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For 9 days, I was missing in action in Toronto.  My bridge was not going well.  I had to change rooms two times (no Internet service, no hot water - then a deluge of water through the ceiling!)  Prices were ridiculously high due to the weak dollar.  I was about ready to chalk up this tournament as one of my more pathetic, and then.... Thursday and Friday happened.

The good news about 11PM last night is that, thanks to wonderful teammates and the kind errors of some opponents, I chalked up another national title.  There must be something to not practicing; both partners of mine were new to me!

Monday I leave for Omaha and will do battle against Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Then - home a week later to crash!

How Many?

How many businessmen must assert that Obama's policies are killing the economy before voters realize it is true?

Bernie Marcus co-founded Home Depot (HD) in 1978 and brought it public in 1981 as the U.S. was suffering from the worst recession and unemployment in 40 years. The company thrived, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and redefining home improvement retailing.

But Marcus says Home Depot "would never have succeeded" if it launched today due to onerous regulation. He recently helped launch the Job Creators Alliance, a Dallas-based nonprofit of CEOs and entrepreneurs dedicated to preserving the free enterprise system. IBD recently spoke to him about jobs and the economy.

IBD: What's the single biggest impediment to job growth today?

Marcus: The U.S. government. Having built a small business into a big one, I can tell you that today the impediments that the government imposes are impossible to deal with. Home Depot would never have succeeded if we'd tried to start it today. Every day you see rules and regulations from a group of Washington bureaucrats who know nothing about running a business. And I mean every day. It's become stifling.

If you're a small businessman, the only way to deal with it is to work harder, put in more hours, and let people go. When you consider that something like 70% of the American people work for small businesses, you are talking about a big economic impact.

IBD: President Obama has promised to streamline and eliminate regulations. What's your take?

Marcus: His speeches are wonderful. His output is absolutely, incredibly bad. As he speaks about cutting out regulations, they are now producing thousands of pages of new ones. With just ObamaCare by itself, you have a 2,000 page bill that's probably going end up being 150,000 pages of regulations.

IBD: Washington has been consumed with debt talks. Is this the right focus now?

Marcus: They are all tied together. If we don't lower spending and if we don't deal with paying down the debt, we are going to have to raise taxes. Even brain-dead economists understand that when you raise taxes, you cost jobs.

End Welfare as We Know It

You want to farm - then farm.  Don't want to farm?  Then don't do it.

Having our government do this, however, is ridiculous.

Goodwin, Smith, and Sumner noted that farmers have no more need than other businessmen for subsidies:  ”some programs serve no purpose other than to give farmers and landowners handouts.”  All that matters is the agriculture lobby’s political clout.  Declared the three analysts:  “The most important conclusion is that, overall, farm program subsidies could be eliminated, or at least reduced from current levels by about $8 to $10 billion, without affecting the U.S. food supply or the financial viability of U.S. agriculture.”

No doubt, farmers have trouble imagining life without their special federal dole.  However, two-thirds of American farm production, such as meat, fruit, and vegetables, is not subsidized.  In 1984 New Zealand ended its subsidy programs and its farmers have prospered.

Moreover, American farmers are entrepreneurial and productive.  Noted my Cato Institute colleague Chris Edwards:  “many industries have been radically reformed in recent decades with positive results, including the airline, trucking, telecommunications, and energy industries.  If farm subsidies were ended, and agriculture markets deregulated and open to entrepreneurs, farming would change,” but “a stronger and more innovative industry would likely emerge.”

The U.S faces a fiscal emergency.  Government outlays must be cut.  It is time to end farm welfare.

Simplicity

It's all quite straightforward and simple.  Hacking is OK if you're on the left side of the aisle. Breaking laws for principle is fine if you are a liberal and the End of the World if you are a conservative.

Carl Bernstein is having a field day denouncing Rupert Murdoch for the phone hacking done by his news organizations. Here’s Mediaite’s report on Bernstein’s appearance on Lawrence O’Donnell’s MSNBC show:

 “This is a massive abuse of power, much like Nixon abused his power… journalism is not a license to abuse a free press.” He went on to say the “Murdoch enterprise has acted like thugs, not like reporters, somewhat like a mafia outfit.” 

But Bernstein is an awkward choice for critic of phone hacking, because of the memorable moment in the Watergate investigation when, stymied in his investigation of the suspicious burglary, he turns to a source at the phone company to obtain what were supposed to be private telephone records.  Here is the relevant passage from pages 35 and 36 of All the President’s Men:

Bernstein had several sources in the Bell system. He was always reluctant to use them to get information about calls because of the ethical questions involved in breaching the confidentiality of a person’s telephone records. It was a problem he had never resolved in his mind. Why, as a reporter, was he entitled to have access to personal and financial records when such disclosure would outrage him if he were subjected to a similar inquiry by investigators?

Without dwelling on his problem, Bernstein called a telephone company source and asked for a list of Barker’s calls. That afternoon, his contact called back and confirmed that the calls listed in the Times had been made.  But, he added, he could not get a fuller listing because Barker’s phone records had been subpoenaed by the Miami district attorney.

Clearly for Bernstein the issue of privacy vs. the public’s interest in truth isn’t quite as clear-cut as some Murdoch critics might like.  In the crunch, when Bernstein was tempted, he agonized — but not for very long.

Family and Friends

Taking care of your family and friends.  A worthy goal; laudable activities.

But - is it still the case when the family is being awarded tens of millions of government contracts? 

Toronto 2011

 

The American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) schedules 3 national tournaments a year; late fall, spring and summer.   Later today, I leave for Toronto, the site of our summer NABC.

Actually, "national" is a misleading description.  Players from all over the world will attend this tournament; generally, roughly 65 nations have representatives.  The competition is as tough as it gets - yet seeing friends from virtually every continent couldn't be more fun.

In addition to competing myself, I am the "Roaming Reporter" for the ACBL.  It has been my privilege and joy to capture photos and stories about this incredibly wonderful game.  I never know for certain what awaits me at each NABC.  I only know that it will be intriguing and fun.

 

Frightened of This Administration

Oh, c'mon, Steve Wynn.  Tell us how you really feel!

This administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I can prove it and I could spend the next 3 hours giving you examples of all of us in this market place that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our healthcare costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right. A President that seems, that keeps using that word redistribution. Well, my customers and the companies that provide the vitality for the hospitality and restaurant industry, in the United States of America, they are frightened of this administration.And it makes you slow down and not invest your money. Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America.

You bet and until we change the tempo and the conversation from Washington, it's not going to change. And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don't want to say that. They'll say, God, don't be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama's deal and it's Obama that's responsible for this fear in America.

The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest, their holding too much money. We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody's afraid of the government and there's no need soft peddling it, it's the truth. It is the truth. And that's true of Democratic businessman and Republican businessman, and I am a Democratic businessman and I support Harry Reid. I support Democrats and Republicans. And I'm telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs.

Waiting for Nirvana

You would think that Herbert Stein's Law - "If something can't go on forever, it will stop" - would be beyond argument.  But it is not.  I remember as the real estate bubble grew larger and more ridiculous, thinking to myself, "it's not a question of 'if' - it's a question of 'when'" as to its demise.  Others, however, couldn't see it.  They thought that the laws of logic and math could be ignored forever.  As the trajectory continued, we'd have people earning $70,000 and purchasing $3 million dollar homes.  Well.  We almost did, didn't we?

Yet it stopped, because it could not go on forever.  And, so it is with our national out of control spending and our idealistic welfare state.

One of THE BEST PARTS of Facebook

Is friends reminding you of stuff like this!

The Choice

We have a myriad of choices in our life.  Choosing our sexual orientation, however, is not one of them.

This columnist explains how conservatives who think we just need to "choose rightly" about our sexual attraction are losing critical votes.

Ben was raised Catholic. He was educated by the Jesuits at St. Joseph's Prep and graduated from Notre Dame after spending a semester interning for Sen. Richard Lugar (R., Ind.) in Washington. Ben comes from a great family and I can personally attest to his character. For two summers he interned for my talk-radio program (on a station that then featured conservative icons Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity). I will never forget the day he jumped unsolicited into his car and drove three hours to the nation's capital to stand in line and pay his respects to President Ronald Reagan as the Gipper lay in state - all while providing my listening audience with live reports.

Ben is troubled by your signing of a 14-point pro-marriage pledge at the request of the Family Leader, an Iowa social conservative group. It's not only the part about black kids being better off under slavery than they are today that caught his eye. (Yes, he knows that language was dropped after you signed the pledge.) It's the verbiage about sexuality being a choice.

You signed a document that challenges the belief that sexuality is predetermined. The Family Leader pledge laments that marriage is "debased" by, among other things, an "antiscientific bias which holds, in complete absence of empirical proof, that nonheterosexual inclinations are genetically determined, irresistible, and akin to innate traits like race, gender, and eye color."

See, my friend and former intern Ben is gay. And he never made any such choice.

"If you could simply choose who you were sexually attracted to," Ben wondered, "wouldn't you choose the path of least resistance? Being gay creates problems and obstacles in life that no one would willingly choose."

"Thankfully we live in a country that, for the most part, does not permit discrimination against those things a person cannot control. We don't tolerate bias based on race, or gender, or disabilities, because people don't choose these fates," Ben said.

"Sadly, obstacles remain in regards to sexuality due to ignorance by many toward the gay community. Once there is a realization that gays are normal members of their families and society who just want a chance to live their lives like anyone else, we're one step closer to equality."

Out of Reach

Why has college become prohibitively expensive for too many today?  Here is but one reason why.

“Based on data in the California State University Statistical Abstract, the number of full-time faculty in the whole CSU system rose from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, an increase of only 3.5 percent. In the same time period the total number of administrators rose 221 percent, from 3,800 to 12,183. In 1975, there were three full time faculty members per administrator, but now there are actually slightly more administrators than full-time faculty.”

Destroyed from Within

A book all of us should read.

The real story of Reckless Endangerment is more a story of democracy corrupted than it is a story of financial fraud. It is a story of America's great wounding of herself. And even now, with this book, the full account is not nearly as known as it should be; and as the authors so sadly point out, nearly every one of the principals who brought such misery and shame upon their countrymen are free, prosperous, in many cases highly honoured and "serving" still at the highest levels of political and financial power.

One weeps and despairs.

What Would You Give Up?

The Center of the American Experiment continues its excellent series of columns where varied opinions are expressed about what changes would be made to return our nation to fiscal health.

I have met Phyllis Kahn, and she is entirely accurate that she can be a woman who irritates many!

Bryan Dowd - alas - expresses the view that I share which is that our generation has been woefully poor at making personal sacrifices for the greater good.

Finally, my favorite of these three:  Fred Smith on more freedom when it comes to our own health and bodies.

There is no such thing as a perfectly safe drug or medical device, thus approvals sometimes create identifiable “victims.”  On the other hand, the victims of FDA intransigence—those who never get a chance to benefit from the health-enhancing treatments that the agency has blocked or delayed—are unknown and politically invisible, and thus the agency is held blameless for them.  Medical innovation is an inherently complex process, with just one of every 250 drugs which begins clinical testing ever making it to market.

Clearly, another strategy for medical innovation is needed.  Milton Friedman argued that the quality of our health care would advance more rapidly if the FDA were abolished.  My suggestion is a bit more modest.  I would simply liberalize the FDA’s gatekeeper policies, allowing each of us—if we wish—to escape our “victim” status and to allow us one last chance, at the end of our lives, to dare the unknown, to perform one last heroic act.

At some point, a doctor will say, “Mr.  Smith, there’s nothing more I can do for you.” Yet in many cases, although no approved intervention may exist, there will be a list of potential interventions that might address my “incurable” ailment.  Must we check out as victims, or might we instead be given the opportunity to go out as heroes?

I'm with Mr. Smith.  Do not do away with the FDA.  But allow individuals and their physicians far greater latitude in the drugs and medical products that they choose to use.  While it is surely true that some may not choose wisely - or with good fortune - others will do so in a way that will either enhance their life - or save it.  And, speaking of savings, these changes would save our society a huge amount of money.

Ultimately, the combination of cost savings and return to freedom is a slam dunk.

Our Men in Blue

Keeping America safe!

Police in Georgia have shut down a lemonade stand run by three girls trying to save up for a trip to a water park, saying they didn't have a business license or the required permits. Midway Police Chief Kelly Morningstar says police also didn't know how the lemonade was made, who made it or what was in it.The girls had been operating for one day when Morningstar and another officer cruised by.The girls needed a business license, peddler's permit and food permit to operate, even on residential property. The permits cost $50 a day or $180 per year.

Physician; Heal Thyself!

 

Monkey See

Monkey do superb self-photography?  Yes.

 
As someone who loves both photography and animals, I found this story fascinating.  One contemplates all the hours and study that professional nature photographers put into their craft - and - here this monkey produces his own fabulous portrait with no training whatsoever! :)

Triple Dog Dare

I don't always agree with Charles Krauthammer.  Today, however, he makes some excellent points.

A long-term deal or nothing? The Republican House should immediately pass a short-term debt-ceiling hike of $500 billion containing $500 billion in budget cuts. That would give us about five months to work on something larger.

The fat-cat tax breaks (those corporate jets) that Obama’s talking points endlessly recycle? Republicans should call for urgent negotiations on tax reform along the lines of the Simpson-Bowles commission that, in one option, strips out annually $1.1 trillion of deductions, credits and loopholes while lowering tax rates across the board to a top rate of 23 percent. The president says he wants tax reform, doesn’t he? Well, Mr. President, here are five months to do so.

Yes!

Will the Democratic Senate or the Democratic president refuse this offer and allow the country to default — with all the cataclysmic consequences that the Democrats have been warning about for months — because Obama insists on a deal that is 10 months and seven days longer?

That’s indefensible and transparently self-serving. Dare the president to make that case. Dare him to veto — or the Democratic Senate to block — a short-term debt-limit increase.

I find this unbelievable.  The president threatens the nation with how serious it would be to not come to an agreement - yet will not agree to something short term, because it threatens his chances of being re-elected.  Republicans should be highlighting this - over and over.

The president is playing hardball.  If Republicans want to end Big Government, big spending, big taxes and big unemployment - then they need to do the same.

Au Revoir, Toronto

Next Wednesday, I leave for a North American bridge tournament in Toronto.  It will be my fourth in that city.  I so look forward to it, because Toronto has always been cosmpolitan and beautiful and a great city to visit.

At least, it always was in the past.

Last night, I read this.  All I could think was:  the Toronto I have known is no longer.

 
It’s the scene every Friday at the cafeteria of Valley Park Middle School in Toronto. That’s not a private academy, it’s a public school funded by taxpayers. And yet, oddly enough, what’s going on is a prayer service – oh, relax, it’s not Anglican or anything improper like that; it’s Muslim Friday prayers, and the Toronto District School Board says don’t worry, it’s just for convenience: They put the cafeteria at the local imams’ disposal because otherwise the kids would have to troop off to the local mosque and then they’d be late for Lesbian History class or whatever subject is scheduled for Friday afternoon.

The picture is taken from the back of the cafeteria. In the distance are the boys. They’re male, so they get to sit up front at prayers. Behind them are the girls. They’re female, so they have to sit behind the boys because they’re second-class citizens – not in the whole of Canada, not formally, not yet, but in the cafeteria of a middle school run by the Toronto District School Board they most certainly are.

And the third row? The ones with their backs to us in the foreground of the picture? Well, let the Star’s caption writer explain:

At Valley Park Middle School, Muslim students participate in the Friday prayer service. Menstruating girls, at the very back, do not take part.

Oh. As Kathy Shaidle says:

Yep, that’s part of the caption of the Toronto Star photo.

Yes, the country is Canada and the year is 2011.

Equality for All

If you believe in equal rights for all and justice under the law for each of us - then we are on the same page.  Yet, if you think that this translates into similar lifestyles or financial status or the like for everyone - well, guess again. 

Actually, many of the schemes aiming for "financial equality" actually do exactly the opposite.  They foster poverty and do not lift up those on the bottom.  Peter Ferrara explains.

Under a social justice regime of equal income and wealth for all, there would be no reason for anyone even to work.  If you work more than others, and earn more income as a result, the above average results of all that work would be expropriated.  If you don’t work at all, then you would receive a grant from whatever government might possibly be functioning so that you still consumed the same average amount of goods and services as everyone else.

This is exactly what happens to the economies of societies where the social justice vision of equal results for all is most assiduously followed.  See North Korea and Cuba, or for that matter compare North Korea with South Korea, or the old East Germany with the old West Germany.  Or China of the 1960s and 1970s with the Japan of that time.  Or China of the 1960s and 1970s with the China of today.

Such economic results lead to further restrictions on personal liberty.  The more productive would naturally want to leave any regime of forced equalization of incomes and wealth, for they are just being plundered by the rest of society, and would be prevented from achieving their full potential.  So the regime would have to maintain tight restrictions on emigration and international travel to avoid losing the society’s most productive citizens.  But this wouldn’t just be a problem among the most productive.  Most would not want to live in an economically stagnant, poor society.  The great majority would want to flee as well to lands of greater opportunity and prosperity.  So the regime would have to restrict everyone from leaving, imposing on the liberty of all.  This is where the Berlin Wall came from.

Requiem for a Rich Guy

So often, the rich receive slings and arrows from the rest of us.  They don't pay enough in taxes.  They live too much of the "high life."  They were born on third base - and they don't know what it is like to struggle.

Here is a fellow who died this week in the Twin City area.  I didn't know Gil Braun - yet I sure am glad that he was part of our community.

When he sold Braun's Fashions in 1986 for $25 million, the company -- which later became Christopher & Banks -- included 113 stores in 11 states.

So when Webster needed a new school, Braun didn't hesitate. School board members in the small town were dumbfounded when they learned of his $500,000 donation. They shouldn't have been surprised.

"He was the finest man I knew," said Bob Gann, his longtime personal accountant. "Number one, in his business dealings, his high ethics. And he was generous. He made contributions and got involved in the community."

Braun was raised by his mother after his parents divorced. With money tight, she and her three children worked for a time on a horse-drawn road construction crew.

Braun worked at the local J.C. Penney store during high school. After graduation, he took a job with a men's clothier in St. Paul. From there he joined Buttrey's, a Montana-based women's fashion and general store chain, and over 21 years, rose to the position of general manager.

In 1956, he opened Braun's Styles of the Mile, in St. Louis Park's then-new Miracle Mile Shopping Center. Designed for working women looking for versatile wardrobes, it was a smash. The shops quickly multiplied.

Brody said, "He didn't start with money or with high educational advantages, and he created this [company] out of nothing."

When he sold Braun's in 1986, the business was generating $50 million annually in sales. The store name was changed in 2000 to Christopher & Banks.

Braun was a longtime member and past president of the St. Louis Park Rotary Club, which named its community service award after him. He was an early contributor to the city's Children First program, which aimed to help kids grow up into responsible adults. He was Robin Hood for St. Louis Park's Robin Hood Days and commodore for the Minneapolis Aquatennial in the 1970s.

Braun was married for 62 years to Louella Peterson, who died in 2003. 

Gil Braun is the poster boy for the American dream.  He came from nothing, worked hard, achieved financial success, contributed mightily to his community - and built a fine marriage and family.  Not all of us can attain the same success in business.  But we can surely follow Braun's examples of hard work, contribution and being an all around good guy.