Another Fine VA Mess
Long time readers already know I have Crohn’s Disease. I’ve dealt with the condition for
almost 22 years, and for large chunks of that time I’ve relied on the Veteran’s Administration Health Care System for medical treatment. As such, I remember the bad ol’ days – when simply signing up for medical care was nearly impossible. The program has made great strides in the past decade and medical care has improved. This isn’t to say the available care is good everywhere; it simply means that fewer VA medical centers seem to have killing veterans as their top priority. I’m also more fortunate than most vets. Because of where I live, I can actually pick and choose from four medical centers. If I lived in Montana, that option wouldn’t exist – I would be stuck with whatever quacks the local VAMC could find to staff the place.
But beyond the quality of medical treatment, there is another problem that, quite frankly, I can’t see any way the VA can correct. The Veteran’s Administration is a government agency – and as such, a ridiculously bureaucratic nightmare to navigate. Just the simple process of checking in for an appointment is a time consuming mess (it means seeing three different clerks, in different offices, before actually getting into the clinic – where you then need to fight with another clerk in order to see a specific doctor).
But there’s another aspect to the bureaucracy that most people (especially those who defend government programs as both necessary and infallible) often forget about: that bureaucracy is staffed by people whose competence is often less important to keeping their position than a host of other factors. A perfect example is what I am now experiencing. Because I’ve been dealing with Crohn’s for so long and every other medication ceased working, I’m now undergoing chemotherapy treatments. It’s a “Hail Mary” attempt at getting this disease under control and it actually seemed to be working.
Enter the VA bureaucracy. As part of the treatment regimen, I stopped the infusion therapy and was supposed to switch over to pills. Great! Fewer trips to the local VAMC, no need to hit up friends for rides, fewer side effects. The pills were supposed to be mailed to me two weeks ago. When they hadn’t arrived by last Wednesday, I spent 45 minutes on the phone to ask where my medication was. Not to worry, I was assured. Because of the holiday weekend, it might take an extra day or two for them to arrive in my mailbox. The weekend came, the weekend went and still no pills. I called back today and after another 38 minutes (most spent on hold), I discovered that somebody, somewhere, placed a “Do Not Mail” flag on my VA pharmacy account. No reason, no rhyme, no excuse – and the faceless person on the other end of the phone assured me they were incapable of releasing the flag.
But wait! It gets even better. A week and a half ago (three days after the pills were supposedly mailed), I spent another hour at the VA pharmacy to get other prescriptions. The clerks (another bureaucratic mess, you need to see four clerks to get a prescription filled – and there isn’t even a paper form, it’s all in the computer) all had access to my account. All of them saw the prescription in question was ordered, one even asked me if I wanted to wait for that one, too. Not one mentioned the “Do Not Mail” flag or offered to remove it.
Is it incompetence? Bureaucratic overlap? A simple failure to communicate? Whatever the cause, the result is the same: another dissatisfied and confused customer. On the surface, an example of how the Veteran’s Administration can screw up a simple task. At a deeper level, it’s a perfect metaphor for why the less government does, the better.
For my friends wondering how I can simultaneously avail myself of a government program and decry government programs, you can find extensive arguments in my archives. But this is an earned benefit, through my prior service to our nation. And for myself and the millions of my fellow veterans, the VAHCS can be done away with by simply issuing us medical insurance that allows us to see private physicians. (Yep, it would cost the government less, too).
Fat Chance
Just a quick observation:
Yesterday, the Obama administration proudly announced 476,000 people had filed their Obamacare applications. The numbers were roughly equal between state-run exchanges and the Federal monstrosity, Healthcare.gov.
Mind you, this isn’t the number of people who have enrolled in Obamacare. Nor are we given a breakdown on how many are the young, healthy types that everyone from insurance industry insiders to HHS administrators stress are needed to keep this particular ponzi scheme from collapsing.
Instead, this is a basic math lesson. The administration keeps telling us they need 7 million enrollees, of which 3 million need to be those young, healthy people, by March 2014 for Obamacare to even have a hope of working. I’m going to give the system the ultimate benfit of doubt and say all of those 476,000 applicants successfully enroll by month’s end.
But by the administration’s own math, they need about 1.2 million enrollees per month to make their albatross fly. Right now, they’re on pace (if all those applicants enroll) for about 800,000 per month. That’s about 4.8 million total by March, or roughly 70% of the goal.
Of course, that is a pie-in-the-sky estimate. While we don’t have hard numbers, anecdotal evidence points to about 10% of applicants actually enrolling in Obamacare. So will HHS actually get to 7 million enrollees?
Fat chance.
Borders: More Than a Word
Bor•der [bawr-der] (n): The part or edge of a surface or area that forms its outer boundary; the line that separates one country, province, state, etc. from another, the frontier of civilization (courtesy Random House Dictionary).
It’s funny how “border,” a seemingly simple word with a clear definition, can rile up so many people. This isn’t one of George Carlin’s Seven Dirty Words either, although the reaction it generates in certain quarters would make you think it was. Sometimes, when I’m bored and need some entertainment, I’ll seek one of that crowd out and ask them why they refuse to recognize our national borders. The apoplectic rage with which the question is met, the incoherence of the replies and the visceral hatred exposed by the body language is almost humorous.
Mind you, I can understand why some groups find borders detestable. I can see why an illegal alien would rather chain himself to a bus rather than cross back over the border. The Catholic Church has never believed in national sovereignty. International businesses dislike tariffs almost as much as payroll taxes and unions are desperately in need of new members. Liberals hate anything that might actually be good for the country. Barack Obama needs a new distraction; after all, both Obamacare and the national economy remain unmitigated disasters.
But what perplexes me is the seeming disinterest the general public has regarding borders. I’m talking about the 70% or so of people who don’t generally pay attention to politics. If there was one issue that they should be interested in 100% of the time, you would think borders – and their security – would be it. After all, everyone is extremely interested in protecting their personal borders, right? We lock the doors to our houses, apartments and cars, we build fences and hedges around our property. Those of us who commute by mass transit quickly learn the unwritten rules regarding personal space and what happens when somebody crosses that border. We alarm our property, install security gates around communities and staff them with armed guards. We install expensive camera systems so we can watch for others crossing the borders around our property. As a society, we even have legal penalties for those who penetrate our personal borders, ranging from trespassing to breaking and entering. In most communities, if the legal resident kills a person who crossed their border, they are applauded as courageous.
Yet if anyone suggests those same measures be used to secure the national borders, they are met with scorn and ridicule. We’re told we should just accept illegal immigrants as new residents – even though if somebody just simply camped out in your front yard, you would do everything possible to get them off the lawn. We’re told the border can’t possibly be secured, although I bet ADT is just salivating at the chance to try it. We’re told posting armed guards along the border with shoot-to-kill orders is impractical, yet we use thousands of American troops to enforce that same standard along the North-South Korean border.
As a nation, we already spend over $34 billion to secure our personal borders. To secure the national borders in a similar fashion, the Congress has already approved $46 billion. But for some reason, most of the country remains blase when it comes border security. So, I have a solution. Make it illegal to provide any greater security for your person and property, than is in effect along the border.
After the general public gets tired of hosting a few dozen people for dinner every night, I suspect attitudes might change.
Is It Time?
As I sit here writing this, the US Federal government is embroiled in a partial shutdown. Since both sides are refusing to even talk to one another (although they are doing an excellent job of talking past each other), the impasse doesn’t seem likely to end anytime soon. Most in the media are equally embroiled in teeth gnashing and other trivial pursuits, while ignoring the underlying reason for the shutdown. And no, I’m not referring to the Affordable Care Act. That is merely the causi belli that ultimately led to the current situation.
No, the underlying reason is that the nation is more politically divided today than since the days leading up to the Civil War 150 years ago. Despite media grandstanding (and cries from an ever shrinking portion of the population) for compromise and reconciliation, such a thing is all but impossible in today’s political environment. Fire cannot be reconciled to ice. Ammonia cannot be mixed with bleach. In today’s political environment, you cannot mix the driving forces behind each political party without similar effect. The results are explosive, caustic and predictable.
The reality is we are a nation with two competing, incompatible ideas on what a government is supposed to do. On the one hand, there is a concerted belief that government should be as unobtrusive as humanly possible. In opposition is the view that government exists to provide for the populace. The reason compromise does not exist on the major topics of our day is that the underlying belief systems are polar opposites. Everything else is window dressing.
The Obamacare mess is just the biggest example of this dystopia. It wasn’t passed in a bipartisan manner whatsoever. In fact, not one Republican voted the bill into law; not one Democrat voted against it. If anyone thinks the same bill would pass the Congress today they need a serious mental examination. It brought to the surface ideological divisions that were evident for the past 20 years, but buried beneath a veneer of political conformity. Like a volcano before erupting, fault lines and fissures have occasionally appeared. But the explosion came about with the debate and passage of that seminal legislation.
So, the questions begs to be asked, though I don’t see it being raised: is it time to dissolve the union and create two separate entities – one that can pursue a restrictive government and one to pursue a restricted government? I’ll leave the answer to that to you… Comment away!
Why I Support the #Defund Obamacare Movement
Obamacare & Your Career
If you spend any time on Twitter or Facebook, you’ve undoubtedly come across the “#Defund” hashtag. If you follow the news even cursorily (and odds are you follow it more closely than that, if you’re reading this) then you also know the House of Representatives voted yesterday to continue funding government operations until December. Everything, that is, except the Affordable Care Act – more popularly known as “Obamacare.”
The President’s reaction? He’s taking the CR personally, certain that the motivation behind it cannot be ideological in nature. “They’re not focused on you. They’re focused on politics. They’re focused on trying to mess with me. They’re not focused on you” he stated during yet another campaign speech yesterday. (As an aside, why is he campaigning? I thought the election was last November.) While my personal dislike for the the man in the Oval Office has grown considerably over the last five years, my disdain for Obamacare hearkens all the way back to its inception. Trust me on this one, Mr. President. My opposition is nothing personal – and neither is it for the people with whom I’ve conversed with on the subject.
I support the defund movement, because it is our last, best hope of getting rid of the “train wreck” (Max Baucus, the guy who helped write the ACA, called it that) and replacing it with something that actually addresses the rising costs and failed delivery of health care in the United States. I support the defund movement, because the economic impact of even a temporary federal shutdown would be far less than realized from your weapon of Mass Economic Destruction. Finally, I support the defund movement because the American people have had about all they can take of Obamacare.
Let’s start with that last point first. That you’ve always a had somewhat regal view of the Presidency is certain. Since early on, you’ve complained that you aren’t a dictator, or king, or emperor, or president of China. The actual concerns of the average American were hardly the thing that kept you awake at night; why else the dozens of “pivots to the economy” over your 5+ years in office? Over the past year, overwhelming evidence was exhumed that you consider yourself above the American people. From the failure in Benghazi, to the IRS crackdown on conservative and libertarian groups, through the revelation that the NSA is spying on everyone, to your recent attempt to force the nation into an ill-conceived war in Syria, said evidence is damning. You really did think for a while there that you are a de facto dictator.
Obamacare was our precursor. Yes, the American people wanted something done about health care. But what we wanted and what we eventually got are two very different things. Instead of reform that lowered costs and made delivery easier, we simply got told we had to go buy health insurance – or else. No matter, we were assured countless times since: once the law rolls out, you’ll love it! Why, didn’t Nancy Pelosi tell us that in order to find out all about the wonderful goodies in the ACA, Congress had to pass it first? The sycophant press quickly dubbed the new law “Obamacare” and you ‘begrudgingly’ accepted the name. FDR had the New Deal, LBJ had the Great Society, BHO had Obamacare.
Never mind that your signature piece of legislation has never been popular with the very people it is supposed to help. Polls show what support existed at passage has slowly slipped away. It’s your signature piece of legislation, by golly! So of course you’re right to be mad at Congress for attempting to undo the damage done, for seeing it as a personal attack and a personal affront. Never mind that the CR defunding Obamacare is actually more popular than the law and never mind that it enjoys popular support (and not just among the Tea Party). Never mind that it’s very passage is regarded is the single most important reason your party lost control of Congress in the 2010 mid-terms. If you refuse to sign that CR, then it’s the Republicans’ fault that the government runs out of operating cash on October 1. Not your own pigheadedness, not your own wanting to be a dictator – or failing that, being seen as the most “transformational” President since FDR.
About that threatened federal shutdown. We’ve been down that path a few times and quite frankly, they aren’t that scary to most Americans. There will be an inconveniences, of course. For instance, I won’t be able to track a flight on the NTSB’s website. I won’t be able to call the IRS with a question about my taxes (which, by the way, I’d probably sit on hold for 20 minutes and then be told to ask my tax professional). But we already know from past experience that essential government functions will continue: the Army won’t be disbanded, the FBI will keep hunting bank robbers, grandma will still get her social security check. Even progressive economists admit the actual economic impact would be minimal, resulting in a reduction of less than 1% of GDP.
But the economic impact of Obamacare is already being felt across the economy. Nobody has a full accounting thus far, but in the past week alone nearly 500,000 people have had their hours cut to 28 or fewer and their existing health coverage terminated. Another 35,000 have lost their jobs completely. Although you love to tout the million jobs created in 2013, you have yet to acknowledge the fact that 1.2 million of those jobs are part-time, without health coverage. Those are real economic impacts directly attributable to your signature legislation. Here’s another impact you may not want to acknowledge: those workers are not only facing a drop in income from reduced pay, they are now going to be hit with a new expense: mandated health coverage. Sure, there’s a subsidy headed their way (provided Obamacare is fully funded) – but those subsidies won’t cover the full cost for health insurance. A government shutdown might reduce GDP by 1%. But Obamacare is easily dropping GDP farther than that and will cause it to crash even further. All this was avoidable, but neither you nor your progressive friends apparently live in the real world, the one in which businesses aren’t going to spend a dime more than necessary. You were warned by everyone from the Chamber of Commerce to (gulp) Donald Trump, but still you refused to listen. The economic mess your signature legislation created is wholly owned by you, as well as the Senators and Congressmen you bought off.
Finally, there is the train wreck. I could list everything that has gone wrong so far with getting this mess in place, but I did that a while back. To that list I add three more fiascos: the doctor shortage, the uninsured and one I’ll keep you guessing about until the end.
The doctor shortage was known and supposedly addressed in the ACA. Simply put, there aren’t enough primary care doctors available to cover everyone. Getting an appointment to see your doctor is already hard enough (and let’s not forget the wait times once you’re in the waiting room). The AMA now anticipates that wait times are going up by about 6% – and nobody anticipates getting an appointment will get easier. Will we see British-type difficulties in getting an appointment, with waits as long as a month? Will they be more like typical waits in the VA system, where it can take up to 6 months to get an appointment? Nobody knows, but the alarm bells should be sounding: in the New York metro area, a recent study found that time to appointment was now ranging from 6 to 61 days, with an average of 24.
The uninsured? When Obamacare was trotted out to the public, we were told that all but a few, perhaps 3 million, of those without insurance wouldn’t be covered. In March, CBO blew that apart with a new estimate: 7.5 million. Last week, that get shattered again, when DHS announced that because of the rollbacks, waivers and deferments, that as many as 30 million people still would be uninsured come January 1, 2015. That would mean we went through all these gyrations over the last 36 months to insure an additional 2 million. Call me what you will, but that amounts to the second biggest load of crap ever handed the American people from Washington DC.
The biggest load of crap ever? Well, here’s the caboose of the Obamacare train wreck. Mr. President, you have promised us that “If you like your health plan, you can keep it.” You’ve pummeled the American people with that line for over four years, even though as far back as June, 2009 you admitted yourself that the statement WAS A LIE. Now millions of Americans are finding out what a monstrous pile of horse manure that line really is. Insurance companies, because of the regulatory morass that this demon child legislation created, are gutting health plans and informing their customers that come January 1, 2014 their current insurance will no longer be available.
In short, I’m supporting the #DEFUND movement because really, what other choice does our country have?
Welfare: It’s Worse Than Cato Realizes
On Monday, MIchael D. Tanner and Charles Hughes of the Cato Institute published their white paper, The Work vs. Welfare Trade-Off: 2013. Even if you haven’t read the full 52 page report, odds are you have at least heard of it. In the last 48 hours, it’s been reported on by FOX News, Twitter has exploded with mentions of the report and the authors’ conclusions. It keeps popping up on Facebook.
Then again, you may not have heard about Cato’s latest. Despite the hew and cry the report has generated amongst the small government crowd, left wing outlets and publications have hardly made mention of it. Searches of Huffington Post, Salon, The New Republic, and The Nation will not yield any mentions of the authors or their paper. Nor has MSNBC deigned to give any coverage, although a search of their website does produce a a short, paragraph spot from WISE in Indiana. Even the “mainstream” networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN) haven’t seen fit to give this story even a 1 second mention (although CNN does see fit to list articles about Dr. Phil and Jerry Springer among their “top stories”).
As the cliche notes, the silence from the liberals is deafening. It’s to be expected, I suppose. For over 90 years, the linchpin in liberal ideology is that government assistance is a requirement for good governance. It gave rise to the New Deal programs of the 1930’s and the Great Society / War on Poverty in the 1960’s. Ask a liberal why, despite these massive government assistance programs, poverty rates remain basically unchanged over the past 60 years and you will hear dozens of excuses. From latent racism to corporate greed, liberals have a smorgasbord of time-worn choices to use. Admitting that the welfare programs they cherish have a problem isn’t in that toxic stew. When faced with as well researched a report as the one produced by Tanner & Hughes, with irrefutable facts that demonstrate the sheer lunacy of the American welfare system, all a liberal can do is cover their ears and stomp around in denial.
The authors conclude that despite the much ballyhooed 1996 Welfare Reform Act, the typical welfare recipient receives more benefits for a longer time with less chance of actually working in 2013. The one achievement that Bill Clinton can point to in defending himself as as a moderate has turned out to be an even bigger failure than his handling of a nascent terror group calling itself Al-Qaeda.
I don’t disagree with the authors regarding their conclusion. If welfare is meant to be a bridge towards making the poor self-sufficient, the the government has completely failed. The authors report:
The current welfare system provides such a high level of benefits that it acts as a disincentive for work. Welfare currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and in 13 states it pays more than $15 per hour.
This is where I have a small problem with Cato’s paper. While I agree that the system is a mess, I believe it is even more of a mess than Cato presents. Why? Two reasons. First, Cato used a 40 hour work week to determine the “equivalent wage” for a welfare recipient. This might have been acceptable when doing this report 17 years ago. However, the average hours worked per week has been steadily falling for the past 14 months (thanks, Obamacare!) and currently stands at 34.4 hours. Odds are since someone transitioning from welfare to work would be in an entry level position and said positions have seen even more drastic cuts to the workweek, the equivalent wage should be based on the 25.9 hours worked per week by chambermaids or the 31.4 hours worked by retail clerks. I’m fairly comfortable using 34.4 hours, since it closely replicates the original reports intent.
Second, the authors failed to account for the individual states minimum wage laws when computing their statistics. They deliver two pretty powerful snapshots:
- “Welfare currently pays more than a minimum wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit.”
-
“In fact, in 13 states, welfare pays more than $15 per hour.”
Yet, when accounting for the two factors I entered, I came up with even more grim results:
- Welfare currently pays more than a minimum wage job in 44 states, even after accounting for the EITC
- In fact, in 21 states, welfare pays more than $15 per hour
And I would add a third bullet point:
- Currently, welfare pays an equivalent wage more than $5 per hour greater than the minimum wage in 33 states
In fact, if the goal is to make welfare an unattractive option for the poor and we want to move them into working, it can be argued that the equivalent wage should be at least $1 less than the state minimum wage. Using that criteria, only one state – Idaho – is succeeding.
Yes, my friends. Bill Clinton promised to “end welfare as we know it.” He was right. Welfare has become a highly paid career choice.
Below is a chart showing the difference between the equivalent wage and the state minimum for all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia. Where does your state rank?
| Rank | Jurisdiction | Equivalent Wage Difference, State Minimum vs. Welfare |
| 1 | Hawaii | $ 26.62 |
| 2 | Massachusetts | $ 20.25 |
| 3 | DC | $ 20.16 |
| 4 | New York | $ 17.18 |
| 5 | New Jersey | $ 17.04 |
| 6 | Connecticut | $ 16.55 |
| 7 | Rhode Island | $ 16.47 |
| 8 | Vermont | $ 15.07 |
| 9 | New Hampshire | $ 14.97 |
| 10 | Maryland | $ 14.08 |
| 11 | California | $ 12.77 |
| 12 | Wyoming | $ 10.98 |
| 13 | Oregon | $ 10.22 |
| 14 | Minnesota | $ 9.16 |
| 15 | Delaware | $ 9.08 |
| 16 | North Dakota | $ 8.87 |
| 17 | Pennsylvania | $ 8.78 |
| 18 | Nevada | $ 8.42 |
| 19 | New Mexico | $ 8.10 |
| 20 | South Dakota | $ 7.62 |
| 21 | Kansas | $ 7.56 |
| 22 | Michigan | $ 7.37 |
| 23 | Montana | $ 7.25 |
| 24 | North Carolina | $ 7.15 |
| 25 | Alaska | $ 7.01 |
| 26 | Washington | $ 6.93 |
| 27 | Ohio | $ 6.80 |
| 28 | West Virginia | $ 6.67 |
| 29 | Alabama | $ 5.78 |
| 30 | Indiana | $ 5.55 |
| 31 | Missouri | $ 5.39 |
| 32 | Oklahoma | $ 5.32 |
| 33 | Louisiana | $ 5.19 |
| 34 | South Carolina | $ 5.00 |
| 35 | Wisconsin | $ 1.07 |
| 36 | Virginia | $ 1.06 |
| 37 | Nebraska | $ 0.81 |
| 38 | Arizona | $ 0.76 |
| 39 | Iowa | $ 0.69 |
| 40 | Georgia | $ 0.61 |
| 41 | Utah | $ 0.55 |
| 42 | Colorado | $ 0.46 |
| 43 | Maine | $ 0.28 |
| 44 | Kentucky | $ 0.21 |
| 45 | Texas | $ (0.23) |
| 46 | Arkansas | $ (0.41) |
| 47 | Tennessee | $ (0.48) |
| 48 | Mississippi | $ (0.64) |
| 49 | Illinois | $ (0.66) |
| 50 | Florida | $ (0.75) |
| 51 | Idaho | $ (1.02) |
GLOBAL ELITE: Stop the parasites
An interesting concept and reasonably well thought arguments. Opinions?
Liberty and Fairness
“The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts.” ― John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
Recent events in my own life have forced me to re-examine some of my most deeply held convictions. During the time I’ve been absent from this blog (wait – you didn’t notice???), four events in particular gave rise to self-reflection:
- Crohn’s Disease, with which I’ve done battle for 22 years, once again reared up and forced me to the sidelines
- My eldest son, who was born with a developmental disability, is now caught up in the nightmare that is the state mental health system
- I’ve rented a room to a family that is emblematic of all that is wrong with the way government abuses good people
- Another of my tenants passed away during the night
You’re probably wondering why I would spend the time to ponder what one prominent politician describes as “esoteric debates” when life brings such immediacy. You’re probably wondering further why I would take the time to write about that internal debate. The answer is that such internal debates are neither esoteric nor a thriftlessness exercise. It is by determining if our views are malleable to the events in our lives that we discover if our core values are the result of dogma or the sound exercise of judgement.
The overarching theme of President Obama’s tenure is that of “fairness.” Only, in Mr. Obama’s world, the fairness is defined by outcome; one in which those aggrieved receive what they deem to be their just share. This doctrine is exemplified in the policy objectives of his administration. Be it the underlying argument for Obamacare (that the only fair medical system is one in which everyone has health insurance), economic policy, the tacit embrace of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the management of foreign policy (attempting the equal embrace of islamist and democratic ideologies abroad) or dozens of other initiatives pursued, Mr. Obama is clear in how he defines “fair.” Further, his actions (including his insistence on defending the possibly unconstitutional and certainly intrusive domestic spying program) demonstrate a certainty that governmental institutions are the best method of obtaining this measure of fairness while denigrating the roles of other, traditional venues.
Unlike many of the President’s critics, I do not think he is an uncaring ogre bent on instituting a draconian new way of life on the American people. Although we disagree on most issues, I certainly applaud his efforts to afford all people equal protections under the law. I think it is indicative of his nature, in that he actually cares about the quality of life afforded ordinary Americans. I think most of my fellow countrymen have that same feeling and that underlying belief in his nature is the ultimate reason he won re-election – even though most of us remain opposed to his specific action plan.
I also think that more than a difference in political philosophy, we have divergent views on reality and possibility that slice to the core of our differences. The President is what might best be termed a government interventionist. Government Interventionism infects both the modern liberal and conservative movements. It is characterized by a belief that not only can the government positively effect outcomes, but that it should. While conservatives and liberals often have different goals in mind, they agree with the principle of a results-based system. As anyone who follows me on Facebook or Twitter is well aware, I have never subscribed to this view of governance.
My introspection of the past weeks has called me to wonder if, perhaps, this approach is best. One of the criticisms of Libertarians is that we are a callous bunch, uncaring about how life’s travails affect our fellow men. Those who know me personally know this isn’t the case. Of the root causes for my self-reflective journey, two involved people that I know cursorily. Yet, they are people who strike me as somehow getting less from life than their character would indicate they deserve.
Allow me to begin with the woman who died in her room last Wednesday. Although I knew her only a few months, what I did know belied her situation. She worked full-time (a rarity in today’s economy) and was well-respected by both her coworkers and employer, she had a large and close-knit family and she was outgoing, gregarious even. Yet, she died alone in rented room, the victim of a long battle with a chronic illness; in her case, diabetes. From what I could see, it was not a pleasant or painless death. She must have known she was in desperate trouble – I found her collapsed at the foot of her bed, in a position indicating she struggled to get to her door, with her phone fallen from her outstretched hand and smashed into bits. If we live in a results based society, why did she die in this manner? What could society have done differently that would have ensured that at the very least, one of her family would have been with her in her time of greatest need? At her funeral on Saturday, meeting her family and friends and seeing the outpouring of grief that overcame them all, I wondered why a woman so beloved by so many, who had done all society asked of her, should have been subjected to such a terrible death?
The week prior to her passing, I rented a room to a family of four. One room, four people, sharing a kitchen and bath with three other tenants. These are decent people, again doing all society says they should do. Both parents work and the mother attends nursing school; the children are incredibly well behaved (I wish mine had been so well behaved!). But they are victims of governmental bureaucracy as much as anything. The father openly admits to making mistakes when he was younger, which resulted in a felony conviction two decades ago. Since then, he’s done the things we tell him he should do: work to support his family, avoid the drama of street life, return to school and complete his GED. He would like to continue his education, but supports his wife as she works towards getting her degree. This is a family, in short, that is playing by all the rules our society dictates – yet they are reduced to living four to a single room, because it is all they can afford. The welfare system, the one that liberals tell us prevents this type of thing from happening and conservatives insist is too generous, is unavailable to them unless the father abandons his family. It is his decades old prior conviction that denies them access to it. Somehow, this result doesn’t seem fair to me.
Along the same lines, my personal struggle with chronic illness – in particular, a 22 year battle with Crohn’s Disease – has become much more difficult over the past two years. Over that time, I’ve had to shutter a business, spent nearly 8 months (cumulative) hospitalized and watched my family’s wealth get drained until we were destitute. I’ve rebounded some financially, but am in no way near the same fiscal position I was in 2011. Most of those around me think it unfair that my life has taken such a drastic turn, or that my reality is I’m likely wheelchair bound within the next two years and probably blind in less time than that. Certainly I wish there were a better prognosis.
Finally, there is my oldest son, Dennis. Some of my long-time readers are aware that he is what society euphemistically calls “developmentally disabled.” His reality is that he will never comprehend things the way you or I do. His IQ is 54; intellectually his development is equivalent to a second grader, emotionally he is at roughly the same stage as most 13- or 14-year olds. So while physically he’s a strapping 25 year old young man, his mind has yet to catch up to his body. Odds are that the two will never be in sync. This is the crux of his current problem. Because of his condition, he finds it difficult to express his feelings, except to occasionally blow up the way most 14 year old boys will. About 6 weeks ago, he found himself in a situation where he was being teased (not an uncommon situation, unfortunately) and lost his temper. The police were called; they followed protocol and brought him to the emergency room for observation. Which is where the nightmare began. Rather than checking his medical records, the hospital diagnosed Dennis as a violent schizophrenic and packed him off to the closest mental hospital. The doctor (I use the term in deference to his degree, not his competence) there confirmed the diagnosis, again ignoring his medical condition. A competency hearing was held, in which the doctor amplified his diagnosis to include the term “homicidal.” And so my son sits in a mental hospital, not understanding what’s happening or why as we fight to have him moved to another facility and have a new diagnosis issued that accounts for his disability. I’m not sure who would consider this outcome “fair.” If the President thought the justice system was ultimately unfair to the family of Trayvon Martin, I can’t see how he could consider this fair.
In reflecting on these incidents, each with an outcome which seems disproportionate in outcome to circumstance, I wondered if the results would be different were the fairness doctrine imposed by society replaced by libertarian values. Chances are that in three cases, the results would be the same but the perception would be different.
- In a Libertarian society, we would acknowledge that the young lady who died chose to live her final days alone. While there still would be sadness accompanying her death, it wouldn’t be considered unfair that she had neither friends nor family with her in her final hours.
- For the family renting the single room, society wouldn’t consider it unfair that a hard working mother and father would resort to housing their family in these conditions. In a Libertarian society, they would be celebrated as examples of how to face adversity.
- As for my health, nobody would consider it unfair that I’m sick and fated to becoming sicker. Unfortunate? Unlucky? Sure, those sentiments would be common. But the choices my family made in previous years were our own and left us in the financial position we find ourselves. I knew my health was precarious before launching my last business; it was our choice to take that route as opposed to my taking a job in what is a poor economy. Using Libertarian values, we took a calculated risk that proved unwise. But in the interventionist society we live in, we demonstrated incredible recklessness and need to be saved from ourselves.
Libertarians believe that fairness in opportunity is far more important than fairness of outcome. After all, if everyone is free to pursue their life’s goals – if they are truly at liberty – then the outcomes are inherently fair. Differences in outcome will have more to do with natural ability and desire than anything a government can do. While the odds are that the above situations would not be dramatically different than in a Libertarian society, there is one important way in which one of those situations would be better. The people above would be less constrained by a restrictive society. The family in one room may well be much better off, since Libertarians tend to look at most drug laws as counter-productive – meaning no felony record for the father. He would certainly have better employment opportunities without that black mark.
As for my son, a Libertarian society would probably mean all the difference in the world for him right now. Without the modern police state in which presumed innocence is nothing more than a tired cliche, it’s doubtful he would be where he is now.
So, yes, I’ve reflected and pondered. You’ve read my conclusions. You may not agree with them, but I end this period of introspection confident in my core belief that the equitable outcomes can only be guaranteed by the one truly fair system ever known to humankind. That is, that by believing in the individual and providing them with the liberty to achieve to their individual potential, a government does its best service to the governed.
THE WISDOM OF JUNIUS P. LONG
It is not “politcally correct.” But then again, the people who are have never stood for anything in their lives, so there’s that…
“If we concentrated on the really important things in life
there’d be a shortage of fishing poles.”
Brownwater Jimster sends me this to share with you. As most know, I tread lightly on political subjects because they are, like religion, fraught with chuckholes. However, when someone like Mr. J.P. Long emerges and points out the sky is indeed falling (and he’s right), I feel obligated to second the sentiment.
Here are Mr. Long’s well-reasoned observations on the state of the Union.
If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without
a license, but not for being in the country illegally …
you might live in a country run by idiots.
If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on
a field trip or take an aspirin in school, but not to get
an abortion …
You might live in a country run by idiots.
If you have…
View original post 524 more words
The End of the Beginning
Some of you may recognize the title of this post as part of a quote from Winston Churchill:
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Although Sir Winston was talking about the Battle of Egypt, the same could be said of Obamacare today. Since this is a holiday week, there is a good chance that you missed the announcement from the Treasury department on Tuesday afternoon. The Obama administration unilaterally decided to delay implementation of the employer mandate part of the law until 2015. Never mind that this is another example of a President who repeatedly decides which laws he’ll enforce (in direct contravention to the Constitution). That’s a another post for another day. No, this is yet another example of what was supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread is actually what a whole bunch of us realized it was from the beginning: in military parlance, a BOHICA SNAFU. (For those of you unfamiliar with military terms, this is a family blog. Feel free to use a certain search engine to look it up).
How bad has this been? There are bad laws and there are poorly executed laws. But this law was less about the stated intention (revamping the American healthcare system to provide easier access, with lower costs, for all Americans) than it was about a political power play between the two major parties. The result was a poorly conceived law, rammed through an indifferent Congress by a power-hungry administration, crammed full of pork and incapable of actually working. Every day seems to bear out the fact that nobody read the ACA before the final vote (even if they had, it would have taken a year more just to figure out the details).
To date, there have been 10 instances where the Obama administration has been forced to admit defeat on a particular program in the ACA. The reversal on the employer mandate is the latest, and one of the most critical. The reason they gave, that businesses needed more time to figure out the paperwork, is as believable as the tooth fairy. The real reason is that businesses already figured out how to avoid the paperwork completely: keep workers under the 30 hour limit which would trigger the mandate. Friday’s jobs report, which showed that more part-time jobs were created than full-time jobs, underscored this.
Score one for those of us who warned that Obamacare was an economy killer.
Unfortunately for the American worker, the individual mandate is still in place. The removal of the employer mandate means that some 36% of Americans are now going to be forced into purchasing private medical insurance. The employer mandate proved politically unworkable in practice, I suspect that by October (when everyone needs to start shopping) the individual mandate will prove even more politically impractical.
By the way, here are the 9 previous ACA failures:
- The CLASS Act: a long-term care insurance program that died last year. The reason? The law, as written, couldn’t be funded. The supposed budget savings amounted to 40% of the total deficit reduction attributed to the ACA.
- Federally mandated insurance exchanges: States were given literally unlimited funds to set up insurance exchanges that would allow uninsured folks to shop for coverage. The problem is that only 17 states have bothered with setting up the exchanges and the law requires HHS to set up exchanges for any state that doesn’t. But the ACA failed to foresee that states might not want to bother with the regulatory and administrative nightmares in trying to create a health care exchange and provided zero funds. HHS estimates it will cost at least $1.5 billion dollars to get the exchanges up and running. Good luck with that.
- Small business exchanges: along the lines of the individual exchanges, these were intended to allow small business employees to access the same rates enjoyed by employees at major corporations. They aren’t dead yet – but like the employer mandate, they have been delayed until 2015. The problem isn’t political here, though – it’s a real-world issue. Namely, how do you get the same actuarial certainty for an employee at a company with 10 employees as one who works with 1,000 other people? (Trick question: you can’t do it. But remember, the math geniuses in Congress who dreamed this up also raise government spending, then call it a “budget cut.”)
- 1099 reporting: This was a major funding tool for the ACA that was scuttled because it amounted to both a new tax and a reporting headache for every employer in the country.
- The Great Waiver Debacle: a provision in the ACA allowed HHS to issue waivers to organizations that could prove they needed them. Lo and behold, the Political Patronage and Payback Machine kicked into high gear. Over 1200 waivers have been granted (nobody knows for sure, because HHS stopped reporting the numbers a few months back). But if you gave to the Obama campaign or the DSCC, it looks as if you got a waiver. Funny how a law that was supposed to benefit everyone has proven so incredibly unpopular in core Democratic Party constituencies.
- The Pre-Existing Plans: great idea, on paper. Anyone who has a preexisting condition knows how difficult it is to find medical insurance. But once again those Congressional mathematicians didn’t realize how much it would cost to insure everyone – and the program has already run out of money. No more people are being accepted, even though HHS estimates that only 30% of those eligible are covered.
- Children Only Plans: under the ACA, if an insurance company sells child-only healthcare plans they need to offer coverage to kids with preexisting conditions. Somebody forgot to tell Congressional Dems the way the marketplace works (that companies do not willingly increase costs without some future benefit). The child only plans have virtually disappeared from the marketplace, a casualty of Obamacare.
- The “Basic Health Care Plan”: What’s that you say? You’re in perfect health, you’re young and you really don’t want to pay for full coverage that you can’t afford, even with the promised subsidies? Well, not to worry: the ACA mandated that states offer a basic plan – or essentially, catastrophic coverage-only. Except, as with the other mandates, it has proven unworkable and pushed back to 2015.
- “If you like it, you can keep it”: I saved the best for last! The greatest example of marketing hucksterism exhibited by the Obama administration was the President’s repeated assurances that if you liked you current health coverage, you would get to keep it after the ACA was passed. It’s pretty clear at this point that either the President is as dumb as rock when it comes to market economics or a bald-faced liar, because millions of Americans no longer have the health insurance options they had 4 years ago. Heck, HHS expects that some 126 million Americans will see a “significant” change to their health coverage as a result of the ACA.
The administration and Congressional Dems keep telling us that we’ll love Obamacare once it fully takes effect. They insist the law’s problems have more to do with poor marketing and Republican obstructionism than any basic flaws. But the record on implementation has more failures than successes and the law keeps proving to be more and more unpopular across all demographics.
Here’s a suggestion for the President. Admit that the latest reversal is, in fact, proof that the ACA is a disaster. Politically, it swept your party out of power in 2010 and is threatening to reinforce those losses in 2014. If you are truly interested in your legacy, which seems to be the general consensus among the DC elite, then do something no President has done.
Declare that your “signature accomplishment” is failing to deliver on the promises it made. Ask Congress to repeal it, scrap it and consign it to the dust heap of history. Ask Congress to work together to craft a healthcare reform package that actually works to improve delivery and reduce costs. In short, take ownership and command the respect true leadership creates.
This is the beginning of the end. The only question at this point is whether the President can rewrite the script and create a happy ending. If the past 5 years are any indication, he is politically incapable and (more importantly) personally unable to do so – and the nation will suffer as a result.
Cops vs. Civil Liberties? It shouldn’t be.
With everything that’s been making headlines this week, there certainly isn’t a shortage of things to write about. Heck, it takes me almost three hours each morning just to get through the barrage of news articles that find their way into my email and the topics cover everything from government malfeasance to the hyper-partisan Congressional environment through miscellaneous popular interest items. But there was one headline of which I’m betting the vast majority of you are unaware.
The other night, the city council in New York City voted to effectively end the NYPD’s “stop-and-frisk” program. They took this action for three reasons, two of which are political (the Council Speaker, once considered a shoo-in in the upcoming Mayoral election, is suddenly trailing human joke Anthony Weiner and the Justice Department is opening a probe on the practice) and one fiscal (the city just lost a lawsuit from the NYCLU). Current mayor, Michael “Mao” Bloomberg has already threatened to veto the new legislation – but in NYC, the Council can override a mayor’s veto and they have the votes to do so.
The stop-and-frisk program is a wonderful example of what happens when what seems like a reasonable idea at one time can later morph into a heinous overreach of government authority. The roots of the program are found in former Mayor David Dinkins’ “Clean Halls” program. That program aimed to reduce crime in NYC’s infamous public housing projects by giving police expanded to authority to stop anyone found in the buildings or grounds and ask for ID; if the person stopped couldn’t prove they lived there, they were arrested for trespassing and escorted away. It was an admirable effort that worked reasonably well in removing trespassers and also found more than a few fugitives.
It was so successful that Mayor Mike expanded it to all public spaces. That led to the idea that the police could catch even more bad guys and maybe even prevent crimes by allowing the police to not only randomly stop people, but check them for contraband. This was all premised on the idea that the police would have reasonable cause before accosting ordinary folks and searching them.
Has the program actually reduced street crime? The NYPD attest that it has, pointing to the reduction in violent crimes since 2002, when the program began (from about one violent crime per 44 residents) to the present day one per 76. But nationally, there has also been a marked reduction in violent crime during the same period: from one per 320 Americans to one per 480. It’s just a cursory examination of the numbers, but it may be that the national reduction in violence is as much responsible for New York’s drop in crime rate as the stop-and-frisk program.
To further damn the program, the NYPD’s statistics show that the program may have been more trouble than it was worth. It was found during the NYCLU case that the stop-and-frisk policy is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, despite the city’s claim that officers were only allowed to stop people who presented with a reasonable expectation that they were involved in some type of crime. Yet, the city’s own data show that although some 4.4 million stops were made, only 6.26% resulted in an arrest and another 6.25% resulted in a summons issued. Those are pretty pitiful results, especially when compared with the fact that over 28% of the incidents resulted in police using force to effect the stop.
So why put the program in effect in the first place – and why keep it going for more than a decade, when there is no discernible proof that it served it’s intended purpose? The answer to the first part is simple enough; New Yorker’s love their city – but they hate the high crime rate. To turn on the evening news or pick up a copy of the New York Post is to be bombarded with lurid tales of rape, murder, muggings and general mayhem. Although they’ll never admit it, most live in constant fear of being assaulted and with a reason. Those crime statistics still paint a pretty grim picture; a picture of a city whose crime rate is nearly 6 times worse than the national average. And as I’ve discussed before, where people are afraid, they’re also willing to cede to the government their rights. New Yorkers are especially axiomatic of this “nanny state” mentality. When they feel threatened they demand the government do something, anything, regardless if rights get trampled in the process – because, after all, it’s the other guy’s rights being trampled. It is, in short, the same mentality that allowed dictators like Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin to ruthlessly pursue their bloodthirsty agendas.
As to why it took a class action lawsuit and the threat of federal intervention to bring it to an end, one only has to look at the cottage industries that grew and depend on stop-and-frisk. The mayor, who at one time harbored Presidential aspirations, became synonymous with both this civil rights violation and by crusading against the Second Amendment rights of his subjects (as well as the evils of tobacco, carbonated beverages and trans-fats). He routinely uses the number of weapons seized during the stops-and-frisk as evidence that his anti-gun crusade would work, if only the rest of the country would follow his lead. There is NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, whose career depends on keeping those crime stats dropping and can hardly walk away from the program he most credits for the decline in violent crime. There are the rank-and-file officers, who after decades of ridicule and abuse by the citizenry, have found themselves for the past 12 years in a position of absolute authority. After all, who’s going to argue with a NYC cop who has the ability to stop you, detain you and search you anytime he wants? There are surely others, as well; like all major operations that are rooted in skirting existing law, corruption certainly follows.
The lesson that I wish New Yorkers (and everyone else) would take away from this episode in their history is this: even trying to exchange their freedoms for their safety was an abysmal failure; their crime rate is still far higher than people who live elsewhere. It is proof that liberty is not a currency that can purchase safety.
Watch the Senate vote on Immigration Reform
Senate Invokes Cloture on Immigration Bill, Final Vote at 4pm | C-SPAN.
The Supremes vs… Everyone Else?
I hear that EVERYONE is up in arms over the way the Supreme Court has ruled on this term’s cases. Conservatives are mad about the rulings on gay rights, liberals feel savaged by the ruling on the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Both are upset about the not ruling in the affirmative or negative on Affirmative Action. Indians are crying foul over an adoption case. All over the country, municipalities are wrinkling their noses over “new” limits on eminent domain laws. Governors had a large part of their executive authority executed, thanks to an overlooked ruling. Felons woke up with a hangover, realizing that they’re never going to be free of the Department of Justice. And in what may be a first, the Court managed to upset both liberals and conservatives with a pair of anti-discrimination decisions.
(h/t CNN)
Yes, there was something in this term to make EVERYONE upset with the 9 Justices. Everyone, that is, except libertarians. We’re actually smiling at the end of this term. Essentially, the Supremes ruled that trying to regulate all of these social wedge issues are nothing more than a waste of EVERYONE’s time and effort.
The reason for this is actually easy to understand, if you look at the Court’s makeup. There are four staunch liberals, three staunch conservatives, one constitutional conservative and one originalist. If you’re unfamiliar with the terms, here’s a layman’s way of defining it:
- Justices Thomas, Alito and Scalia are the staunch conservatives. They generally rule for limiting government authority, except on social issues – where expansive government is perfectly acceptable in promoting socially conservative values.
- Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan are staunch liberals. They generally rule for expansive government, period. Unless the expansive government happens to directly threaten a liberal social value.
- Justice Kennedy is the constitutional conservative. He actually reads the text of the Constitution and tries to see where the issue lies within the document. Once upon a time, this is what social conservatives swore they wanted (remember the arguing over “strict constructionalism” in the late ’90s?). Then Kennedy started making decisions that weren’t socially conservative. That narrative is almost never heard anymore.
- Chief Justice Roberts is the originalist. He weighs precedent to see how past Justices have interpreted the Constitution and apply that to modern cases.
So, how does this wind up with a more or less libertarian court? In almost any case involving a socially divisive issue, there will be four votes for the liberal position and three for the conservative, even before oral arguments. This leaves Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy as the deciding votes on these cases. Justice Roberts tendency to avoid making new law from the bench means he generally votes with the conservative justices. That leaves Justice Kennedy, who is more concerned with actually applying Constitutional principles to the case being decided.
This dynamic gave us what we’ve seen this term. Kennedy voted with the majority in every decision, except for Hollingsworth v. Perry. In that case (the punt on Prop 8), there was a rare majority of conservative and liberal justices who voted 6-3 that the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to bring the case. Kennedy, in his dissenting opinion, wrote that he believed the court had standing to decide the case regardless of the plaintiffs and that remanding it to lower courts only ensured the case would return later (he’s probably right, too).
Most commentators like to portray Justice Kennedy as a Reagan conservative who has surprised conservative lawmakers by often voting with the Court’s liberal bloc. I often wonder where these people have been for the past 30 years. While it is true that he was nominated by President Reagan in 1987, anyone who has cursorily reviewed his prior rulings would understand that his primary concern has been in determining the limits of government power. Among his 9th Circuit rulings can be found ideas like “indifference to personal liberty is but the precursor of the state’s hostility to it” and “a zone of liberty, a zone of protection, a line that’s drawn where the individual can tell the Government, ‘Beyond this line you may not go.’” These are the same principles that define the libertarian cause. Given that the “swing vote” of the Supreme Court espouses libertarian views, why is anyone shocked when the courts decisions follow the same?
For all practical purposes, the political result is that neither liberals nor conservatives are going to be terribly happy with this court. Which is how the Court’s decisions should affect popular opinion. After all, is the Supreme Court is supposed to be an independent arbiter on the Constitutionality of the laws passed by the Legislative branch and the regulations created by the Executive. It isn’t supposed to stick a collective finger in the air to determine which way the political winds are blowing.
Immigration Reform? Not Really.
ONLY IN THE CONGRESS would as daft a piece of legislation as S.770 be called immigration reform.
This is not to say that our current immigration system isn’t in dire need of reform. Anyone who knows anyone who has tried to legally enter the country is well aware that our current system tends to be discriminatory and slow. It is full of arbitrary limits with neither rhyme nor reason. Capricious rulings from faceless bureaucrats rule the day.
Unrelated to the immigration system is the issue of border security. Everyone seems to recognize that our borders are as porous as cheesecloth. The Mexican border, in particular, has become a dangerous and unruly place. Mexican drug cartels have more control over the expanse of desert than our government, with numerous deaths to both US and Mexican citizens resulting from the insecurity. In the meantime, millions of Mexican citizens routinely cross over to the US without permission. Some return. Most do not.
These are not new problems. In 1986, we had our first go-round with “comprehensive immigration reform.” We granted immunity from prosecution or deportation to some 3 million illegal immigrants and we changed the criteria for obtaining visas, green cards and eventual citizenship for future immigrants. Included in the “comprehensive” solution was supposedly upgraded border security. I supported that effort, partly because I couldn’t see anyway to round up and deport 3 million people, partly because the border would be secured and partly because the path to legal immigration was made simpler for future immigrants. I felt it better to have those illegals legalized and paying taxes than using government services from governments they had no real stake in.
Yet, here we are some 27 years later and the same problems that existed before the 1986 legislation not only still exist, but are worse than before. We now have somewhere around 11 million illegal immigrants living in the US, the border is hardly secure, and the path for legal immigration is more cumbersome and frustrating than ever. The legislative response this time? A repeat of the 1986 legislative failure. For the life of me, I can’t see how anyone with more than three working brain cells can think this is appropriate.
And since the colloquial definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result, I can’t see how anyone could look at the current legislation and not come away convinced that our Senators are insane.
As I mentioned at the top, I still believe our immigration system is in need of a serious overhaul. Not just a reform of the current immigration laws, but an all-out overhaul. If the Congress wants to strip down the current system and start from scratch, I’m fine with that. Heck, I would be really, really happy if they did that.
We also need border security. It should be a top priority and it shouldn’t be something that takes Congressional action to accomplish. After all, the Executive branch is responsible for maintaining border security. Yesterday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (a man quickly approaching Sen. John McCain for the “Most Senile Senator” award) told Chris Wallace that the border is “virtually militarized.” Well, that approach obviously isn’t working. I’m certain if the administration actually did militarize the border, there would be howls from the left. But I’m also certain that an infantry division patrolling the Rio Grande and another patrolling the Desert Southwest would be far more effective in maintaining border security than anything else we’ve tried thus far.
And we need to decide what to do with the 11 million people here without visas. I don’t think we’re any more capable of rounding up 11 million criminals today than we were capable of rounding up 3 million criminals 27 years ago. I don’t think they should be allowed to stay, either. I do think there is a very simple and cost effective way to have them return to their country of origin, though: deny them the means to live here. Make it impossible for them to work. Deny them the ability to rent a house or apartment. Deny them government services of any type. Give local governments the ability to turn over those here illegally to federal officials, and make it mandatory that anyone here illegally be immediately sent back home. Not all will “self-deport,” but more than the vast majority will. Human nature is human nature – once deprived of the means to support themselves or their families, they’ll move on to greener pastures.
What is certain that a repeat of the 1986 “comprehensive reform” package will get us, well, a repeat of 1986. Which means in 2040 another bunch of Senators will be discussing what to do about the fact there are more Mexican citizens residing in the US than than in Mexico, why the borders have become deadlier than ever and why the US cannot find (and keep) highly qualified people to emigrate here.
What the Farm Bill Defeat Really Means
From the ICYMI file: on Thursday, the House failed to pass a Farm Bill. Why is this significant? Because ordinarily, the Farm Bill passes both chambers easily. For instance, the Senate passed it’s version of the Farm Bill by a 66-27 vote. The last Farm Bill, in 2008, passed 316-117.
So why could this version of what is normally as uncontroversial a piece of legislation as possible garner only 195 “ayes” – and only 24 votes from Democrats? To hear the Democrat House leadership, it was a failure of the Republican leadership to round up their caucus, pointing to the 62 Republicans who voted against the bill. The Republican leadership casts the vote as pure partisan politics by the Democrats, who had promised 40-60 votes for passage and then reneged. According to the political press, the bill failed because it was too draconian in the way it slashed subsidies for everything from direct payments to farmers to the food stamp program.
All of them are wrong.
The problem with all of this prattling is that nobody is paying attention to a new dynamic that is appearing in the legislative process. The legislative institutions are creatures of habit. The rules they play by are built on decades of two-party primacy in American politics. As such, they’ve become a sort of hodge-podge of American Constitutionalism and parliamentary rulings, with very clear delineations of authority. There are majority and minority party leaders, deputies and whips. These party leaders are expected to round up the overwhelming of their party members into voting blocs. In a strict two-party system, these rules have worked well. Both parties have made use of the “Hastert Rule,” even before it was declared by former Speaker Dennis Hastert. (For the politically uninitiated, that particular rule says no bill can come to the floor unless it has support from more than half of the majority party). Likewise, both parties have made use of patronage and privilege to obtain votes and threats of retaliation to punish wayward caucus members.
But the system breaks down and becomes ineffective when there are three or more parties involved in legislating. While there may be only two official parties recognized in Congress, there is a stark reality that isn’t being faced by any of the DC proletariat: when they weren’t looking, a de facto third party stormed the gates. This party is not beholden to established party dictums or the existing rules. In fact, most of these members consider it their sworn duty to upend the apple cart. While most carry the “Republican” label, they are really much more broad than that narrow definition. Moreover, their power may be felt primarily in the House right now, but there are a small number in the Senate who are making life difficult for their caucus leaders.
I’m speaking, of course, about the Tea Party.
It is a loose coalition of libertarians and social conservatives, who ordinarily could not agree on the time of day. But in the current political climate, they do agree on one important point: the federal government is too big, too bloated and too intrusive. They see the issue not as one in which government practices must be reformed, but completely eviscerated. The reason they voted against the Farm Bill was not that it didn’t cut enough (as opined virtually everywhere), but that it spent $940 billion over 5 years – a figure that wasn’t offset anywhere else. For them, it represented further government growth, which is the ultimate sin. Their nays were virtually assured.
So what is the Republican leadership to do? In the Senate, the establishment Republicans are being faced with fierce resistance by the likes of Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. These members have already employed their own version of the nuclear option to gum up the works on legislation. In the house, Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor are faced with a large bloc (perhaps as much as 35% of their caucus) who simply cannot be cajoled or threatened into following them.
The answer is, the Republican establishment needs to understand that the “party line” no longer exists as they know it. If they really want to survive as a viable party, then they need to reclaim their party – and realize they cannot reclaim the Tea Party caucus. The two groups, currently defined as factions within the media, are in fact two separate parties, pursuing disparate goals.
Legislatively, the “loony birds” (as described establishment figure John McCain) are successful strictly because they can sow havoc within the Republican caucus. While they may not have the power to pursue their own legislative agenda, they do have enough clout to prevent bills they dislike from becoming law. It is the root of the “do-nothing” Congress.
Of course, expelling the Tea Party members from the Republican caucus would present two problems for the establishment part of the party. First, in a practical sense, it would mean losing their majority status in the House and being further diminished in the Senate. Second, while the establishment still represents the majority of the Republican brand, there is little doubt that the real energy in the party is coming from the Tea Party faction – and real fear among Republican leaders that crossing swords with Tea Party candidates would lead to decimating losses for establishment types.
For the Tea Party itself, such an expulsion would have immediate consequences, in that there isn’t a national Tea Party infrastructure. This would mean to survive, it would need to build one immediately. Fundraising (always critical in political campaigns), identifying candidates, getting on state ballots – all of these operations would need to get up-and-running within months, if not weeks. Undoubtedly, groups like FreedomWorks and Heritage would be willing to jump in on their behalf. And a skeletal effort could be gleaned from former Rep. Ron Paul’s presidential campaign organizations. It’s even likely the libertarian Koch brothers, much reviled by the political left, would be willing to switch allegiances.
In the short-term, however, the Republican party is facing a question over how to proceed. It seems likely that the compromises hammered out in the Senate stand virtually no chance of passing the House without significant buy-in from Democrats. On budget matters, the Republican Establishment is still more closely aligned with their Tea Party members than with liberal Democrats – meaning repeats of the Farm Bill fiasco are more likely unless the leadership crafts legislation that reduces overall spending. Think about it: the sequester, reviled publicly by liberals and privately by establishment conservatives, was never supposed to happen. The political calculus was nobody would want to see across the board spending cuts. But none of the main players counted on a strong Tea Party bloc that wanted exactly that outcome. And sequester-type bills are the only thing Tea Party members will approve on appropriations.
So, what happens now? Expelling the Tea Party from the Republican caucus would smooth the passage of legislation that bloc finds offensive. But it would cost the establishment Republicans their power and potentially their seats in 2014 or 2016, an unfathomable idea to the Washington mindset. Moving further to the right on budgetary matters would allow them to preserve their majority, but would likely lead to a legislative stalemate with the Senate. That’s also considered a political loser for the establishment. My bet is on the latter, though, if for no other reason that it leaves battle lines as drawn between Republicans and Democrats. It is a version of kabuki theater with which both parties are familiar.
But looming in the background will be the Tea Party. At the moment, it is much more prominent on the national stage than in local and state government. But if more Tea Party type candidates find themselves in elective office on those levels and the establishment Republicans are perceived to only pay lip-service to Tea Party ideals, then watch out. There may be a sudden explosion of legislators and governors, mayors and council members, displaying a T after their name to show party affiliation.
A Simple Question
(h/t TF Stern)
The lies that this government tells regarding the unconstitutional NSA surveillance programs are never ending. Just this past weekend we learned that contrary to administration and congressional assurances, analysts at the NSA routinely listen in on phone calls and read private emails without any warrant whatsoever. At this point, I’m not sure how anyone with a pulse can actually believe the drivel coming out of the DC establishment. (The Chief Liar, when the revelations about the scope of the NSA wiretapping were first being divulged: “Some of the hype we’ve been hearing over the past day or so — nobody has listened to the content of people’s phone calls.”)
The one thing that we’re constantly told by those same DC establishment types is that these programs are justified, Fourth Amendment be damned, because they’ve stopped “dozens” of terrorist attacks. The Nitwit-in-Chief said,
“I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We’re going to have to make some choices as a society.“
This was his justification for abandoning his oath to uphold the Constitution, suggesting that in order to keep the nation safe we were going to have to “choose” to ignore pesky Constitutional limitations on executive authority. It’s a common theme from Herr Obama, who also raised the specter of doing away with the Second Amendment in the name of “public safety.”
In the name of fairness, I’ll play along with the little game the DC spinmeisters created. We’ve been told by all kinds of politicians that “dozens” of attacks have been stopped by their illegal spying on Americans, but to date they’ve only told us of two, including an attempted bombing of the NYC subway. Yet, a little digging on my part has turned up 28 terrorist attacks since the program began, including 7 on US soil since Obama was sworn in:
- June 1, 2009: Abdulhakim Muhammed shoots two soldiers at a Little Rock, AK recruiting station. Muhammed freely admits to being an Al-Qeada operative.
- Novermber 5, 2009: Maj. Nidal Hassan shoots up a dispensary at Fort Hood, killing 13 and wounding more than 30. The investigation discovers that he has been espousing a Jihadist philosophy in emails and message board postings. Last week, a military judge refused to allow Hassan to use his preferred defense – that he was defending Al-Qeada from American aggression.
- December 25, 2009: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempts to explode a bomb concealed in his underwear while his international flight is on final approach into Detroit. The flight is spared only when the underwear bomber’s bomb fails to detonate and other passengers subdue the Al-Qeada agent.
- May 1, 2010: Faisal Shahzad plants a car bomb in NYC’s Times Square. Disaster is averted only when Shazad’s bomb fizzles instead of detonates. A broken wire in the detonator is later found to be the cause for the bomb’s failure.
- May 10, 2010: A pipe bomb detonates at a Jacksonville, FL mosque, wounding 60. Nobody has ever claimed responsibility and no arrests have ever been made
- January 17, 2011: A bomb is discovered along a parade route to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. Again, no one claims responsibility and the case remains open.
- April 15, 2013: Two brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, explode a pair of backpack bombs at the Boston Marathon finish line. 3 are killed and over 170 wounded. In the resulting manhunt, it’s discovered that the elder brother “disappeared” in Chechnya for six months and that both brothers have “radicalized” in recent years.
I have 7 examples of terrorists that slipped through the warrantless dragnet first unleashed by Bush and expanded by Obama. There are 21 more where the terrorists either successfully killed their American targets overseas, or were only stopped by their incompetence. Quite frankly, the entire program looks absolutely ineffective.
Unless, of course, the intent of the program is simply to give the administration surveillance powers not even the Gestapo or NKVD dreamed of. In that case, it is the most successful program of it’s type in history.
Trust Me – I’m from the Government!
“Trust me government asks that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what’s best for us. My view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties. The trust is where it belongs–in the people. The responsibility to live up to that trust is where it belongs, in their elected leaders. That kind of relationship, between the people and their elected leaders, is a special kind of compact. Three hundred and sixty years ago, in 1620, a group of families dared to cross a mighty ocean to build a future for themselves in a new world. When they arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, they formed what they called a “compact”; an agreement among themselves to build a community and abide by its laws. The single act–the voluntary binding together of free people to live under the law–set the pattern for what was to come. A century and a half later, the descendants of those people pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to found this nation. Some forfeited their fortunes and their lives; none sacrificed honor. Four score and seven years later, Abraham Lincoln called upon the people of all America to renew their dedication and their commitment to a government of, for and by the people. Isn’t it once again time to renew our compact of freedom; to pledge to each other all that is best in our lives; all that gives meaning to them–for the sake of this, our beloved and blessed land?”
The words above were spoken by Ronald Reagan, during his acceptance of the Republican nomination for President in 1980. He was not prescient regarding today’s headlines – he was very much speaking about how the triple whammy of Vietnam, Watergate and Carter had ruined American trust in government.
You have to wonder what he would say about events 9 years after his death.
The scandals rolling out of the White House over the past month seem to cascade, gaining in severity as each new revelation makes the headlines. First there was the attempted cover-up over what happened at the Benghazi consulate on September 11, 2012. That quickly was pushed aside by the revelations that the Department of Justice was wiretapping reporters, going so far as to name one a criminal co-conspirator, and using the secret FISA courts to obtain the warrants. A few days after that came news the IRS was targeting conservative, religious and civil libertarian groups – which despite repeated administration attempts to at turns sweep the investigations away or stonewall them, continue to amaze in their revelations of government run amok. Then last week, we learned that the National Security Agency (perhaps better called the National Paranoia Agency) is actively spying on, well, on EVERYONE.
Of course, to hear the usual suspects, the spying is neither intrusive (hey, it’s only every piece of communication you’ve taken part in over the past 6 years) nor targeted at people who’ve done nothing wrong. But for that argument to have any merit, you need to believe that the government can be trusted. And since late April, the only thing the government has successfully demonstrated is that it cannot be trusted to make a ham sandwich, much less not abuse power.
As I wrote about earlier, there is a common thread that binds all of these revealed actions together: the belief that government knows best. While I welcome that traditional liberals have joined with conservatives in decrying over all of this (you can read some excellent opinion articles here, here and here), the fact is that those traditional liberals are primarily responsible for the way this administration continues to circumvent the Constitution. They have spent 70 years pushing an agenda that calls for greater and farther reaching government “solutions.” It is the progressive tradition that claims the Constitution is an outdated document. It is their current tribune and the man currently occupying the Oval Office, who has publicly lamented that the supreme law of the land fails to define what the “government can do for you” and that he is “constrained by the system the Founders put in place.”
The abuses of power we’re now witness to, are the direct results of that philosophy. After all, were the government limited in authority and power as originally planned by the Founding Fathers, then such things could not have come to pass. Hopefully, America is starting to awaken to this reality. If Barack Obama is the last President to wield such immense power, if this is the last Congress to pass sweeping laws that (at best) skirt Constitutional limitations, then this period of our history will serve to have forever discredited liberalism as a political theory.
We can only hope.
A Generational Divide
Yesterday, Senator Frank Lautenberg died. While I doubt there was anything politically speaking we agreed on, I still respected the man’s commitment to our home state (New Jersey) and country. When I posted those thoughts on Facebook, I was blasted by a sizable number of my friends for memorializing a liberal Democrat. The commentators disparaged him for everything from “spitting on his oath of office” and “attempting to overturn the Constitution” to being an “outright fraud” or “typically corrupt NJ politician.”
Those last two made me stop and think for a moment. Had Lautenberg ever been associated with any sort of corruption or abuse of of his office? The answer is no, and that is saying something for a New Jersey politician. The only association with scandal in his 30+ years of public service is that he replaced a Senator who was convicted for his role in Abscam. Was he a classic liberal? Yes. Corrupt. No.
But why the vilification of a man whose biography is the epitome of the classic American success story? Within the answer to that question lies the answer to much of what ails our political system today. And the answer is not a matter of liberal or conservative principles, but rather what defines those principles in the 2010’s. Undergirding those definitions is not racism (though it is always an undercurrent) or sexism, but ageism.
A little relevant history is probably in order here. I was born in 1965. This makes me either an old Gen X’er or young Baby Boomer, according to demographers. Frank Lautenberg was born in 1924, making him a member of the “Greatest Generation.” Now stop to consider what those demographic distinctions mean, politically speaking. Senator Lautenberg would have been in kindergarten at the start of the Great Depression. By the time he was entering his junior year in high school, Germany was invading Poland and World War II was underway. After a youth of watching New Deal programs like the WPA and CCC save his hometown from disappearing from the map, his young adulthood would be spent fighting the Nazi’s. He would spend the rest of his twenties attending college under the GI Bill. In his 30’s, government programs helped him found ADP – and government contracts helped him grow ADP into the world’s largest payroll processing company.
In contrast, my youth was dominated by the debacle of the Vietnam War and shame of Watergate. The economic stagflation of the Carter years ended with the ignominy of the Iranian Embassy. After my time in the Marines, there wasn’t a GI Bill – it had been replaced by the Veteran’s Education Assistance Program (VEAP), which paid for one semester of college. My first business wasn’t assisted by the government; rather I spent more time than I really had ensuring I wasn’t running afoul of some obscure regulation or another (something that still plagues entrepreneurs to this day.
In short, Frank Lautenberg witnessed an activist government that worked to improve lives, that won the most critical war of the pre-nuclear age and that literally saved the world. As Robert Samuelson points out in this op-ed, I grew up witnessing an activist government with rampant corruption, rife with incompetence, incapable of managing even a comparatively small crisis. Lautenberg’s political views were largely shaped by watching a government managed economy, that while imperfect, at least managed to make poverty tolerable. Mine are the result of watching a government managed economy that has eroded the earning and savings power of it’s citizens and thrown millions into poverty (see chart below).
Click on the image to read the original article
This clash on the views of the efficacy of Big Government is at the heart of the the turmoil within the Republican party. Baby Boomers, such as John McCain, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner share the view that Big Government isn’t inherently bad – just that our current government is poorly managed. The Gen X’ers (Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, etc) simply believe that government has grown too large and unwieldy – or as Samuelson put it, government has “bitten off more than it can chew.” Democrats have largely staved off this demographic upheaval because (a) the vast majority of their Congressional Leadership is comprised of people over 70 and (b) the current President is also an unabashed liberal. The clash of identities that marked the Clinton presidency (Clinton, while more liberal than his Republican counterparts, certainly isn’t as far to the left as the current president).
So how does this story end? It can only end one way, and that’s also a result of demographics. The old standard bearers will eventually die off, leaving the Gen X (and eventually, Millenials) in charge of the Republican brand. Although my friends on the left probably do not want to hear this, eventually the liberal wing of the Democrat party will also die off (liberals are a declining percentage of the population, as recently as last year’s elections only 24% of the electorate declared themselves as “liberal” or “progressive”). That will leave the more conservative DLC wing in command. Future arguments will focus entirely on what role is appropriate for the federal government in our republic, not the size or machinations of said government.
And that is a good thing.
The Last Man Standing
President Biden? And next on the list would be President Boehner.
Once, we delivered great leaders to the leadership positions in government. Today, we deliver…mediocre politicians.
A Government of People
One constant with the Obama administration has been the taint of scandal. Of course, the news media has been particularly exercised over the past ten days or so. Beginning with Benghazi, continuing through the IRS mess and right into the Justice Department’s spying on the AP, the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have been deluged by the media feeding frenzy. But the reality is this: Team Obama has faced a seemingly endless run of scandals throughout this Presidency. There was the lack of “shovel-ready” jobs, the “green energy” debacles of Solyndra and Fiskar, the notoriously inept “Fast and Furious” gun running operation, the “recess appointments” of NRLB directors, the Corporation for National and Community Center misuse of funds. This is also the administration that sees no problem with killing Americans overseas, has pushed for expanding the Patriot Act to allow warrantless spying on virtually anyone (the root of the AP scandal), pushed hard for the authority to indefinitely detain anyone, appointed committed communist Van Jones to a federal post, created the “czar” positions and has overseen the overwhelming ammunition purchases by the Department of Homeland Security. There are plenty more, of course, but you get the idea – this is an administration that kicks up dirt with every step.
The current narrative is that all of this proves that the Obama administration has a bunch of rotten eggs, some who are outwardly corrupt and that the lack of managerial skill in the White House is the primary culprit for all this nonsense. Well, yes – but don’t get sucked into that storyline. The real scandal is not malfeasance by government officials, nor is it the nature of Washington politics. It is not the politicization of every detail (sorry, Mrs. Pelosi) or Republican complicity with a dastardly administration (sorry, Mr. Limbaugh).
The real scandal is that everything that has happened was going to happen under this President, regardless of Congressional oversight or public outcry. No matter how many times the administration stubs its big toe, it will continue on the path they set upon in January, 2009. This is not because the President or his chief lieutenants are corrupt by nature. Instead, it is because of the overriding belief that government can solve all problems, tackle every issue and bring peace and harmony throughout the land.
On its face, this isn’t a terrible idea. It would be wonderful if there were an entity that could wave a magic wand and make every problem disappear. It is the basic thought behind every liberal policy position. But it is scandalous, if only because it is an idea that has been tried many times before and never with any success. In some cases, the result of attempts at government interventions are humorous (such as the toilet paper shortage in Venezuela). But far more often, the results are disastrous. If you’re at a loss for why this is, all you need to do is look at the people around you.
The preamble to our Constitution established a “Government of the People, by the People and for the People.” What the Founding Fathers failed to verbalize is that as with all governments, it would also be a government OF people. That is to say, at all levels of government, there are people making decisions daily; decisions which affect their fellow citizens’ daily lives. What liberals (or progressives) fail, time and again to recognize is that people are not infallible. Quite the contrary, people make mistakes. And a person who believes in the infallibility of government is going to be far less vigilant in looking for the fallibilities in government employees than one who knows better. The Founders understood that bureaucrats generally lack common sense, which is why they spent more time writing into the Constitution the things government is not allowed to do than conferring powers to the bureaucracy. Not so sure on this point? Stop to ask yourself how many of those people around you would you trust with intimate details of your life. Then realize that one out of every ten Americans is currently receiving a paycheck from your taxes – and you’ll begin to understand why government is not the beneficent giant liberals want you to believe in.
This is not to say government is inherently evil. However, when the people employed by the government are in charge of the government, bad things tend to happen. It isn’t a lesson that Barack Obama seems to have learned – and it’s why he is not fit (and never was) to be the Chief Executive of the United States.
What a difference 48 hours can make
So, despite an economy that’s in the toilet and a solid 40% of the nation never buying your policies, you’ve managed to ride your personal popularity to a slight lead in the polls. Just to make matters more scintillating, the opposition seems intent on NOT winning the upcoming election. After all, how else do you explain their choice for nominee, a man who epitomizes many of the things most Americans personally despise? On top of that, the nominee has all the personality of flat white paint and switches positions so often even he doesn’t know which side of the fence to sit on.
If you didn’t know better, though, you would swear that Barack Obama has looked aver these gifts and decided he just doesn’t want to be President next year. It’s the only thing that makes any sense at this point. Otherwise, why would he be doing his best Jimmy Carter routine with less than six weeks until election day?
I’ve been traveling quite a bit over the past 48 hours. In a way, it’s probably a good thing – otherwise this blog would’ve blown up form all the posts. But to recap the events (in case you were hiding under a rock)
- On the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, mobs attacked the US Embassy in Cairo and the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. As it turns out, the attacks now look like the work of al-Quaeda (what a surprise) and it also looks like the CIA and Homeland Security tried to alert the administration and the State Department of the threat 48 hours in advance. The response? The administration ordered the Marine guards in Cairo disarmed and State relied on local security forces in Benghazi. The Embassy in Cairo was stormed and the American flag burned. In Benghazi, the US ambassador and three of his employees were murdered.
- It’s also come to light that President Obama hasn’t sat in on any of his security briefings since September 5th. I guess between campaigning, raising money, golfing and shooting hoops, he doesn’t have any time left for mundane things like, oh – doing his job?
- Yesterday, the Federal Reserve announced that the economy is booming along so well that it’s now launching QE3. Unlike QE1 and 2, this time it’s open ended. The Federal Reserve will print upwards of $85 billion a month (that’s roughly 6% of the total economy) until unemployment reaches some magical number, now assumed to be 7.5%. Of course, Ben Bernanke could change his mind and decide on some different number later. Regardless of how you feel about this latest round of quantitative easing (I’ll probably write more on it later), it’s hardly a ringing endorsement of the President’s fiscal policies.
- Yesterday, before the ink was even dry on the court opinion that the NDAA is unconstitutional, the Justice Department had already filed an appeal. Apparently, although holding foreign nationals and countries accountable for their actions isn’t part of this administrations repertoire, detaining American citizens indefinitely without a writ of habeus corpus is perfectly acceptable.
- Since the original attacks in Cairo and Benghazi, US Embassies in Yemen, Morocco, Indonesia, Malaysia, Tunisia, Lebanon, India, Pakistan and even London have been scenes of mob violence, while riot police and demonstrators have had a running battle in Cairo.
- And today, the President’s spokesman said (I kid you not), “This is not a case of protests directed at the United States.”
That last bit was the final straw. The Obama administration is obviously intent on throwing in the towel (and to Hell if he throws in the American people along with it). The question is, is Mitt Romney enough of a candidate to pick it up and run with it? I’m still not convinced he is. Until then, I’ll continue to support the only candidate on the ballot I see supporting American principles, values and commitments: Gary Johnson
Mike Rowe: the First Four Years are the Hardest…
Mike Rowe, doing another Dirty Job
You may be familiar with Mike Rowe from his show on the Discovery Channel, Dirty Jobs. Even if you’ve never seen the show (in which case I suggest you catch an episode), you’ve probably seen him shilling cars and trucks for Ford or paper towels for Viva. And if you watch ABC’s World News then you hear his voice every night – he’s the announcer during the opening and commercial breaks.
What you may not realize is that he is also a serious advocate for vocational training. His foundation, mikeroweWORKS, is dedicated to making education in skilled trades something other than a remedial course of study. He understands a point I made several weeks back, that a four-year degree is not the best path for every student. Or for our nation’s future.
Before you say that of course our nation still values the skilled trades as highly as a college education, ask yourself how you would react if your son or daughter announced their intention of becoming a truck driver after high school. Or a plumber, electrician, farmer, or welder. Even thought they are among both the highest paying and most consistently sought after trades by employers, I doubt it would be greeted with the same enthusiasm as an announcement they wanted to become an astrophysicist or surgeon.
Therein lies a major problem, both for the current economy and the economy of the future. Already the news is full of accounts of college graduates queuing up for job applications in the unskilled trades (think retail worker), simply because there isn’t demand for their skill set. At the same time, there is a desperate need for mechanics, welders, riggers, electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs – all you need to do is pick up the help wanted section of any metro newspaper.
Mr. Rowe understands this problem is a problem. To that end, he’s written an open letter to Mitt Romney. He wrote a similar one to Barack Obama during the least election cycle, but based on the President’s education initiatives it fell on deaf ears. You can read the full letter here, but I wanted to lift one line that I thought exemplified the problem:
“I always thought there something ill-fated about the promise of three million “shovel ready jobs” made to a society that no longer encourages people to pick up a shovel.“
In a nutshell, THAT is the biggest problem with getting our nation back to work today. Many of my conservative friends are adamant about making welfare and unemployment recipients work for their benefit checks. I don’t necessarily disagree with that sentiment. But in a nation that no longer values physical or skilled labor, how likely is a program akin to Roosevelt’s CCC or WPA to succeed?
Political Baseballs 