Category: POLITICS

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A Month To Go

     It is only one month to go in that most marathon of marathons, the American national election cycle.  The process of election in the United States has become so time consumptive, expensive, and career oriented, that the consideration that there are important ideas to be debated and democratically determined often gets lost in the maelstrom.  Except….this election cycle.   It certainly was originally heading toward being one of those elections where one establishment party  would argue with the other establishment party over who would be best positioned to outspend the other for the right to outspend your money.   This time, however, a funny thing happened.  A growing grass roots process of concerned citizens tired of interchangeable parties and policies decided that this election cycle would be different than all the rest – this election cycle would not be about who was in charge, who was spending more, who was more equipped to “govern – this one would be about ideas.

     Imagine that, an election about ideas, not people,  we elect to govern us.   The tea party movement has calmly stepped on the supposed third rail of politics, that the personal profile of a politician is more important then the ideas they espouse.   To the horror of the national establishment parties, the electorate determined time and time again that they would put forth candidates that would be rigorous with principle, and not just appearance.  Candidates such as Rand Paul , Scott Walker, Carl Paladino, Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, and Marco Rubio, along with a host of others, have shifted the emphasis from their at times their thin or flawed resumes to the power of their ideas.  It is the fear of all establishment parties concerned, that these people might actually vote on their principles.  As a result, we , the electorate, have a unique election that requires us to decide what principles we actually believe in.

     1. Is the Constitution of the United States the critical document of the American Ideal, or a “guide” to be constantly reformatted and interpreted?                                                                                                     When legislators swear to support, protect, and defend the Constitution,  should there be accountability?  The 2008 Congress left their session in 2010 without putting forth a budget, their primary responsibility under the constitution.  They passed governmental takeovers of private industry, banks,  and ultimately, the health care decisions of individuals without considering their constitutionality.   They left in place a broken immigration system that threatens the concepts of nationhood expressed in the Constitution. Does this ultimately matter to the citizen – the 2008 Congress gambled it would not.

    2. Does the Bill of Rights have modern value to the individual citizen?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Are the concerns expressed regarding the current legislative negligence regarding -Amendment II: the right to bear arms, Amendment IV: the right of individuals to be secure in their houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable search and seizure, Amendment VI: the right to a speedy trial, Amendment IX, the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, not to construe the denial of other rights of individuals, otherwise not mentioned in the Constitution, Amendment X:  the rights reserved to the individual states not otherwise specified in the Constitution- sufficiently important to demand compliance by legislators?

    3. Should the individual right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” be a legislated quality or an individual determination?                                                                                                                                    Do laws that purport to support the public welfare, do so at the expense of civil liberties?  Should a government determine what you may eat,  how you should educate yourself, what level of comfort you should live in, what kind of house you should live in, what books you should read,  how many children you should have, what level of support you may supply your family’s future generations?  Should taxes be used to support the nation’s progress and infrastructure, or as a weapon to determine the extent of individual success and redistribute individual achievement and happiness?

    4. Should laws be established that provide for the present with no provision as to the future? Does the American Ideal require protective parenting?                                                                                                 The nation’s spending habits are driving toward a future where all the nation’s resources will go toward maintain the “comfort” of the population against any other need.  Who is looking out for the future generations; should it matter to the living what damage they  do to future generations dreams of the above principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

    5. Does the concept of  Nationhood matter anymore?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        The current congress and President have legislated strongly toward a globalization process that progressively weakens the concept of the American nation through support of international law standards rather than national ones, pursuit of “climate” legislation, that internationalizes American economic decision making,  immigration policies that blur forever the borders and result in acceptance of illegality and inconsistency,  and reject the concept of an American leadership role in defending the principles of freedom and civilized behavior.  Is a nation a place on a map, a certain racial characteristic, or a consensus of ideas that all within believe in and uphold?

    One month to go to the humdinger of all surveys of what we truly believe- its going to be interesting.


  

  

  

  

  

 

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The President as the Portrait of Dorian Gray

   Every four years several dozen individuals contemplate themselves as taking on the mantle of the Presidency of the United States and immortalizing themselves as the select leader of the most powerful nation on earth.  It is an enormous prop to the ego, and entering into the job most see the progressive withering of the individual preceding them as more a consequence of the character flaws of that individual, rather than any sum effect of the burdens of the job.  The ego provides a negligent purview of the true cost physically and mentally of being the singular person responsible for the most powerful military and greatest economy on earth.

     In a relatively short period of time, however, with little recognition on their part, the crushing hyperbolic pressure and microscopic focus of each decision inevitably and profoundly effects them.  The time demands and the continual focus and responsibility become overbearing.  They become churlish, defensive, and reactionary to events and particularly to any personal criticism.  None are immune, and the physical deterioration becomes apparent over time, like fresh fruit exposed to air and temperature.

     Oscar Wilde wrote the famous treatise on hedonism, youth, and the ravages of age in “The Portrait of Dorian Gray”  in which the lead character sells his soul and in return, transfers all the ravages of his sin and age to his portrait and living, for a time, in immortal youth.   The Presidency is essence, the living portrait of Dorian Grey, where the ideal of vigor, confidence, and youthful energy sold to the public every four years in an orchestrated marketing campaign gives way to a lasting portrait of the idealist in decline, his powers diminished,  his whithered image magnified for all to see.  He has become King Lear in the winter of his professional life, reduced to trying to re-create the lost vitality and energy of the original portrait, with the reality of the current portrait only increasing the skepticism of the public’s faith with each passing view. 

      So goes Obama.              So goes all that have come before him.

and… exactly why do they want this job again?
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Hey…You’re Going The Wrong Way!

     A terrific ad recently created by Fred Davis of Strategic Perception, one of the more creative Republican media ad producers, and underwritten by Citizens For The Republic has been furiously making the rounds of the blogosphere and soon to be publicly disseminated.  In a perseptive inverse mirror effect it recalls precisely for the modern generation the extremely influential commercial put forth by Michael Deaver’s brilliant team for President Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign of 1984.  Deaver wanted everybody to quietly reflect on President Reagan’s success in restoring optimism as a fundamental  quality in Americans as they preceeded with their daily lives, and see it as a direct result of his leadership.  Mr. Davis frames the exactly identical emotional argument but in modern, darker shadows that remind all that the current sense of foreboding and uneasiness about the future also is a result of leadership, but leadership steering the nation’s ship toward failure and pessimism.

     The dominant argument is that there is a right way and wrong way to leadership and it projects eventually to all Americans who man the ship of state, that the ship’s captain knows what is necessary, or that he increasingly has no clue.  This is a message of enormous  influence because it seeks to ennuciate in quiet but direct terms what increasing voting majorities have been feeling and whispering to themselves, but progressively acknowledge is a feeling their neighbors carry as well.

     In 1984, more than any other issue, the sense that America had escaped the turbulence of the previous two decades and returned to a stable and positive direction that benefited everybody was overwhelming.  It lead to President Reagan’s re-election in a crushing landslide of 49 states to one for Walter Mondale.  Mr.Davis is now seeking to achieve the same overwhelming emotional reaction, but this time, that an immediate turnabout is in order, if there is to be relief from the progressively darker and stormy direction of the American Dream. 

Watch the two commercials side to side – I think Mr. Davis  just may be on to something.

 1984  –  Morning in America

 2010  –  Mourning in America

 

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Independent Voters Back On The Swing Set

     One day before the 1998 election for Senator for the state of Wisconsin, I was conversing about the election with a good friend, a self described “independent” voter.   The election was one of those elections that provide the best of democracy in action.  Two very intelligent men, Russ Feingold, Democrat, and Mark Neumann, Republican, with absolutely diametrically opposed views and principles on how society should function and government’s role in it, had a run a campaign amazingly free of negativism and attack, and loaded with insightful debate.  My friend, a committed voter, a day before an election with the sharpest of contrasts in principle ever offered , lacking the usual associated personal baggage tied to either candidate, found himself unable to make up his mind between the two.   Both candidates in his mind had merits, he said; he was finding it difficult to do his usual deciding “gut check”.   The two candidates had defined themselves to a razor’s edge, and he could not decide which way to “feel right” about his vote.

     I was and am still amazed by his indecisiveness in that most focused of elections, won narrowly by Mr. Feingold by 35,000 votes out of 1.62 million.  It started my internal debate, however, on the elements that differentiate my thinking from the so called independent voter.  Why didn’t the independent voter of 1998 fail to settle on a single candidate’s vision of the American ideal – the vote separation of 50% to 49% indicates in a state evenly divided by Democrats and Republicans, that the independent voter split right down the middle.  What is the value of a “gut check”, when the candidates, both quality individuals, are separated only by their principles?  Is it possible to be swayed by both the concept of governmental regulation to guard against damaging outliers and limited government that guards against the suppression of individual incentive?  Is it conceivable to support aggressive taxation to promote “fairness” in society, and at the same time, agree that taxes should interfere as little as possible with entrepreneurial spirit and resultant job creation?  Can one believe in the avoidance of all foreign military entanglements and at the same time support the troop structure that makes such entanglements possible?

     My eventual conclusion regarding the philosophical underpinnings of my friend’s indecision and the independent voter in general, is that a set of priniciples regarding what best serves the future vision of the country takes second place as to whether the current atmosphere “feels right or wrong”.   In 2000, the country seemed prosperous and at peace, but had dealt with eight years of clintonian ethical lapses – an indecisive election that after some 103 million votes cast, came down to a few hundred contested votes in Florida.  In 2008, the election brought a massive Democrat wave to Washington, providing  opposition proof majorities to the house and Senate and a strong Presidential mandate, a reaction to the “wrong direction” aggressive foreign policies of the Bush years.  Now in 2010, it appears the independent “swing set” is swinging again toward a “wrong direction” election, looking to remove the very philosophical tenets they voted for in waves in 2008. 

     The Constitution of the United States brilliantly lead us to this pendulum of philosophy, preventing the extremes of principles of societal philosophy such as communism or fascism from ever taking hold.  In modern times however, we are absent that other bedrock concept that drove the founders defining that great document – “we hold these truths to be self evident; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.   It might do well for the “independents”to subscribe to this little bit of bedrock philosophy in forming their decisions regarding America’s future.  Maybe then, we can finally get down to the business of solving our problems in a disciplined fashion, and not equivocate on the basis of a lack of “feeling”. 

    How did my friend vote in that prinicipled election?  It really doesn’t matter; he was bound to change his mind again the next chance he got.

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Tea Party Ascendant

     In one of the most notorious political mis-steps in political history, the democrat party’s denigrating of the grass roots movement known as the tea party may be its undoing in the elections of 2010.   The primary races of September 14th  are showing with progressive clarity the strength and will of tea party activists to upset the establishment cart and convert the direction of the American political scene to something more in keeping with their political vision.  Derided as racists, nativists, bumpkins, and intellectual midgets, the width and the breath of tea party continues to grow and achieve its aims against all odds of establishment support and establishment money.  Starting with the spectacular win of Scott Brown in the bluest of blue states in Massachusetts, to the governor victories in Virginia and New Jersey, the overthrow of senate incumbents like Spector in Philidelphia and Murkowski in Alaska, and the primary night  victory of  Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, the momentum of the tea party into a formidable force is clear.

     The origin of the tea party mentality for vigorous push back against perceived governmental overstep is a treasured American tradition.  The original Boston Tea Party, on December 16th, 1773,  forcably dumped  the tea cargo of East India Trading Company into Boston Harbor as a pointed protest against British policy of securing a tax against the colonists without their sense of fair representation of their views.  Samuel Adams, cousin of John Adams and a member of the Sons of Liberty group that organized the protest, philosophized the underlying process of trying to achieve change in the face of establishment resistance:

“It does not take a majority to prevail…but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”

     The modern tea party lives this to a “T” – the sense of an overbearing government unwilling to respect the need for obtaining the advised consent of the people for the bank and subprime bailouts, stimulus bill, cap and trade, and healthcare “reforms”, lit the fire and created the uniting impulse of many people with completely diverse agendas into an organized force.  What has been so surprising to establishment figures has been the depth of emotional attachment to arcane ideas like constitutional constructionism, fiscal accountability, pride in individual libertarian traditions, and revulsion against forced public planning instead of private enterprise.  These are crystallized into what tea partiers see as the unique American calling. So spoke our friend Samuel Adams again:

“Our contest is not only whether we ourselves will be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum of earth for civil and religious liberty.”

        The initial sense that the tea party movement would dissipate in the soft focus of principle in the face of the hard knocks that form the reality of American politics has proved erroneous.  If anything the election coming on November 2nd portends an amazing forcewave of political revolution.  It doesn’t appear that the genie is going back in the bottle any time soon.  Change, real change, appears on the way.  Mr. Adams, one more time:

“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks…Among the natural rights of all citizens are these: first, a right to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property; together with the right to defend as best as they can.”     

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The Unalienable Right of Stupidity?

     The comedian Dennis Miller was asked about his view regarding the filmmaker Michael Moore’s right to make movies that bombastically drive opinions through questionable logic and facts.  Miller stated bluntly that although he found Moore despicable, he believed that the unique premise of America regarding free speech needed to be defended to the hilt, an inalienable right that ” allowed that stupid moron to be that utterly, completely wrong”.   I have decided for the most part to stay away from day to day stories on this blog for the simple reason that the immediate impulse to interpret rarely provides perspective.  A recent story however about unknown minister determined as a right of free speech to burn Korans has managed to ensnare the national media, the President of the United States, and the General in charge of combat forces in Afghanistan.  Now that’s the power of free speech; thus far no Korans burned, and yet the entire world is commenting on whether this man has the right to state his opinion through a ludicrous and reckless public display.

     What exactly is the right being defended here?  The First Amendment to the Consitution of the United States states the following:

          “Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”

     The privilege to act in ways that express your freedom of speech by voicing your discontent and outrage through the burning of Korans shall not be infringed by law or law officers, whether it be the chief legal officer of the the land, the President, or your local constabulary.  And clearly, your privilege as an Imam to build a mosque within blocks of ground zero is to upheld as a free man’s exercise of his religious expression.  The chief officer of the land, the President, who so vociferously rejects the logic of free expression of a crazy minister, is caught in the quandary of defending the free expression of a crazy imam who desires to build a triumphal temple at the site of the barbarous acts of fringe members of his religious vision.

     The problem comes down to the concept as to whether a right exists, versus whether it’s expression is moral or correct action.  In simple terms, do we have the right to be “that stupid moron” that Dennis Miller eviscerates?  Of course we do – and a developed, mature society has the equal right to complain, abhor, and most importantly, ignore moronic expression. The lunacy of defending indefensible acts does not protect the right of expression, but instead cheapens it by implying every stupid indefensible act needs to be supported righteously by a healthy society as a viable expression.  The right to express, does not make it viable expression.  The defense against stupidity and the prevention of moronic acts is a common sense recognition of right and wrong that demands society not needlessly support its own destruction through publicity.  If Nazis want to march through Skokie, Illinois no one should watch the parade. If an artist expresses his immaturity and perversion of placing a symbol of Christ in a glass of urine, he has the right, but society has the right to assure no public funds or facilities be utilized to publicize his moronic talentless expression.    If imams want to build mosques, they have the right to build but not the right to build unfettered to location.  If Koran burning makes the minister feel better, the total avoidance of any publicity or attention, the two outcomes he craves more than anything, merits the common sense approach.  We all have rights to expression, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to like a particular stupidity, expressed by a particular moron- we can use our common sense and express our opinion, that when you desire to express your right, we reserve the capacity to inform you societally that your right, is utterly, completely wrong.

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A “Wave” Election – Tsunami or Pond Ripple?

     There is a growing consensus that the state and congressional elections of November 2nd, 2010 are heading toward a climatic outcome that may profoundly shift the political direction of the United States.  These are referred to in the journalistic vernacular as “wave” elections, where not only vulnerable politicians lose their elected office, but politicians in so called “safe seats” are swept away in a rising tide of voter anger.  Multiple examples of wave elections are present in electoral history.  A classic example is the election of 1994, when the Republican party took over 50 seats to sweep into power and take the house majority for the first time in over 40 years.   In review of classic wave elections, it is often forgotten what the forces that catapulted winning party into such a dominant position in the voter’s mind, and the reasons are often mis-represented.  In 1994, the journalistic mantra is that the public accepted the positive role of the “Contract With America” as the primary reasoning behind the forceful public decision.  Careful polling, however, indicated that in 1994, the general voter’s acknowledgement of the existence of a  “Contract with America” was in the minds of less than 20% of those who polled for the republican candidates that year.  The true reason for most “wave” elections is a fairly simple one -revulsion for the tactics of the party in power – rather than any positive impressions of the party out of power. If there is such a wave election this year, the reason will be little different. 

     The public’s perception of a ruling party’s arrogance about the role of public opinion is  usual catalyst of electoral collapse of the party in power.  For some time the disconnect between the public’s perception of change they thought they voted for in 2008 – fiscal sanity, government transparency, and government accountability – has become more and more ingrained.  Current congressional job approval is only 23% with 72% disapproval and generic polling for whether the country is on the right track (31.8%) versus wrong track (61.2%)  represents a crushing 29.4% negative interpretation of the current Democrat Party policy direction.  There is no voter gasoline stronger than the sense by the voting public that leaders are acting in “anti-democratic” fashion, ignoring time and time again the priorities identified by the voter.   Promised fiscal sanity, the voter is presented with the ballooning deficits and scatter-shot stimulus spending that seems to have no identifiable productive logic or constructive goal.  Promised government transparency, the recognition of dramatic back room deals to special interests and clumsy bills with thousands of pages of hidden agendas voted through without the barest public or legislative vetting is seen time and time again.  Promised government accountability, the current congress has been unable to come together sufficiently to present or vote on a proposed budget, despite overwhelming party majorities. 

     The democrat party in power has been assuming all along a relative ripple on the pond voter reaction that will allow them to permanently secure their policy agendas.  The current response to the public angst about the direction the country is headed?  You guessed it; a proposal for another 50 billion in stimulus.  Being a successful politician has in recent decades been about controlling the power of money to win elections – more money, more electoral wins.  This election season something different seems to be afoot – politicians who capably use their five senses – touching the pulse of the public, hearing the public concern about the country’s future, acknowledging the rotten smell of an  establishment suckled on money, seeing the future for what it is and acting on it, may yet ride a tsunami wave on the  fifth sense this year – the satisfying taste of overwhelming victory.

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The Road To Serfdom

     In an  Internet bookstore with millions of available titles, Amazon.com lists its category best sellers and overall best sellers monthly, an interesting pulse on the  interest areas of the reading public.  The number 1 best seller for all books on Amazon in June of 2010 was  The Road To Serfdom by F.A. Hayek. – WHO?? – It is reasonable to consider with some amazement that an economic treatise written by an obscure Austrian intellectual 66 years ago could captivate such a large segment of the population as to lead all books in all categories.  A book that dominated the usual summer classics, such as the vampire inspired The Passage or the son’s memoir of his father S**t My Father Says , would be assumed by all to have some violent or sexy angle to bring in all these literary stragglers.  Perhaps this is a book about a Serf mafioso who rules over a dangerous road through which a hero must travel to attain a powerful ring…clever premise, but no,  that’s far from the book’s central theme. 

      It turns out that the gripping premise of F.A. Hayek’s book that so absorbed the American public’s attention this summer is a call to intellectual arms to avoid the collectivist mistakes of socialized states and to defend the power of man’s individualism.  How could such ideas written by a relative unknown born in 1899 resonate so strongly this summer? The answer is obvious to those like me who have read Hayek’s treatise.  Its is Hayek’s description of the collectivist impulses of governments promoting good acts that ultimately strangulates the capacity of individuals to achieve success by “developing their own individual gifts and bents”.  Hayek saw the collectivist responses of governments to the world wide depression born of classic liberal utopian desires to level the playing field and eliminate the inequities presented by the capitalist model.  In the process of seeking societal ideals of social justice, grater, equality and security, the social utopian structures common plans that deferentially and without prejudice would “handle our common problems as rationally as possible”.  For these modern planners, “it is not sufficient to design the most rational permanent framework within which various activities would be conducted by individual persons according to their individual plans.  What our planners demand is a central direction of all economic activity according to a single plan, laying down how resources of society should be ‘consciously directed’ to serve particular ends in a definite way.”  Hayek saw the classic argument regarding a totalitarian socialism that neither cared nor understood how the utopian goals were achieved and were merely certain that they be achieved, no matter what the cost, and the democratic socialist who struggled with dictatorial tenets of such utopians, argued only regarding the means, not the ends.  Both fundamentally believed that government must ” centrally direct economic activity if we want to make the distribution of income conform to current ideas of social justice.”  Hayek quoted Benito Mussolini as objectifying the need for central planning to reduce the inequities of individual competition in a modern world – ” We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become.”  benito mussolini (1929).

     Hayek was speaking to an audience dealing with the aggressive impulses of the totalitarian socialists Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, but asking them to recognize the tendencies in their own threatened democratic world to the less martial but every bit as threatening collectivist strains of their own society.  For Hayek , ”the welfare and happiness of millions cannot be measured on a scale of less and more.”  What becomes inherently clear in the democratic effects on building a collectivist society, is not that the equality of society transcends to an absolute good, but rather, that the benefits of society receive a more equal distribution.  The definition of good or bad can not be left to society to determine benefit, for obviously everyone’s opinion as to good differs, and millions of people’s definition of good differs absolutely.  Inevitably, the direction of relative good can not be left to people to decide as in the end, the decisions in attempting to satisfy everyone will satisfy no one.   The lasting consequence, Hayak suggests, is the inevitable “cry for an economic dictator as a characteristic stage in the movement toward central planning.”   The death of freedom of choice must be the outcome that permits the central planner to achieve his end, because every effort to direct tendencies brings the unforeseen consequence of the individual’s adaptation to the rules, to secure the individual’s best possible outcome against the difference of the definition of good acknowledged by the many individual variations, and the single definition of the central planners.

     The treatise of a long ago theorist has become the running commentary of today’s events and has once again made the obscure economist Hayek a best selling author and a prophet to millions of Americans concerned with the direction of current governmental actions.  The need to eliminate individual variation in decision making and responsibility to achieve a common good – government takeover of mortgage loans, college education loans, credit card and financial lending,  the government take over of health care decisions and insurance, the government takeover of major industries such as the automobile industry, the government regulatory processes to “effect” climate change, social justice, immigration, propagation of non-elected “czars” rather than legislators to effect change – all point to the road map to servitude Hayak pointed out so presciently many years ago. 

     The reason The Road To Serfdom is a best seller again, is because we, as a free society under attack are farther down that road than ever before, and a larger and larger proportion of the populus is recognizing it.

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Does Anyone Read The Bills Anymore?

     We are living in an era of government dedicated to the proposition that, the larger a bill of enacting laws that is put forth, the greater the chance that the bill will deal with the complicated contingencies of modern life. These megaliths are often given clear and impactful titles – The Patriot Act, The American Recovery and ReInvestment Act, the Health Care and Education Affordability and Reconciliation Act, and the Financial Regulatory Reform Act  to name a few of our recent beauties. The descriptive character of these titles belie the incredible vagaries and unknowable effects of thousands and thousands of pages of byzantine edicts and regulations. The one thread that runs through all these monuments to modern legislation is that almost no one who has voted for them has spent any time reading any of them.

Interestingly our leaders are proud of this fact:
          Frank Lautenberg, Senator New Jersey – Feb. 13 2009 – ” No one will have time to read the final version of the Stimulus Act before it comes up for a vote in the Senate.”
          Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House -March 9, 2010 “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it”
          Bill Thomas, Rep. California – June 10, 2010 – Asks Warren Buffet at Financial Review Meeting if he thought the Congress had gotten most of the Financial Regulatory Reform Act “mostly right”. Buffet confessed he had not read the 1500 page bill, and Thomas assured him that was okay, because” no one has read the text of the financial regulatory reform bill, including some of the co-sponsors”.

    What has happened to the consideration that congress used to put into laws, the committee review, the careful syntax, the brevity for impact. Well….its just gone.  President Obama ran on the principle of assuring the public that each act of legislation would see at least five days on the Internet prior to any vote , to provide the “light of Day” to each action.  That promise didn’t last inauguration, and hasn’t seen the light of day since.  The process of passage now is comprised of allowing lobbyists and policy wonks their best shot at crafting policy statements as laws, and then allow subsequent acts to “fix” the mistakes. The American public? Simply too naive and reactionary to be allowed to know what’s in the bill ahead of time, as fore-knowledge would simply kill any passage momentum.  At a time in our history when technology offers the opportunity to each citizen if so inclined to have access to  information that will intensely affect his or her life, the access is denied.  More frighteningly, when the information is available upon passage, the reader is buried under a blizzard of ridiculous hedges, sidebars, and subsets that make the impact simply unknowable.

     The most important piece of legislation passed by an American Congress is the Bill Of Rights, passed by the congress in 1789, and ratified by the states in 1791. 

     The Rights of Man, so complex, so important, so revolutionary, so effective………………fits on one page.

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Are Big Ideas A Thing of the Past?

     Michael Barone has a thoughtful essay on our ability to conceive and create significant construction projects in today’s world.  He bemoans a smaller bridge project in Washington DC that has been going on for 42 months with no end in sight. He compares it to the building of the Pentagon in the forties that as the largest building in the world at the time was conceived,constructed, and opened in less than three years.  The number of similar current “big idea” morasses clumsily produced by the public sector brings forth the premise that we have lost the ability to conceive of the planning, coordination, and logistics that are required to bring big projects to fruition in a time frame that any individual would recognize as an achievement in their lifetimes.  The “Big Dig” in Boston was an effort to reduce traffic congestion over a 3.5 mile stretch of central Boston conceived in the 1980’s, begun in 1991, opened in 2006 ,and an estimated 22 billion dollars later still being shaped by shoddy construction, leaks, ceiling collapses, and minimal improvement in traffic congestion.  The “Deep Tunnel” project in Milwaukee invested billions and two decades in an effort to capture and treatment water runoff before it reached Lake Michigan – it has resulted in multiple sewage back-ups into homes with any steady rain and frequent needs to dump millions of gallons of  raw sewage into Lake Michigan – not exactly the vision of its idealistic planners.  The World Trade Center catastrophe stimulated the plans for a monumental restoration of the subway center, the skyscrapers, and a fitting memorial, all of which languish 9 years later in a state of paralysis and delay, with no conceived process for showing the necessary will to initiate and complete the project.

     Have we lost the ability to work and sacrifice together as a nation to achieve the significant projects that benefit us all in order to focus only on our own security and gratification?  Our government has become wholly interested in its control of the individual life, securing ifor the individual perceived freedom from want, responsibility, damaging health choices, and personal decision making capacity, at the expense of doing what it once did best – achieving the great ideas that were beyond any one individual or group, for the betterment of all.  In 1931, the United States committed to the Boulder (Hoover) Dam project on the Colorado river, completing the dam by 1936, supply water and electricity to millions in the midst of a great economic depression.  The total construction cost? -49 million – which paid for a 12oo foot long 726 foot high structure that 70 years later still generates 4.2 billion kilowatt/hours of electricity every year.

This clearly is not an issue about money, intelligence, capacity, workforce, imagination, or need. This remains a crisis of lack of will and overwhelming self-absorption. Can we once again achieve processes where strangulating regulations don’t destroy momentum and focus on the larger good, where important public needs are subjugated to the attack and erosion of personal needs, where corruption and shoddy leadership suffocate the realization of good ideas in reasonable time frames?  It is truly the question of our time, and reflects on us all.