Episode 59 – The Politics of Process

Did you ever think it was possible to argue about arguing? Well, that’s what the Senate just did in voting to start the health care reform debate. Jeff and Glenn explain the politics of this vote and how the arcane Senate rules can impact the likelihood of reform. Always entertaining and informative, its PoliTalk, the weekly political podcast.

Check out the Senate Health Care Reform Bill for yourself. Click here to get the .pdf.

You can get the PoliTalk Podcast on  iTunes and Zune

Episode 58 – Debating Debt, Deficits and Job Creation

In this episode, Jeff and Glenn continue to the spirit of their National Debate Series and have a constructive argument over the national debt, annual deficits and how more jobs can be created. Is the Stimulus working as promised? Can it be expected to create jobs, or does that burden fall to the private sector? Are the banks, flush with cash from the bailouts and a record year on Wall Street, lending to small businesses or are they hoarding the money and making risky bets on financial instruments? In the end, they find common ground…and then wade into the politically explosive abortion issue.  Always entertaining and informative, it’s PoliTalk, your weekly political podcast.

You can get the PoliTalk Podcast on  iTunes and Zune

Fascinating View on Health Care by Ron Paul

Whatever side you are on, you have to appreciate Congressman Ron Paul for putting a serious, credible Libertarian view on health care and the war in Afghanistan.  Republicans should learn from him rather than isolating him and his ideas. His perspective on “Corporatism” vs. Capitalism is very powerful. Check out the video above. It is worth the 10 minute investment. Oh, and a special note to Larry King… you don’t thank a sitting Congressman for being on your show by saying “Thanks Ron”.

Debate Series Aims to Inform Discourse

The Fairfield Citizen just did a story on our upcoming debate event, the National Debate Series. Check it out here.

Here are some of our favorite quotes from the story:

Kimball and Gaudet have a singular mission: to bring civility and intelligence back to political conversation.

“It’s so much easier to spew rage than to engage in intelligent conversation,” Kimball said. “There are a lot of people who are fed up.”

When Kimball says “a lot of people,” he refers, in part, to the growing audience he and Gaudet get for their weekly podcast, “PoliTalk.” Available at iTunes and other online podcast hosts, PoliTalk is typically an hour-long conversation between the two men, both of whom name the weekly National Public Radio show “Car Talk” as their chief inspiration.

“We’re trying to inform and entertain,” Gaudet said, “when I think others are trying to inflame and entertain. Rush (Limbaugh) makes $30 million a year. I’d like to have that. Anger sells. But if we can change the tone of the discussion, I think we all benefit.”

“We get a lot of good information that we bring to the show, without making it sound like insider baseball,” said Gaudet, whose career has been spent mostly in marketing, technology and media. “We can have conversations that appeal to a broad audience, and, in a sense, an under served audience. [Other, more partisan shows] are preaching to the converted. We’re preaching to the convertible. That’s always your swing vote.”

Where’s Ross Perot When We Need Him?

What happened this past Tuesday night might cause a massive shift in the political landscape over the next five years. It could also be the catalyst for something that is much needed in American Politics today. But it’s not what you think.

You will hear in the coming days and weeks that the Republican victories were a vote against Obama. That this was a referendum against a far left agenda. That the Republican Party is back with a vengeance, and the Democrats have much to fear in terms of next years congressional elections, as they ponder how to vote on a sweeping program inclusive of government run Healthcare.

For the Democratic side, you will hear spin and back peddling. You will be confused as to why if you logged onto CNN.com yesterday AM, you only saw a single line about the elections on the front page. But you saw a lead article explaining why “the change we need” is taking so long.

And this is all true. But there is a greater truth, a greater opportunity.

Last night while watching election coverage on FOX, I saw that FOX convened a voter focus group in Virginia. Granted, most of the folks who are going to show up are probably conservatives, but there seemed to be a good mix of Democrats and Independents as well judging from the dialogue.

The commentator asked a really interesting question, I will paraphrase because I don’t recall his exact words. “Who is just angry at our government?” Three fourths of the hands in the room shot up as if they had just been offered free money to whoever raised their hand first.

Then the commentator asked, “Of those who are angry, who voted for Bob McDonnell?”. Every single person who claimed to be angry – voted for the Republican McDonnell.

The anger in America has shifted. The anger and protest that elected a Democratic President, has moved in favor of the Republicans. A protest vote against government is now a Republican vote.

Now let’s do the heavy lifting and thinking. Is this really a swing to the Republican Party?

No its not. It is however validation that government, as it currently exists, is not working for the American people. It is a referendum in favor of a third party, and against both parties. If the anger can shift so fundamentally, in 12 months, against an incredibly likeable President, then it means far more than a shift in political party momentum. It means its time for a viable third choice.

Let Election Day 2009 be the day the Americans collectively said “We’re mad as Hell, and we are not going to take it anymore”

We need change, and not the change that either party can provide.

What do you think?

Guest Blogger – Jeff Hine

Episode 57 – Pick an Option… Any Option

This episode of PoliTalk offers lots of options for listeners. The first half of the show features a discussion of the options facing the President for the war in Afghanistan. Glenn explains why there are no good options, and Jeff tries to completely change the discussion by offering up a totally different option. The options get more clear when it comes to health care reform and the future of the public option. Glenn explains why the public option, as positioned now, will ultimately work for the President…and Jeff explains why it might not…and why Hillary Clinton may have been a better option to lead this debate. Always entertaining and informative, it’s PoliTalk, your  weekly political podcast.

Join us in Boston on November 10, 2009! Register now, visit http://nationaldebateseries.com

You can get the PoliTalk Podcast on  iTunes and Zune

Time for a Main Street Recovery

2009 promises to be a very good year for Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. According to Wall Street estimates, his firm is expected to finish the year with $46 billion in revenues. In fact, it has already set aside $11 billion for its year-end bonuses, which is an average of $773,000 per employee.  Things are looking up for Mr. Blankfein, just a year after passing around a tin cup looking for taxpayer-funded bailout money.

2009 promises to be a very bad year for many small businesses. Drive down Main Street in Monroe and you can see the impact of the Great Recession – empty stores, vacant buildings and a large tract of land that was once going to be the town’s centerpiece of economic development, which now sits empty.

To understand what’s happening in towns like Monroe today, you have to go back to 1929. In response to the stock market crash of 1929, Sen. Glass and Rep. Steagall authored legislation that prevented banks from going into the investment business and taking working people’s hard-earned money and losing it. Sound familiar?  Glass-Steagall provided stability for the next 60 years, letting banks simply be banks, until the Reagan revolution and its chief economic proponent, Alan Greenspan, Chair of the Federal Reserve, began a sustained effort to undermine it. At about the same time, the financial industry started to pour buckets of money into lobbying and campaign contributions, spending $350 million in the 1998 campaign cycle alone. Then in November 1999, at around the same time banking giant Citicorp proposed a merger with Travelers insurance, which owned Soloman Smith Barney brokerage, Congress officially repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, making that new financial colossus legal.

With rules changed and regulations eased, Wall Street found new ways to make money, through complex financial instruments called derivatives and credit default swaps. These “too big to fail” bank-brokerage-insurance-financial conglomerates began to do the equivalent of walking into a casino and putting it all on red. Eventually our luck ran out, and they lost their bet.

The tragic irony is that taxpayers, like those who own small businesses,  bailed out the likes of Lloyd Blankfein. To return the favor, the Blankfeins of the world turned their backs on small business owners, making it harder for them to get loans for their business, instead using the money to continue making the same kind of risky bets that got us into this problem in the first place – and nobody’s stopping them.

During the campaign, President Obama said, “we cannot only have a plan for Wall Street. We must also help Main Street,” saying that “tough new regulations on financial institutions” are needed. He can make good on his words by resurrecting Glass-Steagall, enacting comprehensive financial reforms.  We can’t have a full economic recovery until you can drive down Main Street in Monroe, Conn. and see those once closed store fronts thriving, and small businesses, which are the engines of our economic growth, fueled by credit from banks. Wall Street has its recovery. Now it’s time for Main Street.

Episode 56 – Goldman Sachs and the State of Financial Regulation

2009 is proving to be a very good year for Wall Street, but times are still tough for people on Main Street. While the Dow passed the 10,000 mark and Wall Street bonuses will be very big, unemployment remains very high and businesses, especially small ones, are hurting. Jeff and Glenn explain why financial reforms may hold the key to encouraging economic recovery helping Main Street! And why the Administration needs to focus more on helping small business and less on Wall Street pay packages and Fox news. Always entertaining and informative, it’s PoliTalk, your weekly political podcast.

Join us in Boston on November 10, 2009! Register now, visit http://nationaldebateseries.com

You can get the PoliTalk Podcast on  iTunes and Zune

Did I Hear That Right?

In all the noise and anger over TARP, Recovery, and Healthcare reform, we as a nation discovered something far more acidic and corrosive to our democracy than any of the so called “socialist” agenda of government control.

It was late one night, and I was half watching, and half not, switching between the Yankees, CNN, Fox, and Discovery Channel, when I heard something that stopped me in my tracks. Thank goodness for Tivo, I stop; I rewind, and listen again, thinking I must have heard it wrong.  But I hadn’t….

What was it you ask that I heard, and we as a nation discovered?  Our Senators and Congressmen don’t actual read bills before they vote on them.

It’s difficult to do in a blog, but this would be the scene of the movie where there’s a long uncomfortable pause of disbelieve.  The characters would just look at each other and say “did that really happen?”  “Did he just say that they never actually read the bills that they vote on”?

Am I the only one who had a “you’ve got to be kidding me” moment?  The sad part is that I, like the rest of America, got sucked into the next sound bite, completely forgetting about the fact that billions of dollars of taxpayer money have been spent in government programs in the past 12 months, detailed in documents that our elected representatives don’t even understand themselves.  It was not until I was thinking of ideas for this post that I recalled the horror of learning how irresponsible government had become.

Sadder still was the fact that the press is not talking about this.

If an employee of a company entered into a contract with a supplier without reading the agreement, they’d call it something like “fired for cause”.

If it was the Military, and a General did not read a rules of engagement pact put together with a local authority, it might be called something like “gross dereliction of duty”.

So what do we call it when the officials that we elect to make decisions for us, and allocate our tax dollars, have no idea what they are signing up for when they vote?

In defense of this quirk in our system of government, insiders tell me that the legislative staff reads the bills.  Or more accurately the staff is briefed on the bill by lobbyist who wrote the bill, and then the staff briefs the lawmaker. Did I really just write that?  It does not seem it could be true?

So I leave it to you, the online politicos. What do we call it when our Senators and Congressmen act like sub prime mortgage buyers with no money, and don’t bother to read the fine print?

What are your thoughts?

Guest Blogger – Jeff Hine

Episode 55 – Politics of Afghanistan, Health Care Reform and Las Vegas Room Rates

Following up on last week’s in-depth discussion of Afghanistan, the PoliTalk boys turn their sights back home to talk about the political implications of what’s happening over there. They wonder what our end game is, and how various options will play politically back home. Moving to discuss the politics of another hot button issue, they explain how room rates at Las Vegas hotels are tied to the fate of health care reform.  They also explain why they are on a crusade to counter the hate-filled sensational bombastic rhetoric found on most political talk shows, and encourage their listeners to invest in and help re-brand the nature of political discourse. Always entertaining and informative, it’s PoliTalk, your weekly political podcast.

Join us in Boston on November 10, 2009! Register now, visit http://nationaldebateseries.com

You can get the PoliTalk Podcast on  iTunes and Zune