Do We Want a Business Model for Our Country?

With the nation polarized and unable to move forward, many people are suggesting that what our country needs is a business model for governing. Forget about the moral issues. Run the nation like a business and everything will come out all right. Find a candidate who gets things done in business and that person will do the same thing for America, Inc. You can’t argue with success.

Such a pragmatic proposal definitely resonates with those who are fed up with government. People are tired of not getting things done. They don’t like running the country in the red. Getting the country on a spreadsheet is an attractive idea.

The problem is we don’t need a business model for governing. We already have one and it’s not working.

Our political system has always had something of a business model built into it. We already find in the literature of the Founding Fathers references to the nation as a “commercial republic,” a union of legitimate self-interest, aimed at providing progress, prosperity and security. American political rhetoric is full of economic references that hold progress and prosperity as the height of well-being. Anyone who strays from this narrative is quickly reminded, as was Bill Clinton in 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

If there is an image that corresponds to our political model, think of a thriving farm co-op or public corporation of shareholders. Citizenship is a kind of a co-op membership full of legitimate benefits with distributed risks, voting privileges, few liabilities, and plenty of entertainment. The key to keeping everyone happy is a robust economic order that ensures that members renew their membership with great enthusiasm.

However, this business model for governing depends upon two important pillars. The first is a great consensus to get along and smooth over differences, which is assured by the outward appearance of prosperity and the promise of the American dream.

The second pillar is a vague moral code that ensures some kind of order and serves as the foundation of trust and confidence that allows business to flourish and the rule of law to prevail. As long as these two pillars stand, the system works well.

But when the economic dynamo stalls or sputters over a long period of time, the glue of consensus no longer holds. When the vague moral code falls into decay, trust and rule of law disappear. What we are witnessing today is the breakdown of this cooperative business model.

That is why everything seems like a free-for-all. Everyone wants to blame the other for the failure of the co-op. Our elections have become like shareholder brawls where the officers are frequently changed. Opinion polls serve as quarterly earnings reports to which all scramble to adapt. Who wins is often the one who promises the most in the least amount of time. Americans are seeing a model that used to work so well now working contrary to their interests by not paying out dividends, but distributing uncertainties that cause anxiety, depression, and stress.

Via: American Thinker

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JetBlue Offers To Help Disgruntled Voters Flee The U.S. After 2012 Elections

Airline to help upset voters leave the U.S.

An airline says it will help voters distraught over backing the losing candidate in next month's presidential contest flee the country — for free.

JetBlue Airways' new "Election Protection" promotion allows voters the chance to win a free round-trip ticket to one of the airline's 21 international destinations if the election doesn't go their way. Contestants first must preregister at jetblue.com/electionprotection. After the Nov. 6 results are in, the airline will give away 1,006 roundtrip certificates — that's 2012 seats — to participants whose candidate lost.

"We've all heard it said before: if my candidate does not win, I'm leaving the country," said Marty St. George, senior vice president of marketing and commercial strategy for JetBlue. "Fun is one of our five founding values, and in this spirit, we decided to give people a chance to recover from the political noise and follow through on their claim to skip town if their candidate comes up short."

Via: Washington Times

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REPORT: JP MORGAN MAKES OVER HALF A BILLION DOLLARS OFF FOOD STAMPS

A new report by the Government Accountability Institute finds that JP Morgan has made at least $560,492,596 since 2004 processing the Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards of 18 of the 24 states it has under contract for the food stamp program.

Indeed, JP Morgan’s Christopher Paton told Bloomberg News that food stamps are big business for the big bank: 

“We are the largest processor of food stamps in the country…[the EBT program] is a very important business to JP Morgan. It’s an important business in terms of its size and scale…. Right now volumes have gone through the roof in the past couple of years or so. The good news from JP Morgan’s perspective is the infrastructure that we built has been able to cope with that increase in volume.”

While some may be glad that a private company—not a government agency—is tasked with EBT transactions, the GAI report reveals that JP Morgan does not use the same fraud detection systems commonly used by today’s credit card companies.  In fact, federal and state agencies—not EBT processors—are the ones tasked with policing food stamp fraud. 

That means EBT processors enjoy multiple pathways to profits that run counter to efficiency and strong oversight.  For example, writes GAI president Peter Schweizer:

 Any time TANF recipients withdraw their cash benefits or make balance inquiries through out-of-network ATM machines, the user may incur ATM transaction fees generally ranging from $.75 to $1.50. In addition, most states allow EBT processors to charge card replacement fees. Arizona cardholders, for example, are permitted one free replacement a year, after which a $5 per card fee is imposed. The same goes for customer service calls: After an EBT cardholder exceeds the state’s maximum number of free calls, EBT processors typically tack on a $.25 per call fee.

By making welfare inefficiency and abuse lucrative, the poverty industry has created a potentially toxic brew of corporate cronyism and government inefficiency that lets food stamp abuse enforcement slip through the bureaucratic cracks:

 According to the USDA’s website, the federal food stamp program has “over 100” inspectors to police the nearly 200,000 retailers nationwide that accept EBT cards. For its part, the state of Florida has 63 positions allocated to police over 3 million EBT users. JP Morgan is currently involved in an eight-month pilot project with Florida focused on EBT fraud and abuse. The total staff? Just one JP Morgan employee and five to ten state employees, according to Florida officials.

So how did EBT processors like JP Morgan land its lucrative half-billion dollars worth of contracts? 

Via: Breitbart

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SECOND 'OCCUPY' WAVE COULD BE MORE DESTRUCTIVE

When the “Occupy” movement began a year ago, many initially dismissed it as a gathering of harmless college students. But the late Andrew Breitbart saw in the movement professional left-wing anarchists and radicals who sought to use the “Occupy” protests to violently overthrow the United States government, then destroy its institutions and the free market system.

Breitbart’s friend, Stephen K. Bannon, was one of those who had initially not taken the “Occupy” movement seriously until he saw occupiers shut down the Brooklyn Bridge. He knew then Breitbart was right, and immediately started a project with Breitbart that would turn into “Occupy Unmasked,” a movie that opened nationwide in theaters this week that systematically dismantled the notion that the Occupy movement was good-natured and peaceful. 

The lessons from the movie “Occupy Unmasked” are important to keep in mind as liberal intellectuals again try to mainstream a radical and violent movement to breathe life into something that, for now, has faded. The movie documents all the violence, filth, rapes, and systemic coordination between left-wing radicals and labor unions like the SEIU that was the real story behind the "Occupy" movement. 

In glorifying the “Occupy” movement and looking ahead to the its future, liberals revealed that a potential second coming of “Occupy” could be even more dangerous and violent than the first. 

Last week, progressive journalist Zeeshan Aleem, writing in The Huffington Post, claimed the Occupy movement “rivaled the Arab Spring” when it started. Though he was being complimentary in his comparison, his analogy may have been more apt than he realized. 

The Arab Spring led to violent radicals like the Muslim Brotherhood gaining power in countries like Egypt and heralded a wave of violence throughout North Africa and the Middle East -- attacking U.S. interests and murdering and ambassador in Libya -- as radical Islamists gain more of a foothold. Liberals celebrated these radicals and the “Arab Spring,” which ended up becoming more of an awakening for violent Islamists. 

Similarly, the second phase of Occupy has the same potential for more widespread destruction, chaos, and violence. 

Aleem conceded that for now the second phase of Occupy has not been as successful as the first. He admitted that a recent “Occupy”-style protest attempt on Wall Street “could not be called a success,” mainly because the NYPD was better prepared this time around.

But Aleem disturbingly asks, “What if instead of being fragmented into dozens of free-forming groups, all the Occupiers targeted one bank or one intersection simultaneously?”

These flash mobs, often violent, have popped up throughout the country, with crowds beating up random strangers or stealing merchandise from stores. 

Could these focused, violent flash mobs be in Occupy’s future? 

Via Breitbart

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