Obama Failed to Master Alinsky's Rule #12

By Kyle-Anne Shiver

Alinsky's 12^th Rule of Tactics: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying, ‘You're right - we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us.'

Why is President Barack Obama suddenly drowning in a sea of widespread resistance to his centerpiece legislation? Because it has now become quite clear to Harry & Louise Q Citizen that this was a man without a "constructive alternative" to the out-of-control healthcare system he has badgered and rhetorically beaten bloody to a pulp.

Obama himself, Organizer in Chief, had no plan. He proposed no plan to Congress. He has let committee after committee of witless tax-and-spend, haggard old liberals write the convoluted mess they're calling healthcare reform, and has virtually done nothing for own his part but bash the insurance companies, the doctors and even the patients, who ask for individual control over their own life-and-death choices.

This, dear readers, is the fundamental difference between an empty-suited celebrity and a nuts-and-bolts executive: flim-flam artistry vs. substance and real results.

Barack Obama, the eternal campaigner, held a healthcare townhall, which even Helen Thomas and her just-as-liberal cohort, Chip Reid of CBS, called "orchestrated," "tightly-controlled," and seemingly "less transparent" than any previous White House occupants had ever dared. The questions posed to the President, it's now quite obvious, must indeed be orchestrated because he is tasked with selling legislation that he himself has neither read nor understands. And the worst of this becoming-nastier-by-the-day conundrum is that the whole cockamamie plan is built upon a disastrously failed European-socialist model, which has proven again and again and again to raise costs, lower quality and ration care. The only real difference seems to be that the Democrats' plan will allow those already at the table to reap even more profits than before, and we will be the ones footing the outrageous tab.

The President trips over his explanations with one real gaffe after another because he utterly failed to master Alinsky #12 before we allowed his ascension to the power-perch in the highest office in the land.

This Obama failure to form workable solutions to gigantic problems should come as no surprise to any American. When a supposedly literate public elects a man to the most powerful position in the universe upon a resume that would fit neatly upon the back of a postage stamp, the result is easily predicted long before Inaugural Day.

Honey, even a nitwit knows that when a president must hire out his real job to 32 czars, he was never CEO material.

When Saul Alinsky's early observers voiced the concern that he was building a host of agitated mobs, who could be overtaken and controlled by a skillful "fascist demagogue," those fears were well-founded.

What happens when a stranger to one's community comes in from nowhere and begins to ingratiate himself with the locals, with the sole intention of forming a political body of disgruntled folks, ready to demand from their government whatever the organizer tells them they really need?

The result of such a deceitful maneuver is a lot of very angry people, making demands without a single clue that the organizer knows what he's talking about. If he were truly one of them, if they had known him all his life, if he lived down the street and had grown up among them, they would know whether his words could be trusted, whether his intentions were truly good and whether he had the real smarts to lead them.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a perfect example of a true leader, and the antithesis of an Alinskyite community organizer. Dr. King wasn't leading a movement of complete strangers. Nor was he dropped into Atlanta by a gang of professional troublemakers, intent on gaining political power. Dr. King, and his father before him, were echelons of the black, upper-middle-class community in Atlanta. They had lifelong friends in every black community south of the Mason-Dixon. They were so well-known, so utterly respected by all, that when Martin spoke, people - black and white alike - knew there was absolute substance behind his thunderous voice. Even the Democratic Party racists who opposed him, gave him grudging private respect.

King had no need of deceptive Alinsky tactics; he had moral authority steeped in roots going back generations in the same home town.

Such is not at all the case with what Alinsky euphemistically called the "community organizer." A community organizer is by definition an outsider, someone hired not by the community itself, but by outside political operatives attempting to gain a foothold in the community.

Precisely the way a young Barack Obama was hired by outsiders to infiltrate a Southside Chicago community in the late 1980s.

Barack Obama dropped in for a few years on the Southside of Chicago. Rather than actually doing anything to improve the community where he was sent to "work," he made political friends and established a political base from which to launch his Organizer in Chief presidential campaign. His chief liaison from those days was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., a very influential friend of Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington.

By the time Barack Obama returned from his sojourn at Harvard Law to his adopted home base of Chicago, he was no longer a man who wasn't sent by anyone. He was a political somebody, about to launch a meteoric rise to a job for which he is utterly unprepared. And this sad fact shows itself more apparent with every passing day.

When Bill Clinton put forth the notion of Barack Obama as a "fairytale" and was trounced for it, Democrats should have listened. They now have a man in the office of the presidency, for whom they must provide cover every single day. Why? It's simple. Barack Obama mastered Alinsky tactics of campaigning for power and working the crowds down to the last little letter, but he absolutely has no plan of governance, no workable solutions, and can't even talk about such things without a live-feed teleprompter glued to each hip.

Leaders don't fall from the sky without proof they ever made friends and dated girlfriends and earned grades and had businesses and wrote papers, folks. Leaders have visible trails; they have made a record of their successes and proudly show them whenever asked. Barack Obama resides in the White House without ever showing a shred of genuine evidence that he is the greatly-gifted man he and his media sycophants say he is. And 52% of the American electorate has bought this faster than they would buy a used car from a slick-suited salesman on a shady lot.

Suckers United for Change. Wow. I'm impressed.

Dr. Obama? I would sooner trust Dr. Frankenstein.

Failed Liberal Newspapers Earn Boot, Not Bailout

Failed Liberal Newspapers Earn Boot, Not Bailout: Kevin Hassett

Commentary by Kevin Hassett

May 11 (Bloomberg) -- When last week’s employment report came in a tad better than expected, it sent a chill through the hearts of Washington’s Democrats.

If the recession ends, then the bailout frenzy will end, and it will be much harder to hand out taxpayers’ cash to political allies. With time running out on the crisis atmosphere, our hard-working public servants put in overtime last week to introduce to the public the next bailout candidate: the liberal newspapers.

Former Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks captured the mood well in her final column before joining the Obama administration. “It’s time for a government bailout of journalism,” she wrote, citing such possible steps as tax credits for newspaper subscriptions and more funding for public broadcasting. The parent company of the Times, by the way, is already in bankruptcy.

Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, held hearings last week to lay the foundation for a newspaper bailout. He is anxious about the fate of the Boston Globe, which is projected to lose $85 million this year, and he has argued for relaxing antitrust legislation that limits ownership of local media outlets.

Such a relaxation might allow for substantial consolidation in the news industry, which would, not insignificantly, advantage newspaper owners vis-à-vis their workers.

It seems to be acceptable in Democratic circles for an employer to take a hard line against workers, so long as that employer serves the greater political good. Which explains why nobody was dragged before an angry panel when the New York Times Co., owner of the Globe, walloped workers there.

‘Corporate Hardball’

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post described the company’s actions thusly: “In a striking example of corporate hardball, the New York Times Co. has threatened to shut down one of its journalistic jewels, the Boston Globe, unless the New England paper’s unions agree to sweeping concessions.”

To save the newspaper, the Globe’s largest union will have to accept a deal that includes an 8.4 percent pay cut and other concessions, the Globe reported on May 8. The union will vote next month.

Relaxing antitrust rules, as Kerry supports, would only increase the bargaining power of the largest media owners.

This recession has hit the newspaper industry hard. The New York Times Co., which owns the Times, the Globe, the International Herald Tribune and 15 other newspapers, had a net loss of $74.5 million, or 52 cents per share, during the first quarter of 2009, and experienced an advertising revenue decline of almost $124 million.

The Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer both closed this year. These newspapers were among the top 100 in newspaper circulation in 2007, and had combined daily readership of almost 400,000.

Bankruptcies and Layoffs

The companies that own the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Philadelphia Daily News have all filed for bankruptcy. Newspapers that aren’t closing their doors are making steep budget cuts. Almost 9,000 newspaper jobs have been eliminated in 2009, according to a Web site that is keeping track.

Interestingly, the news isn’t bad everywhere. In a pattern that is reminiscent of Fox News’ climb to television dominance, circulation for the right-leaning Wall Street Journal increased last year.

The Internet and proliferation of new media have provided enormous economic challenges to the old model of the local paper, but some firms continue to thrive nonetheless, firms that adhere to the highest journalistic standards. That suggests there is a political force that explains the bailout urgency of Democrats. They don’t want to lose their mouthpieces.

Media for Obama

An October 2008 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that, by a margin of 70 percent to 9 percent, American voters “overwhelmingly believe that the media wants Barack Obama to win the presidential election.”

With numbers that lopsided, is it any wonder that newspaper subscriptions are waning? How can you trust a news source that has established bias so convincingly?

If the Democrats succeed in passing a bailout package for newspapers, the potential for political harm will be unbounded.

Think about it: Creditors of Chrysler LLC that have participated in the government’s bailout of banks played along with the Obama administration’s attempt to use bankruptcy to provide a lucrative deal to organized labor. Creditors outside the bailout program, by contrast, recognized the raw deal they were being offered.

A news bailout would create a set of newspapers that are even more beholden to the Democrats than they have been in the past. We would adopt the Pravda model of journalism.

Supporters of a newspaper bailout argue that unbiased and professional journalism is necessary for the success of our democracy. On that, they are correct. But bailing out the firms that are currently struggling will do nothing to advance truth and freedom.

Sometimes, no news is good news.

How Business Schools Have Failed Business

Why not more education on the responsibility of boards?

MICHAEL JACOBS

As we try to understand why our economy is so troubled, fingers are increasingly being pointed at the academic institutions that educated those who got us into this mess. What have business schools failed to teach our business leaders and policy makers? There are three profound failures of sound business practices at the root of the economic crisis, and none of them have been adequately addressed by our business schools.

Just about everyone agrees that misaligned incentive programs are at the core of what brought our financial system to its knees. Countless individuals became multimillionaires by gambling away shareholders' money. Incentive systems that rewarded short-term gain took precedence over those designed for long-term value creation.

We could chalk this all up to greed, as many pundits have. But first we should ask how many of the business schools attended by America's CEOs and directors educate their students about the best way to design management compensation systems. Amazingly, this subject is not systematically addressed at most business schools, and not even discussed at others.

Secondly, as Washington scrambles to restructure the financial regulatory system, those who still believe in the private sector are asking why corporate boards were AWOL as institution after institution crumbled. Why did it take rumors of nationalization and a drop in Citicorp stock to below $2 a share to inspire Citigroup to nominate directors with experience in financial markets?

American icon General Electric was stripped of its coveted AAA-rating because of problems emanating from its financial services unit. Yet its board has only one director with experience in a financial institution. If it is the board's job to oversee a corporation, it seems logical that there would be a segment in the core curriculum of every business school devoted to board structure, composition and processes. But most programs don't cover the topic.

The third breakdown came in the investment community. Nearly 20 years ago I wrote a book titled "Short-Term America" that warned about the growing chasm between those who provide capital and the companies who use it. The concept is simple: When money provided to homeowners or businesses comes from an anonymous source, possibly half way around the world, there are serious challenges to operating a functioning system of accountability.

Nationally, finance departments at business schools offer hundreds of courses in asset securitization and portfolio diversification. They have taught a generation of financial leaders that risk can be diversified away. But in their B-school days, few investment bankers examined the notion of "agency costs." That concept explains that as the gulf between the provider and the user of capital widens, the risks involved with selecting and monitoring the participants in the portfolio increase. It should come as no surprise that financial institutions amassed securities that consist of a diversified portfolio of deadbeats.

About 70% of the shares of American corporations are held by institutional investors such as pension and mutual funds. These organizations are brimming with MBAs. But how many of these MBAs took a class devoted to how shareholders should exercise their rights and obligations as the owners of America's corporations? Few, if any. When shareholders are uneducated about their obligations, how can a corporate accountability system function properly?

Recently, when I delivered a guest lecture at another school, a distraught-looking student pulled me aside after class. She explained that my talk was very disturbing to her. After investing two years and $100,000, she was only weeks away from receiving her MBA. But prior to our class, she had never heard a discussion about board responsibilities or the rights of shareholders. She said she felt cheated.

By failing to teach the principles of corporate governance, our business schools have failed our students. And by not internalizing sound principles of governance and accountability, B-school graduates have matured into executives and investment bankers who have failed American workers and retirees who have witnessed their jobs and savings vanish.

Most B-schools paper over the topic by requiring first-year students to take a compulsory ethics class, which is necessary, but not sufficient. Would Bernie Madoff have acted differently if he had aced his ethics final?

Could we have avoided most of the economic problems we now face if we had a generation of business leaders who were trained in designing compensation systems that promote long-term value? And who were educated in the proper make-up and responsibilities of boards? And who were enlightened as to how shareholders can use their proxies to affect accountability? I think we could have.

America's business schools need to rethink what we are teaching -- and not teaching -- the next generation of leaders.

Mr. Jacobs, a professor at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flager Business School, was director of corporate finance policy at the U.S. Treasury from 1989 to 1991

President Obama failed to sell his budget

President Obama failed to sell his budget plans to the American people

Michael Goodwin

Now you know why President Obama went on Jay Leno. It's a lot more fun for him, and a lot easier to get applause, when people are laughing and having fun.

There were no yuks Tuesday night, and by my count, his first big smile came 46 minutes into a very sober press conference. It's no coincidence that he also suffered a setback to his aim of selling the public on the idea that the economy depends on his budget being passed intact.

"The budget is inseparable from this recovery," he said, putting his chips on a radical spending, borrowing and tax plan.

It's a bad bet, one he won't win - and shouldn't win.

Peppered with questions about the trillion-dollar deficits his proposal creates and the chorus of opposition from Democrats and Republicans, not to mention concern in Europe and China, Obama had no persuasive answers. His silver tongue seemed tied in knots when he was asked why, despite his promises to cutthe deficit, projections have itrising dramatically - trillionsbeyond what his own office estimates.

The true answer is that Obama wants to spend far more than the nation can afford, even with his huge tax hikes. And the more his plans become clear, the less convincing is his claim that they are all tied to the economic crisis.

His cap-and-trade carbon proposal, for example, would impose huge costs on businesses, which would in turn pass them on to customers. That's why critics say a more honest name for the plan is "cap and tax."

Obama did concede the growing tide of red ink had to be addressed, which he promised to do by repeating his mantra about "going line by line" to cut wasteful spending. He also trotted out the tired chestnut about "working on a bipartisan basis."

The problem with both those claims is that, so far, Obama hasn't done either. He has not cited a domestic program he finds worth cutting and has gained almost no GOP support for any major initiative.

Instead, he has shoveled record spending proposals out the door as though he is in a race with FDR to see who can get the most legislation passed in 100 days. And when anyone, Republican or otherwise, dissents, he accuses them, as he did again Tuesday night, of following "the very same policies" that created the problems.

It's a silly fight and one he doesn't need to pick. The country knows we have problems and most Americans are ready to support realistic solutions - as long as the massive spending is temporary.

But somewhere along the line, Obama has confused his election mandate with the belief he and his team have all the answers. The result is that the polarization he promised to fix is taking hold in ways that will be very difficult for him to change.

He should really just stick to the idea he presented in a winning summation. "I'm a big believer in persistence," he said, applying it to the economy as well as foreign relations. He admitted "we don't always have the right answers" and do make mistakes, but said, "I'm convinced we're making progress."

Progress - that's something we can all get behind. Busting the bank on a hope for miracles - that'll make the President a lonely man.