Cowboy Confessional

Cowboy Confessional
Guy Smith – writer, songwriter, political provocateur
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Revision Ruminations

February 14th, 2009

I hate A&R buyers, mainly because they are right.

Buyers shop for songs to sell recording artists. These folks are (typically) industry veterans with the psychological scars to prove it. They are intimate with a wide range of musical genre and can instantly connect a demo song to any number of artists who might record it. They are the necessary middlemen that keep songwriting hacks like me from tossing CDs over perimeter fences of recording star’s homes.

I recently pitched to Jason Brawner, an L.A. producer and someone too upbeat and pleasant for what can be a rotten industry filled with saber-toothed scammers. I tossed the latest revision of One Heartbreak into the boom box and he gave a listen while reading the lyric sheet.

Jason’s other uncharacteristic trait is that he had loads of helpful critique, the most painful of which that night was the tempo of my tune. Paraphrasing liberally, Jason said “I see where you are going. Old school, depression blues. Can’t sell it. Double the tempo, bring it up to blues/rock and …” In other words head back to the studio and do it all over again.

Sigh.

I won’t debate his wisdom. While the CD spun, I was having the same thought though I was not yet ready to admit it to myself. The tune as currently recorded has merit. Anyone with Muddy Waters or Uncle Tupelo in their collection will appreciate the foundation I created.

But Jason was right about it not being currently marketable. Anyone recording desperation blues is either writing his own stuff or lifting any of a million public domain ditties penned by original delta bluesmen. They don’t need to pay me for my song.

Time to warm-up the studio gear and find a faster drummer. I’ll start with the beat and build from there.

Sigh.

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Political Profits

February 11th, 2009

Fred Smith (no relation), the founder of Federal Express and the inventor of an entire industry, spoke at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club tonight. George Shultz — a man who held more secretary positions (Secretary of Labor, Secretary of the Treasury, U.S. Secretary of State) in the U.S. government than Monica Lewinsky – sat attentively in the front of the audience.

That’s one of the wonders of San Francisco. Smart and accomplished people live here anyway and hang out in the audience with the plebs.

During his talk, which covered commerce, energy and tax policy, Smith mentioned in passing that FedEx is currently about a $40 billion company. California is about $40 billion in the hole this budget year. Fairly clear who would be better running a government – a person acquainted with commerce or politicians acquainted only with pocket picking. But I doubt Fred wants the pay cut or having a belligerent boss like me.

This incidental contrast of $40 billion positive and negative statuses made me involuntarily ponder Meg Witman, a woman who apparently has lost her mind given she now wants to skate away from eBay, the online auction house she founded, and preside over the California’s $40 billion fiscal tar pit. Of course eBay churns less than $9 billion in annual revenues, so perhaps it is a shorter step down for Meg than Fred.

Fred thankfully validated – hell, he almost repeated verbatim – one of my common comments, that government does not produce anything and only moves money from one source to another. Business people do produce, and they do so with the help of a lot of employees who work toward creating value (and Fred values employees – he always puts them on the top of the hierarchy, acknowledging that they create FedEx value and he merely sets the direction).

That is why you will see every California state employee campaign vigorously against Whitman as they did against presidential contender Mitt Romney, another successful businessman. State employees fear Meg will force them to create value like the rest of us.

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Cal-lapsing

February 8th, 2009

During boom years promotion pimps bragged that California was the tenth largest economy in the world, eclipsing Italy, Spain, Mexico and the hyper wired nation of South Korea (seriously, you folks in South Korea need to put down your game controllers and get outdoors more often – you make Silicon Valley computer geeks look like rugged adventurers).

You aren’t hearing from government PR flaks much this year because the tenth largest economy in the world has one fiscal foot in the grave and the other on a skateboard. Despite having the 6th highest tax burden of the fifty minor republics, the Golden State is broke, tragically in debt and being held hostage by people who get their money from … the state government.

Politicians and other disreputable sorts in Sacramento have engineered a $40 billion dollar shortfall, or about what California planned to spend on its own operations in the 2007-8 budget cycle. Let that sink in for a moment. The California State Legislature supped-up spending enough to consume all new revenue during the brief bubble period of escalating property values, and hence property taxes. When that bubble burst (as any developmentally disabled person could have predicted were they not employed in the state Department of Finance) a deficit opened that was approximately the size of Montana.

Afraid to raise taxes (because people want to keep their money) or cut spending (because people want free money), the state over the years has borrowed lucre to the point of illiquidity. People are so fearful of a Cal default that the state’s credit rating has plunged below that of Louisiana, a locality known for institutionalized larceny. Home loans to the Lower 9th are a better risk than lending to the government of orange groves, Hollywood starlets and Disneyland (San Francisco is still thriving, but then again congenital vice is always profitable).

The causes for this ongoing democratic delinquency are as predictable as meadow muffins in a pasture, and about as appetizing. American founding fathers – the hyper intellectuals of their era – had long watched the maturation of every form of government. They often warned about two unerring errors. Our forefathers foretold the miseries incurred when accountability is obfuscated and when profiteers control the purse.

Word came from Sacramento that the current budget impasse is in part due to state employees. Unlike regular employees (i.e., you), they are unwilling to give up a nickel despite our mutual hard times (come on boys and girls … where is your collectivist spirit … suffering for the common good and all that stuff). State employee unions are significant sponsors of terror toward politicians. They finance campaigns and are not afraid to bluntly inform an elected official that unemployment awaits should their perks be penalized. San Francisco’s local scandal sheet reported today:

Democrats – under pressure from state worker unions who are essential to their own political livelihoods – have been told that any vote to redo overtime or workers’ compensation rules will mean no endorsement when they run for re-election or for another office.

In other words state employees are dictating the state budget. This is akin to naming Dracula director of the blood bank. Indeed the basic flaw of every democracy (a much lower form of government than our original republic) is that those in power have license to do infinite evil providing they have a majority vote. In the case of state employee unions, they are doing what politicos in power always do – living in relative luxury at other people’s expense and protecting their sullied station in life with the ferocity of a pit bull on steroids.

Yet the government’s wage earning minions (and I use the word ‘earn’ with limbo-like flexibility) are a minority entry in California’s annual money grubbing competition. You could fire every employee in state government and still not save $40B, though you would come mighty close. Capital outlays – which despite the name has nothing to do with politicians banging hookers on the capital lawn – are even less at $7B, though at least with these expenses the taxpayer receives real merchandise in exchange. The silent sucker of California’s coffers are local governments who absconded twice as much state money as the state, or a round $96B in the last complete budget cycle.

Local governments are the largest recipient of local tax dollars after they have been laundered by the state legislature. Take two tequila shooters and wait for the pain in your skull to dissipate.

It is a simple game with complex rules. Local taxpayers bleed profusely to the state government and gripe the whole time. They lose their wealth because some politician invented or exaggerated a localized societal woe and voted to spend state money to solve the problem. Local voters then send their personal politicians (assemblymen and senators) to Sacramento to try and get back as much of that money as possible. Each representative engages in battle with 121 other professional leeches to disproportionately divide the revenue pie. As such no one representative can be held accountable for failure. Since it is impossible for any representative to bring back more money than was paid by their constituents, they mutually agree to spend more than the entire state collects.

Instant deficit.

The same game is played in Washington D.C., another town known for fiscal imbecility and for the very same reason. About $300B leaves California each year for a short stay in the federal treasury. After being yanked, pulled, tugged and slugged by 535 elected parasites, about $250B returns (in cash or indirect federal spending) to the Land of Fruits and Nuts, or a negative 17% return on investment. Like its psychologically disturbed little brother, the national government also runs in the red. Being the big player though, $40B is a mere rounding error in the federal budget that between George Bush and Barack Obama has increased about $1.5 trillion bucks.

Instant insanity.

The solution set is both simple and fair, which means it is doomed from the start. Local funding of local projects with maybe a tiny shared pool of pesos for impoverished places prevents political plunder. If San Francisco wants to build an all-you-can-smoke opium den they can do so with San Francisco dollars (though they would first have to amend their anti-smoking laws – tobacco of course would still be verboten). No cash from Calistoga would be called for. If California wished to seismically retrofit the San Andreas Fault, then no lucre from Louisiana would be allowed.

Sane, simple and completely unacceptable to the people that matter … the ones currently pillaging taxpayers.

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Perfidious Press

February 1st, 2009

Two traits link the beautiful city of San Francisco and the power center that is Washington D.C. Those traits are rampant psychosis and yellow journalism.

Occasionally you can find both in one convenient package.

Modern Sodom’s scandal sheet is the San Francisco Chronicle (or the Chronic as we local observers of the dope smoking counter culture call the paper). This William Randolph Hearst bastard child of is no stranger to the stranger side of journalism despite their occasional lucid interludes when they print and pay for my op/eds. Catering to a left of center populace, the Chronic is seldom ashamed to pimp politicians of the progress persuasion. Naturally they carried affections for Barack Obama that made Alex Forrest appear aloof by comparison.

I am surprised Ward Bushee didn’t wear knee pads during Obama interviews.

Surprising it isn’t then when the Golden Gate’s local fish wrapper blazes front page stories that seem less factually devoted than devotional. Today from their Washington Bureau came an opening paragraph that had an equal mix of DNC talking points and Obama campaign messaging, as well as a complete abdication of journalist integrity.

The Obama stimulus, as history will know it, is change you can believe in. That $900 billion and counting reflects the outcome of the November election …

In less than two sentences the Chronic’s D.C. yellow dog managed to regurgitate as fresh food two distinct Democrat sound bites while simultaneously divining the future aggregate conclusion of historians. The writer (a malleable noun in this instance) commands the reader to believe yet not to think or be informed. The political immodesty of the Chronicle’s alleged journalist contorts the very definition of news and the more important concepts of balance, insight and open-mindedness.

But it says a lot about the decline of the American newspaper.

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