Category Archives: Government

WSJ | There are few permanent victories or defeats in American politics, and Tuesday wasn’t one of them. The battle for liberty begins anew this morning.

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Good pep talk from the Wall Street Journal

Mr. Obama’s campaign stitched together a shrunken but still decisive version of his 2008 coalition—single women, the young and culturally liberal, government and other unions workers, and especially minority voters.

He said little during the campaign about his first term and even less about his plans for a second. Instead his strategy was to portray Mitt Romney as a plutocrat and intolerant threat to each of those voting blocs. No contraception for women. No green cards for immigrants. A return to Jim Crow via voter ID laws. No Pell grants for college.

This was all a caricature even by the standards of modern politics. But it worked with brutal efficiency—the definition of winning ugly. Mr. Obama was able to patch together just enough of these voting groups to prevail even as he lost independents and won only 40% of the overall white vote, according to the exit polls. His campaign’s turnout machine was as effective as advertised in getting Democratic partisans to the polls.

There were several other pieces today that said some of the same things, essentially you cannot win against the progressive / liberal patchwork with a pure social conservative / fiscal conservative mantra.

The Republican side was made up of:

  • survivors of the old line right center Big Business Republicans
  • evangelical social conservative/moderate
  • moderate libertarians
  • constitutional originalists
  • small business owners
  • And a rather long list of single issue activists
  • anti immigrant
  • gun rights
  • anti-abortion
  • anti-tax

The problem seems to be similar to one that the democrats used to lay claim to, Big Tentism…trying to pander to too many one topic interests to the detriment of a centralizing theme.  No party can offer blanket coverage for all the rather distantly touched special interests without weakening itself.

The centralizing theme of the Republican party is, personal responsibility and non intrusive government, based on the rule of law centered on a relatively strong reference to the Constitution.

The centralizing theme of the Democratic party might be seen as common responsibility, government central mediator, based on the interpretation of law referring to the constitution among other iconic law systems.

A key problematic special interests in the Republican party today is Big Business (as a themed entity not as the people in the companies,) not because Big Business is evil but because its interests are really more in line with the Democratic Party centralizing themes, not the Republican party’s.  The only reason Big Business tents in the Republican camp is because the Democrats demonize it, and the actual ‘People’ (i.e. agents) who are the cells of the Big Business are generally very much aligned with the centralizing theme of the Republican party.  But the Players and the Companies when operating in aggregate (or for the company) are much more likely to support the Democratic baseline than the Republican one.

Various single issues activists, particularly the semi organized Tea Party activists of various sub stripes, have pushed their way and their interests into the Republican party.  As above providing huge clubs to beat the overall party to death with.   The TP has tried to remake the Republican party in its image…which purposely does not exist.  This has again and again wrecked the chances of the party by putting up candidates who are very easily caricatured by their opponents and driven into defeat.

That’s not to say that some of the single issues activists are not right and that they all should be driven out.  The gun lobby while demonized is a strength in the party as long as it sticks to the line it has in recent years, this resonates well with personal responsibility and non-interference.  Anti tax when not carried to caricature.  Pro life, when not carried to the level of stupid anti-abortion extremism (as I’ve said before almost everyone is pro-life, most are modestly anti-abortion, but the paternalistic-extremism of an Akin or a Mourdock is nuts in this day.)

Consistency to theme should be considered strongly:  For example:  Pro-Life –>anti-abortion, anti death penalty,  limits to the pursuit of extra territorial murder (drone wars.) pro scientific medical advances (with ethical limits.) In other words limit very tightly the ability of the government to kill anyone unless they pose an immediate threat to the US, which of course has to be defined pretty damned broadly but still consistently.  (i.e. OBL raid was a perfectly reasonable action.)

If you look at the paragraph above you would realize that the Catholic Church while staying out of politics is going to support the Republican theme much more strongly than it did,does today.

Same goes for immigration, we are a nation of immigrants, and the nation needs the flow of immigrants because population growth is inherently good for the US economy in every way for the foreseeable future.  Yes borders should be protected from military incursion (which I think we do pretty well) but no country with a border as long and open (no geographic obstacles like seas, cliffs or rivers) as the US’s can seal its borders without imposing a police state, which largely stops people coming because there is no reason for them to want to go into bondage, who really wants to go to North Korea, all their walls are to keep people in, not out.    Like abortion this is a sore point with fundamentalists but at the end of the day I have never seen anti-immigration sentiment that is not at base about fear of the other or of having to compete.

One of the biggest most fundamental issues that the Republican majority has to come to grips with is that the US has always been about creative destruction and that nothing can stay the same in an evolving world.  We have to compete on the global stage in every venue and that means that in some niches we go up and others we go down.  At the end of the day nothing can protect you as a person from the winds of economic and social change and trying to do so just fosters tyranny. The only thing that provides you a shield is flexibility and the willingness to learn and adapt, which in general the average American has been better at than the rest of humanity, partly because of the freedoms that the country provides to fail and try again.

The Republican party needs to focus on the themes I think it stands for:  personal responsibility and non intrusive government, based on the rule of law centered on a relatively strong reference to the Constitution.

    • Moderate taxes (limit on income taxes, everyone pays income tax
    • Moderate, smart and regulation (stop regulators getting captured by those they regulate)
    • Pro immigrant
    • Pro small business  (not anti big business, just stop giving them special treatment)
    • Pro gun
    • Strong defense
    • Pro Life (not anti-abortion) (anti death penalty)
    • Pro Free trade even if it hurts

Then you have my dreams:

  • One term at a time (no re-elections, you can be president as many times as you want, but only one term at a time, then you take a break before running again.)
  • Individual Health Care:
  • Individual Retirement.

If you know we’re in trouble but can’t quite figure out why? Adam Garfinkle at American Interest has a key

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Great Primer on why bureaucratic / regulatory purgatory has descended on our heads in this blog post at the American Interest site.

America’s political institutions are so fouled up at both the politics/decision-making and the bureaucratic/administrative levels that one can actually make a plausible case that all the variance we are trying to account for lives here. One can make this case regardless of political affinities, too. Liberals argue that our economic situation, touched off by the financial collapse of autumn 2008, is all the fault of anti-government, market-fundamentalist types obsessed with deregulation. Conservatives argue that our economic situation is what it is because we are hopelessly in debt thanks to the futile and counterproductive meliorist entitlement policies of bleeding-heart liberals who invariably care more about intentions than outcomes. Both are partly right, but also partly wrong or, better, incomplete, in their analysis—which brings us to part three, next time.

Couple of updates, Alan’s post really starts here with Section 1 which provides background, that points back to Walter Russell Meade’s The Collapse of the Blue Model series I’ve posted about earlier.  Read it all, Alan says much more clearly and with more background what I have tried to say in various small ways for almost a year now.

The system is systematically broken, it has become so broken that it is self reinforcing and is pointing the nose of the ship of state down, harder and harder as we try to fix it.

How can Romney respond to Candidate Obama’s exposure of his underlying socialist mindset?

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Respond to what, it was just a misstatement, right?

Wrong!!

if you listen or read more it’s quite obvious he meant it in a deeper sense than a softly communitarian sense, he denigrated the hard work and smarts it takes to build up the smallest or commonest business. Yes you need infrastructure to build on, but it was leaders and tax paying citizens who built that, government is at its best when it’s a framework of self organization not the organizer.

How could Romney respond…by declaring a regulatory holiday, for two years. Also rescinding all new regulations from the last eight years unless the were a relaxation of prior rules or to do with acute toxic threats…and I know that even that would be abused.

During the holiday the US’s regulatory framework would be changed from mostly a matter of sovereign law to contract law. Regulations would be matters of goals and baselines and an standard if unwritten contract line item not a legal straight jacket. Don’t feel the regulation is best for your customers, neighbors, employees etc? Then write it up and submit it as a change to your social contract. Regulatory law is ‘now’ contract law, you pay for your day in court to review your change, if someone protests they have to pay the extra court costs (and by the way court is in your HQ’s state capital or a nearer regulatory court, not in your or their venue of choice.) If you’re sued on a ‘regulatory’ item, first hearing is split if it’s extended the ‘suit filer pays’ unless they can prove that you lied, if it’s a question, you split costs.

Simple minded you say? Good laws are simple and philosophically clear. Applying law to complex and ambiguous reality is what we pay judges and lawyers for.

Such a plan would lay the foundation for a new US boom, it would take the shackles off and let people’s ingenuity and desire to build something for the future blow the roof of the doldrums the regulatory over reach of the last several decades has built over our dreams.

How can Romney respond to Candidate Obama’s exposure of his underlying socialist mindset?

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Respond to what, it was just a misstatement, right?

Wrong!!

if you listen or read more it’s quite obvious he meant it in a deeper sense than a softly communitarian sense, he denigrated the hard work and smarts it takes to build up the smallest or commonest business. Yes you need infrastructure to build on, but it was leaders and tax paying citizens who built that, government is at its best when it’s a framework of self organization not the organizer.

How could Romney respond…by declaring a regulatory holiday, for two years. Also rescinding all new regulations from the last eight years unless the were a relaxation of prior rules or to do with acute toxic threats…and I know that even that would be abused.

During the holiday the US’s regulatory framework would be changed from mostly a matter of sovereign law to contract law. Regulations would be matters of goals and baselines and an standard if unwritten contract line item not a legal straight jacket. Don’t feel the regulation is best for your customers, neighbors, employees etc? Then write it up and submit it as a change to your social contract. Regulatory law is ‘now’ contract law, you pay for your day in court to review your change, if someone protests they have to pay the extra court costs (and by the way court is in your HQ’s state capital or a nearer regulatory court, not in your or their venue of choice.) If you’re sued on a ‘regulatory’ item, first hearing is split if it’s extended the ‘suit filer pays’ unless they can prove that you lied, if it’s a question, you split costs.

Simple minded you say? Good laws are simple and philosophically clear. Applying law to complex and ambiguous reality is what we pay judges and lawyers for.

Such a plan would lay the foundation for a new US boom, it would take the shackles off and let people’s ingenuity and desire to build something for the future blow the roof of the doldrums the regulatory over reach of the last several decades has built over our dreams.

Oh for crying out loud!!!!!

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This is just ludicrous…..Afghan Commission: US Abuses Detainees

Pakistan, Afghanistan, stupidstan…..we brought some of this on our own heads in the post 9/11 days(daze.). However this is just foreign thugs/frenemies using the Media as a tool to bludgeon our diplomats (who often seem to care more about their Euro, etc peers opinions than the principles they are supposed to support.)

KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan investigative commission accused the American military Saturday of abusing detainees at its main prison in the country, saying anyone held without evidence should be freed and backing President Hamid Karzai’s demand that the U.S. turn over all prisoners to Afghan custody.
The demands put the U.S. and the Afghan governments on a collision course as negotiations continue for a Strategic Partnership Document with America that will determine the U.S. role in Afghanistan after 2014, when most foreign troops are due to withdraw. By pushing the detainees issue now, Karzai may be is seeking to bolster his hand in the negotiations

My mods in the above quote….read the article it’s pretty clear this is blackmail/extortion, and we need to remember this like kidnapping is an ‘honored’ tradition in this part of the world.

Did the ancient Myan’s predict the collapse of human civilization in 2012?

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There have been a series of Cassandra video’s floating around this year, actually pretty much from the beginning of the internet.  I think the latest one I keep hearing glancing past is Post America or some such.  Ed Driscoll has a piece on the free fall of California that takes a lot of its material from this piece by Victor Davis Hanson then mentions the book After America from which the following comes:

 In ten years’ time, there will be no American Dream, any more than there’s a Greek or Portuguese Dream. In twenty, you’ll be living the American Nightmare, with large tracts of the country reduced to the favelas of Latin America, the rich fleeing for Bermuda or New Zealand or wherever on the planet they can buy a little time, and the rest trapped in the impoverished, violent, diseased ruins of utopian vanity.

“After America”? Yes. It will linger awhile in a twilight existence, arthritic and ineffectual, declining into a kind of societal dementia, unable to keep pace with what’s happening and with an ever more tenuous grip on its own past. For a while, there may still be an entity called the “United States,” but it will have fewer stars in the flag, there will be nothing to “unite” it, and it will bear no relation to the republic of limited government the first generation of Americans fought for. And life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will be conspicuous by their absence.

I agree that things are ugly for certain segments and geographical subsets of the middle class.  But I do not see a wholesale breakdown of the American dream.  On one side the American Dream has always been time and place focused, on the other I see almost as many positive signs as negative if you look at things from a broader perspective.  Conservatives are always going to lament most changes they see around them and conservatives living hyper conservative lifestyles, (i.e. farmers, lawyers, police, military)  are going to see things going to hell with more poignancy. 

The way I see it we got here because of the sequence of bubbles we have lived through, from the Post Cold War Bubble, Tech Bubble, Internet Bubble, a General Bubble (up to 9/11/01) then the Housing Bubble.  All of this essentially enabled the following: 

  • Pandering to gov’t worker unions
  • venal politicians promising money they had no way of knowing would be there
  • Bankers divorced from personal financial risk taking too many risks
  • Stock investors who should know better always expecting smooth growth
  • Managers looking six months ahead instead of six years ahead
  • Apathetic voters:
    • Voters who vote for the guy who ‘looks’ the best
    • Voters who vote for the guy who promises the most
    • Young folks not voting because they’re working 60hours and playing 40.
    • Middle career folks voting on visceral because their working 60hours and then coming home to another 40 of honey dos
  • One issue voters
    • Old folks voting for their pensions with scant consideration for other issues
    • Gov’t workers voting their pocket book  with scant consideration for other issues.
    • Bee in their bonnet rich folks using referendum to drive through special initiatives with no concern for unintended consequences.
    • Bee in their bonnet single issue political movements who vote gut level issues like abortion or church state separation, lower taxes butleave no room for compromise even when most of the realize that compromise is the only way anything will ever really be done
    • Politicians who gutlessly sign pledges that lock out the possibility of compromise, which was the basis on which the US was established.
  • Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, as the king of Siam famously said

So…what am I saying?

That while I agree with the Cassandra’s that things look very bad this too shall pass, though sadly it’s not certain it will not pass without disorder and death, I expect that the United States will continue to exist for a few more centuries.  The majority of the country understands the general direction we need to go.  This majority does not include the rabid left or the zombie right but it does include many on both sides as well as the middle.

    • A retirement safety net that is much more focused on those in real need at a fraction of the current cost (means tested and not generally available till 75.)
    • A universal retirement savings system that is portable and personally monitored and focused on retiring at 70 only earlier if you have the funds or a real need due to disability.
    • A disability safety net that is probably little changed from today. but any federal mandate has to be funded by block grants from the federal gov’t .
    • Out of work benefits, system probably little changed from today but any federal mandate has to be funded by block grants from the federal govt’
    • Health Coverage:
      • A health insurance safety net focused on kids to 18
      • Universal Health Savings account (not mandatory you use it, not taxed), portable and personally controlled
      • Health insurance available, Insurance companies have to take new people, they can establish different price for different age groups (5 year min span.)  If you sign up as an adult with no prior insurance you will pay a reasonable premium for the first two years (25%)
      • Health cost published by all practitioners on their web pages, visits, shots, etc etc. 
      • Health practitioners are not allowed to charge different groups different prices for the same services.
      • People will pay their own health bills via a Pay Pal or equivalent system.
    • A simple but graduated income tax system without the bands.  I’d propose  simple linear progression from 0% at 10,000 to 20% at  $1 Million. Above $1M ‘income’ is considered capital gains and flat taxed
      • Capital Gains 25%.
      • No exemptions period end of sentence.
      • Special tax deals are special contracts with Department of Treasury / Inland Revenue, which Congress has to sign off on. 
      •  No tax deal can reduce expected tax rate below 10% ever.
    • Restrict the volume of regulations and laws.
      • A whole bunch of restrictions on length and length of effect.
      • You cannot make a regulation ex post facto (after the fact) just like no ex post facto laws restriction in the Constitution.
    • Anti Corruption
      • Congressmen have to put their money in a blind trusts.  No insider trading
      • All donations to all elected officials have to be public record, no restriction on the amount. No privacty for political acts.
      • Special interest groups who target politicians with adds, have to publish their financials and who provided the funds. No privacy rights for political acts.
    • Secrecy Restrictions
      • Debates on laws can be held behind closed doors but a proposed law has to be published on the internet at least ten days before the final vote and no special access for lobbyists etc.
      • Nothing can be held secret for more the 5 years without special and specific reasons agreed to by a committee of the senate and the maximum is 50 years.

  • No program / group above a certain size (10 people, $10 million) can be completely black, it has to have a public face and a public (and honest) reason for existence and its top level budget and basic structure must be public.

    • 5 and only 5 Departments of Executive Gov’t
      • Department of Treasury
      • Department of Defense
      • Department of State
      • Department of the Interior
      • Department of Commerce
      • All other departments shuttered and any necessary functions put in one of the others:
      • All current agencies would fall under one of these departments.  No independent Agencies of Gov’t. But can have an independent board of directors who can act as buffers…&seperate budget line item.
    • Recognize that blanket prohibition never works and establish a new regime for bad drugs including tobacco and alcohol.
    • Get Gov’t out of the marriage business.  Gov’t does care about stable committed partnerships for clear socio-economic reasons but should see it as a contractual issue.  Contract of Family Partnership to replace Marriage License.  Marriages are religious and can be restricted as the religious group sees fit. 

    So OK I got carried away, I’ve cut this list down several times then rebuilt it.  Not sure it’s really coherent but it does reflect my opinion on a number of topics.  I also think it reasonably represents the views of a lot of moderated, be they Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives, Libertarians, Progressives….I think.  I may find out I am absolutely wrong….but then that would require folks to read this…..sigh.

    Cheers

    Commercial Crew Launch funding issues cause concerns

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    Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | NASA decision increases risk in commercial crew program.

    Congress short funded the commercial ISS crew/cargo program (by 1/2!!!!) the only good result being the continued use of cooperative agreement funding tools rather than the (potentially) more controlling fixed price contracts. Some concerns about delays and risks are very appropriate but it’s possible this not all bad. One of the comments pointed out that the senatorial launch system got funded as well and suggests a great solution, take some of the SLS money for CCL and then offer the big launcher requirement up to the eSpace competitors for solution on a commercial basis.