Liberal and Loving It

What the Obama campaign should do about the Palin announcement

absolutely nothing.

First off, there is a giant downside to talking about McCain's VP pick, it replaces the conversation over who will make the better president. And the McCain vs Obama discussion is a contest that Obama will win. Equally important, people are not going to decide based on the VPs, but on the presidential candidates.

Second, she appears to be a walking disaster. Letting her self destruct will be much more damaging to McCain that having the Dems be an instigator of it. When she does it all by herself it makes it completely apparent that she, and she alone, is the cause of her problems.

Third, the news media smells blood and an ongoing set of very interesting stories in her. They are going to tear into her a lot, even if the campaign doesn't do anything. And many independent groups will also do so.

The one thing the Obama campaign should do is get people to view this selection as a measure of McCain's judgment. Don't make too big a deal out of it - but try to make that connection now before she blows up, when the McCain campaign will go along with this measure.

Sarah Palin is her own worst enemy. When your opponent is going to keep hurting themselves, stay out of their way and let nature run it's course.

Mutually Assured Destruction - part II

The anti-union folks came up with the execrable amendments 47 & 49. (Spoiled trust-fund baby Jonathan Coors may have instigated this but the business community sure jumped on board quickly - and as such deserves equal opprobrium.)

So the pro-union folks came up with their counterstrike of 53, 55, & the Health Insurance Initiative (not numbered yet). And yes, the union backed proposals are as deadly to business as the business backed proposals are to the unions.

And all of the proposals are anti-worker as they will reduce the pay of workers (the business backed measures) or reduce the number of jobs in Colorado (the union backed measures).

This post is to discuss the stupidity of the Health Insurance Initiative.

An amendment to the Colorado Constitution concerning health care coverage for employees, and, in connection therewith, requiring employers that regularly employ twenty or more employees to provide major medical health care coverage to their employees; excluding the state and its political subdivisions from the definition of "employer"; allowing an employer to provide such health care coverage either directly through a carrier, company, or organization or acting as a self-insurer, or indirectly by paying premiums to a health insurance authority to be created pursuant to this measure that will contract with health insurance carriers, companies, and organizations to provide coverage to employees; providing that employees shall not be required to pay more than twenty percent of the premium for such coverage for themselves and more than thirty percent of such coverage for the employees' dependents; financing the costs of administering the health insurance authority and health care coverage provided through the authority with premiums paid by employers to the authority and, if necessary, such revenue sources other than the state general fund as determined by the general assembly; directing the general assembly to enact such laws as are necessary to implement the measure; and setting the effective date of the measure to be no later than November 1, 2009.

Lets put aside the question of should people even get their health insurance from their employer - that's how it works today for many. Lets just look at what this does.

First you have companies that do provide health insurance, but not at the mandated 80%/70% amounts. So let's take a real example of a company that pays 100% of the individual and 0% of the family part. And it is set up this way based on employee feedback because many employees are single and many others have a spouse's plan covering the spouse & kids. This change can be made at no cost to the company, but the employees will be worse off.

Lets take a second real example where a company provides health insurance at a bit below these percentages. But it's a really good plan, covering most everything, and is through Aetna so that claims are paid with a minimum of hassle. Again, at no additional cost to the company they can get a plan that covers less through a carrier that is a PITA to deal with, but meets the percentages. Again, the workers are less happy.

Now the above examples are the best case scenarios. The workers are a bit worse off, the business is a bit worse off, but no jobs were lost. Lets get in to the bad cases.

Next we have the case of a company that provides no health insurance or what they provide is so much less than this, that in either case they are looking at a much larger expense. What's key here is that this expense is per employee. Not per dollar paid to employees. Not per dollar of income received. It's a flat fee per employee.

So what this company must do is layoff every employee it can, while getting the remaining ones to work as long and as hard as possible. Better to layoff 1 person and pay 2 others for 20 hours/week of overtime each.

This measure will reduce jobs substantially in those industries that provide little or no health insurance. And those jobs are overwhelmingly lower paying jobs - this really hurts the blue collar worker.

But that's not the worst case. Lets now look at the companies that require lots of unskilled or semi-skilled labor, have a very low profit margin, and can be located anywhere. Those companies are gone. You can't bring in an added expense like this and still compete against companies that don't have this additional overhead.

Granted, these are jobs that suck. They don't pay well. Those workers having no health insurance is a national shame. But eliminating the job is not the answer because the job, lousy as it is, beats no job.

The Health Insurance Initiative will be devastating for the workers at the lower end of the economic scale in this state. And for most of them it doesn't mean they will get health insurance, it means they will go from a job with little or no health insurance ... to no job at all.

A postscript

As a business owner in an industry that does not have workers asking for unions (high-tech) the parts that really get my attention are the union-backed anti-business measures. Because those will destroy the high-tech start-up community.

But with that said, this was started by Jonathan Coors and associated bozos in the "business community" (who do not represent many of us business owners). They are the imbeciles who saw a smoothly running business/worker environment and decided to fuck it up.

All of these initiatives hurt the business economy and thereby the workers in this state. And the unions choose a terrible way to fight back. But the business community did fire first amd as such deservie the worst of our ire.

It's Joe Biden

from ABC News

The United States Secret Service has dispatched a protective detail to assume the immediate protection of Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., a source tells ABC News, indicating in all likelihood that Biden has been officially notified that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, has selected him to be his running mate.

It is amazing that they were able to keep it confidential this long. But I guess the secret service does need to move before the announcement.

I think this may be a brilliant move

Ok, on the surface this is Obama bringing in someone with boatloads of experience to answer the inexperienced charge leveled against him. And it does do that - and on foreign affairs which has become important recently with Russia as well as Afghanistan heating up.

But I think there is a subconscious part that is even bigger. America is ready to elect a black man as president. But, at the same time, many many people are unsure of exactly what it means. And that makes people uneasy.

Joe Biden is white male establishment. Possibly the most establishment politician in Washington. More so than even John McCain.

When people see the two of them together it will go a long way toward quieting the discomfort people have over what it means to elect someone different when his running mate is the epitome of the establishment.

Improving the economy - Colorado Style

let's start with this tidbit from Jared Bernstein

But tax policy can only offset the disconnect; it can't repair it. For that you need robust job creation, restraints on capital excesses, deep infrastructure investment, single-payer health care, and long-term energy policy with job-creating investments in green tech and alternative energy sources.

If we wait for Washington we're going to be waiting a long time for some of this. If we get our okole in gear here in Colorado, we can boost our economy - and do it quickly.

So here's what I think we need to do here, as quickly as possible, in the upcoming legislative session. If the Governor and the legislature rolls up their sleves and says they will complete these items, we could be starting a nice growth curve by summer.

1. Pass a sensible, comprehensive transportation bill that is improving our infrastructure as quickly as can be efficiently done.
2. Figure out how to make us a carbon neutral net electricity exporter within 6 years. This provides major benefits not only from the power generation but it will lock us in as the center of green energy in the country.
3. Make healthcare available to all and provided directly (not through an employer). This both solves the healthcare crisis and makes businesses more efficient. (Maybe the answer is requiring all insurance companies to offer a basic HMO to families at a price that can't exceed by more than 10% the best price they offer any company.)
4. Fix TABOR!
5. Figure out what we are going to do for transportation - rail, electric cars, etc. We need to address congeston, moving beyond oil, everything.
6. Fix our K-12 schools. BVSD is failing 30% of their students. DPS it's over 50%. We cannot succeed as a society if this many students are not given the fundamental skills necessary to succeed.
7. Fix Higher-Ed. A bachelors degree is now the minimum needed to have a decent shot in life. We need to first work to get all students through college (not just high school), and second have Higher-Ed be free just as K-12 is

Yes the above is a substantial list. But I think it is eminently doable. And the alternative is what? That we punt on one of the above? Where will we be then?

These are also issues that will have the support of the vast majority of the residents of this state. Yes people will argue on the details. But the basic concepts will have wide support.

Good list? Bad? Missing anything?

Everything's going well, so lets fuck it up

Colorado has a pretty good business climate, from the perspective of both business and labor. Is it perfect? No. But it runs pretty well. Companies are able to operate and succeed. Unemployment is a bit lower here than elsewhere, there are a lot of well paying jobs, and labor strife is pretty minimal.

Most of the effort here is that of businesses going on about their business. And the bottom line is profit for the owners and salaries for the workers all come out of that effort so the concentration on actually working means there's more for everyone. Yes, there is always a tension between company and worker. There is always a tension between union and executives. There should be.

So let's look at the upcoming ballot initiatives being proposed. There's bad ones on both sides but lets start with the worst one. The Just Cause Initiative has the potential to inflict more damage on this state than TABOR, and to do so rapidly. This will destroy parts of the economy, and the jobs that existed in them. It is a bullet aimed at the heart of Colorado's economy. Lets take a look at this train-wreck, here's the title:

An amendment to the Colorado constitution concerning cause for employee discharge or suspension, and, in connection therewith, requiring an employer to establish and document just cause for the discharge or suspension of a full-time employee; defining "just cause" to mean specified types of employee misconduct and substandard job performance, the filing of bankruptcy by the employer, or documented economic circumstances that directly and adversely affect the employer; exempting from the just cause requirement business entities that employ fewer than twenty employees, nonprofit organizations that employ fewer than one thousand employees, governmental entities, and employees who are covered by a collective bargaining agreement that requires just cause for discharge or suspension; allowing an employee who believes he or she was discharged or suspended without just cause to file a civil action in state district court; allowing a court that finds an employee’s discharge or suspension to be in violation of this amendment to award reinstatement in the employee's former job, back wages, damages, or any combination thereof; and allowing the court to award attorneys fees to the prevailing party.

The honeybee is a small part of our environmental system and yet very critical to the entire system. In the Denver/Boulder area we have a vibrant high-tech industry, including a gigantic number of start-ups. This area actually has a higher percentage of high-tech jobs than Silicon Valley (Silicon Valley has a larger total number).

A key component of this system is all the start-ups. Sun located here because of all these businesses. Conoco-Phillips for the same. We are becoming a center for renewable energy research in large part due to these start-ups. To have a future with these kind of high-paying jobs that in turn generate more jobs (all job growth in the U.S. comes from small companies), we need these companies.

Now lets look at start-ups. Most of them fail. Of the ones that succeed, most of them come very close to failing several times before they finally make it. It is a very tough Darwinian environment where you have to be very good, react very quickly, and have an idea that people actually will pay for once it's delivered. And the people who put money into these ideas have to look for the ones where the odds, while bad, are better than any of the other opportunities.

So what does this initiative do to start-up companies? It kills them. Here's why (speaking from personal experience):

1. I have fired people who are competent. Because competent is not sufficient, to survive in the start-up world you need people who are incredibly good (the rule of thumb is the top 5%). Having to hang on to people who are average (or god forbid mediocre) means we get beat by another company that is staffed with superstars.
2. I have fired superstars. Because how well a team works together has a larger impact on success than the skills of any individual. So someone who is the best programmer, but does not play well with others, is actually a detriment to the team as a whole.
3. I have made mistakes. In a start-up you have to make decisions quickly. By definition some of those decisions are wrong. But if you make sure on every decision, once again you're out of business. So at times I have certainly fired people who were competent, and would have done a good job, but I made a bad decision.
4. Lets say they are clearly incompetent. We hired (on contract) a sales team who's job was to call leads. And they were required to work at least 20 hours/week. So when we ended the contract and ended up in court as to was it "for cause," even though the sales team admitted they had made a total of 1 call over 2 months and had worked under 20 hours some weeks, the judge still found it was not for cause (and we had to pay for an additional 30 days of time). So even if someone is clearly incompetent, that doesn't mean a judge will agree.

So what does the above do to startup companies (which grow to over 20 people quite quickly)? They will get saddled with incompetents. And that will have a devastating effect on morale as the others then have to work even harder to make up for these boat-anchors. A successful start-up is a group of people that are putting their heart and soul into making a long-shot a success. This kills that drive.

And so what happens to the venture capital money? Venture capitalists aren't stupid - that money all goes out of state to places where a company can fire those they need to fire. For really good ideas they will tell people that if they move to any other state, they will fund them. Which is ironical since we presently have people moving to Colorado for the start-up environment here.

In short, rather than building on the Silicon Valley we presently have here and possibly becoming the top place in the country for renewable energy start-ups, this will stop virtually all future start-ups and piss away what we presently have. This puts Colorado on the road to an economy where the only businesses here are ones that must be here such as retail. For any company that can locate elsewhere, it will.

My company competes world-wide. We derive no advantage from our geographical location. Nor do we derive an advantage from being inside the U.S. We have competitors located in both China and India and their location also has no impact on who wins sales. We successfully compete against these other companies while paying higher salaries, health insurance, more in taxes, etc. But we can't compete with this proposed albatross around our neck.

And here's the kicker, if we go out of business, there's no jobs. Even if this union led wet-dream public school teacher level of job protection is imposed, when a company shuts down, all the jobs are gone. So if you impose iron-clad job protection for all employees at a 55 employee start-up, you have not protected those 55 people from being fired - you have destroyed those 55 jobs.

In addition, this does not protect the job, it protects the bozo presently holding the job. When we fire someone, it's rarely a downsizing, it's because we need someone better. So the job still exists, it's just we will offer it to someone else. So this initiative does not protect jobs per-se, it merely protects the person presently in that job who is inadequate for the position.

Ok, so this initiative, if passed, will drive jobs out of state, destroy the high-tech business environment built up at great effort here, and devastate our economy. Because of how damaging it will be, hopefully it will fail and then we're done - right?

No. Even if this fails, it has the potential to cause quite a bit of damage this election year due to blow-back. My plan was to donate the maximum to Betsy Markey and Joe Whitcomb. And probably to Joe Rice and Morgan Carroll if their races were looking close. All gone. I donate to Act-Blue candidates every month. No more. There's needs vs preferences. I need to keep my company in business. I have put a ton of money and effort into it and I have a lot of employees who depend on our success for their monthly paycheck. That responsibility comes before my preference in a number of legislative races. My company will survive another 2 years of Marilyn Musgrave. It probably won't survive this initiative.

I'm just one person. But I'm not the only one. Virtually every liberal/progressive/Democrat/etc in the high-tech industry will be devoting some, if not all, of their time and effort this election to defeating this proposed disaster. Because like me, while they would prefer to see progressive candidates win in November, they're more concerned about having a job after November.

And in every single high-tech company there is an example where you can say "imagine if we could not have fired *****" and everyone there will shudder at the thought. This initiative does not appeal to those who are good at their job, it appeals to the marginally competent. Every progressive who looks at this and shudders at it's effect, that's one less person that will be out there working for a progressive candidate because their time and money will be focused on defeating this.

It also means people like me are being driven into the arms of the business interests opposing this (you know - the bad guys - Republicans). We might find other common ground, such as taking on the teacher's unions in order to fix the public schools here. That would be a good thing for the state, but a bad thing for all the unionized incompetent school teachers.

In other words, this initiative is a horrible idea, not just for businesses, competent employees, Democratic candidates, and the state economy, but potentially also harmful for the unions themselves. It's amazing but it look like ProtectFuckColoardo'sFuture has managed to propose an initiative that causes major harm, while providing nothing positive.

As to those that will say this is just a response to Amendments 47 & 49, when someone else is drowning kittens your response should not be "well the we're going to drown puppies." A pox on both your houses! (What we really need is a well funded progressive group dedicated to a NO on all these proposals. I'd much prefer to donate to that rather than Coloradans for Responsible Reform which is staying silent on 47/49.)

Election Results

I will pull numbers from the County Clerk sites as they post them and provide totals below. Kudos to Boulder, Broomfield, Jefferson, & Weld counties - they already have their numbers up. (Maybe Hillary Hall is finally getting her office operating smoothly.)

Most impressive reporting - Weld (first out) and JeffCo - both have updates about every 20 minutes. And hat tip to Clear Creek for completing their counting the quickest (all 477 votes).

Most impressive Clerk's web page - JeffCo by a mile. Most suck-o Grand (it's a PDF), and Clear Creek & Gilpin (they have nothing).

Eagle & Clear Creek told me that they don't know where they will post on their website and Gilpin isn't posting (but will fax me). Come on guys, what century are you living in? Eagle County Clerk & Recorder wins biggest doofus award - 11:30 and still nothing reported.

Update 13: Joan Fitz-Gerald just conceeded.

Update 18: I think this is 100% for everyone

County	Joan Fitz-Gerald		Jared Polis		Will Shafroth
	vote	%	vote	%	vote	%
Adams	4,779	38	5,955	47	1,983	16
Boulder	8,082	36	8,830	39	5,809	26
Broomfield	1,208	35	1,751	51	475	14
Clear Creek (via phone)	380	80	54	11	43	9
Eagle	457	34	573	42	319	24
Gilpin (via fax)	225	55	134	33	47	12
Grand	307	47	238	36	109	17
Jefferson	1,664	46	1,463	41	478	13
Summit	552	49	272	24	293	26
Weld	527	39	672	50	152	11
totals	18,181	38	19,942	42	9,702	20

SD-18

Congratulations to Rollie Heath - I know you will do a great job representing us. And condolances to Cindy Carlisle, you put your heart & soul into this race.

County	Cindy Carlisle		Rollie Heath
	vote	%	vote	%
Boulder - 85%	5,898	44	7,623	56

The primary is this Tuesday

How can I tell? Because the number of visitors to this blog is climbing exponentially. Traffic here is not based on what I write but almost entirely on the voting cycle. Large bump when mail ballots first arrive, giant bump as we approach election day.

So if this is your first time here, welcome. '08 election resources are over to the left. Google searching is over to the right. Links to numerous CD-2 election resources is your best bet for the CD-2 election. You may also want to read why I support Jared Polis and why I support Cindy Carlisle.

And finally, my guesses as to the final vote in the various primaries in the state:

CD-2
Jared Polis - 46%
Joan Fitz-Gerald - 40%
Will Shafroth - 14%

SD-18
Cindy Carlisle - 54%
Rollie Heath - 46%

CD-5
Doug Lamborn - 38%
Bent Rayburn - 31%
Jeff Crank - 31%

CD-6
Mike Coffman - 48%
Wil Armstrong - 29%
Ted Harvey - 12%
Steve Ward - 11%

Oh, and the combination of Jared and Cindy will annoy the heck out of the Boulder Political Elite. How dare the voters not follow their lead. So we not only will get thebest two candidates, but we also have that benefit from their wins.

The Letter

For those that want to see the infamous letter from Joan Fitz-Gerald to the Summit County Board of Commissioners, here is a copy I received from a source I trust.

Download fitzgerald_letter_to_summit_county.pdf

groundswell

groundswell is the latest hot marketing book in the high-tech community (and I believe in a lot of the rest of the business community).

The book is Forrester Research's look at what Web 2.0 means for business. What's fascinating for everyone here is it's look at how people use Web 2.0 for their political information.

For those wondering what Web 2.0 is, the technical answer is social technologies like blogs (that's us!) social networks (like MySpace), YouTube, twitter, forums, wikis, etc.

But the best way to look at it is in terms of the relationship between companies, their customers, future customers, and others. What Web 2.0 does is turn it in to a 2-way conversation. This is radically new to business.

In the past a business owned a 1-way conversation about it's product. Marketing put together programs and those all went from company to the market. Even info from the customer was tightly controlled by the company - the company would select the questions for a survey.

So how does this impact politics? Well Forrester brings up the recent example of what happened on Obama's site after he reversed himself on FISA. The largest group now on MyBarackObama is the one opposed to that switch. He's learned the downside of that 2-way communication.

But it's more than 2-way communication, it's many-way communication. If it was just everyone able to talk back to the company or politician then it's not that big a change. But what we have now is N-way communication where everyone is communicating with everyone.

When done well, it is an incredibly powerful mechanism. And Obama has just scratched the surface with his effort, but it's still worlds beyond McCain. We'll see significant advances in this over the next 10 - 20 years every election.

Is this important? Yes. It's going to decide elections. And Democrats have an advantage here.

Ok, what are we looking at? This shows how active voters are in 6 categories of social activities on the web. If one of those bars was at 100% it would mean every voter in the country was involved in that activity.

The white bar is the average for adults in the U.S. for that activity across all interests from eBay to celebrity gossip to yes, politics.

Look first at the bottom "Inactives." The inverse of that number is the percentage of people using web 2.0 for politics. So 60% of Democrats and over 50% of Republican and independents fall into one or more of the 5 preceeding categories.

Note: Independents in the Forrester numbers are people who actually vote a split ticket, it is not based on registration. So independents here are the ones who decide the election in the close races.

Ok, so we Dems are more active. And you see this in all 5 basic activities where Democrats have an edge. This means more posts, more comments, and even more people lurking. Content is king in web 2.0. And viewing is a close second.

What is even more interesting however is that over 50% of independents are using web 2.0 for part or all of their political news. Keep in mind web 2.0 is not reading candidate websites, news media websites, etc. None of that (outside of forums, blogs, etc) falls in this category.

Over 50% of Independents are using blogs, YouTube, forums, etc. for their political information. 10% of them are pulling in RSS feeds (Collectors), etc to get a stream of info. This is why Allen's "Macaca moment" killed him - a tremendous number of voters are interacting with this stuff.

To shift to local news, what does this mean for this blog? Well, it's not great for interactivity (so come on people - comment!). But it is a good source of local politcal news so it provides well for Collectors and Spectators. And this shows in the site stats which are totally driven by the election calender.

So we're a small part of the web 2.0 political community here in Boulder. But we probably get a significant percentage of the 60% of local voters coming here occasionally. It doesn't mean what I write convinces them - but hey, at least they're reading it. I'm happy with that.

To everyone reading this - thank you. (And please leave a comment occasionally.)

How to fight the Republican gas price attack

It looks like the main issue Republicans are going to hammer Democrats over in this election is oil prices. This strikes a lot of Democrats as ineffective since the fault for the present crisis is clearly due to Republican ineptitude.

That would be a mistake. As the Denver Post reports:

"Americans just want something done about this problem. . . . They don't want to go back over what's already happened, whether the Bush administration has screwed things up," said Karlyn Bowman, an expert on public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.

"I think that public has been rethinking the energy issue. You're definitely seeing some movement in the direction of more drilling," she said.

In other words, we're in a world of hurt right now and people want solutions right now. Discussing who's fault it is is not just irrelevant to the problem at hand, but is wasting time that could be spent addressing the issue.

So what to do? Well one key piece is clearly bringing forth a credible "Manhattan Project" type plan to bring us to energy independence (and drastically reduced carbon emissions) as quickly as possible. And this must include a plan to move all new vehicles off of gas within the next 2 years. The immediacy of that shift starting would have an immediate impact on oil prices as the oil producing countries would then be strongly incented to reduce prices to the level that the issue loses it's urgency.

Ok, that's all well and good. It is actually addressing the problem and all of the policy wonks in the country will be thrilled. Unfortunately, while the above helps in the political discussion, it's not a home run. It's barely a single. It's not sexy, it's complicated, and it doesn't have a giant impact today.

So what if we add this little zinger to the equation. According to ABC News:

In the most recent quarter, Exxon Mobil said it spent $8 billion buying back stock, versus $7 billion on capital and exploration expenditures.

What if the Democrats proposed a law that restricts stock buy-backs at the oil companies to 5% of the amount the spend on exploration (and alternative energy production)? And in addition point out that there are enough approved leases, off-shore as well as on-shore, for the oil companies to be drilling tomorrow if they invested all their profits in doing so.

The beauty of this approach is it pushes the drilling solution back on to the oil companies. Plus it makes the Republicans look like shills for the oil companies rather than people trying to find a solution.

Because how do they counteract such a proposal? It won't fly politically to say that Congress needs to do twice as much so that the oil companies can spend half their profits on increasing their stock price instead of increasing the supply of oil.

I think putting this proposal out there would destroy this as an issue for the Republicans. Plus, while it will take some discussion to determine if it's a good idea, it's definitely worth considering.