Substitution Power

   "Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing." --Vince Lombardi

   "Profit isn't everything. It's the only thing." -- Daddy Greenbacks

   "We make it up in volume." -- Anonymous

   As consumers lose the power to bargain, they become price takers. They have little choice; they either buy at the producer's offer price or they do without. When the customer base is large enough, losing a few to price increases when there remain many others willing and able to pay more matters little. There may be fewer buyers, but the higher price yields a net increase in revenue. To the professional economist, this concept is called "elasticity," and it can be reduced to a mathematical formula so the producer can know whether a price increase will boost total profits.
   Elasticity also works in reverse -- a price cut can attract more sales volume, offsetting a reduction on a single unit, and bringing in more net profit.
   So who cares? If consumers have no bargaining power, what difference does it make? To the producer, none, because profit is the reason for the existence of the business. To the consumer, however, a difference in price can mean the difference between purchasing or doing without.
   There is always a choice.
   Sometimes, of course, a consumer can choose to do without. But is that really a choice, when to do without means hunger or sickness?
   Otherwise, there is Substitution Power, the ability of the consumer to switch to margarine instead of butter, for example. Or trade in a Hummer for a Toyota, or take the bus to work, or ride a bike or even walk.
   Price, however, is not the only reason to exercise Substitution Power.
   Consider the aggravation factor. Airlines are becoming more crowded as managers reduced the number of flights and raised fares to overcome higher fuel prices. In addition, tighter security brought delays and body searches at the terminals.
   Result: Many frequent travelers, especially those along the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, have opted to take the train.
   Amtrak recently reported a near doubling of ridership as travelers abandoned air travel, with its frequent delays and intrusive searches, and gained the convenience of downtown-to-downtown travel, the ability to use computers, cellphones and other devices on board, and dining cars.
   What's more, downtown-to-downtown and door-to-door travel time may be about the same.

Jingoism Redux

"We're a nation of immigrants." -- Mitt Romney

"All they will call you will be deportees." -- Woody Guthrie

   The story of America, said Marco Rubio at the GOP Convention in Tampa, is "the story of a man born into an uncertain future in a foreign country. His family came to America to escape revolution ... struggled through poverty and the Great Depression," and in November, "his son, Mitt Romney, will be elected President of the United States."
   Huh? George Romney, auto tycoon and governor of Michigan, was an immigrant? From Mexico?
   Who knew?
   But then, John McCain was born in Panama, so that makes him an immigrant.
   And Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona before it achieved statehood, so maybe he was an immigrant, too.
  But they were Republicans, whose parents were citizens, so that's all right.
   What of Barack Obama, born in Hawaii to a mother from Kansas?
   Phoebe Zeno, founder and president of the Amurca for Amurcans Legion, said, "That doesn't count, because he's a Democrat and his father was African."


   Our resident philosopher Pug Mahoney pointed out that under the slick veneer of praise for immigrants in convention speeches runs a wide current of jingoism, expressed in harassment of farm workers, voter ID laws and calls for those of questionable status to "self-deport."
　
　
　

Writing Style

   Broadcast news writing is very different from writing for print media.
   Not that it's more difficult; it's just different. How? Mainly because print is more forgiving. If readers do not fully grasp the idea on first reading, they can read the phrase, sentence or paragraph again until they do.
   In radio and TV news, however, that option is not available. The news writer/announcer has one chance and one chance only to tell the viewer/listener what the story is. There is no instant replay.
   OK, so maybe viewers can go to the On Demand listing of their cable TV provider and rerun the entire news program. Some, however, may not have that recourse, and more important, they shouldn't have to.
   Don't make them. They may not come back.
   Writers in the past delighted in the challenge of seeing how many words they could string together and still maintain control of the sentence.
   Novelist William James, for example, once wrote a sentence of 157 words. And the opening sentence of John Milton's Paradise Lost has 17 commas, plus a colon and a semicolon.
   Readability suffers from long-windedness. In today's era of instant gratification, viewers and readers don't want to be challenged.
   It is a fallacy to believe that writing must be difficult to read in order to qualify as good writing.
   Oprah Winfrey once said to author Toni Morrison that she had some difficulty understanding a portion of Morrison's work.
   Morrison replied: "That's called reading."

   But Stephen King commented: "No, that's called poor writing."

Flag on the Overplay

   Some opinionators are slamming Team Romney so much you'd think the election is already over.
   Confidence is good, and uncovering political balderdash is also good. But when the editorial raving against Romney & Co. rises to screed level, we worry about a backlash.
   Resident philosopher Pug Mahoney warns that the barrage of invective, while based on fact as opposed to candidate propaganda, may only reinforce the Radical Right's claim of a "liberal media conspiracy" against their side.
   Overconfidence can be dangerous, and belief can trump fact.

   Remember the 1948 banner headline in the Chicago Tribune: "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN," it read, expressing the confidence of the editors in the results of the poll they sponsored on Election Day. The survey showed overwhelming support for the Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, among those polled.
   The flaw in the survey, however, was that it was taken by telephone, and at the time, most households with telephones were those of upper-income, upper middle class families, who tended to vote Republican. Working class voters were less likely to have telephones in 1948, and more likely to vote Democratic.
   Result: A skewed survey.
   Since then, however, survey methods became more sophisticated and reliable, and the number of American households with telephone service soared to well above 90 percent. (Mobile phones are another matter; they didn't exist in 1948.) And surveys are still done mostly to landline phones.

   Recent polls show a relatively narrow gap between President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney, and many voters -- independent, undecided and unaffiliated -- may resent what they perceive as "vicious attacks."
   That perception may or may not be justified, but keep in mind that perception can easily become reality.

   Also keep in mind the Amerindian adage, "He who hunts the wolverine soon becomes the hunted."

Success Stories

   Mitt Romney points to his success in business as a qualification to be President, noting that Barack Obama had no experience in business.
   Success in business is no guarantee of success in government. Herbert Hoover was phenomenally successful in business and relied on that as a credential to get elected President .... in 1928.
   Four years later, as the Great Depression was in full dip, Hoover lost his bid for re-election.

   Be careful what you wish for.

Bush Whacked

   When he accepted the Republican Party's nomination as candidate for President of the United States, Mitt Romney claimed Jimmy Carter was the only President not to win a second term since the Great Depression.
   Missing from the Republican National Convention and, apparently, from the GOP nominee's memory, was George H.W. Bush, who lost to Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992.
   And while it is true that Carter was the only Democrat to fail to win re-election since 1892, there were four Republican presidents who were turned out after only four years. In addition to the senior Bush, there was Benjamin Harrison, William Howard Taft and Herbert Hoover.

Radical Righteous

   Early signals in campaign rhetoric suggest there will be renewed warnings that single motherhood is a national hazard.
   Look for the rhetoric of the Radical Righteous to drift away from praising the courage of single moms in favor of emphasizing the importance of traditional man-woman marriage and "core family values."
   The issue was touched on by speakers at the GOP Convention, even as they praised women in general and the courage of those raising a family on their own.
   Pay special attention to the speeches of Rick Santorum and Paul Ryan, both Tea Party darlings and leading voices for "core family values."

   Also noted: The use of the plural "these United States" by Mitt Romney and others is a harbinger of a new emphasis on states' rights over federal strength.
   "The United States" implies one nation, as compared to a confederacy of individual, independent states, each responsible for its own social welfare issues, with no room for federal involvement.