West

West

Governor Romney Has a Great Week

22 Apr

by John, posted in competitiveness, election, Government Spending, innovation, Policy, President, Roosevelt, West | No Comments

Governor Romney had a great week. He was able to articulate what many independents and Democrats believe is the fundamental description of President Obama. The president is a nice guy, but we can do better economically when he is writing his memoirs. That is why after Senator Santorum’s suspension the governor pulled close to even in the national polls.

Governor Romney needs to have many weeks where he talks about tax reform, entitlement reform, regulatory reform, and a pro-growth economic and energy policy that generates at least 3 if not 4 percent growth. That is a vision that brings down unemployment and debt rapidly.

What Romney needs to avoid is anything to do with abortion, contraception, women’s rights, voter fraud, gay rights, and almost anything else Senator Santorum discussed in the primary. With the exception of abortion, all of the Republican social issues are national losers.

Some of Speaker Gingrich’s big ideas, as long as they solely focused on the economy, might help Romney shed his tendency to technocracy. Romeny’s two hundred point plan is for pundits. He needs a simple theme of economic renewal: universal tax reform with no favorites; elimination of the Departments of Commerce, Education, and HUD; and a neutral energy policy with federal focus on R&D and speedier federal permitting and environmental review. Get the message down to the brevity and simplicity of Reagan’s, cut taxes, cut regulation, and a strong military. How about, “tax reform, eliminate bureaucracies, and clean energy independence.”

Romney needs to go for President Obama’s economic jugular early and often. In addition to comprehensive tax reform and reform of the federal bureaucracy, Governor Romney can paint a broad vision of an energy independent America unshackled from the chains of import slavery. Most of the West where so much of the land is federal is also bursting with natural gas. President Obama has to win Colorado and needs Arizona, Nevada, and other western states. And in no other area is President Obama more vulnerable in the West than energy.

Obama visited Osawatomie, Kansas to deliver a speech primarily arguing a populist message of government intervention in the marketplace at the site of Teddy Roosevelt’s famous New Nationalism speech. But it was Roosevelt’s call for responsible stewardship of productive public lands that makes the speech so relevant today. “Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.” Obama missed that just as he apparently missed basic capitalism at Harvard.

It is Governor Romney’s opening. He can make as a centerpiece of his economic message TR’s responsible stewardship. As part of tax reform he could announce the elimination of federal subsidies for all forms of energy – no more tax breaks for oil and gas, no more ethanol subsidies, no more clean energy subsidies outside of R&D. With the price of natural gas at historic lows if the federal government can get out of the way, we can replace coal with natural gas dramatically reducing emissions and foreign imports of oil with cleaner domestic natural gas.

While Obama has spent the last four years investing tax dollars in clean companies his government deemed worthy and halting oil and gas leasing for a permitting process redesign, Governor Romney can promise a level playing field. This was an idea I first heard Democratic Congressman Polis discuss at one of his town halls as a natural compromise for both parties. A neutral federal energy policy saves money, increases revenues, and focuses the federal role in basic R&D where it historically works. It can fund basic research into batteries, dramatically more efficient solar panels, natural gas infrastructure projects, and let industry drive commercial innovation, energy independence, and consumer price reductions.

Or Governor Romney can talk about contraception, women’s issues, invading Syria, traditional marriage, and lose the election.

What You Can Learn at the State Fair of Texas

22 Oct

by John, posted in East, South, State Fair, Texas, West | 2 Comments

October always reminds me of a day off from school and a corny dog. When the leaves begin to change I remember my childhood impatience with my father’s mandated tour of the cattle barn before any rides, any games on the Midway, or a Fletcher’s corny dog. So, we took the boys down this year to placate my love of the Texas State Fair.

Texas has had a rough time in the national news of late. Whether it was Governor Perry, the Bush presidency, Jerry Jones, or just the national media’s obsession with a particular brash caricature of Texas, it was time to counter the boy’s perceptions with the truth. My grandparents would turn over in their graves if I let their great-grandchildren think Texas was that caricature.

Is Texas western or southern? For me the best definition of a westerner is Ernie Pyle’s description of Sergeant Buck Eversole in Pyle’s “Brave Men.”

He shook hands sort of timidly and said, “Please to meet you,” and then didn’t say any more. I could tell by his eyes, and by his slow, courteous speech when he did talk, that he was a Westerner. Conversation with him was rather hard, but I didn’t mind his reticence, for I know how Westerners like to size people up first.

Pyle goes on to explain that it was only after talking for days with Eversole about ranches and the West that Pyle got to know him.

That is not a Texan. There is nothing timid in a Texas handshake. I have always believed it was because Texas is also southern – a former Confederate state. One of the more humorous moments in a day can be observing someone from the East learning this basic fact about Texans. It happens when they meet.

“Tony S. from Brooklyn, how ya’ do’in?”

In the East regardless of the accent it is common to ask how someone is doing as a form of “hello”.

“Well Tony, I’m doing right poorly. The damn heifer got out this morning and we’ve been out all day looking for her. It really upset our day – we even missed our regular tee time. Plus, the wife is still upset over that last trip up to New York to see you fellas – I didn’t bring back the right pair of those shoes she wanted …”

In the South if you ask about how someone is doing, they actually think you are interested in how they are doing. Either that or they enjoy shining on Yankees masked behind a good old boy exterior. Texans, like westerners, take their time measuring you but that outward brash immediate friendliness is pure South.

As soon as I put out the word on social media that we were coming into town for the State Fair our two-day trip was inundated with invitations. I have long ago gotten used to my trips back East being a rash of rescheduled meetings and last minute cancellations. It is de rigueur in New York for people to move you around their day or week if they get something better. In Texas nobody ever cancels and you need to be careful about accepting too many requests, because you will have to build into your schedule time for “how ya’ll doing”.

And all that Texan carries into the State Fair. If you come in the main entrance you will encounter “Big Tex”, a giant talking statute in a huge pair of blue jeans and cowboy hat. His puppet like “Howdy Folks, I’m Big Tex, Welcome to the State Fair of Texas” is sprinkled with more marketing messages than I remember, but otherwise he is the same. Everything is bigger in Texas including the mascot of the country’s largest state fair founded in 1886.

After arming myself with tickets for rides and games, the boys made a beeline for the Midway and the Ferris wheel. Children can get priorities backwards. While they towered above us, Dad and I enjoyed our Fletcher corny dogs. No single flavor makes a Fletcher’s corny dog different. It is the combination of a corn meal buttery and coarse as fresh sweet corn and hot grease right out of the skillet that separates it from a mere corndog. It is worth the flight just for a real corny dog.

The rides and Midway games took over the children – a stream of roller coasters, log flumes, haunted houses, animal oddities, rubber ducky games, and BB machine guns (it is Texas). I hate to admit that my father was right, but forcing the kids into the cattle barn, the natural and Texas history museums, the car show, and the creative arts exhibit is essential to both a budget and avoiding a Disney experience. Somehow it was odd justice that the six-month brutal drought in Texas broke two hours into the rides. I pushed the boys out of the rain and into the cattle barn for a judging of “beef master” cattle.

Dad was able to strike up a conversation with the winner across the corral fence and that is when it struck me. We had literally spoken to a hundred people from every conceivable background and race in two days in every conceivable setting. They all said “please” and “thank you”. If we asked someone about himself or herself, they asked about us, and that conversation took a few minutes. We learned all about the beef master and the 4-H program that not only produced the champion but a route to college without loans. It was not western. It was not southern. It was Texan.

And the kitsch is great at the State Fair. We had to visit the creative arts to see my college buddy’s third place win – two packs of Cowboys playing cards? Really, that is art? It was only when I saw the butter-sculpting exhibit that I realized well somebody thinks its art, because that took awhile to lump and sculpt.

It was two incredible days of the Fair, TexMex, barbecue, old friends, and a lesson in what Texas is really about. Whatever you think about President Bush or Governor Perry, tough immigration, lax regulation, or other policy, remember that is base politics. What Texas is really about has a much longer history. And it is all on display once a year surrounded by incredible food, great weather, and arguably the friendliest and most self-reliant people in the USA.

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