than purchasing a plane ticket on Expedia. That likely means setting up large scale customer-support operations, especially when the first open enrollment period starts in October 2013. Caswell recalls setting up a call center that handled inquiries in Texas, when it moved 2 million people into different Medicaid programs. He had 90 days to find hundreds of consumer assistance staff — and a facility where they could all fit. “We had it find a facility, outfit it, recruit and train staff, take in all the work and then shut it down six or seven months later,” he says. “That’s the kind of agility that would be difficult without a public-private partnership.” The Obama administration has known for awhile that there’s a decent chance it could end up doing a lot of this. Now though, they’re finding out how big their workload will actually become. “The federal government was pretty aware by last year that there was a likelihood many states wouldn’t run their own,” says Kaveh Safavi, who leads Accenture’s North America health business. “It’s definitely been part of the planning process. Now, the execution and implementation is where we’ll be watching next.”