How to Raise the Dow by 5000 and Add 1,000,000 Jobs

"I think it's time to set the record straight.  There has been all this nonsense thrown around about how I'm a socialist, that I hate business, that my agenda is for government to take over the economy.

"It isn't true.  Yes, I flirted with a lot of left-wing thinking in my youth.  Who didn't?  But history's verdict over the past four decades is completely undeniable.  The free market, on a global scale, is the path to prosperity for the USA and the rest of the world.

"I am not an ideologue.  I'm a politician, and a pragmatic one.  The best politics for me and my party is to convince the US business community that the Democratic Party is a better vehicle for prosperity than the Republicans.  That isn't a strange idea.  Look at Jack Kennedy's tax cuts, and Bill Clinton's commitments to free trade and welfare reform.

"So, starting right now, here's the message to the US business community:  we are with you.  We get it.  We know perfectly well that government doesn't create jobs, and that we aren't going to prosper and compete in the world economy unless government is the wind under the wings of the free market.

"I'm announcing three steps today.  First, I am issuing an executive order that requires our agencies to implement the recommendations from leaders of the information technology industry that should save us $1 trillion dollars over the next ten years by going after waste, duplication, fraud, and abuse in federal programs.

"Second, I'm going to push for federal litigation reform.   I'm going to propose rules that say if  lawyers bring frivolous claims to court, they and their clients will have to cover the other side's legal fees.  Contingency fees will be capped, so that we aren't going to have lawyers getting multi-million dollar fee awards.

"Third, we are going to push to change our tax laws to ensure that if you take your company's profits and put them back into the business, they won't be taxed.  Period.

"And that's just a start.  From here on, so long as I'm President, I'm going to do what it takes to see that the federal government listens to business.  Here at the White House and in Congress, we are going to stop treating business people like criminals and start asking their advice."

Samizdat, sort of

I let myself down a little when these posts don't come out regularly but right now I'm writing mostly for the drawer.

This is different from something I've blogged about before, somewhat erroneously:  samizdat, the self-publication that Soviet authors were forced to engage in.  It was quiet publication, circulating manuscripts hand to hand.  Both for some level of protection, and because the authors probably couldn't get the materials published in the USSR even if they wanted to.   It isn't really writing for a drawer, where they stay.

Samizdat may be at the other end of the same scale as blogging, which is conspicuous self-publication at the click of a mouse.

Writing for the drawer, making a journal, whatever you call it, is writing for other reasons.

There is the ancient one: writers have to write like breathers have to breathe.

Also to make a record, published or not.

Also to exorcise demons.

As to the last, exorcism, it's double-edged.  If the point is therapy, then the more right down-to-the-bone personal, the better. But then the less likely you'd want anyone to see it.  If no one sees it, what has been revealed?  If nothing is revealed, does it just swirl around and go nowhere, and do nothing?  The Franz Kafka  - Emily Dickinson problems... ah, next post, or the next, or the next.