Monday, November 9, 2009
Attorney General Elect Ken Cuccinelli (VA) Describes Democratic Party Looting
In the above video, then State Senator Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA) describes how he has had to fight Democratic Party officials' lying and manipulation to try to hold the line on government waste and mismanagement.
Aaron Biterman recaps some of the victories of the Republican Liberty Caucus on the RLC site. He writes:
>Another election gone by, and it turned out quite well for the Republican Party overall and the Republican Liberty Caucus in specific.
Republicans elected new Governors in New Jersey and Virginia. Neither of the candidates, Chris Christie or Bob McDonnell, was endorsed by the Republican Liberty Caucus, but we believe they will provide a better vision for their states than their respective opponents.
In Virginia, voters elected State Senator Ken Cuccinelli to the post of Attorney General. Cuccinelli is a social and fiscal conservative, and some RLC members have been offended by his social conservatism. Still, he seems to be one of the few politicians in the state that understands the concept of limited government, and has a voting record consistent with the RLC’s goals. His new position elevates Cuccinelli to one of the most high-level advocates of limited government in the country.
RLC members in Virginia worked hard to help Cuccinelli win the nomination for Attorney General, and many contributed to his campaign directly. Cuccinelli has said that he will not enforce laws he deems unconstitutional. In 2007, Cuccinelli took the time to drive several hours to address a small group of RLC members. View his speech to RLC members at YouTube.
In the RLC’s biggest victory of the night, RLC National Committeeman Dan Halloran was elected to the New York City Council in a Queens district that leans heavily Democrat. Halloran is also the state Chair of the Republican Liberty Caucus in New York. He worked tirelessly to become elected and will join just four other Republicans on the 51-member City Council.
The RLC also had some other significant victories in New Jersey and New Hampshire. Incumbent Michael Patrick Carroll, who the RLC discovered earlier in the year, was re-elected to his New Jersey House seat. Perhaps the most successful liberty-oriented politician in the state, Michael Doherty, was elected to an open seat in the New Jersey State Senate. The RLC profiled Doherty in an earlier edition of our newsletter.
In the Granite State, Jim Forsythe led a team of liberty-loving Republicans that successfully helped three candidates obtain victory. Political newcomer Lynne Blankenbeker was elected in a special election to the New Hampshire House, and RLC members Phil Greazzo and Cameron DeJong were elected to Alderman and Selectman positions in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Several non-endorsed candidates with strong libertarian leanings were also successful on Election night, including Kim Rafferty, who was elected to the Birmingham City Council in Alabama, and Shaun Kenney, who was elected to a County Supervisor in Fluvanna County, Virginia. Additionally, Lisa Marie Coppoletta has advanced to a run-off in a race for San Marcos City Council in Texas.
Unfortunately, TABOR ballot initiatives — which would tie revenue increases to population and inflation growth to keep spending in check — were defeated by voters in Washington state and Maine. The gay marriage ballot initiative in Maine passed, overturning gay marriage in the state, while voters in Washington state chose to extend rights for gays and lesbians.
The nine victories for RLC-endorsed candidates this fall combined with the five spring victories (in Arizona, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Texas) have resulted in a very successful off-year election for liberty-focused Republicans.
Congratulations are extended to all of the above candidates, our other endorsed candidates, our supporters, and the folks that helped our endorsed candidates succeed
How to find a job in a High Unemployment World
Sharon Gitelle of Forbes has posed a question to the bloggers on the Forbes network and aims to discuss the results in a conference call with Carl Lavin, Forbes's managing editor. Forbes just covered a case, Prudential v. Giacobbe, on which I worked as an expert witness, so this is my second crossing of paths with Forbes today (the first was indirect but still, something of a coincidence).
Most students realize that the rejection rate will be higher than the acceptance rate, something that writers, actors and others in competitive fields know, but something that is always difficult to accept. I point out to my classes that success only comes from rejection; that Babe Ruth led the American league in strikeouts as well as home runs; and that Sylvester Stallone was rejected 150 times when he was trying to market the manuscript for Rocky (I got the last statistic from an Anthony Robbins tape circa 1990).
Informational interviewing works because managers are often interested in advising young people interested in the field. The "invisible job market" whereby jobs are filled through contacts is only accessible through informational interviewing. And the information gained in the interviews will give job applicants a leg up over others who lack inside information about the field.
Handling of the informational interview can be taken to high levels of sophistication. A good sales person can probably land a job in the informational interview without asking for one (remember, the condition of informational interviewing is that the applicant is not seeking a job). In the good years of the late 1990s I had MBA students at NYU landing an offer in one informational interview. That is less likely to occur now unless the applicant has strong sales skills. But a sequence of 20-50 informational interviews will land a job.
At one point I went on about a dozen informational interviews myself. My rejection rate to get in the door was about 80%, acceptance 20%. I did not get any offers (I did it during one summer) but had I continued I do not doubt I would have. Compare the 20% interview acceptance rate with the 1-3% acceptance rate characteristic of mass-mailed job letters. Moreover, the interviews are more productive because they are learning and relationship-building experiences.
Prior to informational interviewing the student should have set a life goal and mission. This is extremely difficult for about 20 percent of students; easy for about 20 percent; and a matter of mild indifference to the rest. A student with a focused goal can gain expertise in the field and will be motivated to put up with failure that leads to success. Developing a mission about which the graduate is enthusiastic is of incalculable value in today's world, where ethical confusion (which is not the same as ethical ambiguity) reigns supreme.
An individual with a moral sense that their professional objective is a personal mission will be focused and highly motivated. Clear goals work in a range of ways, and this is one of them. Combine that with inside information gleaned from informational interviews and a willingness to turn over every stone, and the worst job market will not prove disappointing.
Question:
Recently, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a jump in the unemployment rate to 10.2%.Some economists think we could be looking at 10.5% by early next year.
Given these grim forecasts, how do you counsel recent college graduates and others entering the job market for the first time in this employment climate? Is there any advice or strategies you find particularly useful?
I have taught in business schools since 1991, most recently as an adjunct in the Langone MBA program in the NYU Stern School of Business for the past 13 years and in Brooklyn College's Economics Department as a tenured associate professor for the past 11. During all of those years I have addressed this question in my managerial skills and organizational behavior courses. Indeed, I have done so since I first started teaching at Clarkson University located in New York's 23rd Congressional District.
There are three steps to finding a job. The first is to have clearly defined goals and a mission. The second is to learn first hand about your chosen profession through intensive informational interviewing. The third is to utilize all available avenues, to include direct mail, Website and help wanted ads, search firms, job fairs, college recruiting and personal contacts as well as informational interviewing.
In What Color Is Your Parachute? Richard N. Bolles outlines a useful goal setting and informational interviewing approach that may be limited for college grads and MBAs in that he does not detail the concept of cold call informational interviewing that can be quite valuable in major job markets like New York's and other large cities'.
The idea of cold call informational interviewing is to arrange an in-person meeting with an experienced manager or professional in the field that the student is considering. This is done by:
-writing a letter requesting an informational interview that makes clear that he or she is not seeking a job but rather information on specified topics such as emerging trends in the field or how to break into the field;
-in the letter, setting a time that the student will call to set up a meeting;
Most students realize that the rejection rate will be higher than the acceptance rate, something that writers, actors and others in competitive fields know, but something that is always difficult to accept. I point out to my classes that success only comes from rejection; that Babe Ruth led the American league in strikeouts as well as home runs; and that Sylvester Stallone was rejected 150 times when he was trying to market the manuscript for Rocky (I got the last statistic from an Anthony Robbins tape circa 1990).
Informational interviewing works because managers are often interested in advising young people interested in the field. The "invisible job market" whereby jobs are filled through contacts is only accessible through informational interviewing. And the information gained in the interviews will give job applicants a leg up over others who lack inside information about the field.
Handling of the informational interview can be taken to high levels of sophistication. A good sales person can probably land a job in the informational interview without asking for one (remember, the condition of informational interviewing is that the applicant is not seeking a job). In the good years of the late 1990s I had MBA students at NYU landing an offer in one informational interview. That is less likely to occur now unless the applicant has strong sales skills. But a sequence of 20-50 informational interviews will land a job.
At one point I went on about a dozen informational interviews myself. My rejection rate to get in the door was about 80%, acceptance 20%. I did not get any offers (I did it during one summer) but had I continued I do not doubt I would have. Compare the 20% interview acceptance rate with the 1-3% acceptance rate characteristic of mass-mailed job letters. Moreover, the interviews are more productive because they are learning and relationship-building experiences.
Prior to informational interviewing the student should have set a life goal and mission. This is extremely difficult for about 20 percent of students; easy for about 20 percent; and a matter of mild indifference to the rest. A student with a focused goal can gain expertise in the field and will be motivated to put up with failure that leads to success. Developing a mission about which the graduate is enthusiastic is of incalculable value in today's world, where ethical confusion (which is not the same as ethical ambiguity) reigns supreme.
An individual with a moral sense that their professional objective is a personal mission will be focused and highly motivated. Clear goals work in a range of ways, and this is one of them. Combine that with inside information gleaned from informational interviews and a willingness to turn over every stone, and the worst job market will not prove disappointing.
Forbes Covers Case on Which I Worked
Over the past couple of years, I have served as expert witness on a case, Prudential v. Giacobbe. Ultimately, the judge threw out my expert witness report essentially for my giving legal opinion while not being a lawyer, but the attorney reworked my arguments as a legal brief and we won.
Forbes has written up the case here. This was the first time my work has been thrown out by a court, but not the first time the other side has tried. Several years ago I spent an entire day in deposition in downtown Chicago defending against that argument.
It is, of course, not the first time a national magazine has written about a case on which I worked, because I also started working on In Re Tittle et al. v. Enron before it was settled. The Forbes article doesn't mention that while the initial arguments were based on common law, we shifted the discussion to ERISA. The Prudential life insurance plan was an ERISA plan, and so the rule of ERISA outweighed the common law arguments. It is difficult for trial lawyers to work with ERISA because it is a specialized field. Courts' rules tend to favor big business. I worked cheap for the plaintiff, as is my policy.
Forbes writes:
>With death knocking at your door, you realize some family members are more important to you than others, and decide to change your life insurance policy accordingly.
What could go wrong? Just ask the Giacobbe family of southern New Jersey. Inaccurate change-of-beneficiary forms Richard Giacobbe submitted to his life insurer two weeks before his March 2007 death left his wife battling his parents and brother over three-quarters of a million dollars worth of benefits.
Richard, an insurance agent at Prudential Insurance, had named his wife Linda as the beneficiary on his company-sponsored life insurance shortly before their 1986 marriage. In March 2006, he was diagnosed with terminal thyroid cancer. As his condition worsened, there were signs he was becoming estranged from Linda; eight months after he was diagnosed, he began living alone in a rented apartment not far from the couples' Toms River, N.J., home.
On March 6, 2007, Prudential received a change-of-beneficiary form from Richard naming new primary beneficiaries on his life insurance: his mother, Kathleen; father, Robert; and brother, also named Robert. On March 21, Richard received a letter back from Prudential informing him that his beneficiary change form could not be processed because it was missing his family members' Social Security numbers. Richard never sent back the corrected forms and died the following day.
It wasn't long before Linda was locked in a court fight with her dead husband's immediate blood relatives over who should get the $751,000. The key question in the case: whether the incomplete change-of-beneficiary form was proof that Richard truly intended to remove his wife from his life insurance policy in favor of his parents and brother.
Read the whole thing here.
Forbes has written up the case here. This was the first time my work has been thrown out by a court, but not the first time the other side has tried. Several years ago I spent an entire day in deposition in downtown Chicago defending against that argument.
It is, of course, not the first time a national magazine has written about a case on which I worked, because I also started working on In Re Tittle et al. v. Enron before it was settled. The Forbes article doesn't mention that while the initial arguments were based on common law, we shifted the discussion to ERISA. The Prudential life insurance plan was an ERISA plan, and so the rule of ERISA outweighed the common law arguments. It is difficult for trial lawyers to work with ERISA because it is a specialized field. Courts' rules tend to favor big business. I worked cheap for the plaintiff, as is my policy.
Forbes writes:
>With death knocking at your door, you realize some family members are more important to you than others, and decide to change your life insurance policy accordingly.
What could go wrong? Just ask the Giacobbe family of southern New Jersey. Inaccurate change-of-beneficiary forms Richard Giacobbe submitted to his life insurer two weeks before his March 2007 death left his wife battling his parents and brother over three-quarters of a million dollars worth of benefits.
Richard, an insurance agent at Prudential Insurance, had named his wife Linda as the beneficiary on his company-sponsored life insurance shortly before their 1986 marriage. In March 2006, he was diagnosed with terminal thyroid cancer. As his condition worsened, there were signs he was becoming estranged from Linda; eight months after he was diagnosed, he began living alone in a rented apartment not far from the couples' Toms River, N.J., home.
On March 6, 2007, Prudential received a change-of-beneficiary form from Richard naming new primary beneficiaries on his life insurance: his mother, Kathleen; father, Robert; and brother, also named Robert. On March 21, Richard received a letter back from Prudential informing him that his beneficiary change form could not be processed because it was missing his family members' Social Security numbers. Richard never sent back the corrected forms and died the following day.
It wasn't long before Linda was locked in a court fight with her dead husband's immediate blood relatives over who should get the $751,000. The key question in the case: whether the incomplete change-of-beneficiary form was proof that Richard truly intended to remove his wife from his life insurance policy in favor of his parents and brother.
Read the whole thing here.
Disempowering Rather than Disbanding Congress
Contrairimairi just sent me an e-mail about a Natural News post by Mike Adams. The author argues that because of electronic telecommunication:
"...instant communication is available to almost everyone. A new law being proposed in Washington could be instantly read -- and voted on -- by the People all across America. The Internet has made the whole purpose behind the U.S. Congress obsolete... irrelevant. Why do Americans need someone else to represent them when we can all just read and vote on the bills ourselves? In an age of instant communications, Congress is no longer needed."
The author misconstrues the reason for republican as opposed to democratic government. In fifth century Athens, 2,200 years before the American revolution, direct democracy did exist. The problems were not a matter of communication because Athens was small. Aristotle did not see democracy to be as good as aristocracy. He had seen democracy first hand in Athens. The problems with it were severe. They had to do the emotional nature of groups and mobs; the willingness of the populace to succumb to tyrants; and the eagerness of opportunistic poor people to steal the property of those more successful than themselves. Crowd psychology is easily manipulated. Lynchings and mass murder have been associated with democracy as well as tyranny (which Aristotle saw as the perverse form of monarchy). Aristotle preferred aristocracy to democracy, but held that a mixed form of government is most preferable.
The Founders were aware of these arguments, and equally, were concerned with Aristotle's claim that democracy amounted to rule by the needy. The many will not acquire as much property as the few, and will pass laws to deprive the competent and successful of property, arrogating it to themselves. This will cause the economy to deteriorate as competent people cease to put forth effort.
In our world, the existence of electronic media permits elites to manipulate public opinion in their favor. The ease of communication that television and the Internet permit means that hundreds of millions can think like a single mob. Plans like the bailout and the health insurance bill will seem on the surface to support the poor, in the case of the bailout to prevent unemployment and in the case of the health care bill to make coverage universal. But the effect of these laws is inevitably to further the ends of economic elites.
More democracy gives greater power to the elite power structure. The power of the mass media is too great for bloggers to compete. Even conservative bloggers allow the Wall Street-dominated mass media to control the terms of public debate and harp endlessly about the brain-dead mass media. They do not trust themselves to generate their own ideas, and remain slaves of the Wall Street power structure.
Charles de Secondat, Baron of Montesquieu developed the idea of mixed government further. He argued that the republican form of government is best supported by a federation or federal form of government. The Founding Fathers studied Montesquieu carefully. The Swiss provided an example of a federation that was stable.
The Founders argued that the mixed form of government would work best, and they were right. The American republic has lasted longer than any other.
But Aristotle argued that all forms of government are unstable, and that they transmute into each other. We are seeing that now. The instability began with Progressivism, which enhanced the amount of democracy. The high degree of democracy led to the manipulability of public opinion by the power elite and the increasing amount of lobbying and special interest power. Repeatedly, led by the left (whose impulses, including its advocacy of socialism have repeatedly served Wall Street's interests), America has instituted laws that seem to serve the mass but instead serve the wealthy. This has led to the same pattern that will result from Mike Adams's plan in Natural News: more democracy on the surface coupled with greater power in fact to the power elite.
A better approach would be to disempower Congress. That means reinventing federalism to download power to the states and end Congress's ability to pass the bullsh*t laws that is has. Spin off the federal regulatory structure to the states (including social security) and allow each state to decide how to pass laws. The competition that will result will infinitely improve decision making.
"...instant communication is available to almost everyone. A new law being proposed in Washington could be instantly read -- and voted on -- by the People all across America. The Internet has made the whole purpose behind the U.S. Congress obsolete... irrelevant. Why do Americans need someone else to represent them when we can all just read and vote on the bills ourselves? In an age of instant communications, Congress is no longer needed."
The author misconstrues the reason for republican as opposed to democratic government. In fifth century Athens, 2,200 years before the American revolution, direct democracy did exist. The problems were not a matter of communication because Athens was small. Aristotle did not see democracy to be as good as aristocracy. He had seen democracy first hand in Athens. The problems with it were severe. They had to do the emotional nature of groups and mobs; the willingness of the populace to succumb to tyrants; and the eagerness of opportunistic poor people to steal the property of those more successful than themselves. Crowd psychology is easily manipulated. Lynchings and mass murder have been associated with democracy as well as tyranny (which Aristotle saw as the perverse form of monarchy). Aristotle preferred aristocracy to democracy, but held that a mixed form of government is most preferable.
The Founders were aware of these arguments, and equally, were concerned with Aristotle's claim that democracy amounted to rule by the needy. The many will not acquire as much property as the few, and will pass laws to deprive the competent and successful of property, arrogating it to themselves. This will cause the economy to deteriorate as competent people cease to put forth effort.
In our world, the existence of electronic media permits elites to manipulate public opinion in their favor. The ease of communication that television and the Internet permit means that hundreds of millions can think like a single mob. Plans like the bailout and the health insurance bill will seem on the surface to support the poor, in the case of the bailout to prevent unemployment and in the case of the health care bill to make coverage universal. But the effect of these laws is inevitably to further the ends of economic elites.
More democracy gives greater power to the elite power structure. The power of the mass media is too great for bloggers to compete. Even conservative bloggers allow the Wall Street-dominated mass media to control the terms of public debate and harp endlessly about the brain-dead mass media. They do not trust themselves to generate their own ideas, and remain slaves of the Wall Street power structure.
Charles de Secondat, Baron of Montesquieu developed the idea of mixed government further. He argued that the republican form of government is best supported by a federation or federal form of government. The Founding Fathers studied Montesquieu carefully. The Swiss provided an example of a federation that was stable.
The Founders argued that the mixed form of government would work best, and they were right. The American republic has lasted longer than any other.
But Aristotle argued that all forms of government are unstable, and that they transmute into each other. We are seeing that now. The instability began with Progressivism, which enhanced the amount of democracy. The high degree of democracy led to the manipulability of public opinion by the power elite and the increasing amount of lobbying and special interest power. Repeatedly, led by the left (whose impulses, including its advocacy of socialism have repeatedly served Wall Street's interests), America has instituted laws that seem to serve the mass but instead serve the wealthy. This has led to the same pattern that will result from Mike Adams's plan in Natural News: more democracy on the surface coupled with greater power in fact to the power elite.
A better approach would be to disempower Congress. That means reinventing federalism to download power to the states and end Congress's ability to pass the bullsh*t laws that is has. Spin off the federal regulatory structure to the states (including social security) and allow each state to decide how to pass laws. The competition that will result will infinitely improve decision making.
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