Cristalen's Blog

GOP Selection Process

2012-02-01T08:23:00.001-08:00

I like the debates that are going on within the GOP in the effort to find a candidate that can replace President Obama. I don't mind washing dirty linen, but I dislike the lying that is going on in the media and in the various candidates' advertising campaigns. I understand that at least some of the falsehoods are being put out by the so called Super Pacs, but I do not see the candidates disavowing them strongly enough. I also understand that this is the real world and these things have been going on for as long as this country has existed.

I am not naive enough to believe that there are any blemish-free candidates running for office. I understand the alleged dirty linen of these four men pretty well by now. My preference remains Newt Gingrich. but I can easily vote for either Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney to replace Obama. I remain concerned about what happens after the election. I believe that it is essential that we find a way to come together as a people to face the problems that confront us. I do not believe that just voting one way or the other will be adequate this time around. One of the main reasons why I am attracted to Gingrich is that I believe he has thought about those challenges more than any of the others.

State of the Union Speech

2012-01-25T13:08:00.000-08:00

I watched the State of the Union speech last night in the hope that there might be some hint that the president would be willing to change course and start getting our spending under control. I understand that he can not be very overt about doing that kind of thing because his liberal base would vehemently oppose it, so I was just looking for hints. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything that was in the least encouraging.

The most depressing part of the speech was what he chose to leave out. I didn't hear him say anything substantive about the real problems that imperil our future - particularly our massive debt. He only repeated his mantra about the rich not paying their fair share, as though there are enough dollars there to solve our debt crisis. I heard him embrace the thought that Washington is broken and make a plea for working together, but I don't see any concrete evidence that he is doing his part. It would seem to me that he could nudge Harry Reed to get the Senate to at least take up the budget that is required by law. It is obviously not the Republicans that are blocking a debate on the budget. The House long ago passed one, but, as we all know, it continues to languish in the Democratically controlled senate. My suspicion is that the President does not want the budget debate because it would highlight our out-of-control spending binge as well as talk to the problems of the rapid acceleration in the growth of government bureaucracy. I heard the President championing energy independence, but I didn't hear an explanation as to why he has decided to send Canadian oil to China rather than bring it down to Huston to be refined here. I did not hear anything substantive about what he recommends that we do about medicare and social security. Etc, etc, etc. I heard him make some minor promises, but given that he has repeatedly broken his word in the past, I find that I no longer trust him even in the little things.

I not only found the speech boring (all State of the Union speeches tend to be boring), I found it to be depressing. I agree that Washington is broken, but I suggest that our President is one of the chief reasons why that is so.

Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

2012-01-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

The primary process continues to grind along and we continue the winnowing process in an effort to come up with a Republican candidate to take on President Obama in November. This is the point in the process where the various candidates and their more ardent supporters begin to sharpen their criticism of one another. All of them agree that the country is headed in the wrong direction and that the policies of President Obama are the major reason. They struggle to differentiate themselves one from another.

The only candidate that has a radically different set of proposals as to what to do to get this country back on track is Ron Paul and his appeal is limited to a relatively small group of very ardent supporters. The rest of the field are hard pressed to differentiate their positions sufficiently to attract major support from the public at large and their polling numbers show it. Like their predecessors in races before them, they now turn to attacking each other in an effort to prove that the other candidate is not as worthy as they.

Mitt Romney is accused of changing his mind about important subjects and he has a political record that proves that he is very flexible in his political stance on these subjects. People calling themselves "true conservatives" find this to be a serious flaw, particularly since it encompasses both fiscal and social issues. Newt Gingrich is "known to have baggage" and that is worrisome to many even though what is actually in the baggage is rather poorly understood by most folks. The baggage attack generates criticism of the man and his policies and creates doubt as to his electability. Rick Santorum looks like a purist who champions traditional values to such an extent that many worry that he is out of touch with the public at large and thus unelectable.

If I had my druthers, I would take a chance on Newt Gingrich, but I should quickly add that I can easily and wholeheartedly support either of the other two major contenders. The only one that would give me pause is Ron Paul. In many ways he is the most interesting of the bunch. There is no question, but that he touches some deeply felt concerns within the public at large. Domestically, his criticism of our monetary and tax systems resonates with those that are concerned about our economic system in general. Internationally, he plays to those who wish that the world was not as complicated as it is. Although I find much of his message to be naiveté, my basic criticism is that I do not believe that the man is up to actually doing the job of president of the United States.

Although it is not a popular position to take, I continue to believe that what we need in the White House is someone who understands the practical day-to-day job of politics. Someone who can rally the American people behind a set of decisions that will return financial stability to our country. Someone who respects private enterprise and understands how to get things accomplished in government. As I compare them with our current president, any of the three major GOP contenders would do a better job, but my guess is that, of the three, Gingrich would be the best prospect for that honor and I would love to watch a Gingrich/Obama debate.

Iowa Does Matter

2012-01-04T07:18:00.000-08:00

I followed the Iowa caucus results on television last night and listened to the candidate speeches that followed the announcement of the results. There has been a lot of talk about the significance of Iowa in the primary process. I see it as being of importance for several reasons including the fact that it is the first place that at least some folks actually vote. It may be a small sampling of America, but it is infinitely better than all of the polls that have preceded it. Based on history, Iowa does not necessarily pick the winner of the GOP primary process, but it does winnow the field of viable contenders. Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry are now out of the running because of Iowa.

I continue to dismiss Ron Paul as a viable Republican candidate and suspect that John Huntsman is on his last legs. It looks to me that there are three viable candidates left - Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich. Last night, I was most impressed by Santorum and Gingrich, but could not quibble with Romney. I continue to favor Gingrich, but can happily vote for any of these three come November 2012. I see Paul as a possible danger should he decide to mount a third party campaign. If he does that, I suspect that it will probably ensure Obama's reelection. Obviously, I hope that he will decide against that course of action.

The American political process is rough and this election cycle is beginning to heat up. I dislike negativity just as much as the next fellow, but believe that the airing or dirty linen is a necessary part of the process. Gingrich is the most recent recipient of a spate of attack ads that appear to have knocked him out of a better showing in Iowa. It will be interesting to see how he answers these attacks in the New Hampshire campaign. At this point in the process, these candidates are increasingly talking to two audiences. First, they have to convince the Republican Party that they are true conservatives. Second, they have to convince the general electorate that they are capable of governing from the middle. At least some of the current criticism of these candidates revolves around this conundrum.

As I have said before, I am a staunch fiscal conservative, but I want a president that can not only address the dangerous financial problems that face this nation, but one that can also bring this country back together. It appears to me that these three men are capable of doing this. I might prefer Gingrich, but I believe that any one of them will do a better job of it than President Obama.

Huckabee and the GOP hopefuls.

2011-12-05T06:34:00.001-08:00

I saw about half of the Huckabee television show last night and wish that I had seen it all. It was by far the most intelligent forum that I have seen this electoral season. The three attorneys general asked excellent questions and the various candidates had enough time to actually answer them. I did not notice any gotcha being played anywhere along the line. The reason that I did not see the whole program was that I do not regularly watch Huckabee. I like the man, agree with many of his political positions but am not a fan of his show. Here, however, I take my hat off to him. I join him in suggesting this format for more of these forum type candidate "debates."

I am one of those conservatives who can support Mitt Romney if he is to be our candidate, but I confess to be drawn more and more toward Newt Gingrich as my personal favorite of all of the candidates still standing. I honestly do not understand the "electability" argument for any of the candidates and I do not see how any of the political pundits can argue that one or the other of these candidates is more electable in the general election. I do not believe that anyone has a crystal ball that is that clear and suspect that most of those claims are being made by supporters of one or the other candidates. From a purely intellectual point of view, I would genuinely like to watch a head to head debate between Gingrich and Obama. I think that it would frame this election correctly for the average voter and lead to an accurate presidential decision by the general public.

I see Gingrich's past involvement in government as a positive and feel that those who want to put an amateur in the Oval Office are naive. (See previous post.) Romney certainly has enough government experience to handle the job, but I like Gingrich's imaginative approach to problem solving. I believe that both men can probably address most of the front burner issues facing this country, but I suspect that a President Gingrich just might actually be able to find solutions that pull us back together as a people. I like the way in which then Speaker Gingrich and President Bill Clinton worked together on subjects like Welfare Reform.

A good planet is hard to find.

2011-11-30T07:41:00.001-08:00

Environmentalism is alive and well in America and that is a good thing. Anybody who thinks that it is not is short sighted and ignorant. There are seven billion people living on this planet right now and the projections for significantly more are right around the corner. Like the bumper sticker says "a good planet is hard to find." If we do not protect our planet we degrade our future. A short sighted approach to protecting our environment is not in our national interest - even if it is to resolve very real economic problems that currently face us and will face us in the future. We must find ways to improve our economic situation without further degrading our environment.

At the same time we have to face facts. The only way that our environment will be protected is if we are rich enough to afford it. Poor people are understandably so concerned with their day-to-day existence that they are willing to do almost anything to scrape together enough money to buy food for the table. Look at any underdeveloped country and you can see examples of serious environmental degradation. I live in California, which is leading the nation in generating stupid policies in virtually every field, many of them allegedly designed to protect the environment. The state adopted policies that encouraged business to leave California. As a result it is currently flat broke. One of the very first economy measures undertaken has been to close many of the state's parks. Not really very important in and of itself, but symptomatic of what is to come if we stay on this road long enough.

The reality of our political system is not conducive of an easy resolution of this conundrum. We have a tendency to flip flop back and forth about everything that we do in this country. If we decide that there has been too much of something, we vote the other guys into office and go the other way far enough to generate another backlash. Today, we are complaining about too much government regulation and demanding that it be reduced so that we can get our economy back on track. I agree with that position, but have serious concerns about how far we might go in the other direction. Energy is one of my biggest concerns and I find the enthusiasm of those crying "drill baby drill" to be somewhat frightening. Water use is another serious issue and the competition for that resource is an extremely difficult balancing act. The very air that we breath is another. There is a long list of others.

Obviously, we have to deal with our economic problems, but we must find ways to do it that simultaneously protect our environment. I agree with those that say that the world appears to be getting warmer and I can conceive of the possibility that human activity is helping to bring this about. On the other hand, scholars tell me that the earth went through a number of very dramatic climate cycles before Adam and Eve discovered apples. It occurs to me that whatever might be happening to our climate is bigger than we are and there may be nothing that we can do to change it. I wholeheartedly support scientific research in this area, but I do not believe that we can base policy decisions on what we know about the issue right now, because we don't appear to know much.

One of our options is to continue with our current policies and see our economy go further into the tank, in part because we put up too many regulatory road blocks to business. Here in California we still have a few more parks that we can close. After that we can cut back on other government programs to include entitlements. With a sputtering economy the cutbacks will, of course, continue until we eventually go out into the streets and burn tires in a last ditch effort to protect the environment while all the while demanding that someone find money from someplace to feed us. It is simple. All we have to do is re-elect Barack Obama.

When was the last time that you ever learned anything new?

2011-11-29T08:44:00.001-08:00

There are some folks who are looking at the way in which our world is evolving that say that the explosion of technology is one of the reasons that we are having problems with unemployment. Computers are replacing people at a faster rate than people can invent new ways to use computers to generate the industries of the future that will employ more people. According to this line of thought, the basic problem is that raw computer power is expanding at a phenomenal rate and we are just not readjusting our societal systems fast enough to keep pace. A century or so ago, when the industrial revolution forced us to move from an agricultural society to an urban society, technological change took place at a much slower rate, and the new technologies were much easier to master. The technology at the heart of the so-called information age is developing at a blistering pace and it poses a much stiffer learning curve.

Assuming, as I do, that this analysis is correct, it would seem to me that we should start focusing on the challenge right now. We not only have to educate our children to be prepared to prosper in the economy of tomorrow, we also have to transform yesterday's work force to be prepared to play a useful role in today's economy. This second challenge may well prove more difficult than the first. The education of a child poses different challenges than the re-education of an adult. The child's mind is something of an open book, while the adult often feels that he or she already has an education. An adult is often set in his or her ways and resents having to change, particularly if it includes a demotion at work or less prestige in society. We can see this technological dichotomy very clearly in the home where the children help their parents with their email.

In the long run, the education of our children is more important than the re-education of their parents, but in the short run, we have to address the problem of their parents joblessness because it is where the political crunch is being felt today. I am a staunch conservative in my fiscal views and I want to elect conservatives in 2012, but I have not yet seen much real conversation about what we should do about this challenge. Newt Gingrich is the only one that I have heard mention replacing unemployment payments with job retraining. I wholeheartedly support that thought, but I want to see the idea fleshed out a bit more. I utterly reject President Obama's approach to the problem which involves taking care of the unemployed by providing them with government subsidies. Not only can we not afford that approach, it is precisely the reverse of what we need. It encourages the unemployed to find fault with the system rather than helping and motivating them to work hard to find a job that will contribute to pulling us out of the mess that we are in right now.

I am an optimist and I have faith in my country, but I worry about our current mood. It would seem to me that too many of us have lost faith in what has made us the greatest nation in the history of the world. We are depressed because people who are hungrier than we are manage to take jobs away from us and we are angry because some of our businesses are aiding and abetting the process. We hanker for yesterday's world, have trouble seeing today's world clearly, and refuse to see tomorrow's world. If we continue to go down that path it will take us to places that we need not go. Why not embrace the change that is upon us and find a safe path forward that includes learning the new ABCs. Ask yourself when was the last time you learned anything really new? We can all see at least some of the problems that face us. If you are one of the "permanently unemployed," pick a problem, learn about it, and then do something to fix it. With that kind of an attitude and preparation I'll bet you won't be unemployed much longer

We're the really stupid ones.

2011-11-28T07:40:00.001-08:00

We all talk about a center-right country, but recent polls make it appear that this country is close to fifty percent conservative and fifty percent liberal in our political views. Liberals tell us that the top one per cent of this country is not paying it's fair share. Conservatives tell us that the real problem is that we are spending too much of our national wealth. I tend to side with the conservatives in this debate, but I argue that we must achieve some sort of consensus as we go forward, else we will flip flop back and forth between the two positions like a fish out of water. (Fish out of water do not last very long.)

I did not like the Super Committee approach to solving the economic problem facing this country, but it appears to me that it was an accurate reflection of the public at large. We get up on our high horses and spout dogmatic rhetoric at each other rather than making an honest effort to find common ground. The public suspects that our government is becoming obese, fraudulent, and ineffective and the wrangling in Washington seems to validate our suspicions. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a good situation. We are moving toward European style economic collapse faster than we want to admit.

Conservatives fervently believe that taxation is a burden that stunts economic growth and we grudgingly resort to it only when absolutely necessary. We see big government as a drag on the free market that reduces wealth and restricts our freedom. Liberals see taxes as a way of ensuring that everyone lives a good life and believe that government has to be strong enough to ensure that society is fair and equitable. We all know what the deal will be - cut government spending and increase taxes. We can all see it, but we are haggling over the details for political advantage in the run up to November 2012.

In this battle, the combatants are afraid to truly compromise because their political base will accuse them of caving, selling out, blinking, or some other unthinkable political travesty. Our politicians are in reality too weak to do what is necessary and they mask it with bluff rhetoric that feeds their base the red meat that they require to remain convinced of their own wisdom and ideological purity. I am critical of the politicians at all levels of our political pyramid, but I am even more critical of us. We are the ones that elect these people and we are the ultimate source of the stupidity that is endangering our nation.

So what do we do about it? I suggest that we need to start at the bottom of the pyramid of political power. A useful first step would be to have a heart to heart talk with a neighbor that holds opposite political views. Learn about why he or she thinks the way that they do and make an honest effort to see the world through their eyes. We preach to our children that they should learn about foreign cultures. Why not practice what we preach? If you are honest about it, you might even learn something that would help reduce the growing gulf between the two political cultures in this country. (A word to the wise. Keep the initial conversation one on one. If groups are involved the dynamics of the group destroy the honest exchange of ideas and you will end up shouting at each other.) If you are not willing to do this, don't complain that the politicians are not able to get together to solve the problems that are endangering us all.

Compassion and Immigration.

2011-11-26T09:07:00.001-08:00

Illegal immigration is front and center again. Rick Perry spoke to it a few weeks ago and, just the other day, Newt Gingrich made some remarks about it. Both of these men assure us that they are opposed to illegal immigration, but argue that we must have some compassion in dealing with the subject. Both men have been vociferously attacked for their comments. I am not certain that I fully understand either man's position on the subject yet, but I think that I am closer to Gingrich than to Perry. As I understand it, Governor Perry actually favored providing instate tuition to illegal immigrants living in Texas. If that is his position, I completely disagree with it. I see no reason to give an illegal immigrant any such benefit and I see lots of reasons not to do so. On the other hand, Speaker Gingrich is suggesting that we thoroughly vet every illegal immigrant and give some of them who have managed to integrate themselves into the fabric of their local community something that he calls a "certification of legality" that would permit them to stay in this country but not give them the rights of citizenship. Gingrich is famous for saying simple things in convoluted language. I am assuming that this is another instance of his being articulately tongue-tied and what he really means is that he wants to give them an old-fashioned work permit. I completely agree with that proposal and believe that it is one of the keys to resolving the problem.

I have posted my opinions about immigration several times before (see August 1, 2010 for a sample). As the current illegals are proving every day of the week, America needs immigrants to do the work that legal citizens disdain. We've got nine percent unemployment, but our unemployed do not want to wash dishes, or clean somebody else's house, or pick lettuce, or collect garbage, or…. The list is a long one and proves that we need a large inflow of menial labor in this country. That should be enough motivation to get this situation under control, but it is not the most important reason that we need to get our immigration policies straightened out. America has long been a magnet for the world's best ideas and most dynamic innovators. An intelligent immigration policy will help to ensure that these ideas and people continue to gravitate to America rather than to one of our increasingly able competitors in the global economy. So, for what it is worth, I advocate hermetically sealing our borders to illegal entry and liberalizing the policy that we implement at border crossing points to include work permits for the manual labor that we obviously need to make this country function. At the same time we have to set intelligent quotas and regulations that makes it possible for the best and brightest to continue to come to this country.

If we were to be very honest with ourselves we would admit that the subject of immigration has overtones of racial and ethnic prejudice. To say that holding these prejudices in the twenty first century is morally wrong is true, but it is only half the story. It is also infinitely stupid. People that some of us feel are racially or ethnically inferior to native born citizens are taking our jobs away from us at home and abroad and they are doing it because they can do those jobs as well as legal citizens can and they are willing to do them for considerably less remuneration. If we were to face facts, we would have to admit that illegal immigrants generally work as hard or harder than legal citizens and most of them have admirable family values similar to what our educational system claims is one of our national strengths. If they broke the law to get here, I don't want to just give them amnesty, but I certainly do not mind letting them stay as guest workers with limited legal rights. At the same time, it is clear that there are a very significant number of very bad people who have come into this country illegally. Obviously, we need to ferret those people out and either put them in jail or kick them out of the country.

President Obama's policies with regard to illegal immigration are divisive and do not adequately address any of the real issues. He has not sealed the border and he has supported those that demand amnesty. It is another of the reasons that I want to remove him from the office that he currently holds and send him back to academia where he might very well contribute to the national conversation in positive ways. In 2012, we need to elect a president that can straighten this mess out and I give Newt Gingrich credit for being willing to tackle this in what currently appears to be an intelligent manner.

The value of political compromise.

2011-11-25T09:18:00.001-08:00

I recently heard Condoleezza Rice explain away what I consider to be slimy political tactics by saying that America has a rough and tumble political system and it is critically important that we thoroughly vet the candidates. I suppose that her view is the correct one given that the position of President of the United States is clearly the most difficult job in the world. It does not, however, mean that I have to like the kind of thing that happened to Herman Cain. Until the charges of misconduct are proven, I would argue that he should not be dismissed as a candidate. To do so is to permit character assassination to continue in this country unchallenged. As I have said before in this blog, I do not support Mr Cain because I believe that he lacks the experience necessary to do the job, but I assure you that it does not have anything to do with the unproven charges of inappropriate behavior. Before any more liberals get up on their high horses and complain about unproven allegations against Herman Cain, I want them to run their excuses for Presidents Kennedy and Clinton by me one more time. (They can leave Teddy Kennedy and Chappaquiddick out of the discussion, because I will not change my mind about that one.)

At the present time, we have two front runners in the polls and the mystery of Iowa still ahead of us. Like the rest of America, including those living in Iowa, I have absolutely no idea what the political landscape will look like in another month or two, let alone after New Hampshire, but I am basically content with the way things appear to be going and can easily support either Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich as the Republican candidate. They are two very different individuals and their leadership style would be very different, but they hold out the promise of one critical qualification - the desire to unite the country around center-right principals. I have heard Romney address the issues that apparently make it difficult for many conservatives to support him and I can accept his answers. As for Newt's "political and personal baggage" I am willing to let bygones be bygones. I don't know what really happened in his private life and I am not overly concerned because he had some ideas that turned out be less useful than he had originally thought.

I know of very few people who have lived a perfect life and have never had to change their minds about anything. I am looking for a president that can first and foremost pull this country together and govern from the center. I am very supportive of the Tea Party sentiments as far as encouraging a smaller footprint for government and I definitely want to get our massive debt under control before it sinks the ship of state, but I continue to believe that we need to bring all of America together in support of these values. We can not do that by electing another person to the presidency that is doctrinaire about ideology. We did that last time around and look what it got us. While I am on this subject, I should mention Congressman Ron Paul. In many ways, he is the most doctrinaire candidate still in the political mix and that includes Barack Obama. Paul has a lot of support in Iowa and might do well in the upcoming Caucus vote. I love to hear the congressman debate the other candidates and viscerally relate to many of his positions, but I do not support him for president. The world is an infinitely complex place and a doctrinaire approach to all of it's many faceted problems just will not work. Difficult as it is to accept, we need to learn to value political compromise.

How to get The Job.

2011-11-24T08:08:00.001-08:00

How does a young person get a job these days? With literally millions of people looking for work, it is obviously not as easy as it might be in times when there is full employment. That is a given, but what does one do about it? If it were me, I would first decide which job I wanted and was suited for (see yesterday's post). After I had completed that essential step, I would outline a campaign to get that job and it would not be limited to filling out a job application and going home to wait for the phone to ring. I would go through the correct procedures to include completing the job application as carefully as possible and thinking hard about the interview process, if there is one. What is it that this organization is looking for in an employee and why do I fill that bill of particulars? I would make sure that the organization learned that I would not be just marking time, but that I intended to make this job the first step in a career. I would let them see a bit of the passion that I had for the objectives of the organization and let them know that I was doing what I could to prepare myself for a lifetime of endeavor in that particular field. Above all, I would not play for pity by resting my case on the fact that I needed the work (even if that were to be true). Remember that very few organizations that are worth anything are actively trying to hire lethargic losers. Most want to fill their ranks with intelligent, ambitious people who will work hard.

OK, let's get real here. In today's world it is possible to do all of the above and still not get the job. There is a lot of competition and even though you might be the best person for the position that you are seeking it might be that the people who are making the hiring decisions will not see your true value to their organization and will reject your application. If it were me, I would immediately reapply and I would find a way to get face to face with the person or persons that make the hiring decisions. I would be as polite as possible and absolutely avoid any sign of hostility or desperation. I would not waste their time. My objective would be to quickly and succinctly project determination and sincerity. Think about it. We all know of examples of people who are eminently qualified for a particular position on paper, but who lack what it takes to be successful. There are, of course, a lot of things that go into making someone successful, but one of those qualities is usually the ability to persist in the face of adversity.

Let's assume that there is a time lag involved in this process. You have developed your campaign, but for one reason or another you can not get the job that you want right away. What do you do about it? If it were me, I would not go on any form of welfare. I would go out and get a different job or jobs to make ends meet until my campaign succeeded and I would make absolutely certain that my target audience knew what I was doing. If at all possible, I would find work that was related to what I wanted to do in my career, but the essential thing here is to project an attitude of self-reliance to the people who are considering hiring you. I would also continue my education in the career field of my choice even if it is just reading books out of the library. Every scrap of relevant information you can accumulate will help in that next interview and working anywhere is more educational than sitting home sucking your thumb and watching television.

If you go this route, I can not guarantee success, but I do guarantee that you will have a better shot at it than if you just roll over and accept the conventional wisdom that 9 per cent joblessness means that you can not have a job. In fact, if you do that, I can guarantee that you will be a failure. This world needs creative successful people. Why not be one? If you do not believe in yourself, why should anyone else? Go get the job that you want, help us dig this economy out of the hole that it is in and assist the 9 per cent find work.

PS: This posting along with yesterday's post are fairly presumptuous. I understand that I am not all-knowing, but for what it is worth, this heartfelt advice is based on my own experience in life and is meant to be helpful to folks just starting out in this bewildering world. I remember what it was like a little more than sixty years ago when I left the family cocoon and was initiated into the real world.

Gratuitous advice to the youth of America.

2011-11-23T09:53:00.001-08:00

There are folks out there that actually believe that there is less opportunity now than there was in their parents' day. They are wrong. No matter where one looks one can find opportunity. Look at the medical field. It is exploding with new knowledge about the way our bodies work, why we get ill, and how we can stay well. New medicines are being developed to deal with all manner of health challenges. People are living longer and their health requirements are changing dramatically. If I were a young person I would seriously consider a career in some aspect of the health industry. If I had a love for science, I would go into research and work with human cell technology. If I wanted to be of help to others, I might become a nurse. If I didn't like needles and blood, I would go into administration and find a practical way to digitize those mountains of paper files that crowd doctor's offices.

Or how about energy? Why not help tame coal and make it more friendly to our environment? The guy or gal that does that should get a mantle full of Nobel Peace Prizes. Be the person that figures out how to successfully store large amounts of energy and you will crack the brick wall that keeps solar from being practical. Figure out how to more economically transfer power from one point to another and you will not only reduce the price of copper, but make it possible to bring electricity to all of the corners of the earth. Successfully harness one of the really clean energies to an automobile that can drive a few hundred miles on a charge and you instantly become a millionaire (if that is what turns you on). There is a world of opportunity embedded in all of the many problems that face society. Think big, find a sector of our economy that interests you and work out a game plan for your career. Don't rely on someone else to discover your worth, they are going to be too busy working on their own game plan. You must do it yourself and you must be realistic.

The first thing that you must do is accurately assess your strengths and weaknesses. This includes what you like and don't like, but it also includes things like how well you take to technology, whether you prefer to work with your hands, how good you are at relating to other people, how much money you have, where you live, who you know, what kind of education you have, and a whole raft of other specifics. For many, this is going to be the hard part. Screw this up and you waste a lifetime. You must be brutally honest with yourself and you must do this as early in your life as possible. Once you have that done, you are in a position to realistically select a career path. Too many young folks do not do this and wake up after four or more years of college to find that they don't much like where they are in life and they then complain that they do not have any opportunity. I suspect that some of these folks are huddled in tents in one or the other Occupy Wall Street protests currently in progress around the country.

OK, let's assume that you have made the personal assessment honestly and accurately and you know who you are and where you want to go with your career. At that point in your life you are in command of your life, but you probably don't really believe it yet. It is important to understand that you have a monumental advantage over all of the people around you who do not know what they want to do with their lives. Those folks are going to be waiting for someone else to give them a job while you are going to go out and get a job. (The verbs in that sentence are critical.) The next step in the process is to decide which specific position in which specific organization in the career line that you have chosen that you are actually prepared to handle effectively. Here again you must be brutally honest and neither cocky nor timid. This is another tough spot for a young person with limited life experience, but you must do the very best that you can if this is going to work. Aim too high, get lucky, get the job, and flame out. Aim too low and waste your time. Neither is very good, but if it were me, I would err on the modest side - it's safer and I've got time on my side.

Once you are in the organization of your choice, it is time to learn as much as you can about what makes it tick. In addition to the substantive side of the work, which is obviously critical to your ultimate success, you must also understand where decision making power resides if you are to have a successful career. For me, this breaks down into strategic thinking and tactical maneuvering. The strategic side of things is the substance of what your organization is trying to accomplish. The tactical side of things is the bureaucratic struggle to advance yourself in the organization. If you ignore either part of this equation, you seriously degrade your chances for a successful career. I assure you that it will do you no good to merely demand that everyone treat you fairly and leave it to your supervisor or your union representative to ensure that you are not unfairly disadvantaged. The fascinating thing about this point is that it is valid in every single organizational model that I have ever seen from tribal societies through socialist, communist, and those that allegedly are democratic.

Once you know how your organization works you are prepared to address substance more effectively. Decide what you want to be doing in five years, ten years, and ultimately - then map out the specific positions that you need to occupy to be successful in what you want to accomplish. Obviously, you also have to educate yourself to be able to handle those positions as you obtain them. Identify the people who will be making the key decisions along the way. Ensure that you get to know them and make certain that they know how you can be useful to them as you both strive to accomplish specific goals. It very well might be that you need to consider other organizations in your game plan, Don't hesitate to learn about competing organizations that might be useful to you during your career. Obviously you are also going to have to make a real contribution to the substantive goals of the organization as you go forward, but I am taking that for granted and am focused here on the tactical side of the equation. If all of this sounds a bit opportunistic, please understand that I believe that we should not only take advantage of opportunity I also see no harm in creating opportunity. The world is not necessarily a nice place - get used to it and deal with it. Having said that, I have found that if you do bad things to other people it will always come back to bite you in the posterior. Call it justice or karma, I care not, but know that it is very real. Compete hard, but treat others as you would be treated. In addition to furthering your career, it also helps ensure that you get a good night's sleep.

Not to try is to guarantee failure.

2011-11-22T09:06:00.001-08:00

I have no problem with folks that make more money than I do. The more important issue for me is whether or not I can find a way to make enough money for myself and my family. If I can accomplish that objective, I am not even really jealous of those that are astronomically wealthy. In fact, I suspect that I probably have a better life than those that measure their value by the number of zeros in their bank balance. I suggest that the problem that faces America today is that there are too many folks out of work - not that there are too many rich people. The dichotomy is troubling, but the way to redress the problem is to create jobs for those that do not have work. The way to screw our future up is to continue to take money from the wealthy and use it to perpetuate joblessness.

The folks that were at the heart of the original Occupy Wall Street demonstrations are not bad people. They appear to have been joined by a variety of less attractive activists along with a liberal sprinkling of loons, but the original core of frustrated young people should not be lightly dismissed by conservatives just because they are inarticulate and poorly organized. They are representative of an important part of our future. They need to be engaged in an honest discussion that deals with their perceived problems. To leave them foundering is to waste the potential that they represent. To avoid addressing their real concerns substantively is to "kick the can down the road." This overused phrase is an excellent description of problem solving in modern America. Not convincing young folks of the values inherent in our economic system is to ensure that this country will continue to move left as they grow into the political majority.

One of the problems that causes so much of the discontent with the so-called one per cent is that too many people are frustrated because they can not figure out how to become part of that elite club. In today's economy, salaries are squeezed and advancement is made difficult by a faltering economy. Layoffs are the order of the day. The traditional conservative theme of hard work leading to a better life is a hard sell to a young college graduate who can not find work outside of a fast food emporium. Our call of "take a bath and get a job" might well be the best advice out there, but we should not be surprised when many young folks think that we have been taking too many geriatric medications. Youth is, by definition, cocky, no-it-all, impatient, inexperienced, and often wrong, but it is also our future. If we are so certain that we have all of the answers we should not be afraid to engage these folks in honest conversation. Maybe even give them some honest recognition rather than just belittling them because they do not currently have a job and are very obviously distraught.

Now, having said all of that, I still believe that these folks ought to fold their tents, take a bath, and get a job. Believe it or not, there is opportunity out there for imaginative, hardworking, intelligent people of any age who can help businesses and organizations deal with the tough times that are upon us. Solve real problems and you will be recognized as someone of value. God knows there are enough problems out there in this country to go around. If you folks are so all fired smart, share your intelligence with the rest of us and help get this country going again - before really hungry people in other parts of the world take too much of the pie away from all of us. My suspicion is that the one thing that might be holding you back is fear. I assure you that it is a common to all of us - old and young alike. What if I try to do something and fail? So what? Try again, and keep trying until you succeed. The only way to remain a failure is to not try.

You may say that this advice is old fashioned and out of date. I would call it fundamental truth and I would point to a legion of Americans that have proven it's validity.

The Future is Full of Opportunity

2011-11-20T09:15:00.001-08:00

In today's America, the public is increasingly invested in business and that has significant benefits, but it also has some challenging side effects. Understandably, the public wants the best return on it's investment that it can obtain. Capital literally moves all around the world in search of maximum returns. At the same time, in it's role as consumer, the public demands the lowest price possible for the goods and services that it purchases. As a result, the public is simultaneously exerting forces on the market place that are at odds with one another. Profit and low prices at the same time. There are a lot of different things that come into play including production efficiencies, transportation advantages, government involvement, etc, etc, etc, but, at the end of the day, labor is the one component of price that usually takes the biggest hit. In today's global marketplace, that gives economic advantage to poorer countries and those that can organize themselves sufficiently to take advantage of it are doing better than they have ever done before.

As American companies, including those that are owned by the public, seek to be competitive, they have sought to take advantage of the lower cost of labor in foreign places to meet the demand for profit generated at home. The result is that American jobs have flowed offshore and American capital has followed. It is a fact of life in today's global economy and it is obviously a very complicated fact of life. Here at home, while we bemoan the loss of good paying jobs and are forced to take lower paying positions or government handouts, we have considerable political turmoil and confusion. Some advocate "getting tough" with our trading partners and demanding a "more equitable" trading relationship. There is no question about this. We need to do everything that we can to ensure that our trading partners are playing by the rules of free trade, but that, by itself, is not going to satisfactorily deal with the challenge adequately. We must find ways to leverage our current technological superiority (while we still have it) to find ways to produce high value products efficiently and better than the competition.

We have moved past the industrial revolution and we must adapt to that fact of life. We can still benefit from a few old fashioned blue collar manufacturing jobs, but the bulk of our huge labor force is going to have to transition to highly skilled positions producing high value products that are difficult to produce elsewhere. Today, we wear clothing manufactured in Latin America, drive automobiles with parts produced in Canada, Japan and Mexico, eat grapes grown in Chile, and play Angry Bird on tablets and phones produced in China. The good news is that with economic advances being made around the world, the market for those high value items will be there and the money necessary to purchase them will be too. The problem that faces America today is not unlike that which faced our great grandparents when they left the farm and took jobs in the factory. Once again we have to demonstrate the capability to adapt to changed circumstances. Adapt and we will succeed. Fail to change our ways and we will go into decline.

So what are these high value products of the future? I am not smart enough to know what they are specifically, but I know where to look. Many of them are where the problems are. With seven billion people on earth we are going to severely test our global supply of fresh water and we are going to need more and better agricultural production. As economies all over the globe progress, they will need more energy. The health of the global population is an obvious challenge right now and it is going to get even more challenging in the decades ahead. In short, look at the big problems that we face on this tiny spinning green sphere and you find the economic opportunities that beg to be addressed. America has the basics necessary to make this transition, but we sorely need the leadership that will get us pulling together to do what is necessary to meet the challenge. This is one of those places where I credit our president with understanding the problem, but I fault him for not finding workable solutions and providing the leadership necessary to make the transition. Mr. Obama needs to be reassigned to a job where he can help with new ideas, but not hinder with bad policies and divisive rhetoric.

Class Warfare or a Real Problem?

2011-11-19T09:17:00.001-08:00

Much as I hate to say it, it is beginning to look as though what conservative pundits are calling President Obama's class warfare campaign is working - at least among his liberal base. I live in California and many of my friends and neighbors are very liberal. Last night, my wife and I went out to dinner to celebrate a personal milestone. One of the waitstaff volunteered that he was going to vote for Mr. Obama. I indicated that I was going to vote Republican this time around. He then told me that he would not vote for Newt Gingrich "if you held a gun to my head." I asked why, and he explained that Newt had worked for Fannie and Freddie and had been paid $1.6 million. He voiced no substantive complaint regarding Gingrich's conservative positions on issues. It was enough for him to know that the former speaker had received a massive amount of money. I am fairly certain that the gentleman that I was talking with favors the liberal values inherent in Fannie and Freddie and I am also certain that he does not know what advice Gingrich gave those two institutions. It appears that it was enough that Gingrich made a very large amount of money to disqualify him for the position of president. The idea that Gingrich might have been trying to work with Fannie and Freddie to help develop a sound housing policy was absent from consideration.

As a conservative, it is easy to complain about Obama's class warfare campaign, but I strongly doubt that his various comments about spreading the wealth around is what gave birth to the various Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. I think that the genesis of the occupy protest is more fundamental than that, but I do fault the president for playing to the divisions within our society rather than trying to find ways to heal those divisions. It is clear that he sees this as a useful campaign tactic to move the current political conversation away from his failed policies into an area where there is some degree of discontent with what many within this country perceive to be an imbalance of wealth. When the conversation turns to this subject, most conservatives bristle and fight back with slogans as limited in persuasive value as those that are shouted back at us. Work hard and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Etc. I agree with those sentiments, but it is pretty clear to me that there is a rather large group of folks in this country that do not. I part company with Republican political operators who say that the most important thing is to ensure that all conservative voters go to the polls. "There are more of us than there are of them." I would argue that while it is important to win elections it is even more important to achieve some degree of consensus about what our national goals are to be going forward. If all conservatives do is win the election we ensure that we will lose it next time around.

Although I am not angered by it, I do find the huge amounts of money that are being paid to a relatively few flesh and blood people to be fascinating. When I seek a craftsman to perform one or another home maintenance chore, I carefully consider the hourly cost and judge him or her by the quality of their work and the speed by which they perform it. A local plumber might receive $50 to $100 per hour. A carpenter the same. Yard work goes for $20 to $25 per hour these days (if you do not hire an illegal immigrant). Then, I read about someone who has made several hundred thousand dollars by sitting in an office somewhere and I ask myself what he or she did that was worth that amount of money. When I learn that person was given multiple millions of dollars in bonuses, I am further mystified. I know the conventional answer - these people are paid for their knowledge, their business acumen, their leadership, their ability to see into the future, etc. That is all well and good, but the size of these payments is beginning to stretch the credibility of these answers (and I am even less able to explain bonuses for the executives of failed businesses). After I accept that this is just the way things are done these days, I ask myself how in the world these folks can spend these amounts of money and why they feel that they need more.

I am conservative, but even I think that, if you look at the relative remuneration of executive and labor, things are getting out of balance. It used to be that the "common man" resented the "Robber Baron." Carnegie, Rockefeller and that crowd took an "unfair" amount of "the pie." Labor Unions came to the "rescue" of the "working man" and fought the good fight to restore the balance. Today, most of the evil companies are not owned by individuals. They are publicly owned. Today, the evil-doers are perceived to be the executives not the company owners (because we are the owners). Like the Robber Barons before them, all these executives want is profit and they don't care about the "little people." Let's pause a moment and ask why these executives are so focused on profits. The most important single reason is that the stockholders (us) demand it. If a company does not generate enough profit, we move our money to one that does. The board of directors then fires the guy that failed to generate the necessary profits and pays a huge amount of money to the guy who promises to fix the problem. Voila! Instant stupidity, but who is to blame and what do we do about it?

One of the things that we do not do about it is to continue to support the liberal policies of a government that attempts to "level the playing field" and "spread the wealth around." To do so is to replicate the problems that currently face Europe today and have destroyed every single government in the history of the world that has attempted to implement them. We have a system of government and an economic system that is less bad than any system that has ever been tried before in history. It is not perfect. We need to tune it up to meet our current challenges - not destroy it. In order to accomplish that objective we conservatives need to join the discussion realistically not just yell louder than our political opponents.

Solindra and Crony Capitalism.

2011-11-18T08:28:00.001-08:00

Crony capitalism is the buzz word right now. The Solindra deal appears to be an example of an Obama supporter receiving a huge loan to support a business of questionable viability. The details of this deal do indeed smell of the fish stall on a hot summer day, but we must remember that Obama's administration is not the first to be tainted with these types of charges. Virtually all administrations, Republican and Democratic, in the history of our country have engaged in these same activities. In fact, as long as we have government assistance programs, I don't see why a friend of a president can not receive assistance in the same way that a total stranger might receive that assistance. My problem with the Solindra deal is that it was an unsound business deal, hyped effectively, that went bust, and wasted a huge amount of taxpayer money. In addition, the restructuring of the loan to put private money ahead of public money in the event of a default would appear to me to be illegal. And finally, it irritates me that the Energy Department appears to have tried to cover up the collapse of Solindra until after the mid-term elections, but that is a politics-as-usual side show. The most important criticism that I have is that the Obama Administration was incompetent in deciding to support this company.

I would suggest that the Solindra fiasco is instructive of another more important challenge facing the United States and that is how we can improve our ability to compete in the global economy. As I currently understand the Solindra story, the solar products produced by the company were of good quality and the company was trying to increase production to a level that would make them profitable. In the end, they were unable to do that, their products remained too expensive to be sold, and they went bankrupt. According to press reports, the competition that beat Solindra in the marketplace was primarily Chinese. I know nothing of the Chinese solar panel industry, but it would not surprise me to find that it is supported by the Chinese government. It obviously also has far less expensive labor costs and greatly benefits from Chinese currency manipulation. Donald Trump would say that the Chinese are taking advantage of us and our leaders are too stupid to know what to do about it. I agree with the Donald's assessment of the problem, but do not agree with his proposed set of solutions, which I believe would initiate a trade war with China. That might make us feel good for a while, but nobody would win that war.

President Obama's error is strategic and, for that reason, his attempts to apply tactical solutions are going to fail every time. Solindra is illustrative of the necessity of choosing the economic battleground carefully. Much as we might want solar energy (and I want it as badly as Obama does), we should not try to to do battle with a competitor that has strengths that we can not match. Much as we might not like it, we should, at the present time, leave the production of solar panels to the Chinese (and concentrate our solar research on energy storage). If someone comes up with a panel manufacturing process that can beat their price, then this decision could be revisited, but right now let's fight on different ground. I actually agree with Obama when he says that we should invest in our infrastructure, but I define infrastructure more broadly than just roads and airports. I am all for repairing our highways and bridges and building better and safer airports, but I want to include our labor force, energy, and capital in the definition of infrastructure.

This country needs to invest in job training for more fundamental reasons than just lowering the unemployment rate. It will continue to be relatively easy to compete with the Europeans who are as sleepy as we are, but if we are to compete in the global economy with very hungry and increasingly smart Chinese, Japanese and Indians, we need to get one heck of a lot smarter than we are right now and it is going to have to start at the preschool level and go through post graduate training. We also need to invest in our national energy resource base. Think about the importance of electricity in the modern world. I would argue that it is the foundation of our economy. It is one of the resources that we take for granted, but we shouldn't. It is almost as much of a vital resource as air and water. It is in our national interest to secure it and to produce it as cheaply and reliably as possible. That requires us to develop what we have at home and not be as dependent as we currently are on foreign sources. Another resource that is critical to the economic challenges that we face is capital. Why in the world is so much of American capital offshore? The answer to that question is infinitely complex, but that can not be the excuse for not addressing it. If we are to compete successfully in the global economy we need to retain our historic dominance of the capital flow, not only in this country, but in the world. It is as though we were in a conflict and we gave our opponent one of our weapons.

For me, Solindra is a useful illustration of why I want to replace Mr. Obama as president. The man can see the problem pretty well, but he can not even begin to find the solution, let alone bring the leadership necessary to carry us forward to meet the challenge. He is a very smart man in the wrong job.

Anybody but Obama

2011-11-17T07:47:00.001-08:00

In just under one year, we are going to elect an imperfect person to be President of the United States. There are no perfect people running for office. Those of us in the electorate should find that easy to understand. None of us are perfect either. All of this hubbub about Herman Cain allegedly having had an improper relationship with one or more ladies is important, but it should not overshadow the debate about what we are going to do to get this country out of the mess that it is currently in. We call Romney a flip-flopper. In the past, we've elected people who have changed their mind on important subjects - a lot of them. This world is complicated. I can understand why folks change their mind from time to time. It might just be that Mitt Romney's ability to change his mind is exactly what we need right now. It just might lead to the kind of compromise between political positions that we require to get past the ideological deadlock that has incapacitated Washington.

Newt Gingrich is about to get his turn in the barrel. Apparently, he advised Fannie and Freddie executives on the best way to deal with conservative lawmakers. Given that he had just relinquished his position as Speaker of the House of Representatives, his advice was probably worth what he was paid. His extensive government experience might just be the reason that we should elect him to be President. Alternatively, of course, we could re-elect a man with impeccable family credentials, an unwavering belief in his principals, proven resistance to changing his mind, and absolutely no experience in governing, even though he has been at the helm of our government for three years.

I will take any of the Republican candidates over Barack Obama any day of the week not necessarily because they are that good, but because Obama is that bad. This country needs a course correction and the election of a Republican is the only way that objective can be accomplished in our system of government. Once we elect a conservative person to be president, we must encourage him or her to govern from the center. Sure, we have to take immediate action to get our financial house in order, but the far, far more important objective is to regain our national unity. Like the founders said - united we stand, divided we fall.

We've got a lot of work to do and we need our mojo back to get on with it. The rise of the global economy is eating our lunch right now because we haven't figured out how to compete in the brave new world that is all around us. There are things that we can do to stimulate job growth in the short term, but the long term future of our economy is a far more important challenge. We are currently worried about the fact that everything that we use is manufactured in China and our thirst for cheap has us in debt up to our eyeballs. We take some comfort in our intellectual superiority and point to Steve Jobs as a representative of American know-how, but in the process we forget that his products are all made in China or Taiwan. We should also note that the fastest computer in the world is Chinese. In today's global economy, the best lawyers in the world will not protect intellectual property.

I honestly do not think that we need to accept a continued degradation of our standard of living. If we accept that we are no longer king of the hill, it all becomes a self-fulling prophecy. It seems to me that we need to spend more time and energy developing what we have inside our own country. Rick Perry has outlined an energy plan that seeks to develop fossil fuels inside our borders. I support that idea because it will generate jobs and, even more importantly, it will provide energy at lower cost and that will give us an economic advantage in world markets. President Obama's refusal to let our ally Canada send us oil to be refined in our refineries is a terrible mistake for all kinds of obvious reasons. Instead, he would have us continue to buy oil from Venezuela and the Gulf States, thus funding in part, at least, countries and organizations that don't much like us.

I favor keeping those energy dollars and jobs closer to home. Several folks have suggested that we change our tax code to encourage the repatriation of capital currently being sheltered overseas. I think that is a good idea. Obviously, we need to get rid of excessive regulation that is currently stifling entrepreneurship. Liberals will rightly point out that all of this risks damage to our environment. We must be vigilant and we must find ways to simultaneously develop our natural resources and protect our environment. That challenge faces the entire world and offers us a place where our interest in technology can be developed into new commercial applications. Why not be the people who figure out how to use fossil fuels efficiently without harming the environment. (We've actually made a pretty good start in doing this, but there is obviously room for further development of the technologies.) Really clean coal would be useful to the entire world and would be another place where we could make a dollar.

If I sound a bit jingoistic, I make no apologies. While I do not advocate taking unfair advantage of the next guy, I see no national advantage in accepting mediocrity in the guise of fairness. One of my arguments with my president is over this very issue. His efforts to "level the playing field" is in reality, an attempt to squash competition. That is not only stupid, it is also not in our national interest - nor in the long term interest of the very people he is trying to help.

There is no free lunch for any of us.

2011-11-14T07:31:00.001-08:00

As I said in a previous posting, I think that we humans are a greedy bunch. Most of us are also, to varying degrees, compassionate beings. Deep down inside most of us, there is a feeling that we want to help the other fellow if he or she is truly in need. A century or so ago, this country was a composite of small communities. We knew most of the people around us pretty well - even in the big city neighborhoods. We knew the reality of our neighbors' lives. We knew who was honestly in need and who was a wastrel. There were no government programs to help the needy, but most communities assisted those that were truly in need and ostracized those that were just plain lazy. Small rural towns did not have as many bums as now populate our society. You just couldn't get away with coasting through life as easily as you can now.

The transition from horse to railroads started the process, but Henry pretty much single handedly ruined the system with his newfangled automobile. Orville and Wilbur helped too. We became a highly mobile society. The twentieth century saw the breakdown of the small community that had been one of the pillars of our nation and introduced today's faceless mob where few people really know very much about any of the folks that we work and live with on a daily basis. If we get into trouble in one place we can move to another and literally reinvent ourselves. There are a lot of obvious advantages to mobility, but there are some significant disadvantages as well. One of the more important is that we have lost contact with each other to a greater degree than we know. Facebook has not yet succeeded in replacing the town busybody and Twitter is not as effective as gossip over the back fence.

In today's America we see people that have a lot, people who have less, and people who have a lot less. This inequality is a problem and morally we know that we should not ignore it. More importantly, we can not ignore it or it will destroy our nation. (Fellow citizens, hear this point - please.) Those on the political left say that the rich are not contributing their fair share and, on moral grounds, I agree with them. Those on the right say that there are a lot of freeloaders in the system who are not pulling their fair share of the load. On very practical grounds, I agree with them as well. Our system is out of whack and that is obviously not a good thing. The problem is what do we do about it. The liberal approach is to blandly demand more from those that have it in order to provide more to those that need it. The conservative approach is to stamp our foot and demand that the poor become more productive. Neither approach is working very well.

Newt Gingrich and others have proposed that we stop paying unemployment and replace it with job training. I like the idea a lot and think that we should expand the principal to every aspect of the imbalance between the haves and the have-nots in our society. As a corollary, I also favor demanding that everyone (repeat, everyone) in America pay some tax. The basic principal would state that there is no free lunch and no government dole for doing nothing. When that principal is applied that way (and only then), I favor demanding that the super rich pay more in taxes to help support these programs. The conservative pundits that point out that it is wrong to demand a disproportionate amount from someone who has worked hard for their money have a point, but so do the liberals when they ask how much wealth is enough wealth. How does one spend a billion dollars in just one lifetime?

Here is the bumper sticker: Get rid of the free lunch, spread the tax burden out to all of us, reduce government spending significantly, and raise taxes on the folks that can obviously spare the change. Then get off the dime and get very serious about creating jobs for all of us.

Why we should use the Meat Axe on the Budget.

2011-11-13T08:35:00.001-08:00

As we watch the interminable debates among GOP contenders, and spend our time talking about the latest gaff of one or the other, we are diverted from the very serious debt debate that is allegedly taking place again behind closed doors. It reminds me of Rome in the heyday of lions being fed Christians as a diversion from Cesar's shenanigans in the marble halls of power. What ever happened to transparent, participatory democracy? With a Super Committee deciding our fate why go through the charade of electing hundreds of congressman? Why not just admit that we are being governed by an incompetent oligarchy? Well groomed, personable, articulate, experienced, secretive, ineffective and incompetent. Impressive interchangeable individuals, but an incompetent self-perpetuating aggregation.

Earlier this year (February 14, 2011), I argued for taking a meat axe to the budget. Cut the entire budget - absolutely everything - no exceptions - none - by a fixed amount and leave the implementation of where to apply the cuts to the people who run each of the various programs. By leaving the actual implementation of the cut to the bureaucrat closest to the action, we would, in the majority of cases, get the most intelligent decision-making possible. These are the folks that actually understand what is fat and what is sinew in the programs that they manage. While obviously less than ideal, I continue to believe that it is the best approach. It has the one quality that makes it practical - it is equally unfair to everyone. There would obviously be some serious problems that would have to be dealt with as we go forward and I would hope that we could find a way to get the discussion of those problems out of the marble halls of Capitol Hill. It would do the public good to openly debate them, not in Washington, but rather in the neighborhoods of America.

How much should this cut be? I am willing to let the financial wizards decide it, but, if they cannot come up with a number in a reasonable period of time, I suggest that we make it ten percent. I have worked a lifetime in government and have had managerial roles in several programs. I have observed many more. I know of none that I could not easily cut by ten percent without seriously impacting the effectiveness of the program. In order to avoid as much political wrangling as possible I would also require that no program be cut by more than ten percent. This is obviously another point that will be criticized by all, but it is necessary to retain the equity of the cuts. There are a whole raft of government programs that should be dramatically downsized or eliminated in their entirety, but my list is going to be different than yours and we need to get our budget under control right now. We can continue the argument about which programs need to be eliminated after we stop the bleeding.

Someone is going to point out that an Agency like the United States Post Office is already asking for more money in order to avoid collapsing. A ten per cent cut in the Post Office budget would push it over the edge. My response would be to implement the cut, accept reduced services, and open the dialogue with the American people about what they want to do with the postal service. Painful as it might be, it just might be time to let the internet, United Postal Service and Federal Express carry this particular burden in our society. Another, even more serious problem would immediately arise over a ten percent cut in entitlements. This would immediately impact individual citizens and would stimulate understandable outrage. It would also bring home the reality of what lays in store for all of us if we don't get our budget under control. It is all very simple. If we do not stop the reckless spending we will end up yelling at each other over piles of rubbish in the street just like Greece. We have to get serious now before ten percent becomes twenty percent or more.

Break camp and go find a job.

2011-11-12T07:53:00.001-08:00

I see humans as being a greedy bunch and I believe that the individual needs to be controlled lest he or she gets out of hand and does things that are against the best interests of the group. The societal problem is always who exercises how much control over whom and how that control is exercised. A lot of different systems have been tinkered with over the many millennia since our specie appeared on earth, starting with dog eat dog and morphing into all kinds of tribes, monarchies, dictatorships, and isms. Today, we have what we call democracy and free enterprise capitalism with all kinds of modifications that we skip over lightly in school, but apply rigorously and imperfectly in our day-to-day lives. Scholars can easily prove that our form of democracy is not really very democratic and our form of capitalism is not really very free, but whatever our system has been, it has served us pretty well for several hundred years and our country has become the most powerful in the entire history of civilization. (Not necessarily the best, but certainly the most powerful.)

The Occupy Wall Street folks appear to be questioning the validity of our political/economic system going forward and a number of politicians are attempting to associate themselves with these inarticulate protests to push their own political agenda. The forces that are presently at work within our society will inevitably bring change, but the questions are how much, and what kind of change will be applied to whom, and when. This kind of situation is always politically unsettling. Because it is happening to those of us alive today, it is in our minds, the most serious challenge that our country has ever faced. Poppy cock. Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, Wilson, and two Roosevelts had more difficult challenges as did a whole raft of other plain folks adjusting to changing times like reconstruction, industrialization, worldwide depression, worldwide war, and the threat of global communism.

The details are unique, but the threat is not. Very simply put, the challenge that faces us is whether we have the resilience to modify our system adequately to deal with current facts on the ground without giving up the intangibles that have held us together as a nation. Those of us (myself included) who cling to traditional values will inevitably be disappointed with the change that is coming, but that change is inevitable and we had better get used to it. Having said that, I am going to continue to argue for a conservative approach to social and fiscal problem solving, because I believe that is in the best interest of all of us - liberal and conservative alike. I believe that President Obama recognizes the challenges that face this country, but I heartily disagree with the policy set that he has proposed to deal with those challenges. He obviously has a very high IQ and, like many other intellectuals, does not have what it takes to bring a nation together. What we need right now is a leader that can unify the country, or at least most of it, so that we can get on with creating a better world for ourselves and those around us.

PS: It is time for the occupiers to break camp and go find a job. If it is true that we have tens of millions of illegal immigrants taking jobs away from honest, red-blooded Americans, it is time for some of those Americans to go take those jobs back. If the folks who are pooping in public try to argue that they are too well educated to take menial positions, I am sorry, but I have zero sympathy for them. Like most of my generation, I started at the bottom and worked for what I got in life. I actually enjoyed it, but if I had not done it I would have been called a slacker. As I look at the accumulation of high tech tents, down sleeping bags, designer clothing, laptop computers and cell phones, I have difficulty finding a better term for what I see.

Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-28T09:08:00.000-07:00

I part company with those conservative pundits that hold that the Occupy Wall Street protests should not be taken seriously. This is not to say that I agree with much that I see coming out of the various events, but the fact that they involve a lot of people and are attracting the attention of several important political groups is enough for me to try to figure out what is going on. Not having visited any of the protests, my information is limited to what the media is reporting. The following is just my best guess.

Video and still images of the protests emphasize youthful participants with alternative life styles. Interviews with protesters frequently present inarticulate positions ardently delivered on a wide range of issues - economic and social. No single theme seems to be presented by the people on the ground and some of the activity looks more like a college social event than a political protest. An increasing number of liberal political leaders and organizations appear to be attempting to define the protests in ways that support their political positions on a number of issues, while conservative sources strive to minimize the importance of the protests and deny that they have any relevance to the real world.

My suspicion is that the initial gathering in New York was akin to a fairly large flash mob organized through social networking internet sites like Twitter and Face Book. I doubt that there was a single instigator (if correct, an important point relevant to the future of our society). The key participants appear to have been primarily underemployed and unemployed young people (with cell phones) whose aspirations exceeded their perceived opportunities. If my guess is correct, this core of original participants was joined by street people and loons who are almost certainly responsible for the more outrageous happenings associated with the protests. Eventually, various personalities seeking media coverage began making appearances among the tents and sleeping bags.

As the protesters managed to maintain their presence in the public eye, liberal politicians saw an opportunity to turn the phenomenon to their political advantage by equating them with the Tea Party. My guess is that the combination of media bias and liberal money will have some success in accomplishing this objective. One of the themes that I expect to see continue, after sanitation issues and inclement weather end the actual sit-in, is a discussion of what curbs should be placed on free enterprise and capitalism. This is already an important part of the ongoing presidential campaign.

The proper role of capitalism in our society is an important subject that must be engaged. Limits on free enterprise is another. Proper distribution of wealth is yet another. Some conservative pundits treat all of these subjects as being beyond the pale for rational people. They are wrong to do so. To hold that economic inequality is not a real issue in this country is as much a problem for us as the massive debt that faces us. Conservatives must engage these issues not only to win elections, but also to help unite this country and strengthen the economy that brings prosperity to the entire nation. It is not enough to just argue that there are makers and takers. We have to find more ways to increase the number of makers and decrease the number of takers. We must face facts. We are not doing as good job of it as our fathers and grandfathers did.

Cain, Perry, and Romney

2011-10-14T07:26:00.000-07:00

We are moving closer to deciding who the Republican standard bearer will be in the November 2012 presidential election. It looks like it is coming down to Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, and maybe Rick Perry. Although I can find fault with a few things about each of these candidates, I think that it is a pretty good field. Right now, all of the political insiders are betting on Mitt Romney even though Herman Cain is rising fast in the polls. It appears that Mr. Cain is benefiting in direct relationship to Mr. Perry's slippage in the polls. As such, he is being touted as the non-Romney candidate of the moment. These same pundits are pointing out that, although Mr. Cain has a number of attractive strengths, he is perceived to be less appealing to the independent voter. For this reason, they believe that, at the end of the day, Mr. Romney will be nominated as the Republican candidate.

Assuming that Mr. Romney is selected, we can be certain that the Democratic Party will attack him vigorously. That is as it should be in our political system and I welcome it as a way to more thoroughly understand who he is and how he handles himself in rough waters. After all, Mr. Romney is asking to take on the most difficult job in the world. If he can not deal successfully with the likes of Messrs. Obama and Axelrod, how in the world will he be able to contend with people like Grand Ayatollah Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? A great deal will be made of Romneycare and the fact that he has changed his mind on a lot of fundamental issues. His much touted reputation as a job-creator will be challenged with statistics showing that he fired people and sent work overseas. Underlying it all will be the whisper campaign contending that his religion is nothing more than a cult. I already recognize that all of the candidates are imperfect so very little of this is going to shock me. If George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were to be in the field it could rightly be pointed out that they held slaves. There are no perfect people running for political office in this country.

Another theme that is starting to appear in press stories is that many liberals are so disenchanted with President Obama that they intend to sit the next election out and not vote for anyone. Hardcore Republicans hope that this will happen because it will make their victory in 2012 easier to accomplish. I confess that I am so convinced that we much replace Mr. Obama that I will also welcome a liberal boycott of the polls, but we must all recognize that it is not a good thing when a significant percentage of the public opts out of the political process. Great disagreement within the public on fundamental issues is divisive and that weakens us as a nation. Disagreement is not, in and of itself, dangerous. In fact, it is healthy, but prolonged fundamental disagreement on issues such as those now plaguing America can destroy us. I usually vote Republican because I am fiscally conservative, but I believe that what this country needs is a president that can govern from the center. For many of my friends that makes me a RINO. My friends are probably correct. I vote for the people and policies that I think that we need at the moment. No party owns my vote. Right now, this country needs an economic course correction. I will vote conservative to obtain that, but I will not swallow everything or anything that conservatives want to do just because I voted Republican this time around.

Whose fault is it?

2011-09-20T08:07:00.000-07:00

As I read the news and listen to the pundits I am struck by the fact that the contending politicians are not trying to convince anyone of the value of their proposed policies. Instead, they are busy warning everyone within hearing of what will happen if their policies are not adopted. Unfortunately, this includes conservatives as well as liberals. At this point in time we are spending far too much time beating the drum about the danger of continuing our drunken spending spree and not enough time talking about what we would do instead. President Obama is just as bad when he demands that Congress pass his jobs bill immediately without debate or the economy will continue to go down the drain. This, of course, sets the stage for another year of bickering and maneuver leading up to the 2012 presidential election.

In part, I blame the public's short attention span for this state of affairs. If our political figures are forced to communicate in sound bites, it is much easier to cast aspersions than to outline policies designed to deal with inordinately complex issues. (Paul Ryan is something of an exception to this situation with his extensive writings about the budget and intense speaking tour, but then he is not running for office.) I am also critical of the folks in the media who could do a much better job of talking to the specifics of the various issues. Instead they pretty much limit themselves to championing or attacking the latest sound bite. We pretty much understand that Social Security is in trouble, but are far less clear on what we should do about it. We understand that health care is too expensive, but we don't have many concrete suggestions about the best way to bring down costs and extend coverage in the future. We know that our national infrastructure is crumbling, but we can't agree on the best way to pay for the rebuild and repair. Etc., etc., etc.

And then there is foreign relations about which we don't talk much at all except to agree that war is unpleasant, expensive, inconvenient, and dangerous. If we are liberal in our thinking, George Bush's Iraqi adventure was the cause of all of our international problems. If we are conservative, Mr. Obama's half-hearted involvement in Libya is the perfect proof that he is not ready for prime time. For most of America, international affairs is a foreign subject about which we think little. This ignorance is just as dangerous to our future as is our avoidance of the economic realities that face us at home. There are even a few politicians who espouse various forms of isolationism as a solution to all of our problems - domestic and foreign.

We blame our politicians for the situation that we are in as a nation, but it is not their fault. We elected them. Granted they can surprise us after they get into office, but basically they are a manifestation of the mood of the country at the time that they are elected. I might rail at the president's stupidity, but he is in reality nothing more than the personification of us - the American public. If we want a better America we are going to have to do more than just whine about how the place is going to hell in a hand basket. We are going to have to dig in and make it this country that we want it to be.

New York's 9th Congressional District

2011-09-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's election of Republican BobTurner to New York's 9th District congressional seat is a clear repudiation of President Obama - no matter how the New York Times and the White House try to spin it. The single most important issue in the election was America's relationship with Israel, but other issues were obviously intertwined. Former Mayor Ed Koch, a lifelong Democrat and a strong supporter of Israel, supported Turner over David Weprin and called for New Yorkers to send a message to President Obama about both his domestic and foreign policies. As a Jew himself, Koch not only influenced the Jewish vote, but more importantly reflected the feelings of the electorate at large.

Conservatives should take heart that a heavily Democratic congressional district took this important step, but we should not be overly optimistic. There is still a long road ahead to November 2012. It is pretty clear that a lot of folks are fed up with this President's inept policies, but we have yet to clearly articulate the conservative alternative. We are still at the stage where it is acceptable to explain Mr. Obama's stupidity, but we are rapidly approaching the point where folks will start demanding to know what specific things we would do to change things. The Republican led House has passed a number of specific bills that are relevant to this debate, but they languish in the Senate where Harry Read refuses to let them come to a vote and the media ignores them as not being newsworthy. The public knows little about them or the issues that they address.

This situation will continue until we settle on the specific candidate that we want to lead the Republican Party in the 2012 presidential election. Before anybody can assume that mantle he or she has to convince conservatives that they are the best suited to the task of defeating Mr. Obama. Liberals don't get their say until the general election. In order to be selected as the conservative candidate a person has to prove his bonafides as a conservative. This process frequently scares liberals who are watching from the sidelines and that fright frequently carries over into the general election where they vote against the Republican contender.

One example of this is the current tentative discussion of Social Security reform. Governor Rick Perry has called Social Security a ponzy scheme and Governor Mitt Romney has taken issue with that characterization. In the weeks ahead, both men will be forced to expand on what they would do to fix the problems plaguing Social Security and that discussion will frighten a lot of American voters. President Obama will likely continue to ignore Social Security in the hope that the Republican Party will scare enough voters that he can be re-elected. The 2012 election will be a test of the American public's ability to come to grips with the real issues challenging our nation. In a very real sense it is more about us - the electorate - than it is the candidates.

GOP Debate & Obama's Speech to Congress

2011-09-12T08:14:00.000-07:00

The GOP presidential debate turned out to be about as I had expected. We did not get any new insight into real solutions offered by the various candidates, but we did get another view of how they handle themselves in limited debate. Rick Perry came across as forceful, Mitt Romney looked moderate, and everybody else continued to melt into the background. The President's speech to the Joint Session was also pretty much what we had expected with a call for a new stimulus bill, some temporary tax relief and a demand that Congress pass all of it or nothing. The pundits and the media are commenting on both events along party lines with the Wall Street Journal pointing out what is wrong with the President's economics and the New York Times taking shots at the GOP contenders.

This will continue for the next year as we gear up for the 2012 presidential election. The extreme left and right are set in their ways. They will not change. The key to winning the next election is, of course, the political center. My guess is that Perry will continue to play to the more conservative elements in the Republican Party in an effort to win the primary fight and Romney will continue to argue that his "more moderate" position makes him more electable in the general than Perry. Tim Pawlenty has made his choice - he supports Romney. I suspect that other conservative voices will begin picking sides as we draw closer and closer to the primary. At the same time, the President will, of course, be in full campaign mode and will do everything that he can to shape the forthcoming debate in Congress to reflect well on his re-election bid.

From my prospective, the good news is that both Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman are fading in the polls. As I have written before, I respect both ladies, but feel that they would be too divisive if elected president. The entire field of candidates is composed of very good people, but I am content to have it come down to Romney and Perry. I have a lot of very staunch conservative friends. My expectation is that they will favor Perry over Romney in the primary fight. Fortunately, there is enough time that we do not have to rush to judgment. In an ideal world I will be looking for a candidate that can reverse the disastrous course that we are on as a nation and simultaneously pull us together as a people. A very tall order that requires more than eloquence at the microphone.

Thank You Mr. Boehner

2011-09-03T08:54:00.000-07:00

Wednesday evening, I expect to watch the debate among some of the contenders for the honor of being the Republican candidate for president. It is a useful forum and I am glad that Mr. Boehner refused Mr. Obama's request for a speech to a Joint Session of Congress. Awkward timing or political gamesmanship I know not, but I tend to suspect the later. Either the president's staff is overly partisan or just incompetent, either way, the situation does not smell very good. Had Mr. Boehner acquiesced, most of the media would have broadcast the President's speech and those of us trying to decide who to support in 2012 would have been denied this peek into the thoughts of the various candidates maneuvering to replace him.

Having said that, let me quickly go on to say that I do not expect to learn very much from the debate. The problems that our country face are far too complex to be "discussed" intelligently in this type of forum. What we will get when all is said and done is an insight into the way these people think on their feet and how adroit they are at producing politically sensitive sound bites. The "winner" will represent an accomplished politician that was well prepared by his or her staff. Personality will count for more than substantive analytical thought. (Tim Pawlenty has already fallen by the way, a victim of the personality wars.) According to the pundits, most viewers will be watching Rick Perry tonight to see how he holds up to the hopes that he has managed to generate among conservatives in recent months.

What we see Wednesday night will be important, but of even more importance will be how the media spins the debate. One of the candidates will probably stumble and some other candidate will capitalize on his or her gaff with a clever rejoinder. The press will spend more time on that exchange than on any of the substantive proposals that the various people present (if they present any). The media coverage will influence the twittering electorate. This will result in a change in the all important polls. Someone will emerge with a higher rating than they had going into the debate and he or she will be seen to be "gathering steam." As this process continues, we will eventually pick a candidate that some of us like and some of us do not. As Mr. Obama has demonstrated, we won't really know much about the person that we elect until they get into office. It's kind of like the famous Pelosi statement. "We have to pass the law to find out what is in it." In the case of our president, we have to elect him or her to find out who he or she really is.

I also look forward to hearing the President speak Thursday night and I am glad that he is not going to make me choose between NFL football and a speech to the Joint Session of Congress. I confess that I am tired of Mr. Obama's speeches and fear that, to my deep embarrassment, I might have chosen the Saints/Packer game over the speech (understanding, of course, that I could read the speech the next morning on the internet). Like the political theater of the forthcoming Republican debate, I do not expect my president to say anything new. I am deeply jaundiced by his oratory over the years. Well crafted phraseology, superb meter, wonderful voice inflection, goals worthy of lofty ambition, and full of heartfelt promises that are demonstrably devoid of sincerity.

Electoral Silly Season

2011-08-23T07:14:00.001-07:00

We are fully engaged in the silly season that unfortunately always precedes a major election in this country. People on left and right of the political spectrum are spouting rhetoric designed to curry favor with their political supporters rather than to try to find solutions to real problems. Voters who are in the political middle are trying to figure out which set of politicians they should support even though the problems facing our country are so complicated that it is virtually impossible for the public to understand what is involved - even if we had access to the necessary data. The fact that this political system works at all is amazing.

My own take on all of this is fairly straight forward. As I see it, our most pressing immediate problem is that we are spending too much money and have already accumulated a staggering debt that is threatening to destroy the country. If you are still confused about this point read some of Paul Ryan's analysis, or listen to a couple of Ron Paul's or Michelle Bachman's recent tirades. If you are confused about what our President intends to do if re-elected, listen to any of his speeches where he fails to address the major causes of our debt crisis and explains his plans to spend more money in the future. If you are confused about who is to blame for our current problems look in the mirror and face up to the fact that the American public has gotten fat and lazy. Over the years, we have elected politicians on both the right and the left who have promised more than we can afford.

As the 2012 election draws nearer, I am clear in my feeling that Mr. Obama must be replaced for all of the specific reasons outlined in earlier posts to this blog. I wish that I could, in good conscience, champion one of the current Republican contenders for the presidency, but I can not. None of them are an ideal candidate. I can see things that worry me about each of them. It is particularly difficult to understand what they stand for at this point in the election cycle because they are still talking primarily to their political base. Their statements are carefully crafted to avoid angering their most ardent supporters within the far right. They need those folks in the primary fight. In addition, some of the potential candidates have not yet declared, so we know even less about them. I continue to root for Chris Christy, but do not expect him to be able to walk on water. He just looks like the kind of no nonsense manager that we need at this point in time.

When all is said and done, I will almost certainly vote for the Republican candidate - not because I believe that he or she is perfect, but because I believe that America can not afford another four years of Mr. Obama. I believe that this country needs a course correction and our political system provides no other way to achieve it than to change the political balance of power in Washington. If we do elect a Republican to the White House in 2012, I do not expect that I will be totally satisfied with all of his or her decisions. I am not deluded into believing that Republicans can do no wrong and I believe that America will still need to be watchful of our political leadership to ensure that it is truly looking after the best interests of this country.

S&P Downgrade is Symptomatic

2011-08-06T07:53:00.000-07:00

The S&P downgrade of the credit worthiness of the United States of America was predicted. It happened. We are shocked. We should not be. S&P told us what we had to do for them to continue to consider our economy worthy of a Triple A rating. We chose not to do it. They downgraded us. (Please note that they are telling us that they will do it again unless we get serious about improving our economic posture.)

My guess is that we will now argue about whose fault it is and continue to quibble about what it all means. Eventually we will all get used to the situation and will move our national conversation on to other more important matters like the relative merits of Twitter, Facebook and Google +. We will take solace in the fact that the rest of the world is in a bigger mess than we are and rich people all around the world will probably still invest in America because it is less risky than most other places. If they insist on more interest on their loans we will pay it - after all it is just money. We can always print more.

Our president wants to even the economic playing field within this country and, although he probably did not plan on this downgrade, it should be noted that it is helping to do just exactly that. It is making all of us poorer by the minute. Those among us who have managed to save a little money and put it in the stock market understand the situation better than those who have not managed to save anything, but it is affecting all of us - rich and poor alike. This added to the other stupid policy decisions that we have been making is destroying the country that I love.

I am sad and mad at the same time. The S&P thing is not terribly important in the big picture. What is important is that we are spending ourselves into oblivion and too many of us think that it is a good idea. Ladies and gentlemen we are doing it to ourselves and that makes us the dumbest group of folks that I know. Congress is out to lunch (they call it summer recess) and the President is off to Camp David for some relaxation after all of the hard work that he has been doing lately. Nobody begrudges these folks a summer vacation, but there are a lot of Americans that wish that they had a job from which they could take a vacation.

The Debt Ceiling Deal is Inadequate

2011-08-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

We have some sort of a debt ceiling deal, but everybody is reluctant to tell us exactly what it is because not very many folks were involved in crafting it. As noted in my last blog, I really don't like the fact that major policy decisions are being made by a hand full of people in secret, but I will not belabor that point today. Most political pundits are calling the deal a compromise between Republicans and Democrats. Depending on their political point of view, they laud some aspects of the agreement and attack others. Some of the more extreme Talking Heads call it a "sellout" to the other side. Nobody claims to be satisfied with the outcome and the markets are definitely not happy with it. The argument about who created "this mess" continues.

As far as I can see both political parties are responsible for our current economic problems. Leaders in both parties have long been pandering to wishful thinking within the public in an attempt to create a better society. Most of these leaders have been and are "good people" who want the best for their country. There are many divisions within our country, but generally speaking Democrats are focused on the problems of minorities while Republicans champion a free enterprise system that rewards hard work. Both are "right." Many minorities in these United States are less advantaged than they should be were it a perfect world, and hard work should be rewarded. At various times in our history our political leadership leans left or right as one philosophy gains traction over the other.

Mr. Obama represents a major lurch to the left. No matter how lofty his motives are, his policies are destroying the economic engine that has made America an economic powerhouse. The last mid-term election represents a move back to the right and an effort to redress at least some of the damage that this president has done to our economy. This debt ceiling deal, whatever it is in detail, is talking about insignificant numbers in the context of the problems facing our economy. About the only thing that it might do is to slow down further deterioration a tiny bit, but even that is in doubt. No one, right or left, believes that it will "fix the problem." It is clear that the only way to restore the vitality of our economy is to vote Mr. Obama and as many of his Democratic allies in Congress as possible out of office in 2012.

When I talk this way to my liberal friends, they immediately tell me that although the current administration has obvious inadequacies, there is no assurance that voting Republicans into office will result in a better situation. They frequently say that they don't see anybody on the political right that they really like very much. That kind of response puts too much faith in the individual and underestimates the impersonal political forces that are at work in this country. The hero in history is important, but is much over-rated. What we need right now in this clumsy political system that we have is a course correction. We need to elect enough conservatives to move our decision-making process back to the right for a bit. If we do not save this economy from collapse we will not have the where-with-all to deal with the social issues that understandably concern us.

Twitter and the Debt Ceiling

2011-07-29T08:02:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of things going on right now that disturb me and this blog has attempted to speak to many of them, but a structural problem that needs to be addressed is the manner in which our political system has been degraded. A long time ago we used to see congressmen and senators publicly debate the major issues that face the nation in the Halls of Congress. Today, we see a few House and Senate leaders get together behind closed doors and secretively make key decisions on major legislation that are then explained to their respective caucuses, again in secret, before they are hastily written into complex legal language and voted on by members that have not had time to even read the legislation, let alone think about it. The public is informed about these actions by individual political leaders speaking to us in sound bites through Twitter, Facebook and the increasingly partisan media. Nancy Pelosi's famous pronouncement is true - we have to pass the legislation to find out what is in it.

Today, the issue uppermost in our minds is the debt ceiling fight. The fact that there is confusion about what should be done is amazing, but I understand and am seriously depressed by the political/economic reality that faces us. The fact is that America is changing and I do not like the changes. We are losing our initiative as a people and increasingly looking to Big Brother to take care of us. President Obama's efforts to level the economic playing field are attractive to an increasingly large percentage of the people living in this country. The irony of this is, of course, that the effort to create social nirvana is stifling the economic engine that provides for all of us. The president's position on the debt ceiling is part and parcel of his effort to redistribute income and the disheartening fact of life is that a lot of Americans applaud his efforts.

Combine all of this with the revolution in "information technology" and you have a serious problem. I honestly believe that, as a people, we are increasingly ignorant rather than increasingly informed, and I credit "IT" with a large part of the blame. The complexities of the debt ceiling issue are endless and their significance is profound, yet we attempt to deal with what little we know of the situation in tweets and partisan sound bites. We completely ignore the fact that the current political realities are such that we are tweeting and the talking heads are pontificating about rumors coming from behind closed doors. We complain about Obama Care being crammed down our throats, but we are about to have the same thing done to us again. We accept that this secretive decision-making process is the way Washington works and we turn our attention to the love life of the current set of celebrities who are living out our current set of national fantasies.

As we address the debt ceiling on our Droid, we angrily proclaim to each other that Washington is a mess and threaten that if this Big Brother does not do as we wish we will elect a different one in 2012. Twitter is good at expressing simplistic anger, but less effective in addressing the complexity of real solutions. That same criticism is increasingly valid for us as a people. We are content to let the politicians decide our future without public debate, knowing that if we do not like their decisions we can always throw the bums out. As we go down this road, my guess is that we will just get another set that will not live up to our expectations. In order to change this we, as a people, would need to address real issues. We find complaint to be easier than constructive thought and easier to fit into our national attention span. Anybody that wants to get ahead of the curve should move to Greece right now.

Lizards and Oil

2011-06-06T19:44:00.000-07:00

I've been offline for a while. Busy with other projects including a lot of wildlife photography. A very nice break from the real world of lying congressmen, exotic presidential candidates, incompetent presidents. failed foreign policies, and impending economic collapse. Before I return to the lists, I would like to make a confession. At this late point in my life, I have finally figured it all out - or at least most of it.

Assuming that God exists there is no reason why he could not have created a world that includes evolution. There is absolutely no reason that it has to be either God or Science. It is clear to me that it is both and there is no logical indication that God did not intend it to be that way. I've been hanging out with animals and birds for quite a while now and I am confirmed in my belief in the continuity of life forms. Just because birds and animals can not express themselves in one of our human languages does not mean that they do not have feelings and ideas very similar to our own. I don't have any animosity toward scientists and understand that they are just trying to understand what is going on around us. I do part company with them when they draw a sharp distinction between "humans" and "animals." We are all animals and we are all part of the same world no matter how inconvenient that becomes in certain situations.

The part that I am still working on is the God part. I confess that I have a problem believing in the deity that any of the great religions describe. At the same time, I can not explain the great mystery of existence. At this point in time, I am pretty much thinking of it in quasi-Hindu terms. There is a life force out there that we just plain do not understand. For all I know that could be the deity. It gets weird from there, because if the life force is conscious I really don't like him, her or it. He, she or it created a world that is too flawed for me to accept without criticism. If he, she or it is truly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent he, she or it could and should have done a better job of creation. If he, she or it is testing us; he, she or it is in reality playing with us and I resent that. If he, she, or it created me why bother to make me imperfect?

The other evening I was watching the yelling matches on television and one of the more prominent conservative commentators spoke to the problem of the sage brush lizard in Texas oil country. Apparently there are some folks who want to put the lizard on the endangered species list and thus risk slowing down or stopping oil drilling in much of the best part of the state to find oil. In today's economy that oil and those jobs are badly needed and the commentator spoke eloquently to those points. Unfortunately, he also joked about lizard bar-b-cue and deplored the fact that an insignificant lizard that very few people ever see should stand in the way of prosperity. The oil is going to win this particular argument, but it is too bad that we have to be so cavalier when we are in the process of eliminating another form of life.

I am conservative and I am offended by this man's insensitivity. I can imagine how his callous attitude goes over in liberal circles. This is not the way to deal with our political problems. If conservatives continue to be this stupid we will not be able to convince the majority of Americans to vote with us for the policies that we espouse.

South Carolina Debate

2011-05-06T08:16:00.000-07:00

It is once again in vogue for a candidate for high office to brag about the fact that he is an outsider. The implication is that holding political office somehow dirties one's reputation and what is needed in Washington is an outsider who can sweep the place clean. This makes for good rhetoric on the campaign trail, but risks putting someone in office who does not know how to get things done. Herman Cain is the ultimate outsider. As CEO of Godfather's Pizza, he appears to know how to run a successful business organization, but that is a far cry from running the United States Government. Last night, I listened to his participation in the South Carolina Republican Party debate. He is a very personable man and appears to hold solid traditional values. I like that, but I do not believe that he has the background necessary to do the day-to-day job of president.

I also listened carefully to Gary Johnson, the former Governor of New Mexico. In my book, anyone who has successfully held the position of a state governor for two terms has sufficient background to be considered for the position of President of the United States. The fact that he was a successful businessman before becoming governor is good too, but I was not impressed with his performance in this debate. I did find his more liberal position on abortion to be interesting, saying that it might not get votes in the primary, but it would help him in the general election. Whether we like it or not, this is an important issue for Republicans and Johnson's comments are relevant to the conservative primary decision.

It is always fun to listen to Texas Representative Ron Paul. He is an articulate spokesman for the libertarian point of view and it is healthy for all of us to be reminded of those principals from time to time. I wish that we could live our lives according to them, but unfortunately I believe that our world is far too complex for simple solutions. Mr. Paul, however, serves an important role as an advocate for a more perfect world and that gives the rest of us something to shoot for.

I find former Pennsylvania Senator, Rick Santorum, to be a very attractive personality and his service in the House of Representatives and Senate gives him enough background in government to meet that requirement for the Republican candidate for president. I like many of his ideas including his emphasis on family as the cornerstone of our nation. I like his position on the debt and am interested in his thinking about entitlements. I see him as a viable dark horse candidate and look forward to learning more about his views and specific ideas. Even if he does not emerge as the Republican candidate, he can do a lot to shape our position on issues going into the general election.

Of these five men, I find Tim Pawlenty to be the most attractive candidate. His service as Governor of Minnesota for two terms gives him ample background for the office of the presidency. I like his position on the debt and am very interested in his views regarding entitlements. I find it interesting that he is virtually the only one of the five men on stage last night that the Democratic Party has attacked today. I presume that this says something about his viability as a conservative candidate. He will be criticized by many on the political right for not being enough of an attack dog, but that is one of the principal things that attracts me to him. I am looking for a candidate that can unite America - not one that can yell louder than the Democrats.

Although many of the big names that are mentioned as possible Republican candidates chose not to participate, I think that the debate served a valuable service in providing a venue for these five men to introduce themselves to a larger audience.

Our Next President has to Unite Us.

2011-05-04T12:32:00.000-07:00

We are in the process of choosing our next president and there are a lot of people who want it to be someone other than Mr. Obama. I count myself in that number. Many of us are frustrated and even angered by what we see happening to our country because of the policies of the current administration. Potential candidates for the Republican nomination include some who are playing to that frustration and anger. To select a standard bearer for the Republican party that is a conservative firebrand might appeal to enough hard core conservatives that he or she could get elected, but it would not solve the problems that our country faces and it would ensure that the electorate would reject him or her in a succeeding round of elections in the same way that liberal firebrands are being rejected at the present time.

Hopefully, we will be intelligent enough to select a candidate that is levelheaded and can appeal to a majority of Americans. Much as I like conservative solutions to many of our most pressing challenges, I do not believe that America is willing to accept them in their most austere form. Compromise is necessary. I am practical enough to recognize that radicals play a useful role in our political system, but I do not believe that they should be given real political power. It is proper that they articulate the "best" solutions on left and right, but never should those solutions actually be implemented. Obama Care is a perfect example of what happens when they are mistakenly made into law.

Hopefully too, we will learn from our Obama mistake and thoroughly vet our future candidates before voting for or against them. It is my belief that, had America seen through the teleprompter and actually understood what Mr. Obama intended when he spoke of "change," we would have stuck with Hillary Clinton. Right now, the public appears to be in love with Donald Trump. The liberals love him because he is the absolutely perfect incarnation of their ideal conservative politician. Saturday Night Live and Mr. Axelrod could not ask for more. Many within the conservative base love Trump because he offers simple solutions to complex problems that simultaneously speak to our frustrations. I have never met Mr. Trump, but my impression is that he is a fairly shallow personality with a penchant for making money in real estate, but without a great deal of experience in much else. He is important only because he understands the frustrations of America - not because he offers real solutions.

I place Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin in the same general category as The Donald although there are some very important differences. These two ladies are not shallow and they do have a proven record of achievement in the political arena. I like what I have heard of their proposed solutions to the very real challenges facing our country. My problem with them is that they are both polarizing figures in the present political landscape. I do not believe that either one of them could defeat President Obama in 2012 nor do I believe that they could govern the country successfully. To elect either one of them would be to relive the Obama nightmare in reverse.

We need a man or woman who can bring us together, not one who will continue to champion the views of half of this nation. I continue to be very interested in Chris Christy despite his refusal to run.

Dead or Alive

2011-05-03T08:03:00.000-07:00

Osama bin Laden is dead. I did not like bin Laden. He was an awful man and deserved to die for his misdeeds. At the same time, I do not like killing and am not happy about any of it - including the killing of bin Laden. I am not saying that, if I could have done anything about it, I would have let bin Laden continue to cause the kind of trouble that he has for this past decade or so. I admire the professionalism of the intelligence effort that located bin Laden and the Seal Team that implemented our President's order and congratulate them on a very successful military mission. It is with the formulation of the objective of the Seal mission that I might quibble. If it had been up to me, I would have instructed the Seal Team to bring bin Laden back alive.

Maybe the Seals were ordered to capture, not kill, and the situation that unfolded on the ground did not permit it, but I suspect not. It is my understanding that this debate has been going on for quite a while, and President Obama is not in favor of capturing these kinds of folks, but rather wants to kill them as quickly as possible. His increased use of drones to attack other terrorist leaders is an example of this policy. My suspicion is that Mr. Obama's reluctance to capture rather than kill is motivated by humanitarian considerations. He does not want to capture a "high value" terrorist and then be faced with the prospect of having to use harsh interrogation methods to obtain the information that would permit him to go after other high value targets. Killing them seems to be the simpler choice.

America is still living in a dreamworld. We are being forced to slowly wake up to the dangers of the real world that are all around us - with the operative word being "slowly." Our enemies are really very bad people and they mean to destroy us. We are the best country that I know of, but our virtue will not protect us from the likes of bin Laden. It is important to note that the information that led us to the courier that ultimately brought our Seals to bin Laden's compound was obtained through the harsh interrogation methods that Mr. Obama prohibits. The argument that we make to each other is that we are better than that, but if that is so, please explain to me why, in humanitarian terms, our assassination of bin Laden is any different than Stalin's assassination of Trotsky.

America still thinks that Islamic terrorism is just another foreign problem that we will eventually deal with successfully just as we have so many others in our past. I suggest that it is fundamentally different because of the presence of nuclear weapons in an increasing number of unstable countries. We had better get very serious about it because it is literally a matter of our survival as a nation and perhaps as a people. My fear is that we will not do that.

Deer in the Headlights

2011-04-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

Did you know that every single person in America owes over $46,000? That is the national debt divided by the entire population of the United States of America. As you undoubtably know, not everyone pays taxes in this country. If you are a taxpayer, your share of the national debt is north of $128,000. I don't know about you, but I don't have enough money to pay my share right now and I am worried about the fact that my share is increasing every minute of the day.

My president tells me not to worry. He will change the tax code so that the rich folks pay a bigger share and that will permit us to spend even more than we are now. I know that there are a lot of millionaires and billionaires in this country and some of them are saying that they are willing to pay more. The national debt currently stands at more than $14,300,000,000,000. In english that is 14 trillion, 300 billion dollars. So, if all of the rich folks agreed to pay a million dollars each in taxes we would need 14,300,000 folks to step up to the plate. I am not sure that we have over fourteen million three hundred thousand folks that are that rich and that civic minded.

Ok, so I am being ridiculous, but so is my president. Does he really expect me to believe that changing the tax code can solve our debt problem? Maybe he thinks that we are not smart enough to do the math. I certainly agree that it is hard to keep all of those zeros in their proper place, but even if I am off by one or two, the problem still seems to be much bigger than the solution. I suppose that Mr.Obama would point out that we don't have to pay all of the debt off right away and can carry some of it without doing ourselves any damage. In fact, we can add to it as per his budget proposal.

So let's see how that works out if we continue spending at the current rate let alone increase it. Right now the interest that we pay on our national debt is more than $3,583,000,000,000 per year (3.5 trillion dollars). That works out to each one of us having to come up with $11,500 or so in interest payments this year. Again, if we only include taxpayers, it works out to a lot more than that. Assuming that we continue to spend at current rates at some point we are using all of our GNP and borrowing more money just to pay off debt. I suppose that will work assuming that we can find some country that is rich enough and dumb enough to continue to loan it to us.

If the American public permits this idiotic situation to continue much longer we deserve the economic cataclysm that is coming our way with the speed and weight of a freight train. I am reminded of the proverbial deer caught in the headlights.

Debt and Elections

2011-04-22T07:23:00.000-07:00

As I have pointed out in previous posts, I believe that the United States is moving toward what used to be called stagflation - persistent high unemployment and persistent high inflation. We already have the persistent high unemployment and food and energy prices are beginning to get out of hand. Rising energy prices, in particular, will adversely impact the economy and this will tend to inhibit job creation. The Federal Reserve's second round of Quantitative Easing (QE2) is scheduled to end in June. It was designed to help the economy by pumping money into it and indeed the stock market has benefited. As is usually the case, when money is plentiful, prices tend to rise - inflation.

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke is charged with keeping the economy on an even keel. If, and when, he believes that inflation is a real problem he will move to restrict the money supply. For this reason, I do not foresee a third round of Quantitative Easing. I believe that interest rates will increase as a result of this and other Federal Reserve policies. A rise in interest rates is the standard cure for inflation. Higher interest rates will be a significant problem for the entire economy. (It is perhaps easiest seen in the adverse impact that it will have on the housing market.) At the end of the last round of Quantitative Easing, both the stock and bond markets reacted negatively. I expect that, although the economy is on slightly stronger ground now, both will once again react negatively.

This is all happening at the same time that we are attempting to face up to our debt problem and are entering the 2012 election cycle. It will be interesting to see how the public reacts to the emerging economic realities of 2011. I presume that liberals will want to continue the policies that got us into this mess, while conservatives will continue to press for a change in course. In the process, unfortunately, most of the thunder and lightening of the debate will be devoted to whose fault it is. Anyone who has read any of my postings will understand that I dislike Mr. Obama's economic policies, but please know that the fundamental problems that we face are not just his fault. Previous administrations and congresses, Republican and Democrat, share in the blame. I focus my ire on Mr. Obama only because he is in the chair right now and he is the one that must start fixing the problem.

As we consider our political future we must remember that the reason we are in this mess is because we have over spent and are over spending. That not only can not continue - it will not continue. That is a fact of economic life. The only question is how the overspending comes to an end. Whether we do it sensibly or have it forced upon us, a la Greece. I advocate getting our spending under control right now so that we will have the kind of future that we all want. Politicians talk about protecting our children's future. I agree with that objective, but I assure you that we are also talking about our own immediate future. In fact, overspending is already adversely impacting our lives. It is stupid, and we are doing it to ourselves.

Libya is a Mess

2011-04-21T07:13:00.000-07:00

Libya remains a mess. As a number of us pointed out at the outset of this adventure (see previous Libya posts), equivocation about objectives, lack of applying sufficient force soon enough, and confusion within our alliance guaranteed that we would be where we are right now. President Obama has told us that we went into Libya for humanitarian reasons, yet more people are dying now than would have if we had stayed out, and the long term dislocation that is going on in infrastructure and interpersonal relations is far greater than would have been the case absent our involvement. I don't like Gaddafi and agree with most that Libya and the rest of the world would be a better place if he were not in control of that country, but this is not the way to get rid of him.

Libya is another example of this administration's amateurism, and it is understandably stimulating further concern among our allies and delight within the ranks of our enemies. My assumption continues to be that Mr. Obama is sincere in trying to do what he believes is just and right. In the case of Libya, I assume that he did not want to get involved, but pressure from France and Britain forced his hand. Britain in particular would be hard to turn down, given their loyal support of this country in enumerable international conflicts over many decades. I am not privy to the innermost workings of all of this, but I assume that Secretary of State Clinton was right in the middle of planning and executing this policy. My impression is that she helped craft this policy and that not only surprises me, but also disappoints me. I had thought her to be a wiser person.

So where do we go now? Mission creep is, of course, alive and well. More French and British boots are being put on the ground. The rebel force is being supplied by Britain, France, the United States and the United Nations. Interestingly, the United Nations is also trying to establish a relief office in Tripoli. Various organizations are attempting to broker peace negotiations between the two sides. Meanwhile, Gaddafi's forces continue to find effective ways to pound rebel positions and more and more people realize how limited air power is in a situation like this. All the while, the White House is attempting to say that we are no longer really involved, having handed the problem off to NATO.

The rest of the world has a different view of what is going on and it is not flattering to the United States. At best we are seen as bumbling idealists (and that may be close to the truth). At worst we are an increasingly helpless Gulliver being tied down by increasingly numerous Lilliputian challenges (and that too may be true). This particular case of ineptitude is almost certainly going to do more to weaken our relations with Europe than almost anything else going on right now except our debt problem. At some point our unwillingness to fully support the Libyan effort is going to cause our British allies to ask where we were when they needed us. Given that they were alongside us when the going got tough in Korea and VietNam and Afghanistan and Iraq as well as countless other conflicts around this troubled world, I am very glad that I do not have to answer that question face to face with a Brit.

How we purport ourselves in the world is vitally important to our welfare. This administration is not doing a good job in managing our foreign relations and I fault both our president and our secretary of state. It is another reason why we must elect more intelligent leadership in 2012.

Debt Ceiling Battle 2

2011-04-18T07:35:00.000-07:00

John Boehner appears to have managed the Continuing Resolution fight correctly. The Tea Party is howling that the cuts were not enough, but the government continues to function, and some real reductions were made in President Obama's purse. Some liberals may be smirking that the cuts did not damage any of the President's priority programs, but that is the nature of a compromise. Although there are important differences between conservatives and liberals about government programs that is not presently the crucial fight. It is important, but the critical fight is over spending and debt, not health care or high speed rail. We must solve the debt problem before we can argue about how to spend what money we have left over.

The Continuing Resolution was child's play compared to what is now before us. In the Continuing Resolution squabble, I urged compromise because it was not the critical fight. I still urge compromise, but the negotiating parameters for an acceptable compromise are far more limited. This battle is made more complicated because it is composed of two parts - debt ceiling and budget. It is of sufficient importance that it very well may result in one or more government shutdowns. The outcome will decide the 2012 presidential election and that will determine the fate of our country over the succeeding four years.

President Obama has laid out his position which includes minor cuts in spending, an increase in the debt ceiling, and higher taxes. He appears to honestly believe that policy would redistribute wealth sufficiently to solve many if not all of the inequalities that exist within our country. I absolutely do not agree with this philosophy (see earlier postings), but do agree completely with the President that his approach will destroy the America that we have now. I give him credit for sticking to his ideals - he is still after the change that he promised in his campaign.

I honestly believe that we are at an inflection point in the history of the United States. I do not think that we can blindly acquiesce to the kind of change that our president advocates. For this reason, I am very sympathetic with Tea Party views regarding the debt ceiling and the forthcoming budget. If I were to assign adjectives, I would designate President Obama's position as radical and Paul Ryan's position as conservative in the sense of protecting the America that is still the envy of the world. I really do not like the change that the President wants to impose on us. It is very bad for America.

Debt Ceiling Battle

2011-04-11T07:33:00.000-07:00

The next question is how big an increase will President Obama request? If it is on the smallish side, it might get approved more easily, but it may not be enough to see him through to November 6, 2012. He would then have to come back to Congress just before the next presidential elections and that would probably be a political mistake. For that reason, those inside the beltway are betting that it will have to be a large increase. That should make it even more difficult for the Tea Party and most of the rest of America to accept.

I am not sure that Mr. Boehner can pull it off, but I hope that he can wrestle things around so that we keep the increase as small as possible and leverage it as much as possible to get presidential agreement to the deep cuts in the 2012 budget that are necessary. It is important that we also continue to educate the public about the very real problems that face our economy. I suggest that Paul Ryan and his charts are on the right track, but we must stay alert to any and all attempts by liberals to play down the threat posed by our debt. Those efforts must be met head on with facts, not yelling. They must not be ignored as just being liberal trash talk that then stimulates equally stupid conservative trash talk.

The defunding of Obama Care is inevitably going to come up again in these negotiations, just as it did in the fight over the Continuing Resolution. I want to see Obama Care eliminated, and I do not mind seeing it included in the debt ceiling negotiations, but I do not want to see it made a real sticking point for the conservative side. How we get rid of Obama Care is important for a lot of reasons. No matter what conservatives think about it, a lot of Americans are still attracted, at least in part, to at least some of it's provisions. The very best solution I can imagine would be for the Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional. Perhaps Mr. Boehner could convince the President to expedite the Court's consideration of the issue as one of the prices that he has to pay for having the debt ceiling increased.

The debt ceiling is an important tactical engagement in a larger, far more important, strategic effort. The real task is getting America back to financial solvency. In order to accomplish that, we must make progress not only in the 2012 budget, but in at least a few after that one. In order to accomplish the goal of financial solvency, we must convince a majority of Americans that the path that we advocate is the right one for our country. All of these votes are tactically important, but they mean next to nothing if we do not get the bulk of this country thinking that the conservative path is the right one. We should not just yell louder than our opponent. We should continue to talk to the facts.

Continuing Resolution Compromise

2011-04-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

Thank you John Boehner and Harry Reid. Assuming that you hold it together and pass the necessary legislation next week, I see yesterday's Continuing Resolution compromise to be exactly what we needed at this point in time. Although I am not a fan of Harry Reid, I give him full credit for his part in the process. I am a fan of John Boehner and I very much appreciate his management of the conservative side of this process. I thank the voters of this country for giving Boehner the necessary muscle to pull this off. I don't yet see any evidence that the President did much of anything that was useful.

Now that this minutia is hopefully behind us, we can go on to the real problems that face us - the 2012 budget and the debt ceiling. The two are inextricably linked, but the debt ceiling will need to be addressed before the inevitable budget brawl is decided. According to the people that watch this sort of thing, we will probably hit the debt ceiling sometime next month. No matter what any politician on either side of the aisle says, we will have to raise the debt ceiling. Not to do so would have catastrophic consequences both here and abroad. Period.

My presumption is that the more conservative politicians like Michelle Bachman will argue that we should "keep their feet to the fire" and refuse to raise the debt ceiling. Their argument will be that we have already borrowed more than we can afford. If the debt ceiling is raised, the Obama Administration will just go on spending and our problem will get worse. That is unfortunately true, but the real solution is to rein in spending not default on our debt. One of the very unfortunate reasons we need to borrow more is to get the money to pay the interest on our existing debt.

Messaging is very important in the debt ceiling fight. Conservatives should work hard, very hard, to do two things. First, keep the increase as small as possible. Make certain that we do not do anything to damage our fiscal reputation, but do not give President Obama any more money than absolutely necessary to accomplish that objective. Second, continue to educate the American public about the financial mess that this country is in. In the process of doing this, we need to stick to the facts and avoid hyperbole.

I recognize that folks like Bachman will take an extreme view in this discussion, but hopefully we can filter that stuff out of the discussion. It is the kind of theatre that she used when refusing to vote for the recent Continuing Resolution compromise while expressing her confidence that we would get an acceptable deal. In any case, the real fight is the budget fight and that is where we need to keep our focus. Michelle and her Tea Party friends will probably make much more sense in that one.

Government Shutdown

2011-04-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

I don't agree with much of anything Harry Reid stands for, but I take my hat off to him for being an effective politician. To the extent that he is able to cast the looming governmental shutdown as being because of other than fiscal reasons, he is effectively making the case that Republicans are not serious about fiscal responsibility. The so-called riders that he claims are part of the Republican demands are policy issues not fiscal (abortion etc). His claim that the two sides have agreed to the amount of money to be cut and are now wrangling over policy issues will hurt the conservative cause with a lot of independent voters if there is a governmental shutdown. Because the actual talks are being held behind closed doors we do not know what is really going on. It is another case of the public being influenced by the spin doctors, not the substance of the issue.

Hopefully, the actual situation is different from that which Senator Reid is projecting. If the Republicans are, in fact, inserting policy issues into the Continuing Resolution fight it is almost certainly because of pressure from over zealous Tea Party members in and out of Congress. Hopefully Speaker Boehner can eliminate those demands before the midnight deadline and reach a compromise with Majority Leader Reid. If that actually irritates those Tea Party members, I say shame on them. If, on the other hand, it is just part of the inevitable kabuki play that is American politics, then no problem. Speaker Boehner is in a critical seat at a critical time in the history of this nation. What he does today will not, in and of itself, decide the outcome of the 2012 elections, but it will certainly contribute significantly.

I continue to urge conservatives to compromise on the continuing resolution and fight hard for a sensible 2012 budget that actually sets a downward trend to government spending. The Continuing Resolution is the wrong fight. (See previous post on this subject for full rationale.)

DOJ Website Design Issues

2011-04-04T19:46:00.000-07:00

The fact that General Eric Holder took the stars and stripes off of the United States Department of Justice's web site irritates me, but is not, in and of itself, a reason to replace him as Attorney General. I am not even particularly mad at him for highlighting a quote that, for some, implies his affinity for the union movement. I certainly don't have any problem with the quote itself: "The common law derives from the will of mankind, issuing from the life of the people, framed by mutual confidence, and sanctioned by the light of reason." As I understand it, no one is really sure who first said it, but it has been used by a lot of good people over the years and I believe is chiseled into the facade of the Justice Building.

There is an email campaign underway to bring these transgressions to the attention of those who are expected to vote in 2012. I wish that same amount of effort would be focused on the very real problems that are far, far more important then the top of a web site page. There is no question that Mr. Holder is well left of the political center. There is no question that he should be removed from office in 2012, but the top of his website is not high up in the list of reasons. This kind of thing may be red meat for the hard right, but it is not what conservatives should be focused on. All this sort of quibbling does is to stimulate liberal pundits to find something dumb that a conservative has done recently. There then follows a schoolyard full of name calling, but little or no real thought.

Mr. Obama's administration is in the process of ruining America. He is engaged in a lot of really unintelligent policies, but the principal problem that faces this country is that we are actually, perhaps irreparably, going broke. We have daunting national problems that we have never faced before and some others that we have refused to face. We must find a way to compromise, repeat compromise, our way through these next few budget cycles so that we can continue to enjoy a strong America. Yelling at each other about web site design is distracting, but not useful. After we have the budget under control I am willing to debate things like the top of DOJ's website pages, but even then I would suggest that there are a couple of other subjects that might take precedence.

People, this situation is serious. We need to stay focused.

I Miss America

2011-04-02T11:22:00.000-07:00

Daniel Patrick Moynihan is reputed to have argued that culture, not politics, determined the future of a given country and people. Assuming, as I do, that this is correct, we need to try to determine what is happening in our culture in order to glimpse our political future. As I look at the cultural life of modern America, I have to constantly remind myself that I am part of the older generation and that, at least in part, colors my view of what is going on around me. America is changing and it is understandable that those of us who grew up in different surroundings are uneasy about the changes.

Having made that disclaimer, I also have to confess that I am not encouraged by what I see happening. My benchmarks are mostly from the 1950s. To make an intelligent dialogue even more difficult, most of the people who read these words only know that as ancient history. In as much as history is always at the mercy of the historian, I should note that the current popular view of that period is not what I remember. It has been written by those involved in the changing scene about which I have questions.

From my perspective, our culture is creating a mindset in the American people that is unduly emphasizing the following characteristics: greed, immorality, pessimism, lassitude, and impatience. All of these were, of course, alive and well in the 1950s, but they were not the dominant characteristics of our culture. As I see it, they are, today, on the road to being the driving force in our lives and I think that is dangerous to our well-being. I believe that the cultural fibers that hold us together as a people are being weakened as a result.

In the middle of the last century, Norman Rockwell's paintings sold magazines, but today, his images are used to typecast an outmoded way of life. Religion used to be respected, but today it is definitely passe in an ever widening segment of our society. We used to believe that America was a huge melting pot where hard working people mix together to bring out the best in all of us. Today, we see it necessary to maintain individual cultures and accept second languages. It used to be that we respected moral people and actually believed that a deal was a deal. Today, there are organizations that help people squirm out of legal contracts and it is regarded as "smart" to walk away from a legal agreement if it makes economic sense. Etc., etc., etc.

There are a lot of reasons why all of this is happening, but technology is certainly one of the more important. Advances in transportation and communication make it possible for us to live anywhere we choose. Many of the old restraints on how we lived our lives have been removed by these advances. Because we are now infinitely mobile, the old lady down the street's opinion of us is much less important - in fact, we are invisible to one another. We can be immoral (however that is currently defined) and get away with it. Facebook and Twitter make it possible to associate with like-minded people whether they are representative of those around us or not. This minimizes the importance of compromise and makes us intellectually mobile to compliment our physical mobility.

In small town America there were fewer beggars than there are in America today. In those long gone days, the community knew the individual. Scams were more easily detected. Real need was more often addressed effectively. Today, it is cool to give a dollar to a beggar, whether one suspects that he or she is scamming us or not, but it is not necessary to find a way to help that individual in any real way. That is the government's responsibility. This is America and all individuals are owed a good life whether they work hard or not. In fact, working hard is not cool. "Smart" is cool. Me is the definition of our culture.

Norman Rockwell's America had problems, but, in my view, it was a much better place than where we appear to be headed. I recognize that my concerns are not cool and, thus, are not relevant to "smart" America. I should just get one of those bumper stickers - "I miss America."

Tahir Square Again

2011-04-01T09:12:00.000-07:00

A group of students have gone back into Tahir Square in Cairo in an effort to maintain their influence in the political process. Some among them are calling for the removal of Mubarak supporters from the current government and all of them are increasingly worried about the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood. The so-called students fear that they will be unable to organize in time for the forthcoming elections. It will be interesting to see how the Egyptian military responds to these demonstrations and even more interesting to watch the Muslim Brotherhood. I would imagine that there are a lot of very dramatic and very intense debates going on in all three groups. When the history of the revolution is written, this will be determined to be a critical time.

It is, of course, impossible to know how the political situation in Egypt will develop over the years ahead, but the safe bet is that it will be a turbulent process. I presume that, if left to their own devices, the military will do everything in their power to maintain a secular state that they can control without having to actually occupy all of the civil governmental positions. The Muslim Brotherhood will work for an Islamic state that they control through the clergy and the mosques, a la Iran. The student group, which is, in reality, an amalgam of everybody else, will push for something close to genuine democracy. National elections will appear to the outside world to be the focus of the battle, but the real battle for the future of Egypt will take place in the neighborhoods. Coercion will be relevant, but interpersonal conversation will be the dominant battleground.

I have a great respect for the power of the gun and do not lightly dismiss the influence of the Egyptian military, but I know of no military government that has been able to hold on to power once public aspirations fail to be met, as appears to be the case presently in Egypt. I also know of no rag tag bunch of idealists that have been able to stand up to an organized group such as the Muslim Brotherhood and simultaneously invent a functioning democratic government. If I had to place a bet in Las Vegas on which of the three groups would emerge victorious I would bet on the Muslim Brotherhood. My assumption is that they are already well along, not only preparing for the next election, but, even more importantly, working to solidify their influence in every community in Egypt.

The frustrating part of all of this is how little the United States can do to impact this process. President Obama appears to have concluded that the radicalization of North Africa and the Middle East is inevitable, and we must find ways to cozy up to extremists like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood. By so doing, he feels that we can modify their behavior and thus minimize the harm done to ourselves. The President has made Green Energy a principal interest and is attempting to convince America that it must continue to spend in order to meet the challenges of the future. I assume that he foresees a day when all countries in the Middle East and Africa are controlled by radicals and the supply of oil that currently fuels our economy is no longer as available as is the case today.

There is logic to the argument that we need green energy, but not that we should attempt to pacify religious zealots. I do not believe that appeasement is the best route for this country to take, nor do I believe that it is the best outcome for the rest of the world. I don't find any of the countries that are being run by radical theocracies to be responsible members of the international community and I certainly do not see those governments as being good for their own citizens. We are in serious trouble at the present time because we did not do the necessary earlier. We can not change that, but we should not just give up because of past failures. We must find ways to blunt the momentum of radical theology in this critical part of the world. In the process we must understand that the real battleground is not in the deserts of Libya, but rather in the conversations on the Arab Street.

This is a much bigger problem than just Egypt. It extends throughout all of North Africa and the Middle East and, if not addressed now, will certainly face us in other parts of the Muslim world in the future. In Egypt, I would sit down with the current rulers of that country, all of them military men that America has supported for their entire adult lives, and talk turkey - literally. I would use Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as my example. Ataturk was a military man. He created a functioning secular democracy in a Muslim country. I would do my very best to convince my Egyptian military contacts that it is in their long term interest to not make the mistakes that Mubarak made in attempting to control the government. Somehow they must ensure that the so-called students win this fight with the Muslim Brotherhood. I presume that we are talking along these lines, and I presume that at least a few in the Egyptian military see the logic of the argument, but I worry about how determined we or they are. My worry stems in large part from my view of President Obama's attraction to a policy of appeasement.

Donald Trump and the "Muslim Problem"

2011-03-31T09:11:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about the fact that Mr.Trump has reinvigorated the birth certificate issue and I am tending toward making it another reason why I do not support him in his bid to be the Republican candidate for President of this country. I have stayed away from this issue ever since some on the hard right attempted to make it a part of the campaign against President Obama last time around, fearing that to engage it would give it legs. It is a very dangerous issue not just for the President, but also for this country. Unfortunately, it now looks like it is going to reemerge in the 2012 electoral campaign. I find that most unfortunate.

There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and thus is qualified to be our President. There is also no doubt in my mind that his father was a follower of the Muslim faith. My assumption is that the birth certificate states that the child's religion is Muslim. It is also my presumption that the adult Obama saw his association with Islam as a child to be detrimental to his political career. As an adult, he has made repeated statements to the effect that he is a Christian, and I see no reason to doubt him on that score. He has a long and very public record of having been associated with Reverend Wright's church. That association opened another can of worms, but it too is understandable, given his work within the black community in Chicago.

Please understand that I do not want Mr. Obama to be our President, but my reasons do not relate to the word that his parents wrote on a piece of paper in his infancy. Neither do they relate to the fact that he attended a Muslim school in Indonesia as a child. In fact, I agree with him that the Muslim's evening call to prayer is a beautiful sound. I think that he made a serious mistake when he tried to cover all of this up because it raises questions about his core values. That is about the only part of this that does concern me, but my main opposition to him is for the bad things that he is doing to this country as President.

When I first heard The Donald raise the issue with the ladies on The View, I assumed that he just got his mouth out ahead of his brain, but the fact that he is continuing the campaign makes it clear that it is a calculated part of his bid for the Republican nomination. I note too that he is loud and clear that he opposed the Ground Zero Mosque and agrees with Bill O'Reilly that America has a "Muslim Problem." I believe that this is an effort to appeal to the current visceral fear of Islam that is alive and well in the body politic. This is not what or who we need to lead the conservative cause in 2012.

We do not have a "Muslim Problem" in America just because a large number of very dangerous radical Islamic terrorists are attacking us. If that were to be true then we do indeed have a "Christian Problem" when Christian idiots shoot people in schools, post offices, and super markets. Heck, some of them even cite the bible when they kill people, just as the radical Islamists cite the Koran. That there are large numbers of Americans that are unable to distinguish between our true enemies and those that are not is depressing enough, but that we have people who want to lead us into more of that kind of lunacy is dangerous.

The Continuing Resolution

2011-03-31T07:48:00.000-07:00

If it is true that Vice President Biden and John Boehner have agreed to $73 billion in cuts to the non-existent present year budget, I say that is good enough. I know that the Tea Party is calling for $100 billion, but the idea that conservatives would shut the government down over $27 billion is ridiculous. Everybody in America understands that the previous Congress failed, for the first time in the history of this country, to even propose, let alone pass, a budget. Everybody knows that because of that dereliction of duty we are presently forced to run our government a few days at a time with continuing resolutions. Everybody knows that our debt is currently running in the trillions of dollars because of Obama's profligate spending. That should be enough to turn the Democrats out in 2012. Why shut down government and thus give them sufficient ammunition to further confuse the real issue facing our country?

Stop and think about it - please. It is true that $27 billion is an awful lot of money, but as a fraction of our national debt it is invisible and will not save us from anything other than the pyric victory of doing what some conservatives promised in order to get elected. If you do the math, and depending on the particular astronomical number you use for our debt, it is somewhere in the vicinity of .0018%. I am a conservative, and hawkish on the debt problem. I want to actually cut spending and start reducing the national debt. We will not do that by insisting on a cut of $27 billion. We have much bigger (and more difficult) fish to fry before we get our fiscal house in order. And no matter what we do right now, it is going to take us a lot longer than one continuing resolution to accomplish fiscal sanity. We desperately need to elect a conservative senate and, if at all possible, a conservative president in just under two years time. Let's not let anyone, least of all Howard Dean, succeed in painting conservatives as being unreasonable.

I do not believe that we can avoid a fight with the Democrats, but this $27 billion is not where we should be drawing lines in the shifting sands of Washington. The real fight will commence as soon as Paul Ryan unveils his new budget. He has promised to address entitlements in that budget and lay out a road map to solvency in the future. Assuming that his proposals are as good as I hope they are - that is the place to fight the good fight and win, lose, or draw, frame the election of 2012. We must remember that the problem is much too big to be resolved in one or two years. We need a conservative government in place after 2012 for at least four years and, preferably, for eight years. If we do not get that, a victory over $27 billion will not do much except prove that we are not any more serious about this stuff than are the people running the show at the present time.

I am not naive enough to believe everything that politicians on both sides of the aisle are saying right now, but I am not sure exactly where the kabuki play starts and stops. It is politically useful for the Tea Party to continue to howl for $100 billion and to bad mouth the House leadership for "caving" to the Vice President. It is even useful for people like Michelle Bachman to vote against the $73 billion compromise as long as the Republican whips have ensured that they have enough votes to pass the compromise. That provides Tea Party representatives cover with the people that elected them without giving the Democrats the substantive issue of shutting down the government. Assuming that John Boehner is able to pull that off, I say he is doing his job and deserves our appreciation. Unfortunately for him, the real fight starts next month when the new budget is officially unveiled. That will be one that books will be written about and will decide whether we go the way of Southern Europe or maintain our position as the most powerful economy on the planet.

When we do the movie, Jimmy Stewart should probably get the Boehner role.

Trump and the Birth Certificate

2011-03-29T09:13:00.000-07:00

I admire Donald Trump's success in real estate and agree with some of his frustrations concerning our present economic situation. I find some of his criticisms of the current administration to be right on target, but I do not believe that Republicans should continue to attack President Obama on the birth certificate issue. It is not that I am satisfied that the President was born in the United States as required by the constitution. All things being equal, I would like to see that issue cleared up. I admit that I share Mr. Trump's curiosity as to why the President has seen fit to spend millions of dollars to thwart that clarification.

My opposition to making this such a political issue, at this point in time, is that it is helpful to Mr. Obama's reelection campaign. I presume that from here on out, we will ask this question of all of our presidential candidates as a matter of course, and that is as it should be. By raising it now, we are energizing the President's base support and that is not an intelligent thing for conservatives to do. Elections are, unfortunately, partly a test of voter intensity on left and right. Whoopi Goldberg's point that we have never asked white men to show their birth certificate is not relevant in absolute terms, but it is extremely relevant in gut political terms. Why is it in the conservative interest to stimulate the political left?

I have long ago gotten over the fact that the American public did not ask enough questions of this man before we elected him. Among other things I am flabbergasted that we elected an individual to office that could not have gotten a job in the United States government that required a security clearance. His questionable associations with radical thinkers and activists would have raised too many questions. The birth certificate issue comes far down the list of my complaints about the decision to select him as our president, but the fact is that we elected him. We will not defeat him at the polls by poking a stick in the eye of his base supporters - even if it is deserved.

If, repeat if, we elect a better person to lead this country it will be because we make the case on the political issues that divide us. The key thing to keep in mind is that the middle of America is where that decision will be made. The so-called independent voter aligned with "weak" Democrats and Republicans will decide who our next president will be. Libya will be part of that debate, as will a number of other things, but President Clinton's oft-repeated political slogan highlights the principal issue - "its the economy stupid." Although we are currently focused on radiation in Japan and air strikes in North Africa, the most important thing looming on the near horizon is the dogfight over the budget.

Before I leave the subject of Mr. Trump's reported consideration of running for the office of president, let me make a heart-felt plea. Please do not. Like a similar request that I make of Mrs Palin and Mrs. Bachman, Mr. Trump is too divisive to be able to govern us effectively. I continue to think that we should draft Chris Christy. He is certainly smart enough to give Mr. Obama a run for his money in any debate, and more importantly he is right on the principal problems facing this country at the present time.

Libya - a legal approach.

2011-03-28T08:06:00.000-07:00

The United States, France, and Great Britain managed to get a resolution passed in the United Nations that called for a no fly zone. This was indeed an impressive diplomatic accomplishment and I would very much like to learn how it was done. Whatever magic was applied, the coalition obtained abstentions rather than opposition in the crucial Security Council vote from Russia, China, India, Brazil and Germany. Now, however, there is a rising tide of concern about the way in which the coalition is implementing the UN resolution. Coalition aircraft are attacking government ground units even when they are in retreat. We already have special operators on the ground with Gaddafi's opposition and are considering arming the rebels. Libyan government spokespersons are asking how those actions are consistent with the terms of a no fly zone. Coalition spokespeople take the position that they must destroy the Libyan capability to harm Gaddafi's domestic opponents else they are not protecting civilians in the long term. The inescapable logic of this rationale is regime change - something about which we continue to equivocate.

This type of debate is analogous to the litigious nature of our approach to problem resolution here in the United States. President Obama, a former law professor, has assigned the United Nations the authority to sanction military action. He has obtained a judgement from that international body and is in the process of implementing it. As questions arise, he quibbles with the words in true lawyerly fashion. There are a number of substantive problems with this approach. The ten members that voted for the resolution included the United States, France, Great Britain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Lebanon, Portugal, South Africa, Nigeria, and Gabon. This is not an impressive list of international supporters. In addition, the United States, France and Great Britain managed to get a favorable decision in support of a no fly zone from the Arab League. The Arab League is composed of a number of regimes that are under attack by their own people thus weakening the authority of that body. In addition, it is important to note that the coalition failed to get the support of the G8 even though the United States, France and Great Britain make up more than a third of that organization.

Another problem that I have with this policy is that President Obama saw fit to seek the authority of the United Nations, but he did not see it necessary to more fully discuss this action with the American people or our elected representatives in Congress. He did not act unlawfully here, but in my view he should have done more to seek public and congressional support before he acted. I am sure that he will argue that he did not have time to do more before he had to take off on his Latin American trip, but I would argue that he did have time and should have postponed his trip for a variety of reasons including the need for a more fulsome discussion here at home.

It may well be that the United Nations will someday take over responsibility for determining what is right and what is wrong in international affairs, but we are not yet at that point. In order to get there we would have to subordinate our own sovereignty to that of the United Nations. The idea that the UN is seen by anyone to be a real authority in this world is naive. There is no question that it is a useful forum to organize coalitions, but it is not the final authority to decide much of anything - certainly not the fate of Gaddafi. In the real world that authority comes from the weight of the coalition assembled and the determination of the members to accomplish a specific goal. We do not have a formidable coalition and we have not clearly articulated our goal. At best, we look confused. At worst we look like lawyers playing with guns.

The world is, unfortunately, still a morass populated with good and bad actors. Much as we wish it were not true, there are few, if any, real legal limits to the old adage that might makes right. The United States wants to do the right thing in Libya, but we are going about it too tentatively. In my view, we should have decided what needed to be done regarding Gaddafi a long time ago. If we decided that he had to go, we should have discussed this with our allies and developed a plan to accomplish it without requiring conventional military action. Among other things, this would have resulted in far fewer Libyan civilian casualties and would have cost much less in lives and treasure. Such an action would have also included a post Gaddafi plan that would have guaranteed British and French oil interests and might even have started the country on the road toward real democracy. Granted, we would have been criticized for illegally interfering in another sovereign country, but I see that as inevitable. Certainly the present approach is generating a great deal of serious criticism and I expect more to follow.

The role of social media in Libya.

2011-03-27T10:21:00.000-07:00

How much and what kind of a role does social media have in the revolutions presently going on around the world? I believe that Facebook and Twitter do indeed have an important tactical importance - they make it easier for like minded people to coordinate their activities. They also help in recruiting support for the revolution internally and abroad. Social media was not, however, the cause of any of these revolutions any more than was the telephone or the radio. The technology evolves, but the basic cause of revolution remains the same - discontent with the status-quo.

Once a revolution gets under way, the regime is in serious trouble, even if it succeeds in putting the current rebellion down for the time being. The only way to eliminate the threat entirely is to remove the discontent which is at the heart of the matter. For the same reason, it is not enough to just topple the existing regime. If the successor government does not do the things necessary to convince the population that the underlying causes of discontent are being acceptably addressed, a new rebellion will begin to smolder.

The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt have successfully toppled governments that were unacceptable to a large portion of their people and are now attempting to find their way toward creating governments that hopefully will be able to address the basic problems facing those countries. The problems that these revolutionaries face are enormous. The organization of their new government is very important and it is understandable that they are now primarily focused on that challenge. Who will sit in which governmental chair and how will he or she be selected? We can expect that all elements of the populace will be interested in that subject - including people who have objectives that we do not like.

In today's global economy, whether we like it or not, what happens in one part of the world impacts all parts. It is safe to predict that the turmoil that currently exists in the Middle East and North Africa will continue to give us very real problems no matter what form of government emerges from these chaotic revolutions. The principal reason for this is that endemic poverty in the region ensures the discontent that fosters revolution. Poverty is by no means the only cause, but, combined with unfulfilled aspirations, it is the root cause.

Today, we are bombing one faction in Libya in support of another faction. This is an attempt to apply a tactical solution to a strategic problem. It might or might not temporarily improve our tactical situation in the region, but it does not address the strategic challenge. Neither will much of anything that we do with either Twitter or Facebook. I am all for championing democracy, but if we want to protect ourselves from an ever more dangerous world we must deal with poverty throughout the world including right here in our own country. In order to accomplish this we must understand that we can not just throw money at the problem. We have to find ways to make that money effective. Until we do that we will continue to have to bomb people more than we like.

Libya - humanitarian ineffectiveness

2011-03-25T09:45:00.000-07:00

I continue to believe that President Obama was genuinely horrified by Gaddafi's efforts to kill all of his domestic opposition and genuinely wants to stop him for humanitarian reasons. The President did not think it through and has bungled the effort. In order to accomplish that goal, one would have to remove Gaddafi from power. Louis Farrakhan has a point when he asks President Obama "who the hell do you think you are?" A lot of folks in the international community have the same question and we need to carefully consider our answer. Does the United States have the right to decide which regime is legitimate and which is not?

Our own civil war comes to mind and I suppose that an outsider might accuse President Lincoln of having ordered the killing of far more people than Gaddafi. When is it ok for us to decide when we should intervene in the domestic affairs of another sovereign country? Our interventions in Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are also relevant to this discussion. The world is not a high school debating class. Morality does not often enter into these types of decisions. The reality is that in order to effectively intervene in another country's affairs one must bring as much of the rest of the world along with you as possible. Sometimes you need specific assets and always you need moral cover. This is one of the aspects of our adventure into the Libyan desert that has not been handled well.

Another problem that faces us is that inexperienced civilian leaders that have never been in conflict do not often understand the limitations of weapons of war. Anyone who thinks that air power alone can accomplish political objectives should stop a moment and really think about our aerial campaigns in Viet Nam, Bosnia, and Iraq. I will argue that those campaigns destroyed massive amounts of equipment and infrastructure but did not change our opponents' minds. It is even worse in this case, because apparently Secretary of Defense Gates was trying to talk Obama out of this stupidity. That an inexperienced community organizer would ignore his Secretary of Defense is inexcusable, ignorant, and one more excellent reason to vote this man out of office. If, as is rumored, Secretary of State Clinton supported this stupidity, I say shame on her.

We are now entering a phase of this adventure where Gaddafi's troops are in close combat with their less well armed opponents. Reportedly, in spite of President Obama's promise not to insert Americans on the ground, we have special operations personnel in Libya trying to help the revolutionaries. (Why this is not boots on the ground I don't know.) Certainly Gaddafi knows this so why do we continue to deny it? My guess is that we fear that it would be offensive to some of our vacillating allies as well as devastating to Obama's image at home. I am sure that the brave men that have been inserted with the revolutionaries are being asked for more modern weapons to defend against Gaddafi's troops. If we say yes, that is mission creep. If we say no, are we really being true to our humanitarian instincts?

We should also ask ourselves what Gaddafi is going to do next. My guess is that he will attempt to continue the Hatfield-McCoy feud with America that has been going on for decades. He bombs a nightclub in Berlin killing a couple of Americans, we bomb Tripoli killing his adopted daughter, he bombs the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, we invade Libya. It is now his turn. My guess is that he has assets and money outside of Libya and will use them to hurt us if he possibly can. I wonder if the President factored that into his decision. If he did and did not see the necessity of physically removing this tinhorn dictator from power he made a decision that imperials American interests and probably American lives as well. If he did not think it through then this is one more reason why he is incapable of fulfilling the responsibilities inherent in the position he holds.

Libya - What Now?

2011-03-24T08:32:00.000-07:00

President Obama has repeatedly stated that our military intervention in Libya is for humanitarian reasons. He has equivocated as to whether we intend to remove Gaddafi from power, but I presume that he wants to do so. He has refused to be drawn into a discussion as to why we intervened in this particular humanitarian crisis when there are so many others active at any given moment in time around the world. Some of his supporters point out that Gaddafi was behind the Lockerbie tragedy and that makes the difference. The President has mentioned it in passing, but has not made it the principal cause for his decision. I continue to believe that he reluctantly acted in Libya because of pressure from our European and Arab allies.

Using military force for humanitarian reasons is a dicey proposition. Using it halfheartedly as we are trying to do in Libya is ridiculous. There is a very good chance that fewer people would have been killed if we had left things alone in Libya. Granted, they would have mostly been members of tribes not loyal to Gaddafi, but the total number of people killed would probably have been less than will be the case after we get through trying to manage the revolution with missiles and fighter planes. We must face the fact that we have taken sides with a disparate group of tribesmen that we know nothing about because we don't like the guy in charge of the country. We see blunt military intervention as being better than targeted clandestine action against Gaddafi the individual because it can be cloaked with a legal rationale developed in the United Nations.

Now we face a number of practical problems in that far off place. Gaddafi, at least to this point in time, shows no inclination to call it quits. (His worldwide unpopularity makes it difficult for him to quit even if he wanted to do so.) His military units are continuing to attack everywhere that they can. By closing with the revolutionary forces inside of populated areas wherever possible, coalition air assets are much less effective. They can be used to cut off resupply and occasionally pick off a tank or an artillery unit, but they are far less effective in stopping the very personal killing that is surely going on between the various antagonists. The unfortunate example of Americans reportedly shooting revolutionaries attempting to help our two downed airmen is, unfortunately, an excellent example of how difficult it is to tell friend from foe when you are flying above them.

How all of this ends is, of course, not known. We apparently do not even know how we want it to end. I presume that after spending huge amounts of money and after the people on the ground get tired of killing each other, things will quiet down a bit. Then what do we do? Removing Gaddafi opens the door to possible anarchy which would benefit Al Quaida, whether the revolutionaries are already allied with Bin Laden or not. We clearly do not need another Somalia, nor would that outcome be consistent with our humanitarian concerns. My guess is that Secretary Gates was correct when he warned that Libya could be a tar baby. (Not a particularly sensitive comment, but probably an accurate one.)

Now talk to me about how this impacts our fiscal situation.

President Obama and Libya

2011-03-22T09:44:00.000-07:00

The Libyan situation is a royal mess. We don't know anything about the people we are trying to help and we don't know how we are going to get rid of the one guy we know we don't like. We are arguing with our allies about pretty much everything including the objective of our military campaign, the command structure, and the rules of engagement. Worse yet, we still have to discuss and craft the exit strategy. It is a clear case of an amateur president attempting to wing it with tomahawk missiles and F-15 airplanes.

Here at home, the president is not doing any better. The left is criticizing him for about everything from immorality to failure to consult with congress. The right is increasingly critical of his ineffectiveness. Individual critics span the spectrum from Senators John McCain and Richard Lugar to Louis Farrakhan and Michael Moore. Democratic representatives Dennis Kucinich and Maxine Waters are questioning the constitutionality of the president's actions. Pundits are questioning the political wisdom of the Libyan decision and are suggesting that it could come back to bite him in 2012.

About the only place that there is euphoria is in the beleaguered cities that Gaddafi's military are pounding. Understandably, the revolutionaries that are left alive are happy to see the devastation that is being unleashed on the government's tanks and artillery positions. Equally understandably, they are attempting to take advantage of this to press their attack. It will be interesting to see if the allies continue to provide air cover for their attack. Clearly, the French want to do just that, but President Obama is adamant that we only want to stop Gaddafi from killing his own people.

Internationally, Turkey, China, Russia, and the Arab League are increasingly worried about the situation. Vladimir Putin has branded it as a crusade and several well-meaning Europeans have thoughtlessly used this politically loaded term in describing it. We can be sure that Al Quaida will do everything in their power to amplify those comments. The fact that Libya has the largest oil reserves in North Africa will also be used to explain why the West has acted in Libya rather than in any of the other countries undergoing revolutions.

It remains to be seen how all of this will impact our relations with the people living in North Africa and the Middle East. I fear that it is probably not going to play well in the long run. Much will depend on the end game of the military campaign and the events that follow. For those folks who like the ultimate result, President Obama will be a hero. For those who do not, he will remain a villain. Here at home, I do not see how it can help his popularity with anyone. As for me, I continue to think of him as a dilettante out to lunch in South America.

When we make the movie, only Peter Sellers could do the role justice.

We are not as smart as we think we are.

2011-03-21T10:28:00.001-07:00

The current situation in North Africa and the Middle East illustrates the complexities of international relations in today's world and the limitations of our power and influence. There are public demonstrations against regimes going on in virtually every country in the region. Some of the governments are friendly to the United States and some are not. Our leadership does not really know much if anything about any of the amorphous groups opposing these regimes yet we feel compelled to pick and choose who we support and who we oppose. President Obama, commenting on the situation, tells us that we should not fear change, but given his definition of change as it applies to the United States, I do not draw any great comfort from his statement.

In Tunisia, our leadership not only did not see it coming, it was over before we understood what was going on. In Libya, we are applying military force to change a regime that we don't like. In Bahrain, we are standing by while our allies apply force to maintain a regime that we like. In Syria, we watch hopefully as regime opponents tentatively challenge a regime that we don't like. In Yemen, we see our military assistance being used to sustain a regime that we like. In Iran, we stand by and wring our hands while religious zealots kill opponents of a regime that we not only don't like, but actually fear. In all of these countries, our leadership knows very little about the people involved and have very few levers to influence the outcome - yet the whole world looks to us to "do the right thing." There are a lot of problems facing us in today's world, but I suggest that one of them is technology.

As technology has improved over the years, we have applied it to improve the efficiency of our government. Today, our president is somewhere in Latin America eating dinner with some foreign leader. Our Secretary of Defense is in Russia eating dinner with another important foreign leader, and goodness only knows where our Secretary of State is. We have military men and women engaged in combat in several difficult places and a lot of civil unrest going on in a lot of fairly important places, but no worries - we have secure video conferencing. The president and his top lieutenants can get together anytime they so choose. With all of this travel, our leaders actually believe that they understand the situation in the various countries of interest to them at the moment. With video conferencing they think that they are in control of things. Both assumptions are incorrect.

Before all of this technology was developed, we had a system in place that provided a better flow of information than currently exists. It was by no means a perfect system, but it was better than what we have today. In every country of the world there were embassies that provided a flow of reporting that in most cases accurately analyzed the political/economic/ security situation in that particular country. These embassies provided the principal contact with our country and the ambassador was usually quite influential. Overall, our leaders had a better understanding of small out of the way places like Libya than we do today. As technology improved, it was increasingly possible for ambassadors and embassies to be bypassed whenever Washington so wished. By the time that Vietnam and Henry Kissinger came along, the State Department had been eviscerated and the embassies were beginning to be routinely bypassed all over the world.

Overly centralizing the management of foreign relations is one of the reasons that we are in the situation that we find ourselves today. It is by no means the only reason, but it is an important one. My guess is that in some obscure lock box somewhere in Washington there are obscure reports written by line Foreign Service and Central Intelligence officers that are very relevant to the problems that we face in these obscure little places all over the world. It is too bad that none of our leaders know that they exist let alone have factored them into their decision making. When things get hot in a particular place the line foreign service officer is pushed aside so that the big boys can get in and take care of things. That frequently results in a less than sophisticated set of remedies.

Presidential Travel Junkets

2011-03-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

One of the characteristics of this administration that I worry about is the propensity of it's leaders to travel around the globe on goodwill junkets. I am not opposed to travel, but there is an awful lot going on right now, and efficient as the modern airplane command posts are, I think that it would be far better for a lot of reasons if our leaders would stay closer to home. It would be fascinating to see Secretary Clinton's travel history, but I would not be surprised if it showed that she was out of the country far more than in it. President Obama must be setting records of a sort as well.

Right now, President Obama is in Latin America with the stated objective of improving our relations with those very important countries and increasing our trade opportunities in the region. Those are important objectives and a presidential visit can help accomplish those goals, but it is not a critical element in the process. I would rather see him stay in Washington where he can have more frequent face to face contact with the men and women who are attempting to deal with a multitude of issues vital to the future of this country. Libya is not the most important of those issues, but it is illustrative of the problem. Decide to intervene militarily in a country that we know very little about and take off to visit with folks in Brazil.

Today, Amr Moussa, the Head of the Arab League, criticized the military operations that he had earlier supported because it killed the civilians that he wanted to protect. The French Foreign Minister has indicated that the objectives of the current military operations do not necessarily include the ouster of Gaddafi. Secretary Clinton has said that it does. The President has obfuscated on the issue. Clearing this kind of confusion up is important and can not be consistently accomplished without adequate staffing and careful coordination. Public exposure of important officials forces them to comment with or without that staffing. Worse yet, this is only the symptomatic side of things. More important is the disconnect between the principal and the staff on the substance of the issues. Do we really know what we are trying to do in Libya? Unfortunately, I think not.

In addition to Libya, the flying command post and the President are dealing with a bewildering array of challenges stemming from the recent disruption of the third most important economy in the world and how that impacts our own economy as well as our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran's efforts to obtain nuclear weapons and delivery systems, Israel and Palestine, world hunger and starvation, and on and on. And then there is our domestic agenda. Our system of government requires our president to be the ultimate decision-maker on all of these issues. There are twenty four hours in a day. The amount of time available for careful consideration and intelligent decision is severely limited. It should not be wasted on travel of marginal value.

Libya - Mr. Obama's Iraq?

2011-03-19T11:08:00.000-07:00

President Obama has decided to support a United Nations edict designed to oust Gaddafi from power in Libya. It is too soon for us to know how he came to this decision, but here is what I think took place. I believe that he did not want to get involved in any of the North African and Middle Eastern revolutions that have been going on since the end of last year. I believe that he wants to focus on his policy of domestic change inside this country and probably believes that it is wrong for America to continue to play a dominant role in international affairs. I believe that he feels that it is in America's interest to have other countries pick up more of the responsibility for international stability. (See previous post.) In order to accomplish this, he feels that it is important that America not be too aggressive in taking the lead in situations such as exist in Libya today.

My guess is that there were some pretty hot and heavy exchanges in the White House during the past few weeks as more and more Libyans were annihilated by Gaddafi's mercenaries. I suspect that a number of Middle Eastern allies as well as both France and Great Britain were putting pressure on Washington to "do something." I presume that it was pointed out to the President that Gaddafi was behind the Lockerbie tragedy and thus was an enemy of America. Understandably, Secretary of Defense Gates was probably advising caution given the fact that we are currently engaged militarily in Afghanistan and Iraq. All of the financial folks in Washington probably pointed out that we were broke and even limited conflict is expensive. Various Middle Eastern experts probably advised against "another war in a Muslim country." And certainly there were a number of liberal supporters of the president who advised against "going to war" on purely morale grounds. I'm not sure what finally convinced him to act, but it is clear to everybody that he really did not want to do anything.

President Obama's speech casts this decision as a humanitarian action designed to protect the Libyan people against a horrible dictator bent on denying them their human rights and killing them rather than debating with them. This will probably make a few in Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the region ask questions as to how they qualify for a no fly zone, but I suppose that the president feels that is Secretary Clinton's problem, at least for now. The president's speech also made it clear that we would not put American soldiers on the ground in Libya. Instead, we would support others with our unique assets. No one outside of Washington knows exactly what that means, but everyone speculates that it will be air and naval support of French and British and Arab military efforts. There is some minor confusion as to whether we will insist on Gaddafi giving up power, but I presume that will be cleared up in the very near future. President Obama indicated that we were not interested in going beyond stopping the current mayhem, but that is easier said than done. We don't even know who the revolutionaries are, but Mr. Gaddafi claims that they are tools of Al Quaida. Sorting that out will be interesting and probably difficult - especially for well meaning folks who don't know the first thing about who is who in Libya.

Now the situation gets complicated. Libya's foreign minister announced an immediate cease fire, but apparently Libya's army, led by Gaddafi's sons, continued to attack revolutionary positions so French airplanes took to the air. I can only imagine that things on the ground are really ugly and very confused. How do we stop Gaddafi's military actions inside populated areas with air power without killing the civilians that we are trying to protect? I presume that, with enough ordinance, Gaddafi's tanks and artillery will be silenced, but I suspect that person to person killing will continue for some time to come as old scores get settled with knives and guns and clubs. I also guess that eventually Gaddafi will either be killed or otherwise eliminated from the decision-making process. What will be our role in what comes next? It is pretty clear that we have very thin international support for this action. The United Nations decree is marred by the number of important countries that let it pass without supporting it. The Arab League's support is useful in the developed world, but much less so on the Arab Street where the various members face a rising tide of opposition from among their own people.

Domestically, here in the United States, it is only a matter of time before critics of Mr. Obama draw comparisons of his action in Libya with Mr. Bush's invasion of Iraq. Although there are obvious differences, in both cases we attacked a sovereign country without ourselves being attacked. In North Africa and the Middle East, no matter what we do, our actions are going to be used against us by our enemies. There is nothing that we can do about that fact of life, but we have to cope with it as best we can. Personally, I believe that if we were to go this route we should have acted far more quickly. By delaying the decision, we projected weakness and that encourages our enemies. Now that we are engaged, I hope that we will pursue Gaddafi's destruction as vigorously as possible, but I worry that we will attempt to do the minimum necessary - thus ensuring prolonged ineffectiveness. I do not believe that America has the option of fading back into the pack. I believe that we are stuck with world leadership and we should lead - for better or for worse.

Gaddafi and School Yard Bullies

2011-03-11T07:02:00.000-08:00

President Barack Obama has recently announced a campaign against school yard bullies in America. At the same time he is being criticized by many Americans for dithering, a la President Carter, with regard to the crisis in Libya. Indecision is indeed one of the possible explanations for his actions or lack thereof, but there are other possible explanations.

It is all a guessing game at this point, but I currently lean toward the thought that in all of his recent Middle Eastern and North African policy decisions the president is focused on giving up the role of world leader. Instead, he is attempting to deal with any and all violence through multilateral action, and is probably frustrated by the unresponsiveness of our European allies. Previous administrations facing similar challenges decided to lead and encourage allies to assist as best they could. President Obama appears to reject that approach and is, instead, endlessly discussing the situation with leaders in Geneva and the United Nations.

If I am right, it does not bode well for the Libyan rebels, whoever they are. Gaddafi's military currently appears to be gaining the upper hand and may even succeed in putting down the rebellion, but win, lose, or draw, a lot of people in Libya and in the rest of that part of the world see President Obama's policy as being helpful to a hated dictator. It will be easy for our enemies to explain to the man on the Arab street that this is because America needs Libya's oil more than it wants democracy.

Those readers who have read my previous posts know that I admire many of Mr. Obama's objectives and abhor most of the policies that he has fashioned to attain those objectives. If I am correct in my guess about the rationale for his policies in North Africa and the Middle East, this is another such instance. America should expect more help from the rest of the developed nations in dealing with international issues, but hanging Gaddafi's opponents out to dry is not the way to go about obtaining it.

Even more important than the fate of the Libyan rebels is the issue of America's proper role in the world. Libya is another in a long series of indicators that Mr. Obama is uncomfortable with the mantle of world leadership. I honestly believe that he is consciously working to reduce the importance of America. I am intellectually uncomfortable with that policy and more than a little angry. Our president should understand that there are bullies in the international school yard as well as here at home.

Income Redistribution

2011-03-09T08:21:00.000-08:00

We are in the midst of a fight over the budget, but the real issue is income redistribution. In Madison, Michael Moore said it best - "Wisconsin is not broke." What I presume that he meant was that there was still plenty of money in rich people's pockets - they just don't want to contribute what he considers to be their fair share to the common good. Conservatives deride Moore's words as being patently (to them) untrue and quote horrendous financial statistics that support their position in the public union debate. As is so often the case, we are talking past each other and not addressing the real issues that divide us. Media coverage of the events in Wisconsin unfortunately reinforce stereotypical positions. Liberal leaning media outlets point to huge crowds demanding their "rights," while conservative leaning media outlets emphasize union intimidation, illegal activities, and "irrational" statements by people like Moore.

I support the concept of right-to-work for private enterprise unions and favor doing away with public employee unions altogether. I also support free enterprise and oppose the welfare state and excessive income redistribution. This puts me squarely in the camp that Mr. Moore dislikes and I am comfortable being there. At the same time, I do not believe that it is useful to deride Moore or any of the other outspoken critics of Governor Scott Walker. I suggest that they have a legitimate point of view that must be debated on it's merits if we are to move forward. I grant you that to do so would further complicate an already complicated discussion, and I freely admit that I do not see it happening, but that does not change anything - it is something that needs to be done. Not to address this issue of income redistribution squarely means that this nation will not do the things that it needs to do to remain competitive in the global economy and thus sustain a good life for all of us.

We should ask ourselves why so many people in this country favor legislation that requires the public sector to pay for more and more of the cost of staying alive in America. It is not an easy question to answer, but not to understand it and answer it, is to ignore what is dragging us down and hurting all of us - including the very rich and the very poor. If I am right, the events in Wisconsin are symptomatic of a larger problem which is not being addressed. Instead, we are debating marginal solutions that risk being overturned if (when?) the other side of the argument achieves a victory at the polls. To me, today's union rallies in Wisconsin look an awful lot like the Tea Party rallies of yesterday. The demeanor of the crowds is certainly different, but the depth of feeling seems to be about evenly matched. Come to think about it, we are not talking past each other, we are yelling past each other.

PS: To deride Michael Moore as a crack pot is a mistake. He clearly holds views that are very different from what has here-to-fore defined "main stream America," but he is no loon. He is a formidable communicator in communication systems that traditional conservatives still do not understand. The really frightening thing to contemplate is this last point. It just may be that traditional American values are in decline, in part, because we don't know how to effectively pass them along to the new generation.

Are there tribes in Libya?

2011-03-08T09:31:00.000-08:00

America prides itself on being well educated, technologically ahead of the rest of the world, and more involved in international events than any other nation on earth. It is all true, but it is also inadequate to meet the needs of the twenty-first century. As an example, the United States of America suffers from a lack of understanding of the world of Islam (and I freely confess that I am as guilty of this ignorance as are my fellow Americans). I would argue that the reason for this is to be found deep within our national psyche.

A long time ago, while a foreign service officer, I volunteered for duty in Vietnam. When I reported to my supervisor, his first question was if I spoke French. I said that I did, but very poorly, and went on to explain that I was studying Vietnamese. He dismissed my interest in Vietnamese by explaining that all of the important people that I would be dealing with spoke French. With a few important exceptions, that mentality continues alive and well in this country. As a people, we are so caught up with Charlie Sheen and Lynda Lohan that we have no time to be curious about far off corners of the world until they explode in our faces.

Ask why we are interested in what is going on in Libya and you will be given a laundry list that includes the price of gasoline, but does not express much of a real interest in the people of Libya. Let's assume that we decide to become more involved in that far off place. Who do we send that even knows which tribe is which, let alone understands their interrelationships. Most Americans are aware that one or another Greek or Roman once occupied parts of North Africa, but we are probably unsure of which one favored what. Ask the average American who the leader of Oman is and you will receive a blank stare. If you persist, you will be asked why that is important. If we so choose, we can relatively easily establish a no-fly zone in Libyan airspace, but I doubt that we will be able to influence the people that we will be protecting - even if and when we find out who they are.

A long time ago, I watched young American fighting men patrolling Vietnamese villages and saw first hand the problems that arise when the soldier and the people do not understand each other, particularly when the Viet Cong returned to those same villages in the evening and sat down with the village elders for long conversations. The threat that we face today will not be effectively deterred by bullets. It will be won or lost in the conversations. Please remember that we won every major battle in the Vietnamese war, but we did not win the war.

We are facing similar challenges in Afghanistan, and even though our military are capable of defeating the Taliban in every battle. we are not able to even participate in the conversations - let alone be persuasive. What is more, the vast majority of the American people do not really care. Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, and the rest, are irritants in our daily lives not something that is of real interest to our people. Unless we, as a people, get genuinely curious about our world we will continue to be dealing ineffectively with tactical problems that confuse and frustrate us. Today, Congress is commencing an investigation of Muslim radicalism in America. Unfortunately, that is probably necessary, but it would be far better if America got really curious about Islam (beyond our fascination with Sharia Law) and made a genuine attempt to understand it.

Spending and Inflation

2011-03-06T07:55:00.000-08:00

Last August, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, initiated a plan designed to prevent prices from falling and to invigorate the stock market. The economists call it "quantitative easing." Like all of these macroeconomic things it is very complicated, but basically it involves the Treasury issuing bonds to finance our national debt and the Federal Reserve printing money to purchase those bonds. Mr. Bernanke set a target of $600 billion for this program and has been authorizing billions of dollars every month to support it. It is currently thought that the program, will run out of money in June of this year. The economy has responded pretty much as Mr. Bernanke predicted. The stock market has improved, a double dip recession has been avoided (at least to this point in time), and deflation has been avoided.

We now have another problem looming before us - inflation. Energy is costing more in this country and so is food. International problems in North Africa and the Middle East as well as seasonal price fluctuations are contributing to the problem, but the principal source of our inflationary pressure is the massive increase in the money supply which has been necessitated by the prolonged spending spree that this country has been engaged in for at least a couple of administrations. (There is plenty of blame here for both Democrat and Republican.) As we print more money to pay our increasing debt, we reduce the value of our currency and thus worsen the problem. Critics liken Mr. Bernanke's quantitative easing to Mr. Bernie Maddoff's ponzi scheme. (There are indeed unfortunate similarities.)

When the value of our money declines, the market tends to ask for more of it when we go to buy something. Things become more expensive, savings become less valuable, borrowing becomes more difficult, etc., etc. We have inflation. Mr. Bernanke is an intelligent economist. He knows this and is attempting to balance things as best he can. He is currently fearful that if he pulls back on quantitative easing and allows interest rates to rise it will have an adverse impact on the stock market, the housing market, and job creation. It is a valid fear. At the same time, he has to worry about the very real danger of inflation or, worse yet, stagflation. Stagflation is what the academics call an economy that simultaneously has high unemployment and inflation - pretty much the worst of all outcomes.

Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, is talking about the possibility of raising interest rates. Mr. Bernanke has to be thinking about it as well, but he clearly does not want to do it. Some economists are even talking about another round of quantitative easing. For me, the problem is clear, as is the solution. We are spending too much money. We must stop the spending in order to cure the problem. Quantitative easing and all of the rest are tactical measures designed to try to manage the problem. We are at the point where we can not think tactically anymore. We must address the fundamental problem. We must cut spending.

Unions are complicated

2011-03-01T09:21:00.000-08:00

I completely understand the union movement's concern with events in Wisconsin and the other states where the public unions are under pressure to give up some of their collective bargaining power. I believe that they see this as a threat to the union movement across the nation in both the private and the public sector and I think that they are correct. I believe that most conservatives, myself included, favor right-to-work legislation that would substantially reduce union influence not only in the economic sector, but also in the political life of America.

This is a very difficult issue for America. There is no question but that unions have been vital in improving the living standards of workers in America, and I know for a fact that my own life is better because of their efforts. At the same time, I also see that public unions, in particular, have attained political power that is being used in ways that are unintentionally harmful to our country. As we debate this important issue, we all must remember that no one in the union movement is intentionally attempting to harm this country. They are instead fighting for what they believe their charter calls for them to do.

Unions were formed to protect the rights of workers and to better their standard of living. They have done a very good job in fulfilling their mandate and their ability to insist on their collective bargaining rights has been a principal way in which they have accomplished this. It is understandable that they do not want to see that tool diminished in any way. In the public sector, the system is inherently flawed because politicians seeking votes are unmindful of the future economic cost of their decisions and comparatively stable union leadership has a distinct advantage. In my opinion, public sector unions were a flawed concept from the get go, and should never have been established.

Unfortunately, we have public unions in a number of states and they are politically very influential at both the local and national levels. Political union dues are a source of massive amounts of money that is used to support the election of politicians that are favorable to union interests - usually Democrats. We, on the conservative side of the fence, don't much like this, but there is nothing illegal about it. Not withstanding this fact, many conservatives demean union leadership ascribing to it motives that are harmful to the national interest. I do not see it that way. Granted, there has been and still is corruption in the union movement, but unfortunately that is also true of many conservative organizations as well. I see everything that the unions are doing in Wisconsin as being consistent with what they believe is necessary to continue to protect the interests of their members. Some of their tactics are stupid, shortsighted, and perhaps illegal, but union objectives are consistent with their charter.

In retrospect, I believe that Governor Walker has made a tactical error in attacking the collective bargaining issue at this time. I hope that he wins his fight, but I think that it would have been better to insist on the fiscal elements of his budget reform and leave the issue of collective bargaining to another day. On the other hand, he has at least started the debate that is necessary to deal with this divisive issue and that is a good thing. Here again, my hawkish friends will not agree with me, but I believe that he ought to back off temporarily on collective bargaining. Announce something to the effect that, because of the disruption caused by the unions and the irresponsible actions of the Democratic legislators, he will postpone consideration of this aspect of his budget reform bill for one year in order to give the people of Wisconsin time to fully consider what is at stake here.

Democratic legislators threaten the glue that holds us together as a nation.

2011-02-25T07:35:00.000-08:00

All eyes are on Wisconsin Governor Walker's effort to reduce the collective bargaining rights of public unions. We should, indeed, watch the outcome of that battle very closely for obvious reasons, but do not forget what is going on in Indiana. There, some excessively ardent Republican legislators attempted to extend the concept of diminishing the power of public unions to all unions operating in the state, including those in the private sector. Democratic legislators took a leaf out of the Wisconsin book and fled the state. By so doing, they made it impossible to get the necessary quorum to vote on the bill.

Republican Governor Daniels had warned against introducing right-to-work legislation, saying that it would require a thorough debate before it could be acted upon in Indiana. It was taken off of the table, but the Democrats failed to come home. Instead, they introduced new demands. My suspicion is that they feel that their tactics were successful in getting rid of the right-to-work challenge so they might as well see how far they can go with other things that they want. Do not be confused. The Democrats are resorting to political blackmail in both Wisconsin and Indiana.

This is not the way our system of government is supposed to work and it is highly dangerous to the fundamental glue that holds us together as a nation. We are supposed to vote every two years for legislators. The people elected are then supposed to duke it out and legislate. If we the people do not like the results, we get another shot at changing the cast of characters in another two years. This kind of nonsense in Wisconsin and Indiana is negating the decision of the voters. If it goes on too long or spreads too far it will undermine the trust that the public has in our system of government.

There are legislative and political avenues open to redress this travesty, but none of them are particularly good for the long term health of our system of government. It is tempting to chase the truant legislators with law officers, or perhaps mount a recall effort to have them removed from office, but neither of these remedies could be implemented without generating a great deal of rancor in the body politic. Better to let the public weigh in at the next election cycle. In the meantime, it will be important for the Republican leadership to exercise great patience and not be lured into irrational action.

We have serious problems in this country that demand our full attention. They must be resolved in a manner that is supported by the majority of Americans. This is frustrating for all of the true believers on both sides of the political aisle, but it is none the less true. All conservatives must remember that one of the main reasons that we achieved massive political gains in the last election cycle was that our neighbors were fed up with a government that crammed things down our throat. If we are so convinced that we have the best ideas we should put them forward and debate the heck out of them until we convince America to go along with us in straightening this country out.

Short Ribs and 2012

2011-02-24T08:11:00.000-08:00

Rush Limbaugh recently found out that Michelle Obama and her children ate short ribs in Aspen, Colorado. He went on national radio and used this to denigrate her effort to get American children to eat healthy. In the process, he denigrated himself and that is too bad because his over-the-top commentary frequently highlights real issues. I continue to believe that the First Lady is on to a serious problem in America - childhood obesity - and I admire her efforts to improve childhood nutrition in this country.

This is not to say that I am a big fan of Mrs. Obama. (I still remember her comment "this is the first time that I have been proud of my country.") It is just that I do not think that conservatives should attack her just because she is married to a president that is taking this country in the wrong direction. She is in the public eye and deserves to be judged fairly for what she does. When she does good work we should not be afraid to give her the credit she is due.

Fox News is guilty of much the same thing when they poke fun at her for not letting her own children have a Face Book page. From what I can see, the Obamas appear to be pretty darn good parents and I do not feel that their decisions as to how to raise their daughters is a suitable subject for national debate. (If anything, I agree with Mrs. Obama about the Face Book thing.) It would be far better to just leave anything to do with the Obama children off bounds.

When major conservative voices stoop to this kind of attack it may appeal to the hard right in their audience, but it makes more moderate conservatives wince in embarrassment. Worse yet, it turns off the political middle and justifiably raises questions about the suitability of conservative ideas. The only person that is happy about this kind of thing is David Axelrod. Conservatives should wake up and get serious about 2012. This is not the way to accomplish what needs to be done for this country.

Republicans sometimes remind me of Nancy and Harry

2011-02-23T09:19:00.000-08:00

Indiana Republicans are proposing legislation which would prohibit unions from requiring workers to pay union fees as a right to work. This has triggered another show down between unions and Republican lawmakers. This fight is made more interesting by the fact that the Republican Governor probably does not have his heart in it. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels earlier warned his party not to push for "right-to-work legislation," saying that he supported it, but it would require a statewide debate before it could be introduced in the state legislature. In as much as he is thought to be one of the folks interested in running for president in 2012 it will be interesting to see how he deals with the present situation in his state.

Right-to-Work legislation is opposed by unions because they fear that many workers will refuse to pay union dues and this will significantly reduce their political muscle. Most Republicans support it for exactly the same reason. This argument goes back a long way in our history - even before the Taft-Hartly Act of 1947, and it looks like we are in the midst of another chapter in the long standing battle between labor and management. Today, twenty-two states have right-to-work legislation in place and it is said that those states have a significant advantage in attracting business. New business means new jobs and Republicans are saying that today's battles are not about squashing unions, but rather about attracting jobs.

I favor right-to-work legislation for all of the usual conservative reasons, but believe that Republicans are overreaching in attempting to introduce it now by claiming that the November election results support it. I do not remember any campaigns that included mention of right-to-work anywhere in the country and Mitch Daniels is reported to have said that "no Republican Governor ran on this issue." I would be surprised if the subject did not come up in one or another campaign from time to time, but I certainly do not remember it being highlighted anywhere. If conservatives are going to get serious about this they must let it be debated thoroughly throughout each state. It is too complicated an issue to try to sneak it by, a la Obama Care.

Right-to-work is an important issue and I am very interested in how things work out in Indiana. I am even more interested in seeing what Republicans take away from this argument with the Unions and our President. Win, lose, or draw, I believe that Republicans are giving the public a very good reason to be concerned about granting them more political control over our lives in 2012. The arguments in both Wisconsin and Indiana, although different in substance, are both examples of a majority attempting to ram something down the throats of a minority without a thorough airing of the very real differences that exist. It makes me think of Harry Read and Nancy Pelosi.

Lest my conservative friends think that I have fled the nest, let me reiterate: I favor right-to-work legislation and would love to se it implemented throughout America. I do not believe that it would result in a diminution of living standards. Quite the contrary, I believe that it would improve our competitiveness in the global economy, improve the jobs situation at home, and lead to a better standard of living for the nation. I suggest, however, that we back off trying to take advantage of new majorities in state and local government to ram things down the public's throat without a thorough debate. We could be in the process of creating a liberal version of the so-called "Tea Party" and it just might come home to bite us in 2012.

My hawkish friends will mock me saying that when the opportunity presents itself one must press forward. "Damn the torpedoes!" I suggest that I would prefer to have a 2012 electorate that saw a conservative majority as a rational, thoughtful, deliberate governing body that perhaps has not done quite enough to right the ship of state. The tactical objective being to have the voters add at least the senate and hopefully the presidency to the right side of the aisle and the issues.

Teacher's Reputation & Politics in Wisconsin

2011-02-22T10:16:00.000-08:00

I wish that the most important story in the news today was North Africa and the Middle East, but for Americans it is not. Although not as dramatic as Muammar al-Gaddafi's offer of martyrdom, the most important newsworthy developments continue to be in Wisconsin where Republican Governor Scott Brown is facing off, not just with his own public unions, but also with the President of the United States and virtually every union in the country. The good news is that, so far at least, there has been no violence. The bad news is that public employees are ignoring contracts and laws in an effort to protect their benefits and their collective bargaining rights. This has placed the governor in an unenviable position. He is rapidly approaching the point where he may feel compelled to fire public employees who are not acting legally.

For the reasons outlined in a previous post, I continue to believe that a distinction needs to be made between public unions and the rest of the union movement. In the private sector, the struggle for dollars between labor and management is very much a fair fight. With public unions it is not, because the changing cast of individual politicians that are in charge of their side of the negotiations do not care as much about costs down the road as they do about soliciting votes. I advocate eliminating public unions entirely and relying on the marketplace to ensure that government positions are filled by qualified persons. This is obviously not a perfect solution and it is relatively easy to point out how it might go wrong, but the system that we have now is even more obviously broken.

Governor Brown is not proposing that Wisconsin abandon public unions nor that the unions give up collective bargaining. He is, however, proposing that collective bargaining be weakened and that state funded employees benefit system be brought more into line with that of the private sector. In today's fiscal climate, I suggest that his proposals are a very modest approach to a serious issue. The opposition advocates higher taxation rates for the wealthy instead. Governor Brown feels that the November 2010 election results rejected that fiscal avenue and points out that he was elected on a campaign promise not to raise taxes. In his mind, the majority of people in Wisconsin are on his side of this disagreement.

For obvious reasons the face of the opposition to the governor's proposals is the Wisconsin teacher. Nobody wants to hurt the kids, right? These dedicated people who teach our children need to feel secure in their employ so that they can focus all of their energies on the education of this nation's future leaders, etc. If I were in charge of the union campaign in this disagreement, I too would be tempted to make the teacher the focus of the issue. If I were a teacher, on the other hand, I would oppose this approach and would go back to the classroom lest the public become disenchanted with my intransigence in demanding what many people feel to be an inappropriate economic advantage.

There may well be fall out from these events in Madison that runs contrary to the public school teacher's position in our society. The education system is already believed by most to be less than what we need going forward into our brave new world. Most reports that I read are highly critical of public education. The attractiveness of charter schools continues to be bandied about as a solution to the problems that face public schools. Some of the most articulate educators in the country point to the teacher's union as one of the most serious problems facing our education system. Granted the criticism of public school teachers and the their union is hushed, but it is there, and there are very few Americans that have not heard it. Watching the antics of the protesters in Madison is not conducive to thinking of our teachers as being good role models for our children and then there is the question of their honesty when they permit union organizers to do unlawful things - allegedly on their behalf.

I am not anti-union, but you may think that I am when I say that the national private sector unions are wrong in the way in which they are dealing with this set of issues. By resorting to time-honored tactics of bringing in out-of-state support, resorting to illegal tactics involving children, and accusing the governor of wanting to bust the union, the unions are intensifying the anti-union sentiment that is already well established in this country. They are also further tarnishing the public school teacher's reputation. Neither of these things are good for unions or for America. I understand that a shortsighted union leader might be tempted to engage in this knee jerk set of reactions, but why is our president aiding and abetting this stupidity?

See follow on post.

Radical Islam and Mr. Obama

2011-02-21T08:12:00.000-08:00

As I see it, President Obama is an intellectual with all of the strengths and weaknesses of a very intelligent person. On the domestic front he is convinced that he is smarter than the rest of America and knows what is best for us. He may actually be right. I agree with many of his announced domestic objectives. I would love to see prosperity enjoyed across the land by everyone in America. I definitely want to "win the future," at least as far as new technologies are concerned. I am all for bipartisanship and believe that we should all share in the effort to bring our deficit under control. Etc., etc., etc.

My problem continues to be that I do not agree with any of the president's policies designed to bring this utopia to fruition. Specifically, I do not believe that big government overseeing a welfare state is the way to bring prosperity to anyone except those with high positions in the commissariat. I see it as a way to lower the standard of living for everyone else. I do not see how we can afford to spend our way to technological supremacy when we can not pay our current debts without borrowing more money and thus increasing our debt to foreigners. I do not see any shred of real bipartisanship in anything that the president is doing. Etc., etc., etc.

Internationally, it is much the same, but infinitely more complicated because of the diversity of people that we are dealing with in one hundred some countries. I believe that, here again, Mr. Obama feels an intellectual superiority even though he goes around the world bowing to foreign potentates and smiling weakly at dangerous men who would kill us. I believe that he feels that America must find a way to become part of the pack rather than seek to lead the pack. In so doing, he believes that we will eliminate the intense hostility that we find in certain quarters of the globe. Reason will triumph over force, etc. The analogy is not perfect, but Mr. Chamberlain had much the same attitude with regard to Adolph Hitler.

We are all shaped by our experiences. I believe that Mr. Obama is a good man with a high IQ and noble objectives, but I fear that he lacks international street smarts. Granted, he did spend a lot of time in rough parts of Chicago and it is clear that he knows how to use his political muscle in dealing with recalcitrant domestic political opponents, but that is nothing when one is faced with truly evil outsiders that possess weapons that can hurt, if not destroy, this country. Lest we be too hard on this particular president, we must note that our system of government does not often select leaders that are experienced in the rough and tumble world of international relations. It is another case of an amateur having to grow into the job. In Mr. Obama's case the process is taking far too long, if it is happening at all.

I am one of those who believe that one must define an enemy before an effective defense can be organized. In addition, the entire country must agree with the definition. Some historians believe that President Roosevelt permitted Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor in order to rally the American people behind the war effort in the 1940s. I am not advocating that we permit another 9/11 to convince all of America that we have a serious problem with radical Islamic ideology. One such attack should have done the job, but the public gets confused when it's leadership quibbles about definitions. This administration's "man caused disaster" does not cut it. Neither does a declaration of war against all Muslims. We should have learned by now that crusades do not work.

I suggest that we make very clear to ourselves and to the world around us that we understand that we are under attack by radical Islamic groups and that we intend to protect ourselves by every means necessary. An important subtext needs to be added that we do not dislike Muslims in general and we do not see ourselves as capable of deciding fine points of religious ideology for the Muslim community. We simply want to defend ourselves from those that would kill us and I see no problem with asking Mr. Ahmadinejad if he is serious when he repeatedly calls for "Death to America."

I am not a proponent of first strike attacks and was very concerned about the Bush decision in Iraq, but, like George Bush, I am even less enthusiastic about responding to a nuclear attack on our soil or on the soil of a close ally. Unfortunately, we are once again rapidly approaching those kinds of nasty policy decisions. Our threat of mutual destruction worked the last time around with the Soviet Union, but I am not convinced that it will work against an Iran, the fanatical religious leadership of which is comfortable with the concept of martyrdom, and I certainly do not see how we can hold a stateless terrorist group hostage by threatening the country where they happen to be hiding at the moment.

While I am not a big fan of Mr. Obama, he is the only president that we have right now and I certainly wish him well in his effort to protect this country. I just suggest that he toughen up a bit so that we and our enemies are less confused as to what will happen to them if they get out of line. I also suggest that the next time that we get an opportunity to select our national leadership we look a bit harder at their experience and character, and not permit ourselves to be confused by a lot of rhetoric.

Conservatives should stop bashing and start leading.

2011-02-20T08:47:00.000-08:00

According to the economists, the recession is behind us and has been for some time. The economy is growing and has been for that same period of time. The stock market has climbed back to where it was almost three years ago. That is good news, right? Not to folks who are still out of a job. People all over this country are asking how economists and government leaders can say things are getting better when they are still unable to find acceptable work. Heck, we are even told that the flow of illegal immigrants is down because the lure of a low end job in this country has pretty much faded away.

What if this is the new normal? Ugly thought, but something that we are going to have to address if we want to return to the concept of prosperity for all Americans. We all talk about this global market thing that has somehow sucked all of the jobs out of America and sent them off to China. I have a friend who recently purchased a Macintosh clone from a Chinese web site. He says that it works just like a regular Mac, but costs far less. My email in-box has an increasing flow of offers from China that emphasize low prices and speedy delivery. Today's offer is a bicycle in five days. I recently purchased an iPad online directly from Apple. When I got the package, I noted from the routing slip that it had originated in China five calendar days (not work days) earlier. Even when I buy American, I am buying foreign.

An increasing number of pundits on the left and on the right are saying that our government has aided and abetted our dependence on the global market by signing a bunch of unfavorable trade deals with foreigners. Donald Trump is so mad that he is once again threatening to run for president. If elected, he says that he would be a lot tougher on foreigners who sell us low priced junk and refuse to buy the good stuff from us. At one point in time, eons ago, I was in a position where I was supporting the sale of an American jet ferryboat to the Japanese government. I was precluded from offering incentives to Japanese officials. A Russian company did offer incentives. The Russians got the sale. At the same time, I was watching American cars excluded from the Japanese market while Toyota was crushing Detroit single handedly. Viscerally, I am with The Donald, and am all for tougher negotiations, but that all by itself is not going to solve our problem.

We are not going to be able to return to the world wide economic system of a previous era. We are in the global economy for better or for worse, and right now, things are not going in the right direction. One of the things that has made America an economic powerhouse is that we attracted the best brains from all over the world to come live and work here. That accomplished two things. America was smarter and the rest of the world was less smart. We had an edge and we still do, but it is slipping. A lot of very good minds are staying home and our economic dominance of the world market place is slipping - badly.

President Obama is speaking to this issue when he proclaims that we must win the future by developing the new technologies that the world will need as we go forward. We are in such an economic mess that we are precluded from accepting his path to this utopia, because it would spend us into oblivion. The single most pressing issue facing America is not that the Chinese are manufacturing our stuff. It is that our economy is not strong enough to do what we need to do. Conservatives are correct that we must get spending under control before we can move on (pun intended). I am optimistic that we can achieve that goal in the next couple of years if the American voter understands the seriousness of the threat. I am somewhat less optimistic that conservatives will be able to come up with their own path to the future. Right now, I see too much bashing of Obama and not enough specifics as to why we have better ideas.

I think that it is about time for conservatives to start outlining a specific set of policies that will lead this country forward once we get our deficit under control. I am all for freedom, self reliance, initiative, lower taxes, smaller government, and the rest of the mantra, but the American voter is going to need some concrete policy ideas come 2012. For us to say that we don't want to propose specific ideas because it would permit Democrats to poke fun at them is cowardliness and lack of intellectual leadership. To say that the President should lead is to abdicate the opportunity that we were given last November.

Madison, Wisconsin and the Unions

2011-02-19T09:14:00.000-08:00

Events in Wisconsin are presaging the intensity of the debate that is before us regarding the budget deficit. It would appear that the conservative leadership of the state is attempting to balance the state budget by requiring state and local governmental employees, paid in part or in full by the state, to pick up a small portion of their retirement pension payments and a slightly larger share of their health care cost. Apparently, they are not now paying anything into either fund. According to press reports, the amount that they are being asked to pay is much less than what folks in the private sector are paying. This seems like a fair approach to solving a difficult problem.

A second objective of the conservative leadership appears to be an effort to weaken the public unions' ability to bargain collectively in the state. President Obama characterizes this as being an assault on unions and is apparently spending money, time, and effort to block it. I agree with the president on the substance of the conservative effort, but do not believe that he should be involving the presidency in what is, after all, a state matter. He obviously feels that he needs union support in 2012 and can not sit on the sidelines with regard to Wisconsin. This is one more place where he is using the office of the presidency to the detriment of the state and I am definitely with those that point out that he is not abiding by the intent of the framers of our constitution, but I do not see him clearly, at least, breaking any laws.

Unions are rightfully concerned with events in Wisconsin. All over the country there is a rising tide of anti-union sentiment. Everywhere that one looks within our economy, the high cost of labor is blamed for jobs moving offshore. It is not the only reason, but it is certainly in the list and it has to be addressed if America is to be competitive in the global economy. Unions feel that the correct way to fund the budget in Wisconsin is to increase taxes on the wealthy. Understandably, non-union members of the public are less enthusiastic about the idea of raising taxes. With regard to the jobs problem, they argue that the federal government must negotiate foreign trade agreements in such a way as to protect American wage earners. In addition, the public should boycott foreign products that are produced by underpaid laborers at home and abroad. Unfortunately for the union movement in this country, neither solution is feasible.

Of the two issues in the Wisconsin standoff, the more important is collective bargaining. The amount of money to be paid into pensions and health care by government workers is very reasonable and should eventually be sustained. Collective bargaining, however, has been a key element in the long history of improving the standard of living of the working man and woman in this country. The problem is that in the case of government employees, the process has been flawed. Over the years, an ever changing cast of political leaders have negotiated with a stable cast of leaders on the union side. Politicians had little interest in looking into the future cost of their immediate decisions. It is a very complicated set of issues, but, in a nut shell, shortsighted politicians currying political favor gave too much and got too little.

Because of the increased size of government, there are a lot of people in this country with a stake in the Wisconsin argument. Whatever happens in Madison will inevitably be used as a precedent for what is done elsewhere. Wisconsin is not the only state with this set of challenges, in fact, some of the issues are also seen by a growing number of Americans as being applicable to federal employees. Federal and state salaries and pensions are fixed by legislation, and are not as responsive to changes in the overall economy as is the income flow within the private sector. In times of prosperity, the public is less concerned with government salaries, but when times get difficult for the majority of Americans, tax payers are understandably less enthusiastic to see their tax money used to maintain a better and more stable standard of living for their public employees than for themselves.

See follow on post this subject.

Paul Ryan is right but...

2011-02-18T07:02:00.000-08:00

Paul Ryan, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin and a man that I admire, dislikes my "single cut across the board solution" to the budget problem. He has what he believes to be a better set of cuts and he is almost certainly correct. He has access to better numbers than I do, is a better economist than I am, and has been thinking about little else for a very long time. I sincerely hope that he will be successful in his efforts to get his cuts implemented. It would be a better solution to our budget woes than what I suggest.

The problem is that a whole lot of people, in Congress and out, dislike his suggestions. Mr Ryan is inevitably making policy judgments as to what is important and what is not in the programs that he is addressing. What he considers to be important programs don't get cut in his proposals, or at least not as much as unimportant programs. There is the rub. Everybody has their own definition of what constitutes important programs. As we have seen in Britain, France, and Greece, and are now seeing in Wisconsin, people can get pretty upset when their important program is on the chopping block.

Mr. Ryan also feels that a single cut applied across the board would be unfair because President Obama has increased spending in some areas more than in others. To cut all programs equally would be unfair to those that have not recently been enlarged. Here again, I can only agree with Mr. Ryan if I agree on the importance of the programs in question. Although I have not discussed specific programs with him I probably would agree with most, if not all of his choices. The problem is that I know of a lot of folks who would not agree with either one of us.

My proposal to cut government spending by an equal amount in every single program that exists is not particularly fair or intelligent, but it just might be "politically doable." We should also understand that our problems will not be resolved in the 2011 budget fight. This is going to go on for some time into the future. My solution would create a lot of problems that would have to be addressed, but it would also get the process of taming our budget challenge under way. If that does not happen soon, we will see a lot more of the kind of thing than is going on in Wisconsin right now.

PS: Mr Ryan is wrong about one thing. Madison, Wisconsin, does not look very much like Cairo, Egypt, but it does look exactly like Athens, Greece.

Sharia Law and Spanish as a Second Language

2011-02-15T09:47:00.000-08:00

Several European countries have recently discovered that what they call "multiculturalism" is not working the way that they thought that it would. Like most things involving human beings it is a complicated set of issues, but it boils down to conflict between islands of one culture living in the heart of another culture. A lot of Algerians live permanently in France and their communities primarily follow the cultural patterns of the country of their birth. Many Turks in Germany do much the same thing. Pakistanis in Great Britain are to some extent another case in point. With cultures radically different, at least some conflict is bound to occur between these peoples. Most European countries actively do not want to absorb these foreigners through acculturation and have passed laws to ensure that does not happen. In an effort to rationalize this situation, European intellectuals have theorized that it is possible for multiple cultures to live harmoniously side by side. The penetration of radical Islamic activism within these communities is causing Europe to rethink the issue. Germany, France, and Great Britain are leading the backlash against multiculturalism, but other countries are rethinking the issue as well.

Here in the United States, we have taken a different approach. We have welcomed foreigners from every part of the world and have only insisted on one thing - they must become Americans. During the course of our history, when particularly large numbers of immigrants came from one particular corner of the globe we usually saw a cultural ghetto created as when the Irish or Chinese arrived to escape the potato famine or to build our railroads. These ghettos usually turned into neighborhoods within one generation, and by the second or third generation they were usually a marketing ploy offering ethnic food in their restaurants. Most of our new immigrants have been fully absorbed into the main stream culture within a short period of time and have made major contributions to our strength as a nation. It has been an excellent concept and has been part of what has made this country great, but today the basic idea is being corrupted.

We still have the laws in place for legal immigrants. They still learn at least a little bit of English, study an outline of this country's history, and pledge allegiance to the American flag, but illegal immigrants do not go through any of this "Americanization." Even more importantly, main stream society is increasingly accepting of people who live in this country for generations and do not speak English. Many places in the United States have laws that require Spanish as a second language. We actually teach children in Spanish in public schools. Our laws are translated into Spanish. Many of our citizens are dual citizens, and while that has always been the case in this country, this dual nationality is in the process of changing in nature. It used to be that the other nationality was less important than the American nationality. I don't have the numbers, but my guess is that this is in the process of change.

Another change that is occurring is that some of our ghettos are becoming large functioning communities with a life of their own. There are parts of Los Angeles that are effectively a permanent Spanish speaking community largely independent of the Anglo community surrounding it. The same is true of the agricultural region between Highway 99 and Highway 5 in California. I am not prejudiced against Spanish speaking people and I do not want to rob them of their cultural heritage, but if they want to live in America I request that they become Americans. I do not care what people speak in their homes, but I see no reason why this country should have two languages in our public forums. I believe that it weakens one of the pillars of our strength and I think that it dooms the children born into that community to a second class life at least in economic terms.

Ironically, the thing that is bringing all of this to the fore in the United States is our concern about radical Islamic terrorists. We are beginning to worry about the loyalty of American Muslims and are fearful of what the Europeans call "multiculturalism." Some of our more rabid nationalists worry about the construction of a mosque in the heartland of America and warn that some Muslims want Sharia law practiced in this country. I agree that we need to be watchful for radical Islamic tendencies within America, but I am even more concerned about the long term effect of Spanish as a second language in our schools.

Let's take a Meat Axe to the Budget

2011-02-14T07:43:00.000-08:00

There is a lot of angst about the deficit and there should be - it is a very serious problem that could bring this nation to its knees. We must cut our spending and the good news is that both Democrats and Republicans are finally saying pretty much the same thing. We are still miles apart in how to deal with the issue, but we are finally engaged in dealing with it. The very hard part is now before us - Where to cut, and by how much, and for how long. As we approach these tough choices a plethora of formulas will emerge. This program will be cut by 10%, that one by 14%, the other one by 7%..... This cut for four years, that one for three years, the other one for two years... If the economy improves by 3% every year for two years we will...

It is going to be impossible for the average citizen to know in detail what is happening, why it is happening, and for how long it will continue to happen. We are going to have to trust the folks that we elected to get it right. (A commentary about how important our vote is in an era when some folks feel that they have no say in government.) No matter the formula that is arrived at, we can be assured that we will feel it. The numbers are just too big for that not to happen. It is also inevitable that we will be dissatisfied with the formula because it will certainly be "unfair" to one or another group of people.

I favor what most people consider to be the least attractive formula out there. Were it to be chosen, the New York Times would immediately label it a draconian "Meat Axe" approach. I favor having the best and the brightest economists decide on the best number and time line for a single cut that would be applied across the board to our entire budget . No exceptions and that includes aid to the poor, education, defense, public safety, entitlements, and absolutely everything else. Economists are pretty good at macro economics, but they are not very good at running a government program. Neither are elected officials. The folks who understand their programs the best are the folks actually in charge of them. Let them deal with the cuts rather than have an outsider tell them that they need to buy fewer pencils next year. I still cringe when I think that an elected official who has never seen a battlefield up close and personal thinks that he is smart enough to tell the Army what kind of tank they will need ten years out.

This will not be a perfect solution. There will be severe problems and they will need to be dealt with as they come to light, but my guess is that one heck of a lot of fat will be burned out of the system at all levels before that happens. An administrator facing a reduced budget will cut the nonessential faster and more intelligently than any committee in Washington will ever do. (In fact, we should cut that committee's budget too.) Everybody talks about waste and fraud in our governmental programs. The most intelligent and effective way to deal with those problems is with the meat axe, not the scalpel (metaphors, not actual tools to be used).

If those in charge of our programs can not make the transition to a lower budget we must immediately replace them without prejudice. They are probably not bad people - they just can not handle the job that needs to be done. We, of course, need to tell them up front that we will do that. Some will say that is being awfully hard on the bureaucrats. My answer is that managing the people's business is a hard job that needs to be done and done right.

Islam and Democracy

2011-02-13T10:20:00.000-08:00

As we look out into the world we must remember that although we are one of the oldest democracies, we are also one of the youngest nations. Our political system matured over a period of just a few centuries. It fortuitously includes a very stable democratic government. Other nations in the world around us count their years of existence in millennia. Few include democratic forms of government. A tradition of political instability is well entrenched. Social systems and belief systems differ widely as well. Perhaps, because I am an American, I see America's form of government as the best around. I also see America as having the most mature society in the world. Compare America with most African or Middle Eastern countries in any field you care to enumerate and you see enormous differences. Education, wealth distribution, health, freedom, equality, etc, etc, etc. We are by no means perfect, but our populace is genuinely more caring (in the best sense of the word) about what happens in this world than any other group of people on the face of the earth.

When America comes into conflict with other nations, this imbalance in maturity comes into play immediately. In Afghanistan, an American military man with space age fighting gear is opposed very effectively by combatants newly emerged from the stone age. (An exaggeration, but not by much.) As we attempt to dialogue either on the battlefield or in the conference room we have to bridge the gap in social maturity that exists between us. Much of the time, we find it difficult to understand the other person's thinking, let alone find ways to avoid conflict and work together. In today's world, a major concern is something we call radical Islamic terrorism. Most of us do not understand this threat very well, but it is clear that religion is somehow involved. Many of our enemies are talking in terms that harken back to the Crusades and, to our horror, their words are resonating with a great many people all through the world of Islam.

Given our background, we advocate democracy as an antidote for what ails the world and we are confused when it does not take hold as quickly as we would like or result in political decisions that we favor. This confusion is not the other guy's fault - it is ours. We are so convinced that we have the right solutions that we are genuinely perplexed when the other fellow does not see things exactly the same way that we do. Palestinians pretty much universally hate israel and we are confused about why they elected Hamas to govern them. As the kids would say - DUH! Today, we are seeing political change occurring across North Africa and rumbles of it in the Middle East. We are calling for democratic solutions in all of these places and that is as it should be, but we should not be surprised if these democratic initiatives result in political developments that we do not like. One of the differences that will continue to characterize these nations no matter their form of government is the central role that religion plays in their social and political decision-making process.

My guess is that the potential advantage of democracy is actually emerging within the thinking of the more educated groups in all of these countries. Certainly they are increasingly talking about it, but I do not believe that it will develop as we know it in this country. Genuine democracy in a country whose population is largely Muslim will not be the secular form of government that we know in America. The Mosque and the Imam are just too influential in the daily lives of the people for that to be sustained for long. The question that should concern us is not how the form of government develops, but rather the ideological battle going on within Islam between radical and moderate. If the moderate voices in government and in religion are not able to improve the lives of the people I believe that they will turn to radical solutions that are inimical to our national interest. My thesis continues to be that we must deal effectively with the fundamental problem of poverty at the same time that we concern ourselves with the form of government. It is the right thing to do, but more importantly, not to do so is extremely dangerous for our own well being.

The 2011 Budget and Egypt

2011-02-12T09:54:00.000-08:00

Events in North Africa and the Middle East are extremely important to our future, but we have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. The budget fight has started here at home and, although it is far less dramatic, it is every bit as relevant to our future as what is going on in Cairo. On top of that, the average citizen can do something about what our president calls our "domestic squabble." We, as individual citizens, have far less say about what happens in Egypt.

The budget issue, that is currently in the news, revolves around so-called discretionary spending for the current fiscal year which amounts to about 13% of our overall budget. What we do there is not going to do much to address the fundamentals of our deficit problem, but it is an important start. The budget that President Obama is going to unveil next week is reputed to include a significant increase in discretionary spending over what we spent last year. If he does indeed do that, he is obviously continuing the reckless spending that got us in the mess that we are in now. We must not permit that to happen.

The Republican members of Congress are now debating how much of a cut they should propose in FY2010 discretionary spending. There is a range of opinion within the House Republican ranks as to how much should be cut. The original idea was to cut about $32 billion, but the more ambitious newcomers that are being identified as belonging to the "Tea Party," are pushing for $61 billion less than last year. This new number is said to be $100 billion less than what President Obama is requesting. Apparently these newcomers have enough political muscle that the Republican leadership is going to go along with them.

I can see the rationale for the higher number. In the forthcoming continuing resolution debate with the President, it is useful to start with a higher number and compromise on something in between his number and ours - say $32 billion instead of $61 billion. That would be smart politics, but if the budget hawks within the Republican Party are not willing to compromise, I see potential trouble on the not so distant horizon. The new continuing resolution has to pass in the House and the Senate and be signed by the President by March 4 or the government will have to shut down. The last time that happened, it benefited the incumbent president , Bill Clinton, and is credited with leading to his reelection.

I am all for convictions and promises made at the polls, but let's not lose focus on the big picture while we deal with an infinitesimal part of the debt issue. The important part of the budget fight is still ahead of us when we tackle entitlements. After that, we have to replace Obama with someone that can better address our challenges both here at home and abroad (including Egypt).

"Knuckle Dragging Neanderthal"

2011-02-10T09:25:00.000-08:00

The pushing and shoving has commenced within conservative ranks to find the right person to be the Republican standard bearer in 2012. "Knuckle dragging Neanderthal" is one of the descriptive phrases currently in vogue among the contenders. I understand that this is part and parcel of the political process in this country, but I don't have to like it. Nor do I have to think that it is smart politics. Any thinking American; left, right, or center, has to wonder about the suitability of potential conservative leaders that resort to name calling rather than sticking with the very important real world issues that face us.

Conservatives need a pretty intelligent candidate to go up against Barak Obama. I may not like his policies and I definitely think that he is vulnerable, but I certainly respect his mind and give him a great deal of credit for being a clever politician. If we just stick to IQ, the man is almost certainly one of the most intelligent people who has ever served as our president. If we consider his speaking abilities he is well up in the pecking order as well. We are not going to beat him by resorting to name calling. If we have a chance (and I think that we do) we have to select a leader that can articulate a set of ideas that are superior to the ones that he is selling. Resorting to name calling is akin to using a club when a rapier is required. (Lest anyone misunderstand in today's politically correct world, I am not advocating the actual use of a rapier. It is meant as a metaphor for effective argumentation.)

We all understand that the real battle ground (metaphor) is the political middle of America, not either extreme. The so-called independent voter will decide who our next president will be. It is easy to see how the partisan fire breather might well be selected in the primary because he or she appeals to the visceral feelings of a lot of frustrated conservatives. The question is whether this person has what it takes to beat Mr. Obama, let alone govern this country. I certainly hope that he or she does, but if I had to wager my own hard earned money I would not bet on it.

Mr Obama is back in campaign mode. He might govern poorly, but we all know how well he campaigns. His recent appearance with Bill O'Reily just before the Super Bowl is a case in point. Mr. O'Reily asked a lot of good questions and the president answered every one of them adroitly. He came across as a reasonable man with a likable personality. The President's recent speech to the Chamber of Commerce is another case in point. He did not give ground on any of his principals, but he came across again as reasonable and likable unless you thought hard about the specific issues he was talking about.

My thesis is that Mr. Obama will not be defeated by denigrating him with epithets. He is vulnerable on the issues. Let's find some one who can match wits with him effectively. My current favorite would be Chris Christy. My hope is that his promise not to run for president that he gave to his wife is a political ploy. I suggest that we draft the guy. I'd love to hear him in a debate with Mr. Obama. I expect that it would be about issues and Mr. Christy's straight forward no nonsense argumenttion would win the political right and center hands down. Even more importantly, with a man like that in the White House, we could probably get on with our lives, reestablish our place in the world, and get to work solving the real problems that face this country.

Cowboy Stadium vs Tahrir Square

2011-02-06T11:40:00.000-08:00

As confrontation turns to negotiation in Cairo, the American public's interest in Egypt begins to fade and our thoughts turn to who will win the Super Bowl. If you are really interested in Egypt, please read my posts in the order in which they were put on line. There are five posts and they constitute one story. The one below is the last in the series. Please start here.

All of our wise men are being interviewed on television and are pontificating about what is going to happen in Egypt. I happen to know some of these folks and they are indeed wise men in the best sense of that term. There is no question but that they know more about this subject than I do. Much of what they have to say seems to make sense to me, but I am depressed by the fact that they and their interlocutors are primarily focused on governmental process and are not looking at fundamentals. I give them a great deal of credit that their analysis is above the minutia of the moment that understandably characterizes most of the press reports, but I bemoan the fact that, so far at least, I see no one on either side of the microphone attempting to tackle fundamentals.

A great deal of attention is being paid to the question of why we did not see all of this coming. Another line of questioning revolves around who will occupy which chair in the next government and how many people will accept that arrangement. Another fascination is with the role of the internet and social networking. Once all of that subject matter is decided (or at least exhausted), questions arise about what will happen in other countries around the region. Etc, etc, etc. All of this is important stuff and I find the emerging story fascinating, but I remain depressed that nobody is talking about the most basic issue - poverty. Whenever I talk this way, I see people's eyes glaze over, their feet shuffle, and I immediately lose their attention. I presume that this is the reason this subject is rarely addressed on television. The people in the front office know that this is not the type of material that improves market share for their station. Boring, depressing, impossible to resolve....

I know from experience that when I engage the best minds in our foreign policy establishment one on one regarding this subject they will agree with me as to the importance of poverty as a root cause of instability and argue that the very best way to address the issue is by working toward improving the structure of government. The vast majority of them honestly believe that by encouraging democracy throughout the world we are setting the stage for effectively eliminating poverty. I agree with them, but believe that we must simultaneously improve the way in which we provide concrete assistance both at home and abroad. I suggest that one of the many reasons why radicals are able to subvert democracies is that they do not always deliver improved quality of life to the public in question. Just because a group of people are democratically elected does not necessarily mean that they will be able to deliver improved standards of living let alone meet the rising expectations of the public they serve.

I believe that the political actions of most people are primarily motivated by their perception of how well off they are. People who regard themselves as well off, tend to be conservative, while people who regard themselves to be less well off, tend to be attracted to more radical concepts. It is true in our own political system as well as in Egypt. The amount of foreign or domestic assistance is not the real issue. The real issue is the effectiveness of that aid. I honestly believe that the dollar amount of our foreign and domestic assistance programs is adequate. The problem is that neither in the United States nor abroad is our assistance effective enough to achieve it's objective. At home, charity makes us feel better, but does not really help the recipient. Abroad, foreign assistance helps us achieve specific short term objectives, but does not adequately address real problems facing the country in question.

As long as we fail to deal with the fundamentals, so long will we have discontent at home and abroad. I really don't care if we address the imbalance of wealth that currently exists in this world because it is the moral thing to do or because it is politically expedient, but if we do not address it, I predict that we will continue to face serious challenges to our own well being. In America today, we are faced with a very mild version of this same problem. Tens of millions of people do not have access to the same quality of health care as do the well off in this country. They want it and are willing to experiment with faintly radical political solutions in order to get it.. The conservative challenge is to find ways to satisfy this objective without resorting to what we regard as a radical reformation of our system of government. Our democracy provides a framework to accomplish that goal, but the fundamental problem is health care. In most of the rest of the world the fundamental problems are so numerous that they get lumped into one word - poverty.

Obama vs. Mubarak

2011-02-05T11:40:00.000-08:00

Those that worry about radicals taking advantage of the situation in Egypt can point to a number of recent occurrences as evidence that they are trying. The one line of events that stands out among several is the series of attacks on Egyptian jails and prisons. Among the prisoners that have been released are a significant number of radical Islamists. My guess is that the attack on the gas line into Israel and Jordan is probably also the work of radicals. Assuming that an attempt on the life of the newly designated Vice President actually happened, the probability is that it was the work of radical elements. There are several objectives involved in these kinds of efforts, but central is the attempt to further intensify political instability in the hope that it will make it possible for radicals to increase their influence. Presumably, those that advocate more moderate solutions are as concerned about political instability as is the ruling elite. This opens the door for detente between the regime and their more moderate opponents. Hopefully, that is what President Murarak is attempting to take advantage of in his current political maneuvering.

We, here in America, sometimes are a bit arrogant in our judgment of foreign leaders, particularly those from what we loftily call "Third World" countries. We tend to believe that our president, as the elected leader of a true democracy, leading a country that is recognized by the entire world as a super power has some sort of moral superiority over leaders in lesser countries. In some cases that might actually be true, but our arrogance does us little good in dealing with an international challenge like the one that we face in Egypt today. A day or two ago, I heard a former US ambassador to Egypt opine on national television that Mubarak must go, but he was a "stubborn man." I remember that back when this same Mubarak was sending Egyptian troops into Kuwait to help us stop the Iraqi invasion he was a "steadfast friend" of America. The difference between "stubborn" and "steadfast" is an interesting one and it says a lot about the individuals wielding the lexicon and their interests of the moment.

In past incarnations, I have learned that if you want to convince someone to take a specific course of action you had to first take the full measure of that individual. I do not know Hosni Mubarak, but my guess is that he is a formidable personality and is probably irritated that the America that he has helped so consistently is now throwing him under the bus. He is a staunch nationalist (stubborn/steadfast?) that has ruled Egypt for over thirty years, has helped lead his country in several shooting wars, has escaped assassination multiple times,and has played a critical part in working toward peace in the region. To the extent that the President of the United States, a law professor/civil activist, is attempting to influence his decisions, he almost certainly sees Barack Obama as being a significantly lesser individual that happens to be leading a very powerful nation and knows much less about Egypt than he thinks he does. In addition, Mubarak is over eighty years of age and understands that he is approaching the end of his life. He does not appear to scare easily. I believe that he is going to do what he feels is necessary for his country and is not going to be influenced by outsiders including the almighty United States of America.

I think that it is also interesting that I have yet to hear any Egyptian voice asking for America to do anything other than "butt out." Granted, the so-called "young democratic" protesters are interested in how they are trending on Twitter and want the moral support of America, but even they have not asked us to do anything specific. They appear to think that it is their fight and that they are winning it all by themselves. They have Mubarak making concessions and they appear to be convinced that they have the regime on the run. I predict that they will come out of this intent on showing the world and themselves that they are not stooges of America. My guess is that, if they succeed, they will insist on an all-inclusive government that includes the Muslim Brotherhood. Because the Muslim Brotherhood is not yet appealing to a large percentage of folks in Egypt, radicals will be content with this situation for the moment and will attempt to use it to build power as rapidly as possible.

One thing to remember - Egypt is a country of 79 million people. At best, all I have seen in the street is a disorganized crowd numbering in the hundreds of thousands. The mass of the population is, as yet, unheard from.

Click here to read the last post in this series on Egypt.

Egypt - What Now?

2011-02-04T08:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, the most ardent critics of President Obama started accusing him of cutting off information to the press about what he was doing with regard to Egypt. They started hurling charges that he was not living up to his pledge to govern transparently. I am a fan of transparency in all things domestic and far fewer things international. About Egypt, our president should keep his mouth firmly shut for reasons outlined in my post yesterday. In this instance, his critics on the far right are being unintelligent, shortsighted, and unhelpful. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama's reluctance to talk about this situation is a bit late and, even more unfortunately, " Administration sources" continue to blather about how we are working with the Egyptian military to work out a transition. In the world of foreign affairs it is one thing for people to speculate and quite another for the actors in the drama to actually spell things out. In this case, the cat is out of the bag and we have to live with it. We have no choice but to get over it and move on.

Eventually, some sort of a transition will be worked out. Mubarak will stay for some period of time as a weakened leader or a transition will occur more immediately. In either case, the disorganized group of folks who are currently sitting in Cairo's Tahrir Square will be far more important to the political process than they were last month. Many in the United States and abroad hope that this will somehow result in movement toward true democracy in Egypt - and the fascinating thing is that it might. If it does, that would unquestionably be a positive development in the long run, but the more immediate challenge is more mundane and potentially very dangerous. There is a lot of anti-American hostility in Egypt and even more anti-Israeli hostility. Just because a government is a democracy does not mean that it necessarily has interests that are compatible with our own. Hamas did well in what were apparently fairly honest elections in Gaza and Hezbollah is doing well in Lebanon. Among many other things, the United States is firmly committed to Israel and that will inevitably cause very serious problems in Egypt after Mubarak leaves the scene.

As everybody is well aware, the radical Islamist Muslim Brotherhood is considered to be the single best organized group in Egypt other than the Egyptian military. The nature of military organization does not lend itself to the give and take compromise inherent in the political process. To the extent that the military involves itself in determining the political future of Egypt, it can be expected that it will tend toward authoritarian solutions. If it remains uninvolved, it can be expected that the Muslim Brotherhood will do very well in increasing it's political influence and power. Here is the dilemma for those of us who genuinely wish for democracy, not only in Egypt, but throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Given the fact that there is considerable anti-American hostility within Egypt the challenge becomes even more intractable.

Mohammed ElBaradi, Former Director General International Atomic Energy Commission, is currently emerging as the nominal leader of the opposition, but, if successful, will be totally without a real power base. He is known abroad, but does not have a following within Egypt. There is no question but that this offers Egyptian radicals a wonderful opportunity. I presume that radicals are already in the process of rallying to the Muslim Brotherhood and that countries like Iran and Syria will provide them with resources, operatives and advice. I will not be surprised to see Al Quaida's involvement as well, although that will depend on a lot of things about which I have no information. (Remember that Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Quaida's number two leader, was born in Cairo.) The more interesting questions for me revolve around what other countries in the region will do and what our own options might be. It will be fascinating to see how this administration addresses this set of issues.

Click here to read the next post in this series on Egypt.

Amateurs and Egypt

2011-02-03T07:23:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of advantages to democracy and I am a staunch supporter of the basic concept. One of it's challenges, as practiced in the United States, is that amateurs are constantly forced to deal with international relations at the very highest levels. In past incarnations, I have worked hard to convince foreigners that a peanut farmer, or a rich dilettante, or a professional politician, or a movie actor was presidential timber and was truly capable of leading the free world. I assure you that we talked a lot about the advantages of fresh ideas in dealing with intractable problems and I think I remember arguing that experience was not always what it was cracked up to be. Sometimes my arguments carried the day and sometimes they did not.

President Obama is another in this long line of distinguished amateurs facing significant foreign policy problems. In Egypt today, he is obviously intent on projecting an image of an America that dislikes dictators and loves the free expression of ideas. He believes that access to Twitter and Facebook is pretty close to an inalienable human right and he feels compelled to publicly instruct former staunch allies as to how they should remove themselves from power. I am not as naive as I sound. I am not a big fan of Twitter, but I agree that President Hosni Mubarak should step down. My quibble with our president is not what he did, but how he did it.

I don't know it for a fact, but everybody that should know seems to think that we still have superb relations with the Egyptian military establishment. Mubarak is a member of that elite. If you want him to step aside you talk to him and his associates very, very privately and you help him map out a face saving exit and a smooth political transition to someone else who wants to be friendly with the United States. Not hard and definitely not rocket science. If you do it publicly you prove several things. First, this particular dictator was our puppet all along. This means to most that we supported all of the bad things that he did for thirty years. Second, we will throw our friends to the wolves whenever it appears to serve our interests. Not the most heartening message to send to other leaders that we support.

OK, so Mr. Obama is not dealing with this mess as well as he should, but the more important failing is further back in the chronology of Egypt and it involves both Republican and Democrat. I was looking hard at Egypt at exactly the time that General Mubarak came to power. (In fact, I tried to attend the ceremony during which Sadat was assassinated, but my boss at the time did not like what I was telling him and refused to take me with him.) We had successfully convinced the Egyptian military to quit playing the games that Nasser had advocated and were moving toward solidifying peace between Egypt and Israel. Mubarak looked real good to us at the time and he helped us in virtually every way that he could. Eventually, we began to take him for granted. Hard to believe, but true.

We left Mubarak to deal with his internal problems as best he could. We needed him in the bigger regional picture and felt that he knew his country better than we did. On occasion we attempted to encourage him to permit domestic opposition to develop as a way of relieving internal tensions, but our primary worry was elsewhere and we did not sufficiently press the case. Both Mubarak and his American advisers felt that it was important to educate young people in Egypt. Education is good, but once you educate someone they begin to think that they know something. At that point, you had better give them something constructive to do or they will become disillusioned with the system. On January 25, 2011, inspired by events in Tunisia, these young intellectuals led hundreds of thousands of dissatisfied citizens out into the street and precipitated the crisis that is ongoing today.

Here in the United States, we are fully occupied with our own problems, but we have time to ask questions. "Why didn't anybody see it coming?" Why did the previous administration ally America with an evil dictator? Will the Muslim Brotherhood take power? Will the revolt against authority spread to our other allies in the region? What will it do to the stock market? What will happen to Israel? Unfortunately these are all good and valid questions. Even more unfortunately, I have heard them asked at other times about other places. My question is - will we ever learn? My answer is - probably not.

Click here to read the next post in this series on Egypt.

Unrest in Egypt and the Region

2011-02-02T10:37:00.000-08:00

I know very little about North Africa or the Middle East. I have been there, but it was a long time ago. I once followed events in that part of the world, but don't any more. I only have inadequate media reports for current information sources. Having said that, here is what I think is happening and what it means to America.

The quality of life for the vast majority of people living in the region is extremely poor. The ruling elites are, by comparison, living very well and their leadership is frequently ostentatious with it's wealth. This is not a new development, but it is made more grievous by increased access to the knowledge that people in other parts of the world have a far better standard of living. Understandably, the mass of people want their lives to improve. Expectations are rising more rapidly than regimes can meet them throughout the region - particularly among the younger segments of society.

In Tunisia, on December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of city hall in the town of Sidi Bouzid in protest of this basic situation. The specific facts had to do with a squabble with local authorities over a few vegetables, but the underlying cause was frustration and hopelessness in his life. Bouazizi's martyrdom caught the imagination of the people of Tunisia and, led by young idealistic intellectuals - not radical ideologues, they went into the street demanding regime change.

Thanks, in part, to improved communications through out the region, Bouazizi's action resulted in copycat immolations in a number of places in Africa and the Middle East and, more importantly, triggered massive demonstrations in several countries where the specific conditions on the ground were different, but the underlying dissatisfaction with life was very much the same.

In all of these upheavals, there are many other forces peculiar to each individual locale that are shaping each individual political outcome. Everywhere, radical ideologies vie with more moderate voices offering political solutions and making grandiose promises. In some countries like Syria and Iran the demonstrations are harshly repressed. In Tunisia, Jordan, and Egypt, they have resulted in governmental change and may well even result in regime change.

Because there are very real assets at risk, countries around the world, including our own, are vitally interested in the political outcome of each of these dislocations. In Egypt, we are worried about the Suez Canal and Egyptian support for peace in the region. In Jordan, we are worried about Israel. In Yemen, we are worried about our quasi-military effort against Al Quaida. Throughout the region, we are worried about access to and cost of oil. Over arching everything, we are worried about our struggle with radical Islam.

Lost in all of these worries is concern with the basic problem - too many people in this world have a lousy quality of life. In a perfect world, those of us with more would think harder about how to help those that have less - in North Africa as well as here in America. Please note that I am not advocating increased charity in either place. I am advocating more effective assistance - both foreign and domestic - and more self-reliance - both foreign and domestic.

We have to deal with each of these international upheavals as they come at us and the real world forces us to do things and strike deals that are distasteful. I understand that. (In fact, I've done it.) It is not in the national interest of either the United States or the Egyptian people to turn that country over to the Moslem Brotherhood. Inevitably, we will do things in the immediate future that will not pass muster in a high school civics class. I fear that it may also be inevitable that we will not effectively address the underlying problem of poverty.

Because we won't deal with the fundamentals, we can expect these things to continue to happen and to grow more dangerous in direct relationship to the growing inter-connectivity of this world. Assuming that we are short sighted enough to continue to do that, we will deserve what we get.

Click here to read the next post in this series on Egypt.

Obama Care - Fast Track To The Supreme Court

2011-02-01T08:12:00.000-08:00

Federal District Court Judge Roger Vinson's decision that Obama Care is unconstitutional should clear the case for immediate consideration by the Supreme Court. There are provisions in our legal system that, if a case is important enough, it can be fast tracked to the Supreme Court for immediate decision. The need to decide this case as rapidly as possible should be clear to everyone, but apparently the White House is not willing to agree to permit it to move forward expeditiously. Speculation has it that President Obama feels that the longer he can keep it from what many believe will be an unfavorable Supreme Court decision the better. If that is true, he should be ashamed of himself. If it is not true, I wish he would explain himself.

Everybody that studies the Supreme Court these days seems to think that the case will be decided by a five to four vote and most judicial pundits appear to believe that it will be declared unconstitutional. I suppose that there might be some faint hope that one of the conservative seats on the court might become vacant if the decision can be postponed long enough and that might be reason enough to engage in delaying tactics, but I sure hope not. More likely, the White House believes that the longer that the final decision can be delayed the better their chances will be in 2012. I can't see that logic, but then this White House has mystified me for quite a while. In the meantime, we have fifty states spending money and energy to implement a law that might or might not be constitutional. Seems to me that is just plain irresponsible in this time of financial peril.

Polling and Elections

2011-01-31T09:38:00.000-08:00

Politicians on both sides of the political spectrum are attempting to use polls to prove what the American public is thinking and what it wants our government to do going forward. To the extent that anybody in authority bases their decisions on these polls, to that extent they are proving that they should not be in office. We are all aware that it is possible to frame a poll question in such a way as to get the answer that the poll taker wants. And the problem does not stop there because the next thing that happens is that the poll results are then "analyzed." Today, both the left and the right are skewing polls to make their case and influence government decisions. In my mind, the only poll that really counts is the one that is taken at the electoral polling place. In 2008, the American public said that it liked what Candidate Barack Obama was promising. In 2010, the same public said that it did not like what President Barack Obama delivered.

Today, we are facing massive debt that is threatening to bankrupt America. Some on the left are using polls to argue that the public does not want to cut spending. In my mind that is inexcusable as well as wrong. We know that we have to cut spending, but understandably we are very concerned about where we cut and by how much. When a poll taker asks someone if they want to cut social security and they say no, it does not mean that they want to continue to pile up debt. It does mean that they don't want to cut social security. The same is true for any other specific question that can be conceived. Heck, even the President of the United States has agreed that we have to get our deficit under control. The problem is that he does not know how to do it and wants the Republicans to force his hand so that he can be popular in 2012 as having fought against the very cuts that are necessary to save our economy. If America permits these folks to get away with this kind of shenanigans we unfortunately deserve to go the way of Southern Europe.

Cancel the credit cards - please!

2011-01-30T11:03:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of very important things happening in the world right now and it is understandable that we should be looking hard at events in Mexico, North Africa, the Middle East, and other hot spots around the globe, but one of the most important things going on anywhere in the world today is occurring right here at home. President Obama and the Congress are entering into negotiations about raising this country's debt ceiling.

If the United States were to default on it's obligations it would not only destroy our country, but would throw the entire international economic system into chaos. Obviously, we can not permit that to happen and obviously it means that the Republicans in the Congress will have to support legislation that dramatically increases our national debt. Today, our debt increases by four billion dollars every day. The fact that we have no choice, but to increase that astronomical figure is all by itself an indication as to just exactly how bad our national finances are.

The Speaker of the House has a clear understanding of the situation. He said that defaulting on our obligations is not a way to create jobs, but we must reduce spending if we are to dig ourselves out of the economic hole that we are in. The Senate Minority leader said much the same thing. Meanwhile, the president is preparing a budget request that is expected to ask for massive increases in spending.

The fact that there are folks in this country that do not see the need to reduce spending amazes me and, to some extent, disheartens me. How can we be so stupid? I understand the need to argue about where we cut and by how much, but I honestly do not understand someone like our president who wants to ignore our debt and pile on even more spending that will significantly worsen it. It does indeed remind me of the teenager with the credit card problem.

Obama Care - Replace it or else

2011-01-29T09:29:00.000-08:00

According to news reports, the Federal Government has granted over 700 waivers to employers who cannot meet the requirements of Obama Care. Conservatives point out that this proves the unworkability of the program, particularly since many of the recipients of these waivers were supporters of the program in the first place. If they can't make it work nobody can.

I oppose Obama Care and agree with this criticism, but I want to caution my fellow conservatives. We must remember that Mr. Obama's real objective is a national health care system that is completely controlled by the government. In the give and take on health care over the next months, he and his allies can be expected to offer these types of problems as proof that a market based health care system is unworkable.

We have two choices. We can continue to argue with him about Obama Care or we can propose specific new legislation to replace it. With 2012 approaching I suggest that we best get busy with our new ideas. Let's immediately take him up on his offer to reform medical malpractice legislation - tort reform. Let's propose specific legislation that permits folks to buy health insurance across state lines. Let's harness the whiz kids in the IT world to develop a nationwide digital health records system. Etc.

It is important that the House defund Obama Care and use it's investigative powers to illuminate it's failings, but we can not stop there. If we do, the public will turn against us - and they should because we are no more able to deal with real problems than the liberals are. If we do have the ideas that can get the job done better than this president we had better get them out in the open right now.

Tax Code Dangers

2011-01-28T07:08:00.000-08:00

A month or so ago we had a great national discussion about taxes and we came to a bipartisan decision that nobody liked, but most of us accepted. We decided to continue the Bush tax rates without change in return for a large dose of additional spending. During the debate much was made of the fact that increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans would adversely impact small business. Many liberals believe that is as it should be. The wealthy should share their wealth with the less fortunate members of our country.

I am concerned about the less fortunate, but do not believe that sharing the wealth works (see previous posts). I also believe that overtaxing the top echelons of income will adversely impact small business and that this will put one more impediment in the way of creating more jobs. The reason for this is that many small business owners pay their taxes as personal income.

Recently, Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury said: "A lot of people have suggested that we look at business income generated outside what we call the corporate sector. There is a lot of income there and many of the distortions in the corporate sector affect them too. It's worth taking a look at." Mr. Geithner is talking about what you and I call small business and is edging up to suggesting that we include some or all of it in what he calls the corporate sector thus making it possible to apply corporate taxes to their profits.

I agree that we should look at this in the context of a complete overhaul of the tax code, but suggest that we had best be very careful lest we adversely impact job creation and even more importantly stifle innovation. We must remember that many of our most important innovations started out with a couple of people tinkering in their garage. I don't mind government sponsored research, but honestly believe that garage based research might be even more important to our success as a nation.

Social Security

2011-01-27T09:17:00.000-08:00

Following President Obama's State of the Union Speech, Mitch McConnell, Republican Senate Leader, said: "I take the president at his word when he says he's eager to cooperate with us on doing all of it." This is exactly the right approach for conservatives to take and I commend Mr. McConnell.

One of the more important issues before us that requires this kind of bipartisan action is social security. I am not an expert on social security, but as I understand it, the program has generated a $2.5 trillion surplus. A problem exists because this money has been borrowed over the years to pay for other programs. It is not in the piggy bank anymore. Instead there are IOUs that must be paid from other funds. Even if these funds are found (and I presume that they will be), the system will go broke in 2037 unless it is overhauled. The basic reason is that fewer workers are paying into it and more retirees are drawing funds out of it. There are peripheral arguments, but this is the basic problem.

Politicians inching up to this issue can be expected to spend a lot of time and hot air talking about who is to blame for this situation. Affixing blame is easier than fixing a broken program. Those that are to blame include every politician that has served in the national government since the program was initiated following the Great Depression. We have a broken program. It has to be fixed, the fix is going to hurt, so get on with it or give up your seat at the table.

The Social Security Administration estimates that in 2037 the program will be able to pay about 78% of the benefits due to recipients. That is clearly unacceptable. We have about 25 years to work with if program modifications are made now. Among the things being suggested are changes in the retirement age, reductions in annual increases designed to offset inflation for wealthier recipients, as well as increases in payroll taxes. Some are also calling for partial or complete elimination of the program as it stands now to be replaced by a program that invests in the stock market.

Let's start by somebody in authority with access to the numbers spelling out exactly what each of these options can do for us. Get rid of the hyperbolae and just give the public the facts. After that the politicians can debate the various solutions and make some decisions. If those of us in the audience don't like the decisions we can express our displeasure at the polls in 2012. If you folks in Congress don't get on with it though, I say you all need to find other work. As for those of us in the cheap seats - we are going to have to be realistic. There is no way that this is not going to hurt. Suck it up.

2011 State of the Union Speech

2011-01-26T09:08:00.000-08:00

President Obama's State of the Union speech last night was an excellent defense of his current position on a number of critical issues facing our country. He clearly maintained his position as the foremost orator currently working the room in the English language. He urged bipartisanship going forward and spoke forcefully, if briefly, of the need to get our deficit under control. There were a few places where he reiterated promises that he had made before and failed to keep, but most of the speech was focused on the need for massive investments to ensure that America could maintain it's position as the greatest nation in the world. As is the case in all such speeches, specifics were lacking. Paul Ryan's Republican response to the speech was focused entirely on the need to get our deficit under control before we engage in increased spending. The president painted a glowing utopia if we invested in our future and Ryan painted a certain apocalypse if we failed to reduce our spending.

I continue to believe that our president is able to identify the right challenges facing our country, but utterly fails in finding acceptable and effective ways to deal with them. His speech was a long list of attractive national goals, but did not effectively deal with the question of how we pay for them. My guess is that he does understand the economic crisis that we are in and does want to deal with it, but wants the Republicans to force him to make the spending cuts that will inevitably be unpopular with significant elements of the voting public. He fears taking the lead in addressing Medicare, Social Security and the other entitlements that are at the root of our economic woes. This will be useful in his 2012 reelection campaign. His success (or lack thereof) in pursuing this political strategy will be an interesting commentary on the political sophistication of the American people.

I continue to believe that we should take the president at his word and test his sincerity rather than just dismiss his words as glib gibberish. When he says that he wants to get the deficit under control, conservatives must offer specific realistic proposals to do that and follow through with effective argumentation to support their position. When he calls for investment in our future, conservatives should agree in principal and demand that it be done in a fiscally responsible manner. With regard to the conservative rebuttal to the speech, I like Paul Ryan's economic approach and feel that some of the more articulate Tea Party folks are trying to go too far too fast. The solution to our economic problems must be a centrist solution that a majority of Americans can support. The solution is inevitably going to be painful and it must hurt all of us equally.

Pawlenty and Social Security

2011-01-25T09:47:00.000-08:00

Timothy Pawlenty, former Governor of Minnesota is running for president. He is also presenting specific ideas that might be adopted in our search for the resolution of our debt crisis. It is still too early for me to decide whether I would support Mr. Pawlenty in his bid to capture the Republican nomination, but I am interested in some of the ideas that he is advocating. Two suggestions are related to social security.

Mr. Pawlenty suggests that we raise the retirement age for younger workers joining the work force. In as much as we are all living longer and better than we used to, this makes sense to me.

Mr Pawlenty also suggests that we adopt means testing for annual increases in social security payments. As I understand his proposal, this would mean that wealthier recipients would have their social security increases scaled back. Here again, I support this concept.

I note that Mr. Pawlenty describes both solutions as "suboptimal." I agree with him and am attracted to them only because they are less bad than many others that are floating around. We simply do not have enough wealth to continue the social security system as it is now. It has to be changed and these ideas seem to me to be a reasonable start.

It is relatively easy to see the injustice of both of these suggestions and, if implemented, to get angry at the people who support them. This will be true of all of the "suboptimal" solutions that are coming down the pike at us in the months ahead. We must remember that the real culprits are the ones who spent too much money in years past - both Republican and Democrat. They created the problem and now we are paying for it. We are all going to have to sacrifice because of their errors, shortsightedness, misjudgments, and stupidities. We can not get angry at the folks who are trying to dig us out of the hole that we are in by suggesting less bad options. Let's focus on the specific solutions being offered and choose wisely.

Spend 'till we're Broke - We're There

2011-01-24T09:05:00.000-08:00

As this country is forced to get serious about curbing it's profligate spending and paying our bills, we run into the danger of inflation. One of the ways that our government has been dealing with the current ongoing economic crisis has been to print a flood of new money and hold interest rates as low as possible. I am not an economist, but, given the problems that we were facing, I suspect that this policy was probably necessary even though it has created some serious dislocations in the economy.

The arcane ways in which this has been accomplished are complicated, but one of the inevitable results of this policy has been that the value of our currency has gone down. The dollar does not buy as much today as it did yesterday. This means that, here at home, those of us who have managed to save some money are seeing our savings reduced in purchasing power. It also means that, internationally, those that hold our national debt are witnessing an erosion in the value of their holdings.

There is increasing inflationary pressure on core economic sectors both here at home and abroad. In order to deal with the adverse effects of inflation, the money supply has to be reduced. The best way to accomplish this is to raise interest rates. Unfortunately, an increase in interest rates will adversely impact our efforts to dig ourselves out of the economic hole that we are in.

This is not a partisan issue - it is cold hard economics. Whether on the political left or the political right, we must deal with this issue. The two sides of the congressional aisle have different approaches to the problem. I champion the conservative approach which, in part, calls for an immediate reduction in spending. This will relieve pressure on the money supply faster than anything else that can be done. If we spend less we need fewer dollars.

As politicians and economists pontificate in the months ahead do not be confused by long winded explanations. The basics are simple. If we continue to spend like drunken sailors all we will do is intensify the hangover that is already ruining our day. We must reduce spending and that means that we have to decide where and how much. That will be painful.

My guess is that President Obama understands this very well. I expect him to attempt to maneuver his political opponents into taking positions that are unpopular with the general public so that he can get reelected in 2012. I am not overly concerned and do not see that as anything other than politics as usual. The real question is whether the public blindly goes along with the wishful thinking that has so long characterized our political discourse. Folks, there is no free lunch. We must reduce spending.

President Obama Moves Toward the Center

2011-01-23T09:34:00.000-08:00

Is President Obama moving to the center? Of course he is. Has he changed his basic political philosophy? Of course not. After the massive November election defeat of Democratic candidates for office at national and state levels, Mr. Obama understood that he had to compromise with conservatives in order to protect his prospects for reelection in the 2012 presidential election. In so doing, he can be expected to protect as much of his liberal accomplishments as possible and thus will give ground to genuine compromise grudgingly.

Mr. Obama ardently believes in the programs that he helped pass during his first two years in office and thinks that many Americans do too. He understands that he can do nothing to mollify the political right, but he believes that he can convince the middle of the political spectrum that he is a moderate by giving ground on some Republican demands while at the same time warning against conservative extremism. Assuming that he is re-elected in 2012, I expect him to return to the ultra-liberal philosophy that characterized his first two years in office. I believe that would be extremely detrimental to our future.

The current political situation in this country is fascinating. As the president begins saying moderate things, conservatives are at a loss as to how to respond effectively. The knee jerk response is frequently to clamor that he does not mean it. He is insincere, crafty, duplicitous, splutter, sputter... Those in charge of Mr. Obama's reelection campaign could not be more delighted. The president says that he wants to reduce debt and conservative talk show hosts roll their eyes and mumble something about how he is the one that created most of the debt. True, but politically ineffective except within conservative circles.

I suggest that what conservatives must do during the next two years is to avoid empty rhetoric and stay on message: The President is sincere in his belief in governmental solutions that are wrong for America. The midterm elections forced him to compromise and he is now talking about compromise. That is as it should be. Now let's focus on results. Where actual progress is made we should give credit where credit is due - even if it is partially due to the president. Where we get nothing but empty talk, that too should be pointed out. Simultaneously conservative leaders must, repeat must, present intelligent alternative solutions to the problems that face this country.

Nutrition and Tucson

2011-01-21T09:36:00.000-08:00

I believe in freedom and dislike government intrusion into our private lives. Perhaps I am missing something, but I do not see how Michelle Obama advocating healthy food for children is somehow wrong. I support small business and am concerned about the impact of large box stores on our economy, but I do not see how Wal-Mart saying that it will attempt to improve the nutritional value of the food that it sells is a bad thing. Sarah Palin, whom I respect, seems to think that Mrs. Obama's "Let's Move" campaign to fight childhood obesity is a bad idea. I am unable to see it that way. I think that the first lady's campaign is a good thing and should be supported by all of us. Her advice on how to eat is much like what my mom told me while I was growing up and is pretty much what all the nutritionists are saying these days.

I want to see President Obama replaced in 2012, but I think that he gave a good speech in Tucson. In fact, I think that speech achieved some of the same high notes that characterized some of his better pre-election speeches. I have no basis to question his motives, his true feelings, nor his sincerity in making that speech, and I think that those that do so are making a mistake. My guess is that he is genuinely horrified by the Loughner rampage and genuinely wants to tone down the political rhetoric on both sides of the congressional aisle. Those conservatives that criticize his Tucson speech are not helping their political cause. I wholeheartedly agree with the president that we should tone down the rhetoric. This does not mean that I agree with his policies, only that I do not see the need nor the wisdom of arguing with everything that the man says. Let's stay focused on the real issues that need to be addressed.

Repeal and Replace

2011-01-20T07:34:00.000-08:00

I support the repeal of Obama Care and applaud the House for their vote yesterday. Obama Care is too expensive, requires too much government intrusion into people's lives, and, if implemented, would create too much additional governmental bureaucracy. I believe that it would also reduce the quality of health care in America. I will be interested to see how the effort to repeal Obama Care fares in the Senate, but presume that it will be defeated. If that happens I support House conservatives using the power of the purse to do everything that they can to block implementation of this onerous legislation. At the same time that I want to do away with Obama Care I believe that America should strive to extend the best health care possible to as many of our citizens as we can. Ultra-conservatives are correct that there is nothing in the constitution requiring this, but I believe that it is the right thing to do none-the-less. I will be looking for specific initiatives designed to accomplish this from our conservative representatives in the months ahead.

There was another important congressional vote yesterday. The House Rules Committee approved a resolution calling on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (Republican, Wisconsin) to limit non-security discretionary spending in the second half of 2011 to 2008 levels or less. This is the beginning of a conservative effort to reduce governmental spending and to shrink the size of the federal government. I fully support this effort as well, but I recognize that it will not be enough to straighten out our economy. For that, we must address the question of entitlements as well as defense spending. Solutions to those problems are going to be painful and are potentially dangerous but we can not shy away from them.

A third welcome development came from the White House when President Obama instructed some government agencies to review their regulations to see if they were impeding job creation. It remains to be seen whether anything useful will come from this, but I certainly support the initiative and hope that it will be expanded to all agencies throughout the government. Some on the political right are skeptical of the president's true motives here and are criticizing it as being insincere before we have an opportunity to see what might come of it. That makes for good ratings for talk show hosts speaking to their most rabid fans, but it is less than useful in the public debate about how to get ourselves out of the economic mess that we are in. It also drives thinking Americans away from conservative voices.

Where are we going?

2011-01-16T08:47:00.000-08:00

It is a cliche to say that America derives much of it's success from immigrants. It is also true. Over the years, the brightest minds from all over the world have immigrated to the United States. The individual reasons for this are as diverse as the people that immigrated, but one important common attraction was freedom. Freedom from government meddling in our daily lives, freedom to live and work where we wanted to live and work, and freedom to be whomever we wanted to be. Our society is in the process of restricting those freedoms more rapidly than ever before in our history. As our freedoms are further restricted we will see a corresponding reduction in the inflow of intelligence, initiative, and energy. This will inevitably contribute to the decline of America. Depending on how fast and how effectively we reduce freedom in this country, we will, for the first time in our history, begin to suffer from the "brain drain." Our best and our brightest will move somewhere else and foreign intelligence will stay home. (Further complicating the problem, unimaginative people will continue to come as long as we are able to offer attractive social benefits.)

It can be said that this is already happening with, for instance, many of the most creative young people working in Silicon Valley moving to Mumbai, India, but that is because of specific stupidities in our laws. That kind of shortsightedness could be reversed with a simple vote in the legislature. I am more concerned with the pervasive, if subtle, inroads on our freedoms that are going on at every echelon of our society. People can argue about the merits of specific programs, but there is absolutely no question that we are moving ever more rapidly toward a welfare state with all that implies for freedoms of all kinds. President Obama's desire to "spread the wealth around" will ensure that there is less wealth to spread. This, all by itself, is reason to vote him out of office in 2012, but it is not the end of the problem. The real problem is within us - the people of America - and it could be an incurable and terminal illness for the America that we know today.

Ironically, we are doing this to ourselves for admirable reasons. Our population is well-educated and we can see the inequities that are all around us both at home and abroad. We are a moral people and are justifiably concerned with the plight of those that have less than we do. We are the wealthiest country in the world and we understand that much of that wealth has come to us through the exploitation of others. We are a confident people that has successfully dealt with external challenge without ever having serious military conflict touch our heartland until very recently. We are also an insular, naive, and self-absorbed people that has very little understanding of the world around us. In international affairs we attribute qualities to others that are not there and at home we have an unrealistic faith in governmental solutions.

We are still the greatest nation in the world - no matter how you define great and we can still turn things around, but only if you and I want to do it. I want to, but I worry about you. My suspicion is that you will win.

Loughner and Mexico

2011-01-15T08:38:00.000-08:00

For understandable reasons, we are focusing most of our current attention on the recent horrific shooting in Tucson. It is pretty clear from the information that we have now, that Jared Loughner acted alone and had nothing to do with Islamic terrorists, or Mexican drug cartels. Those that try to label a person that far removed from sanity a liberal or a conservative are indulging in flights of fantasy. I doubt that Loughner killed six people because of the words of any politician including Sarah Palin, but that certainly does not condone excessive political rhetoric. As I have posted before, I believe that the words that we use do have consequences and excessive political rhetoric works against conservative arguments. Even if it does not stir violent acts, excessive rhetoric is less than intelligent and gets in the way of decision-making about important challenges facing America and the world.

There is another recent disturbing report out of the Southwest. Apparently, suspected Mexican drug cartel members used live fire from across the Rio Grande River to haze American road workers and chase them out of a part of West Texas close to the Mexican border. This highlights the ongoing violence that exists just south of the United States and it also reminds us that our government is not doing enough to protect our border nor enough to help Mexican authorities that are in a literal life and death struggle with anarchy. Loughner is one man. Mexico is a nation of 107 million people with a very long common border. To turn a blind eye to what is going on in Mexico is naive, foolish, and extremely dangerous.

In the United States, a Loughner goes nuts every once in a while. In Mexico, it happens on a daily basis. In our country, the idiot acts alone without rational thought. In Mexico, the thugs are acting as part of organized groups consciously attempting to destroy national authority. We should be horrified at what Loughner did and we should be terrified by what the drug cartels are doing just south of our border.

Guns in Society

2011-01-13T09:05:00.000-08:00

Guns are understandably a controversial subject. A whole lot of folks do not like them and that certainly includes me. Another group of people, including a number of my closest friends, actually like them although most of them would claim that "like" is too strong a word. They would argue that guns are nothing more than a tool that can be used for sport and/or for personal protection. I agree with them, but I still do not like guns.

Many in our society want a total ban on gun ownership, but a significant number of people argue that our Constitution provides citizens the right to bear arms. I am not an expert on the constitution, but can easily understand both sides of that argument. For me, it comes down to the interpretation of words and not the intention of the people who wrote the founding documents for our government. In the eighteenth century, virtually every household in the country had one or more guns in it. It is obvious that the men who wrote the constitution did not intend to try to deny guns to the citizens, but I am not sure that is particularly relevant to our present situation. These same men believed that it was acceptable to own slaves and that women were not smart enough to vote. We have changed our minds on both points and I see no reason why we can not change our minds about guns. The world changes as time moves on.

For me, the question is whether we should change our gun laws and, if so, how. This is a much more difficult and relevant issue than the esoteric constitutional argument. I suggest that most folks who want a total ban on guns live in secure neighborhoods and most of those that want guns for personal protection fear that their personal security is inadequately protected by the police. It is fairly easy to develop compelling arguments on both sides without either side convincing the other of their relevance. Take the insane idiot that shoots someone for no reason. If he did not have access to a gun he could not have done it. On the other hand, if the victim had a gun he might have been able to protect himself. Etc., etc., etc...

I think back to life in America during the nineteenth century where every man that lived in my part of the country carried a weapon. That lifestyle makes for exciting motion pictures, but I certainly would not want to go back to it when I left the cinema. I have spent time in places where I carried a gun and had to be constantly on guard against mayhem that could kill me - even when I was sleeping. It is a waring pressure and changes one's very being. It is not good. I want a society that is as far removed from that as possible and I wish that we could get rid of everything and anything that can cause harm to a human being - including, but not limited to guns. My guess is that is an impossible goal because the real problem is within us. If we get nuts enough to want to kill someone and we do not have access to a gun we will probably use some other tool.

I believe that it would be useful to limit and control access to guns, but I do not see it as being practical to try to impose a total ban. To do that effectively we would need to impose a level of government control on our daily lives that would be totally unacceptable even if it could be accomplished. Certainly, guns should be registered. Waiting periods are an excellent idea. Gun education is absolutely necessary. Miss-use of guns should result in very heavy penalties. Effective action against gun smuggling and illicit sales should be strengthened. This last point is far and away the most crying need right now, but it is more relevant to our relations with Mexico than it is Main Street America. It is understandable that we should be horrified when someone kills six people in a shopping mall, but we should also remember that our guns are killing hundreds if not thousands south of the border.

Books versus the iPad

2010-12-31T08:08:00.000-08:00

We own an iPad and are beginning to use it to read e-books and e-magazines. We grew up loving traditional paper books and magazines and are having something of a hard time adjusting to the new forms of these traditional elements in our lives. Our home has hundreds of books in it and we have already given a like number away. I have absolutely no idea how many magazines have passed through our lives, but the number has to be astronomical. We really like our local bookstore and the people who own it and feel disloyal when we buy an e-book online.

On the other side of the equation there is convenience, cost effectiveness, and the wow factor. The ability to meld sound and video in a book or magazine is a giant step forward in the publishing world. Reading on what is basically a computer facilitates note taking, finding passages and words, looking up the definition of strange terms, checking sources, and a whole host of other things. The convenience of finding and obtaining a title to read is astounding when you have the iTunes and Amazon bookstores a click away. And then there is the very real, if mundane, consideration of cost - e-books are less expensive. On a trip carrying one slim iPad instead of an armful of heavy books is also relevant.

Some folks are still fighting the issue and understandably the publishing world is in turmoil, but as I see it the game has changed in a very fundamental way. Going forward, e-books and video will play an increasingly large part in our day-to-day lives and traditional books and movies will retreat further into the realm of specialty items. Streaming Netflix and uTube have already replaced the neighborhood movie palace and it is only a matter of time before somebody starts trying to find a business model that will support an online public library of e-books that can be borrowed. The implications for education are mind boggling.

I feel sorry for the folks who are in the business of selling paper books and I bemoan the passing of an important icon, but I fear that I have passed the point of no return. Recognizing it's lack of intellectual panache, I am now a dedicated iPad aficionado.

Missile Defense is Expensive

2010-12-23T07:47:00.000-08:00

Allegedly, every single living Secretary of State has indicated that the new Start Treaty with Russia is a good document that will improve relations with Russia, will further reduce and verify the nuclear stockpile in both countries, and will not inhibit our country from defending itself. The sitting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has echoed that opinion. President Obama appears to be convinced of it as well. I certainly hope that they are correct and the few Republican Senators that are voicing doubts are wrong, but I worry a bit. Senator Graham has indicated that there may be differing Russian and American interpretations of the preamble to the treaty and that this somehow impacts our ability to develop a missile shield for ourselves and for Europe. I respect the good senator, but I hope that he is wrong.

There is a lot of controversy surrounding the cost and viability of missile defense in general, the feasibility of building a missile shield for this country, and what the diplomats pompously call the "European Phased Adaptive Approach" (which I understand is the colloquial name for the European missile defense system). I, of course, know nothing about missile technology, but it appears to me that developing an effective defense against missiles for ourselves and our friends is unfortunately a necessity in today's world. North Korea already has both nuclear weapons and missiles that are good enough to deliver those weapons throughout much of East Asia. Iran has missiles that can reach friends of ours in Europe and the Middle East and is well on their way to developing the capability to build nuclear weapons. Venezuela is planning to install missiles capable of reaching the United States with warheads that can disrupt our electric grid. All of this is over and above China and Russia's capabilities.

This is a dangerous world. We may have escaped the horrors implicit in the Cold War, but we continue to face hostility that can hurt us in ways that are unacceptable. Effective missile defense is a complicated subject, expensive as all get out, and an elusive objective as the capabilities of our potential enemies change and improve. I advocate reducing the cost of government, eliminating waste, and improving efficiency. The development of an effective missile shield should not be exempt from this process, but in the end all of the resources necessary to accomplishing our objectives in this regard must be made available to the program. Unfortunately, this has to be an urgent priority going forward.