Category: POLITICS

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Two Voices That Get It (aka Staying Out of the Cookie Jar)

     Two relatively unknown heroes are emerging onto the American political stage.  One is pugnacious, willful, and admits to a “weight problem”, the other is short,  balding, thin, and prefers motorcycles to cars.  Neither projects the stature of our current President, lacking the photogenic lines, baritone voice, and soaring rhetoric associated with our cinema influenced view as to how the perfect leader should present.  They share in common truly only one thing – in an age of adolescent politics, they govern as adults.

     Governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and Mitch Daniels of Indiana are presenting real difficulties to the reactionary governmentalists who like to paint every intellectual response to governance not including more government as somehow racist, uncaring, lacking in vision, or simply undoable in today’s complex world.  The rabid attacks on each have somehow only seemed to reinforce their “adult” presence and popularity to the bewilderment of the governmentalists, to whom these tactics have always worked before. 

     The basic premise of governmentalist or statist logic has always been the assumption of the American society’s need for personal security. The need is first dressed in the form of a means of support during down times. Its continuous presence becomes a part of the society’s fabric and the temporary need becomes the assumed entitlement. The statist confirms inevitable growth of individual control by reminding the individual of a terrible world where the security blanket would be removed and the painful realities of life destroying the comfortable existence the individual must be entitled to.   It is the story of the cookie jar. The young child has a problem; he wants a cookie, because he is hungry for something sweet. One cookie is provided because cookies are available and hunger is evil. One cookie does not seem to be enough to fill his hunger, and the child asks for more cookies. The cookie jar is filled with more cookies, but no amount of cookies seems to assuage the child’s hunger.   At the end, the child cries, looks longingly into the empty cookie jar, and states, ” Now I have two problems – I am still hungry, and now I am fat.”

     The adult answers for government are outlined by the two gentleman in different ways tempered for their local population and specific “cookie jar” problems.  In his excellent essay on the two governors,  Rick Moran goes into detail regarding the specific approaches used. The adult style of governance has some electoral legs but it is yet unclear as to whether the performance of these two politicians under very trying circumstances is looked upon as revolutionary by the voting public, or merely refreshing. Neither has yet declared a desire to take these principles to a higher plane, but neither has denied the possibility. Given the size and scope of our national cookie jar sized problems, its going to have to take someone with real adult sized mentalities to begin the process of educating the public that here is a perfectly good life feasible without cookies – and freer for the individual, without the hunger, and without the oppressive fat.

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The Rant That Started It All

     On Tuesday, August 10th, multiple party primaries took place across the United States as part of a steady stream of electoral nominations to occur over the next weeks promoting candidates to battle for election to the US Congress in November, 2010.  Colorado’s Republican primary for Senate ended with Ken Buck, the so called “tea party” candidate, easily winning the nomination over the establishment Republican candidate to be the party’s standard barer in the upcoming statewide election in November.  The “tea party” has proved to be a potent mix showing staying power and grassroots organization and support, upsetting on many occasions the expected victories of establishment candidates and positioning the movement to be an electoral force on par with major special interest groups.  

     What the “special interest’ all tea party advocates have in common is the question of the hour.  The movement started from an seemingly innocuous morning broadcast of CNBC from the floor of  the Chicago Board of Trade on February 19th, 2009.  Rick Santelli, a CNBC reporter was listening to a debate regarding the proposed mortgage bail-out program of the Obama administration, the so-called Home Owners Affordability and Stability Plan.  The conversation strained his capacity for tolerance for the expressed  ideas and he went on a several minute rant regarding the outrage he felt for the concept, and the lack of respect by government for people who tried to meet their responsibilities and live within their means.  He  declared the time was at hand for a new tea party for those who felt the way he did to express their mutual outrage.  The power of the internet provided exponential exposure to the rant and suddenly the concept of a new American tea party began to take hold across the nation.  Initially an entirely spontaneous process, the organization of this concept has now grown to the point where it has the capacity of sponsoring winning candidates that espouse tea party “principles”, such as Mr. Buck in Colorado, Ms. Angle in Nevada, Mr. Rand Paul in Kentucky,  and Mr. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.

     The success of the movement outside the control of the establishment parties has led to the inevitable establishment backlash.  The Democratic liberal establishment looking at tea party participants sees only the darker shades of demagoguery, implied racism, and fasciistic nationalism.  The Republican Washington establishment sees it as a threat to the status quo, an undisciplined group that will prevent the party from achieving diverse outreach, broad based solutions, and re-inforce the “looney toons” conservatism of flat taxes, guns, border control, and libertarian streaks they find so distasteful.  The clear indication is that neither party has the capacity to control the tea party message, nor the ability to absorb its electoral power without being changed immeasurably by it.  The  power source of the tea party is a simple one – as seen by the tea party, the process of government has exceeded the parameters on which it was founded and threatens the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness stated in the Declaration of Independence and encoded in the Constitution.  In no small measure, arguments regarding the current controversies of our day framed by governmental expenditures and policies not including these principles are anathema to the tea partiers.

     The future of the movement, either to disintegrate from internal division, or to propagate into a compelling force that changes America, will likely be prominently written by the outcome of the November election.  If the tea party movement turns out to be the representation of the Silent Majority some claim for it, we will have had the unique advantage of having seen the moment of birth of history in as vivid and precise a pivot point as has ever been recorded.

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Just Maybe, Finally, Something Wonderful

   The United States is approaching thirty years of direct and tumultuous involvement in the dangerous and tortuous politics of the Arab World.  President Reagan’s catastrophic 1982 decision to directly engage US Marines in force separation and peace keeping activities in attempting to bring a ceasefire in Lebanon’s murderous Christian Muslim civil war resulted in the largest single day loss of American service men since Iwo Jima in World War II, with 241 American and 58 French peacekeepers losing their lives to a terrorist attack in Beirut October 23rd, 1983.   The devastating nature of that attack and America’s quick withdrawal left America and Europe adverse to the direct involvement in middle east affairs and an impression in the radical Arab community that western forces were paper tigers that could not withstand loss.  Progressively since that event, persistent testing of western resolve has been the rule, with violent and cataclysmic contacts being the norm – Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein in 1991 and resultant need for the Desert Storm expulsion, the World Trade Center Bombing in 1993,  the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the American embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya killing hundreds in 1998, the USS Cole terrorist attack in 2000, and the penultimate terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and  Flight 93 foiled destruction on the US Capital building on September 11, 2001.   This succession of blows led to the extensive and sustained efforts of the United States to actively change the accepted paradigm by  invading Iraq and Afghanistan, and attempting to convert despotic processes into a democratic model not previously seen in the Arab world.

     Of particular focus and requiring massive expenditure in lives and resources has been the country of Iraq, a generally modern and one time prosperous country in the fertile crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and lying on top of the third largest known oil deposit in the world.  Iraq lies on the knife’s edge of Muslim history, split between the Sunni royal dynasties of the Near East and the Shia theocracy of Iran and Pakistan.  Ruled for thirty years by the fasciistic dictator Saddam Hussein,  its people remained buried beneath a tyrant’s whim and suffered greatly in spasmodic wars, government perpetrated rapes and murders, ethnic cleansing, and even internal use of chemical weapons against Iraq’s own populus.   The United States’ extremely risky strategy was to overthrow the dictator and help the Iraqis produce a form of self government known nowhere else in the Arab world.  The ideal was a society that would inspire others in the region to begin to focus on their people’s welfare and less on the perceived slights of a western world the radicals were convinced had purposefully left them so far behind.  This experiment in human freedom and self determination has demanded enormous sacrifice and a logical questioning by a tired nation as to whether the sacrifice could possibly be worth it, or the Iraqi people  sufficiently worthy or capable of recognizing and taking advantage of the opportunity.

     The answer has been laid out since 2003 by two Iraqi brothers named Omar and Mohammed Fadhil.  From the tumultuous moments of the fall of Hussein and his subsequent capture,through the horrendous summer days of 130 degrees with no public services for water, electricity, and sewage, to being eye- witnesses to the massive bombing and murder campaigns against Iraqis by warlord mullah armies and radical Al Qaida terrorists, through the aborted hopes of the first Iraqi elections ever, to the too slow too bumbling process of building viable Iraqi governmental institutions, the brothers have maintained a terrific “you are there” reporters’ eye and fundamental belief and optimism in the Iraqi character faithfully reported on their Baghdad blog IRAQ THE MODEL .  The archived history from  2003, 2005, and 2006 are particularly riveting and inspiring.  When all else struggled to see the faint shadows of change, the brothers using their keen eye  and fundamental knowledge of the Iraqi psyche kept  their poise and perceptiveness of the underlying currents for epic change.   At a time when reporters hunkered down in the Baghdad Green Zone reported societal collapse, the brothers and other brave blogadiers ventured out into society to report the world as it was, both faults and hopes.  A non-synthesized projection of the truth  began to be heard that inspired amateur observers the world over and have changed the world’s sources for information in difficult and censored zones forever. 

     This all leads to the current interpretation by the world’s assembled media of the continuing “debacle” in Iraq, as five months after a close national election the Iraq government has not settled on a leader.  This is thrown out as another example of the “failed” democratic experiment in Iraq, and the need for US forces to abandon their presence in Iraq before they are drawn into the inevitable and unavoidable instability in the Iraqi  self governance. The brothers Fadhil beg to differ, and as they have been right so many times, it is appropriate to listen when they suggest, finally, something truly wonderful is happening in Iraq. .  Omar offers in a recent post perhaps the most prescient description of what worked in Iraq, and what needs to happen in Afghanistan, if similar success is one day to be found – defeat the irreconcilable, and offer the reconcilable a chance to find political solutions.   Maybe the brothers are on to something, and maybe, just maybe, if the world listens to its independent voices, the path to achieving something wonderful.

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Time for Term Limits?

     The news of the week is the considered U.S. House of Representatives trial on ethics charges of Charles Rangel (D) of the 15th District of New York.  It seems Mr. Rangel is accused of the famous old crime of using U.S mailing privileges for private concerns, running multiple rent control apartments in abeyance of the law, failing to report rental property income on off shore properties to the tune of $600,000, and coercing donors into giving to the Charles Rangel School of Public Service at City College of New York, among other violations. Mr. Rangel, 80 years old,  has now served 40 years in congress.  This unfortunately makes him only the fourth longest serving member, with David Obey(D) of  7th Wisconsin at 42 years determining to retire this year, John Conyers(D) 14th Michigan at 45 years, and the estimable John Dingell (D) of 15th Michigan coming in at, you heard it right, 56 years in the house of representatives.  These terms have been served consecutively, and these gentlemen have been immune to re-election risks. 

     The Senate has been no better, with the recent Lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy(D) of Massachusetts, at 46 years, and the Master of the Senate, Robert Byrd(D) of West Virginia at 57 years, requiring the ultimate term limit to achieve removal.  Waiting in the wings is Senator Daniel Inouye(D) of Hawaii, only 50 years of continuous governing. In fact 42% of its members who have served 20 years or more in what was once looked on as a period of public service in an otherwise private life.  The Congress of the United States has become a career.

     I am sure all these gentlemen are , or have been, worthy servants of their populus, but are these the giants we need to stand on the shoulders of the founding fathers?  Is it feasible that after 40 years in a profession, or at 80 years of age or greater, you still have your finger on the pulse of societal change, the direction the country needs to go, the investments and priorities it needs to put forth?  The man considered the greatest historical congressman of our democracy, Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, managed to fashion greatness in the wells of congress for 29 years – well, congressmen didn’t live that long in those days.  Except that he imposed his own term limits twice and did not serve consecutively, finding other contributions to make with his oratorical skills. 

     It is no small consideration that all these gentlemen are from one party. The stasis and idea decay are becoming profound.  I suggest we look again at the state level of reducing the number of feasible consecutive terms and give some individuals who might have some new ideas a try.  I don’t think honestly we are likely going to miss all this “experience”.

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Uh Oh! The Monster’s Back!

   The Congressional Budget Office is an independent non-partisan agency enacted by congress to help estimate the effect of laws on national revenue, review the budget process, and help make projections on the national debt.  Earlier this week the CBO released their economic and budget issue brief,  Federal Debt and the Risk of a Fiscal Crisis ,  and the Monster in the Attic fears were stirred in me all over again.   U.S. government debt has grown so rapidly lately that it is projected to exceed the highest previous debt spiral in our history, the costs of  World War Two, and proceed into territory considered by the CBO to be “unsupportable”.  It is not clear what the fiscal crisis would look like if the United States, the primary economic engine in the world, were to face unsupportable economic choices, but it wouldn’t likely be anything the world would want to experience.

     The economic consequences of an significantly growing debt to a nation in proportion to its gross domestic product creates typical economic responses learned in Economics 101.   To pay for the debt, a growing portion of peoples savings would be diverted from personal investment in productive capital goods like consumer products or building factories.  The reduced investment leads to lower economic output and therefore lower incomes.  The increased levy of the government to pay for the debt requires higher marginal tax rates, further discouraging work and savings and further reducing output.  The circular spiral to resultant lower available money to pay for the debt at the very time when the increasing debt demands more input leads to the need for other sources of income to pay for current programs or prevent collapse – printing more money inciting inflationary pressures, or borrowing from foreign sources increasing the long term indebtedness. 

     The ability for the government to borrow is predicated on the government investor’s willingness to trust that government’s ability to pay back the owed money.  What happens if in difficult times,  a fiscal crisis occurs where investors would lose confidence abruptly and either no longer lend or lend at a significantly higher interest?  We don’t have to look far for an example – within the last twelve months the world wide recession drove Greece, a nation with a debt greater tha 110% of its gross domestic product into default, as the investors in that debt simply refused to put any more money down the black hole.  An emergency fund by the European Union , of which Greece is a part, decided to staunch the bleeding temporarily and painfully lend Greece two hundred billion dollars to prevent the complete collapse of governmental services and secondarily debt payment.  There is no indication this one time buttressing will prevent the progression of Greece’s debt crisis and its eventual default.   Greece has a current GDP of 343 billion dollars and is the 27th largest economy in the world.   What would happen if the United States, the number one economy in the world, with a GDP of 14 .5 Trillion dollars, would find itself needing to finance a similar debt?

     As seen in the CBO figure below the Federal Debt held by the public since 1790 has varied, driven high particularly by crises such as depression or war, but has been driven back by the vibrant health of the American economic engine.   As recently as 2007, the percentage of debt to GDP stood at 36%.  The deep recession and massive government investments like TARP, Auto industry Bailouts, and Stimulus packages, have driven the percentage to 62%, a level not seen since World War II.  What particularly worries the CBO is the unbridled goals of further government investments over the next twenty years, such as entitlement expansion that remain unfunded.  Without changes in fiscal policy, the CBO predicts the debt held by the U.S. public to exceed 110% by 2025,  180% by 2035. Within most of our lifetimes we will see the United States facing the current choices held by Greece.  Who may I ask, will be our European Union to bail us out?

 

As the CBO simply states, the higher the debt, the greater the risk of a financial crisis. The process is fairly straight forward; the government’s all consuming appetite is driving it to seek more foreign investment to support its growing debt. Currently over 4 Trillion of the debt is owned by foreign investors, 1.7 Trillion by China and Japan alone. Any further economic downturn by the world’s  greatest consumer nation would significantly effect the very countries who are the suppliers of much of those consumer goods, effecting their bottom line and eroding their further ability to underwrite our financial needs. The U.S. government would be left with very poor choices – restructuring the debt thereby even further burdening later generations, or printing money and driving inflation. The expected interest payments of the U.S. government annually to creditors expected by 2015 is 460 Billion, not taking into account interest hikes or further spending. The CBO predicts a simple 1 percent increase in inflation over the next decade would drive budget deficits 700 Billion dollars higher. Now we are clearly getting into that unsustainable range.

     The solution? No matter what,  the CBO says a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases adding to 5% of GDP is necessary to prevent an increase in the US debt to GEP ratio over the next 25 years, the equivalent of 20% of this year’s non-interest spending in the current budget year.  Ouch!! That should convince anybody of the pain ahead and the need to get serious  in holding our government leaders accountable for their desires to feed the problem, rather than solve it. Times a-wasting, people.   2010 is as good a time to start as any.

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Climate Change – Making Nature a Political Weapon

      The world’s climate has been in flux since the creation of climate with the stabilization of atmosphere and emergence of oceans and continents over a billion years ago.   Man devined the ability to exist in various climate eras, and with the retraction of the glaciers of the last ice age harnessed the power of climate to produce crops and conquer the variences of topography and weather.  The pecularities of weather have always held a facination for man, but the underlying forces of climate were always assumed to be eternal and immutable.  

     The past twenty years, however insignificant in the timeline of the existence of earth and its living character, has been a period of significant turmoil in the understanding of man’s role in the climatic forces that effect his environment.  Climate study has taken a dominant position in academic centers in these past two decades on the basis of the emerging belief that scientific evidence is overwhelming that man has a direct and deleterious effect on the enormous forces at work in climate.  In particular, the cause celebre’ is – anthropomorphic global warming.

     The obvious advantages to political leaders in converting social policy to conform to the narrative of man caused global warming became apparent and many made it the tool to achieve power and prominence.  The narrative has been a powerful one for conversion of previously unacceptable concepts of societal dogma into acceptable ones – the evil of the carbon molecule in providing man energy resources for economic progress, the need to “punish” developed nations by demanding a redistribution of wealth to underdeveloped nations to make up for developed nations’ contribution to the global climatic effects, the need to demand of individuals a conversion of  their lifestyle to living with a reduced”carbon imprint” for the betterment of the world.   These political forces came together in the perfect storm of the protocols of Kyoto in 1995 which devised a strategy of permanently institutionalizing the theory of global warming on all functions of developed nations on the basis of “settled” science,  and progressively made opinions to the contrary a religious heresy.

     Late last year, the final conversion to a new world order predictated on climate was scheduled for codification in the World Congress on Climate scheduled in Copenhagen.   On November 19, 2009, an anonomous internet hacker stopped the coronation of global warmists and the redistribution of trillions of dollars in its tracks.  The University of East Anglia in England, the mothership of global climate research, had its e-mail traffic hacked and the internal musings of its leading climate scientists put under the microscope.   Suddenly the “settled” science on many levels began to unravel and the prima facia evidence of man’s perceived effect on global temperature over the last three decades, a “hockey-stick” shaped graph of a sudden and alarming increase in world temperatures accompanying an dramatic increase in world economic development and carbon use over the last three decades, exposed as shaky and possibly fabricated science.  A process of computer modelings showing an alarming acceleration of world temperatures by  the year 2100.

This was predicated on a computer models that utilized tree ring data to estimate world temperatures for the the thousand years prior to 1960, and when the data no longer fit the expected models, surface temperature assessments thereafter. The further the evaluation of data processing was investigated, the more it became clear that climate scientists, under enormous pressure to conform to the dogma of anthropomorphic global warming and with significant funding advantages to science that supported the dogma, increasingly  warped results to maintain the narrative as extensive data over the last decade began to confuse the pristene understanding of the science as “settled”.

     In the middle ages, the religious dogma of sin and absolution dominated man’s understanding of his place in creation and ideas to the contrary were severely punished.  It took the development of the objective philosophy of scientific method – the submission of the hypothesis on gathered evidence and the critical evaluation of its capacity to withstand analysis through increasingly sofiscticated and reproducible measurement – to lead to the age of enlightened understanding of our universe and  the coupled progress of the individual to his current sence of self value and quality of life. It is a tragedy that political motives have returned us to the concept of unquestioning faith that selected and elite “others” know what is good for us and our future together, and that our questioning of them and their motives, again a heresy.

     Whatever the eventual understanding of the complex nature of climate and man’s interaction with it turns out to be, we have an unknown computer hacker to thank for pulling us back from the edge of destroying our way of life,  before we know whether its destruction will have any effect what so ever on the world to be.

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The Dangerous Season

     For the United States, a nation battered and tired by a decade of conflict and two intractable wars, a period of retrenchment from world affairs has been pledged by the current administration. Unfortunately the world, as usual, is in no mood to cooperate. We have been entering for some time a dangerous season of instability and potential disaster driven by two authoritarian powers with aggressive desires and hostile intentions. We as a society ignore significant trends in these reactionary societies at our peril.

     The obvious issue that binds the futures of western society and these two dictatorial powers is nuclear proliferation. Both regimes have been bent on developing a nuclear program with nuclear weapon capacity. North Korea, despite have one of the world’s most wretched economies has consistently invested in an expensive nuclear weapons process despite multiple declarations to the contrary. In 1994 North Korea jointly signed an agreement with the Clinton Administration to suspend its nuclear weapons program and agree to international atomic energy inspections in return for economic support and development of nuclear energy grid to supply electricity to impoverished population. In 2002, North Korea admitted it had violated all definitive aspects of the agreement and succeeded at plutonium extraction required for development of a nuclear explosive device. On October 9, 2006, North Korea achieved a small but successful explosion consistent with a nuclear device, an obvious abrogation of the previous 15 years of diplomacy. The efforts to achieve nuclear weaponry are at great odds to the nation’s stated desire to use nuclear sources for energy production, as a satellite view of North Korea at night compared to its neighbors attests.   

North Korea At Night

      Iran has been on a similar path, eliciting North Korean nuclear scientist expertise, to develop similar nuclear weapon capacity. Using much the same diplomatic tactics as North Korea, in claiming peaceful nuclear use while forging ahead with infrastructure for weapon development, Iran sits on the precipice of achieving nuclear weapon capacity. Diplomatics efforts by multiple nations to steer Iran away from nuclear weapons development have met with much the same success. Iran, despite having the the third largest oil reserve in the world, and producing 5% of the world’s current oil production, has determined to put its nation’s economy on hold in the effort to complete the nuclear weapons task.   

     Since 1949, with the Soviet Union’s successful testing of a nuclear device, the potential catastrophe of a nuclear exchange has been feasible , but constrained by the nuclear powers acknowledged capacity to annihilate each other, and the recognition of each as to the destruction of civilized society with such an exchange. September 11th, 2001, changed everything in the world’s understanding of rules of engagement, and the risks have therefore increased acutely. North Korea since 1950 has been ruled into the ground by a dictator and his son, with now a complete implosion of its economy and a starving population, ignored by a military machine that props up the regime and jealously lashes out at its hated genetic brothers, the South Koreans, for their obvious success in nationhood. The regime has no qualms about starting a major conflict, evidenced by the unprovoked torpedo sinking of the South Korea military vessel Cheonan, with the loss of 46 sailors on March 26 of this year. The North Korean’s propensity for irrational and dangerous statements to the world can not be taken lightly given their propensity for just such behavior.   The Iranians have shown similar bluster, with repeated comments by the Iranian president Ahmadinejad to deny the Holocaust and promise the removal of the Isreali nation from the world map.   

     The blustering theats from both parties are unfortunately becoming a potentially realistic scenario as both have developed delivery systems capable of attacking both their local and regional enemies, and frankly, approaching the capacity to strike the United States and Europe.  Iran has shown ballistic missile development in the Sejil- 2 missile with a 2500 kilometer range;  North Korea is even farther along, with medium , and now long range missiles in the Taepodong series, reportedly capable of up to 10000 km range, approaching the distance between Pyongyang and Chicago.  It is clear that the United States’ once safe oceanic separation from the world’s regional conflicts is a thing of the past.   

     The time is likely inevitable when both states will have the capacity for enormous damage and the irrational and messianic will to engage a crisis.  How the civilized world responds to the threat before it reaches such proportions is the key question of our times.  The United States is currently led by an administration that has cut funding for missile defense and purports that engagement and appeasement offer safer routes then confrontation to controlling the risks of the modern world.  Such thinking has been on the wrong side of history since the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia to an dictator with insatiable allusions, and has continued in failures of logic as communist permanency , nuclear freeze, strategic missile reduction, military defense contracture, treaties of engagement with dictators,  United Nation sanctions,  apologies for perceived slights, and a myriad of other self absorbed illusions of means of peaceful co-existence.  The manning of the ramparts to preserve the peaceful protection of the great achievements of western civilization against those dictators that would risk a dark age for their own survival is likely upon us in the coming months.  Our will is being tested and our ability to respond before Danger’s Door, will determine whether this Dangerous Season marks an end to an era of human prosperity and liberty, or we hold on , one more time.

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A Thief in the Night

    One of the most disheartening aspects of current governments is their propensity to steal.   The overwhelming urge to pilfer is born from another addiction, the insatiable appetite for growth.   The classic resource for governmental action, the tax. has , secondary to this gluttonous appetite,  required supplementation by the fee, the assessment, the service charge, the toll, the penalty, the tuition, the class-action lawsuit, and others that functionally fundamentally as – a tax.   The very unfortunate truth is no form of income streams have proved sufficient to satiate most governments.  In order to fund the ever-growing entitlement processes and programs without end or size limitation, pilfering has become the weapon of choice for budget busting spending. 

      At the national level, this process of pilfering has incurred subtly through the facetious guarantee of the “lock box” for Social Security.  Political leaders pretend in their accounting that on-going funding is occurring, when in reality, future resources to support later Social Security participants is being spent now on other “more pressing” priorities.  The “promise” is to guarantee underwriting of the mandate for later generations.  As I noted in a previous posting on the Debt Clock, the unfunded mandate for Social Security alone is 14.45 trillion dollars – may I be the first to express my skepticism regarding this promised underwriting.

     At the state level where balanced budgets are often a requirement of their constitutions, the pilfering has been much more audacious.  In the state of Wisconsin, budget shortfalls have not incentivized any elected officials to cut expenditures to reflect available resources – perish the thought.  The reaction instead has been the brazen stealing of funds meant to be locked in place to meet specific concerns of the populus, such as transportation, environment,  tobacco lawsuit health fund, and other funds meant to be used specifically for certain venues.

PILFERING THE STATE FUNDS

 

     Why do they steal? – as a famous thief was once asked why he chose to rob banks – That’s Where The Money Is! The state of Wisconsin managed to finally go too far, however, with an audacious grab of 200 million dollars of the state’s malpractice fund, specifically invested in by the state’s physicians and hospitals to be used exclusively for damages. I am convinced Governor Doyle took the money, not because he wasn’t sure it was inappropriate, but because he was convinced he could get away with it.  No such luck for our own Badger thief – the State Supreme Court acknowledged that when a law stipulates a certain requirement, amazingly, the government that has voted for a law must be in the business of actually upholding it. A thief gets his just desserts.
Its critical that accountability return to our legislatures, so that the future we hold for all of us in escrow, someday, might just see the light of day.

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Every Picture Tells A Story

     The narrative regarding our current economic doldrums has been reflexively blamed on the previous administration by the current administration  – along with the lack of consensus for two wars, climate change, border problems, poor international relations, callus views on the social safety net, immature energy policy, etc,etc.  The storyline has been underwritten by a compliant media, to whom a particular animus was reserved for the previous president, and whom the overarching theme of devotion prevents rational critique of the current one.

         Although the rhetoric leans partisan, the objective dismantling of the myth that we needed to be saved from the past foibles by the brilliant new economic strategy undertaken by the current occupants of Washington bears a second look.  Read and review the link -its an eye-opener.  Now, about those other narratives…perhaps some other time.
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Words and Deeds

     Former President Clinton, eulogizing Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia at Senator Byrd’s funeral last week said the following:

      “He once had a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan, what does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. He was a country boy from  the hills and hollows from West Virginia. He was trying to get elected. And maybe he did something he shouldn’t have done come and he spent the rest of his life making it up. And that’s what a good person does. There are no perfect people. There are certainly no perfect politicians.”

     We live in fascinating times where heroic imaging is more important than heroism, where perceived principles however illusory are more important than being principled, where the narrative has become more important than the objective fact.

     Senator Byrd had more than a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan, actively joining a racist organization notorious at the time he joined for vigilante lynchings on the basis of race, became a local leader of the organization, and espoused its principles for as much as ten years after joining. 

     Is it remotely conceivable that there is a benign explanation for wanting to be part of a racist organization? Is it feasible to formulate an image for the single purpose of securing an election, than deny it once safely elected?  Obviously- it happens all the time.  Yet the sanitation of terribly improper acts by the later performance of “acceptable” acts is what gets us into the position of doubting anything our leaders say.  This is, at the least,  the fundamental definition of a hypocrite.  When is the last time we had a leader who defined specific principles that ruled their life direction and performance, and by which we could use to predict their future actions?  I think the power of deeds and actions provide us with more insight regarding a leader than any set of politically correct opinions ever can.  What did they do, when they had a chance to act; how did they act, before they had a chance to know how their actions would effect the outcome?

    Upon stating the above remarks, Mr. Clinton was interrupted with applause by the assembled.  Enough with the applause for such twisted thinking.  Its time we, the Assembled, support leaders that live their lives like their ideals, and stop supporting those who think, the joke’s on us.