REPUBLICANS FOR OBAMACARE

6/28/12




The GOP just dodged a bullet with the Supreme Courts’ upholding of the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as ObamaCare, and its insurance mandate. I have written extensively on this bill and its provisions; see my 3/28/12 post YOU CAN’T TELL THE PLAYERS WITHOUT A SCORECARD, which dealt primarily with the politics of the issue and my 3/29/12 post PAY ME NOW OR PAY ME LATER…, which dealt primarily with the substance of the health care mandate. It’s obviously time to revisit the issue, today to discuss its politics.



As a realist (My realism is often derided as cynicism, and I don’t mind that somewhat derisive moniker. Paraphrasing that great philosopher Lily Tomlin, no matter how cynical I become, it’s never enough to keep up. But I digress.), I have long given up the naïve notion of my youth that the GOP, or any political party, cares about anything but getting elected and obtaining the opportunity to loot the public treasury such election entails. So even if they profess disappointment, grounded in ideology, in today’s ruling, the Republicans are, if they are sentient (and one wonders most of the time), popping champagne corks. There are at least three reasons the GOP is doing so.



First, if the health care mandate were struck down, and probably the entire ObamaCare structure with it, the GOPers, as opponents of ObamaCare, would have to wear the jacket for their constituents’ no longer being able to keep their twenty something kids on their health insurance policies and, if they have preexisting conditions, their not having any hope in the foreseeable future of getting health coverage. While many people are opposed to ObamaCare in theory, they like many of its provisions, especially the aforementioned preexisting conditions and kids on the policy provisions. The GOP, for all its talk of “replacing” ObamaCare with a plan that contains the things their constituents like while eliminating the things they find ideologically or financially onerous, have nothing resembling a replacement in the wings (and for good reason, but that is grist for another mill). Thus, those popular provisions would have been gone if ObamaCare went down, and the Democrats would be incessant about reminding voters who took them away—the Republicans and what the Dems would surely call the Republican Supreme Court. This would not bode well for the GOP in 2012.



Second, one of the GOP’s campaign themes for 2012 is that we must elect Mr. Romney (The irony here is incredible, by the way.) if we are going to “get rid of ObamaCare.” If the Supreme Court had struck down ObamaCare, that issue would have eliminated.



Third, had ObamaCare been struck down, the Democratic base, which has shown signs of lethargy of late, would have been instantly energized by citing the necessity of “taking back the Court,” or something like that. Killing ObamaCare would have once again shown how important the Court is and, thus, how important having a Democrat in the White House is Democratic faithful. If this did not become obvious to the typical Democratic true believer, David Axelrod and company would have made it obvious. This issue is now perhaps not gone but clearly diluted.



So, my friends, the big winners today were the Republicans.

BAA, BAA, BLACK SHEEP, HAVE YOU ANY VOTES? YES, SIR, YES, SIR, 43 FOR THE BOSS.

6/27/12




The Chicago City Council today passed the bill implementing Mayor Emanuel’s plan to ticket, rather than arrest, people for possession of 15 grams or less of marijuana. The vote was 43-3 in favor of the effective decriminalization of possession of pot within the city’s borders. The “no” votes were cast by Aldermen Roberto Maldonado (26th), Nick Sposato (36th), and Lona Lane (18th). The main arguments of these three opponents was, effectively, that 15 grams is a lot of grass…enough to roll about 30 joints…and thus might not be for the ticketee’s personal use.

Leave aside the merits of the ordinance; take a look at the lopsidedness of the vote: 43-3. Even if this were the most meritorious, flawless, brilliant legislation in history, one would think that more than three alderpersons would find enough objections to it to vote against it; that is the nature of any form of democratic governance. More disturbingly, this has not been an atypical margin under our new Mayor; indeed, most votes for anything of substance are similarly skewed.



Even in the heyday of Richard J. Daley, Council votes were not that lopsided. One could always count on “No” votes from the likes of Bill Singer, Dick Simpson, Leon Despres, Bill Cousins, and Sammy Rayner. There were even a few Republicans in the Council, like Casey Staszcuk, Ed Scholl, and Joe Potempa, who would occasionally oppose Daley. So, yes, the margins in those relative halcyon days were lopsided, but sometimes as many as ten or twelve votes could be mustered against Richard I. This changed with the advent of Richard II; during Richard M. Daley’s tenure, the Republicans were limited to one guy from the 41st Ward and even liberal independents like Dorothy Tillman and Helen Schiller eventually joined the hosanna chorus and willingly, sometimes eagerly, swallowed whatever the Mayor tossed their way.



It was that completely cowed nature of the Council under Richard II that led to rumblings, after Daley’s announcement of his decision to retire, that the Council was going to reassert itself as a viable and independent legislative body rather than a cheering section for the Guy on the Fifth Floor. There was talk of strong opposition to Rahm Emanuel among aldermen who feared that, with someone of Mr. Emanuel’s, er, self-assuredness, in the mayor’s office, they would blow their fleeting chance at relevance and remain the flock of sheep they were under the Daleys. This opposition was led by Alderman Ed Burke, Chairman of the City Council Finance Committee and dean of the City Council, who actually acted on his opposition to Emanuel’s candidacy by backing Gery Chico for mayor.



Once Rahm Emanuel became mayor, though, this reported self-assuredness by the estimable members of the Council evaporated. Eddy Burke and virtually the whole lot of them fell in line. Because these people are not profiles in courage by nature, Mr. Emanuel is as tough and strong as everyone seems to think (How could one not be tough and strong relative to the lily-livered lilliputians who constitute most of the Council?), Mr. Emanuel has bought them off one way or the other, or some combination of the above, the City Council remains a rubber stamp, an assemblage of sheep, a flock of nonentities.

CHAIRMAN COLLINS, MEET CHAIRMAN BERRIOS

6/26/12




Ever since my first book, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics, came out, most readers, but especially those attuned to the politics of our town, have been trying to determine who the title character, Chairman Eamon DeValera Collins, is in “real life.” Many names have been posited: Richard M. Daley, Richard J. Daley, Mike Madigan, Ed Burke, even Ed Vrdolyak. (See my 10/16/10 post, ED VRDOLYAK, MEET EAMON DEVALERA COLLINS for a treatment of this theory.) All these guesses are, of course, wrong, as would be any guess; Chairman Collins is a fictional character who is no “real” person but who has characteristics of many “real” people, much like another popular fictional character, Don Vito Corleone. (Both The Chairman and its sequel, The Chairman’s Challenge, are available at Amazon.com, Marathonbooks.net, the Irish Book Club, IndieLitWorld.com, and various independent book stores, most notably The Bookies’ on 103rd and Artesian in my old neighborhood.)

After a recent recommendation by the Cook County ethics board, another name will surely be thrown into the hopper as a possible “real world” Chairman Collins, that of Cook County Assessor, 31st Ward Democratic Committeeman, and Cook County Regular Democratic Organization Chairman, Joe Berrios. The ethics board recommended that Assessor Berrios fire his son and his sister from their mid-level jobs in the Assessor’s office but made no recommendation regarding Chairman Barrio’s daughter, who had worked in the Assessor’s office before he arrived (while Mr. Berrios was on the Cook County Board of Review, which hears appeals of property tax assessments made by the Assessor’s office…hmm…) but who has been promoted a few times since her father became her boss. The board has also assessed Chairman Berrios a fine of $10,000, $5,000 for each of the relatives it says he should fire, but, since the board has no enforcement powers, it has to go the Cook County Circuit Court to compel payment; good luck with that.



What really might make one suspect that Mr. Berrios might be Chairman Collins, or vice-versa, was Chairman Barrio’s response to charges that he is an “old-school politician.” To this surely groundless charge, Assessor Berrios replied



“If I was an old-school politician, I would have picked up the phone, had someone else hire them and I wouldn’t even be answering these questions.”



Despite such a statement, and the attitude that underlies it, Chairman Collins is NOT Chairman Berrios…nor is Chairman Collins anybody else but Eamon DeValera Collins. But such a statement might cause Diogenes to put down his lantern.

“PEOPLE AGAINST GOODNESS AND NORMALCY…PAGAN!”

6/19/12




I haven’t followed the Jerry Sandusky trial closely for a variety of reasons. I focus mostly on financial, economic, and political issues. While I occasionally veer off course to discuss things like cars or the English language, I just about never discuss sports, which would be an obvious, though stretched, link to this case. Further, the whole affair saddens and disgusts me, not only as a father but also, to a far lesser extent, as an inveterate Big 10 fan and twice proud alum who hates to see the “family’s” name besmirched by this nearly most heinous of crimes. Finally, I prefer to leave discussion of this type of case to the tabloids, refusing to pretend that the broad public interest in this case arises from a concern for children rather than a lurid fascination with anything having to do with sex, seemingly the more strange and perverted the more attention grabbing.



That having been written, I felt compelled to comment on today’s reports in, among other places, the Wall Street Journal (page A2, “Sandusky Witnesses Defend Showers”), regarding the opening defense testimony.


I’m no lawyer, but I’ve always thought that, in a rather hopeless case, the best strategy for the defense is to destroy the credibility of the prosecution’s witnesses. But what if the defense’s witnesses destroy their own credibility?



Take the case of Richard Anderson, who played football with Mr. Sandusky in the ‘60s and coached with him in the ‘90s. Mr. Anderson apparently thinks there is nothing wrong with showering with young boys, according the Journal,



“because he has done so at the YMCA after workouts and ‘on occasion over the years” he was in a Penn State shower while Mr. Sandusky showered with boys.”



Further, Mr. Anderson replied to defense lawyer Joe Amendeola’s question of whether coaches were “in and out of the shower while Jerry was in there with kids,” with a “Correct.”



One hates to make light of such a situation, but if Mr. Anderson’s taking showers with boys at the YMCA is an illustration of what Mr. Sandusky and his defense team consider “normal,” I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in the Bizarro World.



But maybe I’m wrong. We also had the testimony of Booker Brooks, a Penn State assistant coach until 1983, who defended Mr. Sandusky’s cross-generational approach to personal hygiene with fond memories of his own adolescence:



“I showered with adult men who were not relatives of mine all the time.”



I have to admit that it is impossible to stifle a laugh while reading that line. Perhaps it is my natural Irish-Catholic prudishness coming to the fore, but such behavior is just weird. I, for one, never showered with adult men when I was growing up in my apparently abnormal neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. And whether these men were relatives or non-relatives mattered not a whit to my propensity not to shower with them. I didn’t realize that, by taking showers alone, I was violating the standards of goodness and normalcy as defined by the Jerry Sandusky defense team.



Either I grew up in a world that was so Victorian and repressed that I showered alone in my formative years or Messrs. Anderson and Brooks are a really weird couple of guys. And I’m not so convinced of Mr. Amendeola’s stability, either; are we supposed to believe anything his witnesses say after they told us that showering with young boys is normal and acceptable behavior?



One supposes that the only consolation for Mr. Sandusky is that, where he is going, many of his mates will share his beliefs regarding the salubriousness of showering with one’s friends.

“…THE CRAZIES ARE ROLLING INTO KANDAHAR."

6/14/12




According to this morning’s (Thursday, 6/14/12’s, page A8) Wall Street Journal, the CIA and the State Department are ramping up their aid to the opposition in the (Let’s call it what it is.) Syrian Civil War, known as the Free Syrian Army (“FSA”). Our intelligence agencies, working through proxies, primarily the Gulf states, are helping the FSA with logistics and communication, primarily to ease the movement of supplies to the FSA.

In determining and planning its moves in Syria, the U.S. operation is drawing on its experience in Libya, as if that now lawless land, where no effective government is in place and retribution is the guiding force behind the machinations of the various factions formed after the overthrow of the murderous Colonel Gadhafi, is a glowing example of fruitful intervention in other people’s conflicts.



Who knows what’s next? The French would like to go further, asking the U.N. Security Council to vote on a resolution giving U.N. members a mandate to intervene, even militarily, in Syria. Given Russia’s and, to a lesser extent China’s, support of the Assad regime, this resolution will never pass. Russian intransigence on this issue almost makes one grateful for the Cold War.



Why am I currently so happy that the Russians stand in the way of a more robust western intervention in Libya? I can only think of December of 1979, when the Russians invaded Afghanistan. The West, and especially the United States, felt it incumbent to do everything possible to thwart Russian colonization of that landlocked no man’s land. Even the normally pacifist Carter administration was enthusiastic about a surrogate war in Afghanistan, and that enthusiasm picked up considerably when the Reagan administration assumed office. Just as in Syria today, we worked through surrogates, primarily Pakistan but also the same Gulf states whose scores we are helping to settle in Syria. We started out just providing logistical support to what was then called the mujahideen. As the war dragged on through the ‘80s, this support ramped up to the point at which we were providing all sorts of arms, including Stinger missiles, to this ragtag band of resistance fighters. Their eventual defeat of the Soviets, and the Russians’ withdrawal from Afghanistan with their tails between their legs, was considered a major victory in the Cold War and one of the final straws in the fall of the Soviet Union. Both, especially the latter, were exaggerations, but the action in Afghanistan drew wide and bipartisan support in this country; even Democrats who would reflexively oppose anything President Reagan proposed were solidly behind his Afghan strategy.



So what was the result of our Afghan intervention? The mujahideen morphed into al- Qaeda. A scion of a wealthy Saudi family named Osama bin Laden made his bones in Afghanistan and moved quickly up the ranks of the jihadists, primarily through his monetary contributions but also through his charismatic appeal to this group of people who swore to defend and impose their version of Islam to the death. The Taliban eventually cleared out all alternative rulers in Afghanistan, primarily through making peace with bin Laden and al-Qaeda, allowing bin Laden’s people free reign in a largely ungovernable Afghanistan. And the rest is history: worldwide jihad, 9/11, the “war on terror,” Iraq, and Afghanistan, which would have been the Russian’s problem and quagmire were it not for our intervention, has become our problem and quagmire.



While I can’t understand the geopolitical impulse to oppose everything Russia, either Soviet or post-Soviet, does in order to fulfill the U.S. government’s, and especially the U.S. military industrial complex’s, ever present need for a bogey-man, I can understand the humanitarian impulse that leads us to want to do something for the Syrian people against a second generation tinpot who, just like his father, shows no compunction about using anything, including mass murder, to keep his people under his thumb. But we have to use our heads as well as our hearts. The parallels to what appeared to be the successful Afghan intervention but what turned out to be a geopolitical disaster on a massive scale, are too stark to ignore. We try to reassure ourselves, to tell ourselves that we are smarter now, that we have learned from our mistakes, but the historical evidence, and especially the recent historical evidence, provides little support for such a contention.



Yes, we’d like to help the Syrian people; what decent people wouldn’t? But we wanted to help the Afghan people, too. The result was a disaster for us and seemingly endless misery for them. A little humility is in order here; we have neither all the answers nor the capability and resources to help everyone the humanitarian impulse would lead us to help.

“YOU’RE STILL PAYING? WELL, THEN, TONIGHT I’LL HAVE THE FILET!”

6/13/12




This morning’s (Wednesday, 6/13/12’s, page A2, “Steep Rise in Health Care Costs Projected”) Wall Street Journal treated its readers to news that the growth of health care spending, which has slowed over the last three years, will pick up again if the Obama health care plan is implemented in 2014. These assertions were made, according to the Journal, in a report issued by something called the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMMS”).



The report attributes the slowdown in the health care spending over the last few years to the recession but states that the pickup it sees in such spending in the post 2014 years is due not so much to the Obama health care plan (The report attributes only 0.1% of the projected growth rate to implementation of the plan.) but, rather to the aging of the population and the resultant growing demands on Medicare.



The CMMS is absolutely right in the former assertion. The recession resulted in the loss of health insurance by many people and a drastic reduction of incomes by at least as many people. This forced people to make hard decisions about what medical treatment is worth expending of their own money. When someone else is paying for something, be it a meal out, a vacation, or health care, it assumes vast importance; we simply cannot live without it, especially in the case of the last. But if we have to pay for it with our own money, we tend to be a little more circumspect in our expenditures. The asinine ads we see for miracle drugs that are supposed to make us happier, more masterful in the bedroom, calmer, more pain free, or free from the bitter necessity of having to sneeze once in awhile suddenly become less compelling. Thus, it is natural that, when going to the doctor or getting a prescription became our responsibility, we did less of both. This, contrary to popular opinion, is a very good thing. (See my seminal 8/24/11 post, AS LONG AS YOU’RE PAYING, I’LL HAVE THE LOBSTER!).



The CMMS is at least partially wrong in its latter assertion; i.e., that the growth in health care spending is attributable more to the aging of the population than to the Obama health care plan. Yes, older people use more “health care” than younger people, but age has little or no impact on our being subject to the rules of economics. Older people not only consume more health care than younger people, they also consume more health care than their grandparents did. Why? Because, with the advent of Medicare, someone else was paying for their health care. Not every prescription that your parents or grandparents (or, for many of my readers, you) take is vital. Without even the most rudimentary knowledge of medicine (I haven’t been to a doctor for at least the last ten years and have no intention of going in the next ten years, either. Good nutrition (five vegetables or fruits a day supplemented by frequent visits to White Castle), brobdingnagian water consumption, and simple over the counter amelioratives (primarily vaseline and rubbing alcohol, with the very occasional aspirin or ready substitute) serve to either avert or treat any malady I have or might encounter.), I know this is true. Why? Because if Medicare and its adjutants, and especially George Bush’s idiotic prescription drug rider, were not so generous, older people would do without the drugs they now find so absolutely vital and would get along just fine. People need most of these drugs only until they have to pay for them. This iron rule of economic applies to the young as well as the old. Yes, with age comes the need for more medication and more trips to the doctor, but not as much medication and as many trips to the doctor as current wisdom, amply abetted by someone else writing the checks, would have lead us to believe.



Given the propensity of people, regardless of age, to suddenly “need” things when those things are either free or heavily subsidized, it is indeed the Obama health care plan, and not the aging of the population, that will drive the CMMS’s projected increases in health care spending.



The really dyspeptic aspect of the Obama health care plan is not the insurance mandate, with which I have absolutely no problem. See my 3/29/12 post, PAY ME NOW OR PAY ME LATER… No, the really bad aspect of the Obama plan is that it exacerbates the main driver of higher health care costs in this country: the divorce of the person receiving the care from the person paying for that care. If health care costs are ever to be brought under control in this country, the American people have to bring their considerable shopping skills to the health care marketplace; i.e., users of health care services have to have more skin in the game. The current system has created the problem by taking skin out of the game, i.e., by having people spend other people’s money on their health care. The Obama health care plan makes this very discordant system even worse.

IT WAS PROBABLY NOT A GOOD NIGHT TO BE IN MADISON

6/8/12




Like all proponents of small government, I was thrilled by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s crushing Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in the Badger State’s run-off election. The magnitude of my delight was perhaps only exceeded by the degree of my appallment at this circus’s ever having to be conducted. In this country, we don’t recall public officials when we disagree with their politics; to do so only puts us further down the perilous path to mob rule.



At least to this observer, though, what we were seeing was only in a broad sense a backlash against big government. In a more concentrated manner, this was a backlash against taxpayers’ being compelled to pay outrageous taxes to finance benefits, especially pensions, of state and local workers of which those taxpayers could only dream. I addressed this issue in the early days of the Pontificator, in my 11/16/07 post entitled “ELIHU, WOULD YOU LOOFAH MY STRETCH MARKS?” In that seminal post, I wrote, with a degree of prescience my readers have come to expect



But now that local government workers salaries’ are getting higher, pensions are getting ever richer, and the defined benefit pension plan is going the way of the pterodactyl in the private sector, property taxpayers are getting more and more resistant to paying their growing real estate bills when an ever growing portion of those bills is going to fund pension benefits of which they can only dream.



Simply put, people are tired of paying for benefits they don’t get. They were tired of it back in 2007 when times were better and they are now even more tired of it now that times are worse. One could spin this as a revolt against big government in general, and I hope it was, but I fear it was not. This was a much more concentrated anger.



The big discussion on this topic on both Tuesday night and Wednesday (a day on which I had to once again rely on Sirius/XM because we were on the road, this time to Lincoln, Nebraska on another college trip for my second daughter. What we found was a very nice campus filled with friendly and helpful people who really love their school. And I highly recommend the ice cream at the Dairy Store on campus. I may hate to travel, but I love these college trips, but I digress.) was what ramifications the Wisconsin results hold for November. Unlike the wise and learned commentators on the major media outlets to which I had access, I have no idea what Wisconsin means for the Presidential election. However, I would advise against immediately embracing what seemed like the conventional wisdom spewing from the major media, to wit, that the Wisconsin results hold little predictive value for November because the exit polls showed that the majority of the residents of America’s Dairyland still like Mr. Obama and that even a sizable chunk of those who supported Governor Walker in the recall intend to vote for the President in November.



Why do I hold these poll results suspect? On Tuesday night at 8:00 CDT, in the immediate aftermath of the polls’ closing, CNN reported that the recall election was far too close to call and, therefore, a terrible disappointment to the Walker camp because just about every poll showed him going into the vote with a small but not inconsiderable lead, about 3%. (That the CNN crew was positively glowing at these preliminary results should come as no surprise, but again I digress. At least I do so parenthetically in this instance.) But as the actual numbers came in, the closeness somehow vanished as Governor Walker sailed to a near landslide victory. Yet the experts depended on those same exit polls to predict few, if any, consequences for President Obama’s re-election chances from Wisconsin’s hearty re-endorsement of its conservative governor.



I am an honest person, perhaps not because I am good but rather because I am insufficiently clever to keep lies lined up with the perfection lining them up demands. Honesty is its own reward, as I tell my students. That reward is often not immediate, but it will come. I have that on very Good Authority. So I never lie and I tell my students, children, and anyone who asks for advice never to lie…except in one case and one case alone. ALWAYS lie to an exit pollster. If I ever get the opportunity, I certainly will do so. Why this exception to a seemingly impervious moral rule? Because exit polls really ruin election night, which is my New Year’s Eve. I, and others who so fervently enjoy the horse race aspects of the political game, cannot stand being told one minute after the polls close who won. We would rather wait for the a modern day reincarnation of, say, Len O’Connor, to report that, in, say, “In the 18th Ward, with four precincts reporting, President Obama leads Mitt Romney by 15 votes,” than to hear the likes of Wolf Blitzer mouth, at 8:01, that “Our exit polls show that President Obama has won the election. Now to our expert panel to tell us how we should think.”



But I digress.

THAT TODDLIN’ TAHRIR

6/4/12




I haven’t been writing much in the Pontificator of late; most of my written cogitating has been conducted at my financial blog, Mighty Insights at Rant Finance


But I have not abandoned the Pontificator by any means; it will continue to be the home of my political and eclectic posts for the foreseeable future.



I have written extensively on the situation in Egypt in the past. My 1/15/12 post, DON’T BOTHER TO WAKE ME WHEN THE REVOLUTION’S OVER included a comprehensive list of all my past writings on the travails in Egypt and its neighbor to the west. The mixed verdict in former President Hosni Mubarak’s trail has given me a reason to revisit this topic which one suspects will be far more consequential in world politics than many suspect at this juncture.



In the wake of Mr. Mubarak’s and his former Interior Minister, Habib al Adli’s receiving (in Mr. Mubarak’s case, probably short) life sentences but Mr. Mubarak’s and his sons’ being acquitted on corruption charges, the demonstrators once again took to the now world famous Tahrir Square to demand whatever it is they are currently demanding. This reaction was predictable; screaming and yelling to little consequence and disrupting the lives of people who actually have something to do beats working for a living, but I digress. What was interesting about these demonstrations was the reaction to them of the two candidates in the presidential run-off to be held later this week.



The Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohamed Morsi, joined the demonstrators in Tahrir Square, apparently in an attempt to soften his image, show solidarity with the demonstrators, and win the support of the secularist “young people” who feel that they have no candidate in the run-off.



Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force general and Mr. Mubarak’s last prime minister, stayed away from the demonstrations, choosing, as the Wall Street Journal put it, to make “common cause with the majority of Egyptians who chose not to descend to the streets on Saturday night.”



If the Western media, who, depending on their age, cut their journalistic teeth either cheering on the yahoos who were burning down the campuses their parents paid for or singing “We Are the World,” could vote, Mr. Morsi’s posturing would be smart and incisive politics. Indeed, if it Mr. Morsi were not the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, one could see the CNN crowd deifying him as some sort of hero of the people’s movement or some such drivel.



Unfortunately for Mr. Morsi, however, the estimables at CBS News and MSNBC can’t vote in Egypt and Egypt is like any other country in the sense that the people who get out of bed in the morning to head for someplace other than the latest site at which people feel free to rant and rave for nebulous causes, those who really make a country work, can tolerate only so much nonsense from those who have nothing better to do than to tell everybody else how to live their lives. The people who really matter, what an ultimately disgraced but once very successful American politician coined, very correctly, the “silent majority,” do not share the pie-in-the-sky platitudes that so inspire those who have nothing else to do. The average Egyptian wants an end to this nonsense. He wants order. She wants to make a living. This is especially critical in a country that does not enjoy the prosperity we take for granted, in which making it to work on a given day may make the difference between eating and not eating.



I’m no expert in Egyptian politics and don’t like making political, or most any, predictions in any case. But it looks like Mr. Shafiq, as appalling as he might be to the children of privilege in both Egypt and the West, seems to have the ear of the Egyptians who matter.