The American Roadmap (Part 2 of 3)

(Continued from Part 1)

Every great nation in history has existed from a position of strength. It’s often been said that the only price liberty will accept is blood. But what underlies great nations has always been a sound economy. America’s rise to power, like Britain’s before it, and Rome’s and future powers like China and Brazil and India, relied or will rely on a sound, robust economy. An ability to defend the nation, an ability to care for the downtrodden, an ability to go to the moon ALL depend on the wealth of nations. That wording is chosen deliberately because the wealth of nations, a work by Adam Smith postulates that market economies are the most productive and socially beneficial economies for their societies.

Market Recovery

Just a quick question for those of you touting Obama's economic recovery. Below is a chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) for the last 10 years (1999 to 2009).

That's a recovery?

By that logic, a leg amputation for a hangnail is a successful surgery. Look at the chart. 2003-2004 is a recovery.

Axelrod email crimes

That's right Mr. Axelrod, and everyone else at the White House, crimes. Direct Marketing is an interesting business. It basically consists of the effort of creating a message and sending that message to a targeted group of people, through any number of channels - telemarketing, direct mail or email for example. There's a lot of complexity underlying how that's done, particularly if it's done well.

If it's not done well, it goes to the wrong target, or a mass untargeted group, or includes people who don't want to be included, or worse. And there are a lot of ways it can go wrong. And I know that personally, since it's my day job to manage direct marketing campaigns.

One of the touchiest areas around direct marketing involves privacy. People who have asked to not be solicited and are solicited are having their privacy violated. It's something to take seriously, so much so that there are laws against violating privacy, specifically related to telemarketing, and email spam.

With that in mind, recently the White house sent out what appeared to be a spam type message, regarding health care. The issue was brought to the nation's attention in an at length exchange between Fox News' Major Garrett and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on the matter.

The problem was serious enough, that as Politico reports the White House followed up on the issue by making changes to it's email rules.

“We are implementing measures to make subscribing to e-mails clearer, including preventing advocacy organizations from signing people up to our lists without their permission when they deliver petition signatures and other messages on individual’s behalf,” spokesman Nick Shapiro said in a statement Sunday night.

...

“The White House e-mail list is made up of e-mail addresses obtained solely through the White House website. The White House doesn't purchase, upload or merge from any other list. … [A]ll e-mails come from the White House website as we have no interest in emailing anyone who does not want to receive an email.

“If an individual received the e-mail because someone else or a group signed them up or forwarded the email , we hope they were not too inconvenienced. Further, we suggest that they unsubscribe from the list by clicking the link at the bottom of the e-mail or tell whomever forwarded it to them not to forward such information anymore.”

The complaints concerned a 1,500-word e-mail sent Thursday in the name of White House senior adviser David Axelrod, including “8 common myths about health insurance reform.” The e-mail mimicked the style of chain e-mails attacking President Barack Obama’s health-reform plan. The subject line: “Something worth forwarding.”

The White House had sent other e-mails to the list without complaint.

The email even sounds like spam in the title. Despite Politico's attempt in the last line to run interference for the White House, serious questions remain unanswered. It doesn't matter if 500 lists went out without complaint, this one is the one where the problems exist. The question is why did it happen?

The White House is clearly trying to deflect blame by indicating some organizations mass enrolled others without their consent. Maybe that's the case, but maybe it isn't. If this were a private company, no doubt the Federal Trade Commission would be all over it wanting to see the database, and understand what the company has done to be compliant with the CAN-SPAM act of 2003 and the changes of 2008.

Regardless of the spam aspect of the situation there are some real ethical concerns with these unintended recipients.

1) How did the White House get their email addresses?

2) Why did they not have any sort of gatekeeper mechanism (for example a verification step) in place to prevent this from happening?

3) Did the White House willing accept these mass lists without any sort of screening process or at least questioning the list sources and contents?

4) What other private data might the White House have, just because they think the target of the data might be someone 'fishy'?

These are legitimate questions and the answers might, if not prove criminal activity, at least provide some difficult to explain away ethical shortcomings of the White House, Mr. Axelrod or, more likely the scapegoat they decide to blame the whole issue on if it ever gets that far.

Obama Foreign Policy: Debacles

Just a quick recap. Remember a couple of months back, all those media reports about how wonderful Obama's foreign trips and speeches apologizing for America were? In truth it was bad. And now it's gotten worse. Obama's been leveraging his community organizer past to try to organize a world community. He's got his "we're all in this together" philosophy and he's trying to share it with Hamas and Chavez, and Ahmadinejad and others.

The problem is - we aren't all in this together. There are those who would gladly see the US destroyed, or Israel wiped off the map. That is not together-hood. The do not see a chance for reconciliation - they see weakness and reluctance, and they are taking advantage of it.

Let's do a little exercise in comparing Obama then to Obama now.

THEN:

(Just a sample)

-We've got to close Guantanamo

-Saying during the apology tour, that the US has committed acts of arrogance

-We should not have gone into Iraq

-We need to go further in Afghanistan

-Not following the proper etiquette with the Queen of England

-Bowing before the King of Saudi Arabia

-A feeble response to North Korean nuclear tests and rocket tests

-Joe Biden will be my foreign policy guy

AND NOW:

-Thugocracy in Iran killing protesters in the streets and a weak response from the leader of the free world
-North Korea missiles aimed at Hawaii and they're threatening to harm the US if attacked (including apparently, having the sanctions enforced while they try to sell illegal arms to others).

-Chinese ships playing chicken with American ships.

-China and Russia trying to take the US dollar off the world stage as the world's currency reserve.

-Al Qaida admitting they would use nuclear weapons on the US if they could just get their hands on them in Pakistan

Guess what Mr. President, it's a dirty world and there are same bad, bad people out there who don't have your country's best interests at heart. To call your foreign policy anything other than a debacle would be being generous.

Let's do another quick compare and contrast:

-Bush managed to free Iraq from the oppression of Saddam Hussein. Obama's premature withdrawal has sparked an uptick in violent action in the country

-Bush removed the Al Qaida supporting Taliban from power in Afghanistan, Obama's going to try a surge to prevent them from regaining power in the region, in this case by taking parts of Pakistan and their nuclear weapons.

-Bush tried to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestinians. Obama is trying to dictate the conditions to it's ally.

-Bush kept Americans safe from attack after 9/11 for over 7 years. Obama has done so for 5 months. So far so good, but it's got a long way to go to prove his approach will be effective as President Bush's approach actually was.

Those who had derided Bush's foreign policy stance as arrogant or 'cowboy diplomacy' can not argue with the relative successes of Bush compared to Obama. And the excuse that Obama inherited a mess won't wash - EVERY President has inherited a very difficult and often dangerous foreign relations situation because the world is a dangerous place; always was, always will be.

To try to not take ownership 5 years in is no longer acceptable. You won the job Mr. President, the responsibilities are yours now. So just do your job and stop the PR tour, stop the blame game. Just do your job.

Because when you pander, Europe loves you

Dear President Obama;

Your effort in Europe to talk down the Bush administration, and to talk down America isn't proceeding with enough force as required. We realize you were doing it to get people in Europe to like you but they didn't sign on for your global economic rescue plan, and they didn't sign on to more Afghanistan. It gets worse when you consider Turkey.



In fact, it appears they dislike you as much as they disliked President Bush.

All this despite your best efforts at pandering to Europe.

The lesson? Well, you could assume the insanity approach is the best approach - keep trying to pander. Or you could realize that no matter what you do, there are people who just don't like America.

As an aside, another lesson to be learned: you could have done your homework before the trip. It appears that since you didn't get anything you'd announced you wanted to get, you either didn't have pre-meetings and just weren't prepared, or else you and your team of advisers are lost. Either way, you're making George Bush look better and better. And I thought you were incapable of performing miracles.