Gene Schwimmer

NEW!  In a perfect world, where Republicans actually exercise their principles, this essay would be called, “The Democrats’ Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog-Law.  Sadly – but let us agree, surprisingly – Republicans are complicit with Democrats in passing the travesty known as the Marketplace Fairness Act.  This Heather has two mommies.

The purported logic behind the MFA is simple:  The ability, via the Internet, to buy products and services across state lines without paying a state sales tax, puts in-state businesses, that must collect state sales tax from their customers, at an unfair competitive disadvantage.

Nonsense.  First, where is it written that business competitors must be fair?  Open and transparent, yes.  Honest, yes.  But fair?  Business, like politics, ain’t beanbag.  Indeed, one could argue, the goal of every businessman, to the great advantage of us consumers, is to be unfair – to gain a competitive advantage over his competitors in the only way a businessman can get such an advantage in a capitalistic system:  by offering some combination of better and cheaper products and/or services.  It is by doing this that the businessman hopes to entice you and me to buy his stuff instead of his competitors’.

Second, if the logic behind the Marketplace Fairness Act truly is to “level the playing field” among competing businesses, why stop at the Internet?  Wanna see some real “unfair competition”?  Then visit New York, Midtown, where you will see brick-and-mortar restaurants paying stratospheric rents (I’m a commercial real estate broker in NYC, so trust me on this), plus utility bills, license fees, salaries for multiple workers and taxes and/or benefits on all of the above.  Oh, and don’t forget to include, starting in 2014, for businesses with 50 or more employees working 30 hours per week, healthcare premiums or Obamacare).  And on the same block, perhaps even right in front of these brick and mortar businesses?  Guys in pushcarts and food trucks, who have none of those expenses.

And yet, astonishingly, New Yorkers still eat in restaurants.  New Yorkers are still willing to pay as much as $5.75(!) for a hot dog, even though there are pushcarts selling hot dogs for as little as $1.00.

What we have here, with the Internet-to-brick-and-mortar comparison is the same thing we have with the pushcart/food-truck-to-brick-and-mortar comparison:  the age-old choice between price and service and between price and quality, with either choice equally likely to get the upper hand, depending on one’s mood – and wallet – at any particular time.  If one desires a hot dog, is in a hurry and/or has only a buck to spend, I can personally attest to no dearth of pushcart vendors, who would be happy to serve you.  And if one prefers a more upscale (and indoor) hot dog experience, Daniel Boulud’s Café Boulud, at the corner of Broadway and 65^th, will sell you one of their celebrity-chef hot dogs for… well, the menu doesn’t list a price, which, in NYC, should tell you something.

Same with the Internet.  So while, yes,  I have examined a product in a brick and mortar store and then gone online to see if I could get that product cheaper on the Internet, there have been other times when I have, for example, stood before a line of inkjet printers at Staples and brought up Amazon.com on my BlackBerry not to look for a cheaper price online, but to read the consumer reviews of particular models to help me decide which one to buy from Staples.  In this case, then, the Internet helped a brick and mortar business to make a sale.

Even better, why not enjoy the advantages of both worlds as, indeed, Staples does?  Like so many modern businesses, Staples has brick and mortar stores and a Web site.  If selling over the Internet is so much cheaper than selling on-site, why don’t all of those businesses create their own online storefronts?  Oh, you say, your particular product or service won’t work on the Internet?  Then let me suggest that that product or service won’t work for anyone else, either.

And for those businesses whose products or services are equally well suited to both on-site and Web site sales, one would think that the ability of a local brick-and-mortar business to expand its reach beyond its small, local market to the entire country, if not the entire world, and pay no state income tax, would be a good thing.  and not have to charge a state sales tax for those sales, could be a great advantage.  All that’s needed is for a business to be willing to change its business model from circa 1913, to circa 2013.

And if a brick-and-mortar-only business is unwilling to change?  Then what we have here, I would suggest, is an Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Law, straight out of Atlas Shrugs  And in which case, the best response I can offer is:  too bad.  This is America, not France, and in America, there is no constitutional right to continue doing the same thing, the same way, forever, as in European countries, with their quaint little shops and small, inefficient postage stamp-size farms.  Sorry to be blunt, I know it sounds harsh and I can certainly understand how some brick-and-mortar operators can love running their brick-and-mortar businesses and not want to change a lifestyle and business model to which they have become accustomed – just as I can understand how some candle- and buggy whip-makers may have loved what they did, too.

But I can also envision how someone who enjoys making candles and buggy whips by hand, who could not have made a living 20 years ago, could make a very good living today – by selling over the Internet.  It’s certainly worked for handmade duck calls.

So let’s just say that my sympathy for the brick-and-mortar store whiners owners is as wide as the Grand Canyon, but considerably less deep.  Still, that’s several magnitudes’ wider and deeper than my sympathy for the senators – and, especially, the GOP senators – who voted for the Marketplace (Anything But) Fairness Act.

So what say we chuck the red herring of “marketplace fairness” overboard, cut to the chase and be honest, which, as a non-politician, I am free, and able, to do.  The Marketplace Fairness Act has nothing to do with marketplace fairness and everything to do with politicians – of both parties – sticking their fingers into every nook and cranny, searching for additional revenue to shovel into the voracious maw that is government today, at all levels, instead of doing what  they should be doing:  cutting spending.

Let us hope that when this misconceived bill reaches the House, that House Republicans will show more sense than their colleagues in the Senate did.

I write today from Cordova, a small suburban town outside Memphis Tennessee, where I am attending my adorable niece’s wedding.  I am also, for the first time since my last visit, nine years ago, enjoying a real shower, the kind where the water just skooshes out in a broad, forceful torrent that blasts, as much as washes you clean, with the invigorating pinpricks of steaming wonderfulness that I’d almost forgotten.  In New York City, where I have been living for over 30 years, the City long ago outlawed such showerheads, to be replaced by newfangled “energy saving” showerheads that restrict the water flow so much that one feels almost grateful for each slow-moving droplet that manages to make it through.

Sometimes even the scientist, if he is truly as open-minded as scientists claim to be, must open his mind and look beyond.

Almost precisely a year ago, Egypt announced that it would cut the amount of natural gas it would sell to Israel.

And little more than a week ago, production began at the Tamar offshore natural gas field.  And just two days ago, a German newspaper reported that the estimated capacity of the Tamar field has been raised, by a full trillion cubic feet.

Suspecting that I raised a few conservative eyebrows with this article’s title, let me clarify from the outset that I do not support Obamacare.  On the contrary, I fervently believe that this horrible new entitlement must – and will – be torn out by its roots, stomped to a bloody pulp and consigned forever to the legislative hell whence it came.

But that doesn’t mean one can’t exploit – and some fun – with the law in the meantime.  After all, it’s not often that one is gifted with a law so badly conceived, so convolutedly written, that one can use the law to one’s advantage and bring it down at the same time.

Next month, President Obama will be making his first trip to Israel since becoming president, a trip that “is almost certain to raise expectations for the type of peace initiative that eluded Obama and his foreign policy team during his first four years in office.”

The so-called fiscal cliff has been avoided, at least for the time being, and all it cost was a tax rate increase on the nation’s most productive taxpayers.  Of course, conservatives are disappointed, but one also needs to appreciate that with all the Bush tax rate decreases set to expire automatically, Democrats had Republicans over a barrel.  That being the case, Republicans didn’t do so badly, considering.  The higher rates that would have kicked in at incomes above $250,000 (for marrieds, $200,000 for singles) will instead apply only to incomes above $450,000 (for marrieds, $400,000 for singles).  And the formerly temporary Bush rates on incomes of $450,000 and below, have now been made permanent.

The attacks on House Speaker John Boehner followed quickly and furiously (not to be confused with Operation Fast and Furious) on the heels of what had to have been a painful vote for House Republicans.  But just as President Obama believes that at some point, one has made enough money, this writer believes that at some point, one has sufficiently beaten a dead horse.  Or a live speaker.  So now that the barely re-elected and clearly chastened, has stood before the House and delivered a near-tearful mea culpa, what say we hold off on further criticism and focus our efforts on the more useful task of analyzing what Boehner did wrong, learn from his mistakes and use what we’ve learned to strengthen his hand moving forward.

When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. – Benjamin Franklin

In 1938, famous psychologist and behaviorist, B.F. Skinner introduced the concept of “operant conditioning,” after a series of experiments in which:

Skinner found that he could train pigeons and other animals to do particular behaviors in exchange for a reward, namely food. His experiments consisted of placing a pigeon in a cage with a lever.  When by chance the pigeon pecked at the lever, it was rewarded with a pellet of food.  Consequently the pigeon continued to peck at the lever to get more pellets of food.

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After more than a decade of exploding gun ownership – and the accompanying and indisputable plunge in violent crime, including those committed with guns that accompanied it – the formula, more guns = less crime – has been proven.  Only liberals dwelling in the parts of America that still preach and practice strict gun control, where “fewer guns = more crime,” continue to argue the contrary.

Today (12/9/12), Politico is reporting that, “This afternoon, the President and Speaker Boehner met at the White House to discuss efforts to resolve the fiscal cliff.”

I object.  I object to the secrecy.  More than that, I object to Boehner “negotiating” with the president at all.  And regarding the quotes around negotiating, that’s because, so far, the Speaker seems to be negotiating only with himself, which, to me, is kind of like calling masturbation, sex.  Well, except that masturbation at least produces a conclusive, hopefully pleasurable, outcome.

Perhaps, the National Republican Committee should create a new position, Pointer-out of the Obvious.  Or how about, Victory from Jaws of Defeat Puller?  Well, whatever they call the new position, if they create it, I would like to apply.

On the other hand, I could also be the VFJDP’s first customer because, it would seem, my ability to miss the obvious is as good as anyone’s.

In his December 2 appearance on Meet the Press, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham merely stated the obvious – and articulated the frustration of the entire Republican caucus– when he said, about Obama and the Democrats, “I don’t think they’re serious about finding a deal” to avoid driving over the “fiscal cliff.”

Obamacare opponents dismayed about John Roberts’s opinion in the Supreme Court case that upheld Obamacare’s individual mandate and therefore Obamacare itself, may have occasion to do a rethink.  The ruling, it turns out, may not be the saving grace that Obamacare supporters think it is.  Indeed, the very opinion that Obamacare supporters praise may, ironically, be the opinion that kills Obamacare for good.

David (“Spengler”) Goldman latest Asia Times article is a must read.  As the saying goes, you’re not really paranoid if they’re really following you.  Goldman makes a strong case that those of us prophesying declines in U.S. power and influence on the world scene have good cause to worry (emphasis mine).

Some of you may already be familiar with the accompanying photo, which “went viral” on Facebook.  For those of you who are not, what you are looking at is not some kind of ritual Israeli siesta; it’s “Bibi is a loser,” spelled out in Hebrew (לוזר ביבי) by disaffected Israeli soldiers protesting prime minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s announcement that Israel had agreed to yet another ceasefire with archenemy Hamas.

In much the way “a picture is worth a thousand words,” so, too, can a single word spoken at the right time, in the right context, make a point that a thousand words, less well-chosen, could not.

“Who is John Galt?”

That question, of course, is the opening sentence of Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, arguably the first major novel written with a sledgehammer and the first (but, thankfully, not last) to drive generations of liberals crazy and in the most delicious and poetically justified way: by simply depicting a society in which liberals get everything they want.

Seemingly out of nowhere, geopolitics have been all but turned upside down in the Middle East, thanks to the discovery of massive energy resources in Israeli territory.  As a nascent Oil Power, the Jewish State is only beginning to contemplate the new dynamics of influence available to it.

How do you say Schadenfreude in French?  Or Spanish?  Or Greek?  Because, three years into the failed economic policies of a failed president, Schadenfreude — knowing that, however bad our situation may be, the state of affairs in the Eurozone is much worse — is all that is left to us.