Ted Cruz and Mario Loyola are distinguished scholars who make the argument that constraints on federal power have all but vanished from out of the Constitution. Notwithstanding, the battle against unconstrained federal supremacy continues in the federal courts, and there have even been a few victories and precious groundwork lain for the resurgence of an “originalist” approach to the Constitution, as well as a restoration of the Republic in which the federal government has limited powers.
Perhaps the most important power granted to Congress (though the Framers did not intend this to be the case) has turned out to be the power “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.” As has been widely noted, the principal motivation for granting this power to the federal government was the concern that individual States might erect tariff barriers, and thereby discriminate against interstate commerce. During the 19th century, the Commerce Clause was invoked chiefly to overturn state laws that discriminated against interstate commerce. But as late as the early 20th century, the Supreme Court was unwilling to allow this power to reach commercial activity that was purely intrastate.
Starting around 1914, however, the Supreme Court began to embrace an ever-widening interpretation of the Commerce Clause. In the Shreveport Rate cases, the Court articulated a novel basis for intruding on purely intrastate commerce: Where interstate and intrastate commerce were so mingled that regulation of interstate commerce required incidental regulation of intrastate commerce, the activity fell within the commerce power, because of their “close and substantial relation.” As it happened, the victim of this first expansion of federal commerce power was Texas: the Court had ruled that the federal government could regulate the fees charged by a railway between Dallas and Marshall, Texas. The law protected those purely intrastate carriers who faced penalties for disobeying the regulations of the Texas Railroad Commission, in order to comply with federal mandates.
In the 1935 case of Schechter Poultry v. U.S., the Court once again asserted its role as a powerful guardian of constitutional constraints, striking down federal regulation of labor conditions in a purely intrastate business because the activity in question bore only an “indirect” relation to interstate commerce. The Court reasoned that otherwise “there would be virtually no limit to the federal power and for all practical purposes we should have a completely centralized government.”
The Court was no doubt correct about the looming danger of unlimited federal power and “a completely centralized government,” but the political winds were blowing against it. FDR won a landslide reelection in 1936 and in an address to Congress in early 1937 threatened to pack the Supreme Court with additional justices, implicitly warning that if the Court did not acquiesce in his New Deal legislation, he and the Congress would break its power. The Supreme Court reacted that very year, in the case of NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., by casting aside the categories of direct and indirect effects, and holding instead that Congress could regulate activities that “have such a close and substantial relation to interstate commerce that their control is essential or appropriate to protect that commerce from burdens and obstructions” in state law.
With that, the Court opened the door to all but eliminating the Constitution’s constraints on federal power exercised under the Commerce Clause. The stage was now set for the 1942 decision of Wickard v. Filburn, in which the Supreme Court held that a farmer’s private cultivation of wheat for purely personal use on his own farm could nevertheless be regulated pursuant to the Commerce Clause, because any activity which, in the aggregate across the Nation, could have a substantial effect on interstate commerce, was properly within the power to regulate commerce “among the several States.” If this purely personal activity affected interstate commerce, then every activity falls within the power of the federal government. Wickard expanded the Commerce Clause to its outermost limits—so much so, indeed, that it arguably made the other enumerated powers of the Article I, Section 8 superfluous.
If the Framers had intended to grant the federal government a power to regulate commerce as expansive as that defined in Wickard, there was no need to enumerate so many other powers in addition to the Commerce Clause. Why specifically authorize Congress to create a Post Office (Art. I, Section 8, cl. 7); or regulate bankruptcies (Art. I, Section 8, cl. 4); or protect patents and copyrights (Art. I, Section 8, cl. 8)—if anything that in the national aggregate which might have an effect on commerce (as all those assuredly do) could be regulated already under the Commerce Clause?
Friday, February 25, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Reflections on Ronald Reagan: What If? (Issue #488)
If you have memories tied to Reagan and his presidency, you may find it hard to believe that it has been 30 years since Ronald Reagan’s First Inauguration. On February 6th, 2011 we celebrated the 100th anniversary of his birthday, which means he was nearly 70 years old when he took office becoming our 40th president. He is still the oldest president Americans have ever elected. Maybe it was his optimism or sense of humor and easy laughter, but he seemed quite young at the time—more youthful frankly, than Nixon, Ford or Carter.
The Reagan Revolution was a great moment in history, and I am grateful to have been alive. Reagan said that gratitude opens a door to deeper wisdom. Reagan was a thinker, even though his detractors liked to pretend that he was unsophisticated and even simple. History has borne out that Reagan achieved a lot and certainly he changed the tenor of the time. I am mindful, however, that the Reagan Revolution was not and is not completed, not to its full extent as I understood it then.
I know there are disagreements within the conservative movement, in terms of just what the Reagan Revolution entailed. But I was a student of politics at the time and listened intently to what Reagan said. I am confident in the assertion that Reagan would not have supported the runaway spending in Washington, or the fearful concentration of power in the federal government that has occurred since he left office.
Let me suggest a few more things he may have done. He no doubt would have supported some version of the War on Terrorism, possibly even before 9/11. You know I remember being shocked and dismayed while at Ft. Bragg going through an Individual Terrorism Awareness Class in July 2000 (over a year before 9/11 when Bill Clinton was president)—and finding out, the administration actually knew who Osama bin Laden was. They knew he had declared war on the United States. For the life of me I can’t imagine why, but most of the Army did not know this, and the American people sure didn’t know until that fateful autumn day in 2001.
When the planes crashed into the twin towers I was in Kuwait, still helping contain Saddam Hussein in the Southern No-Fly Zone. Reagan was more strategic than either Clinton or George W., and he usually had his priorities straight. Reagan would have taken out the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11 the way George W. Bush did. My sense is the invasion of Iraq in 2003 would have been superfluous, because he would have taken care of Saddam Hussein the very first time he violated terms of the March 1991 truce—instead of putting up with more than a decade of risky expensive international containment paid for by the American taxpayer! In no wise would Reagan have supported the indefinite undeclared warfare we see today, or embarked on the same level of democratic nation-building. His foreign policy was of the realist school and tended to be bi-partisan.
On the domestic spending front, he would have used his veto many times over the last decade to be sure and probably would have taken on Republican and Democrat pork. We never would have doubted his intention to nominate strict constructionist judges for the Supreme Court—judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade.
I don’t believe he would have sanctioned the loss of freedom in a cynically named “Patriot Act” without sunset provision or oversight of the Executive Branch, or without reading it. I can’t imagine he would have continued to leave our borders unsecured either, in the wake of drug violence, kidnappings and murder—particularly since he tried a one-time amnesty program, which was expressly predicated on a national requirement to secure the southern border and to regulate immigration.
Of course this is hypothetical conjecture. We can’t know for sure what President Reagan would or would not have done, in lieu of George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama. Like every other president, Reagan came into office with a set of goals and objectives; his actual record inevitably falls short and is mixed—he reduced overall government spending during his first term only to see it go up again in his second. Then there’s the debate over what constitutes his actual historic legacy, not to mention what unfinished legacy remains for those of us who count ourselves among his philosophic heirs.
To me the political environment today is reminiscent of the Reagan Revolution. Reagan’s agenda developed in the late 1970s and put into practice in the early 1980s received momentum during a period of financial crisis, and represents a similar critique to what is espoused by the Tea Party in the wake of today’s financial crisis. (And we thought Carter was bad!). For every action, government still has an equal and opposite government program. Government still subsidizes error, drags down the economy, burdens posterity with debt. Ronald Reagan’s speeches are full of references to the necessity of fiscal responsibility—of spending less and reducing the deficit; of returning to limited constitutional government; of free enterprise and free market solutions.
What this indicates to me is that the progressives joined in the battle again, after Reagan. They conducted a counterattack and have made headway. Capitalism may have won internationally, but socialists are rife in this country and continue to drive home their agenda. It is perhaps true that no political battle is ever won once and for all. That is why Reagan cautioned that our freedom cannot be handed down in the bloodstream—it can never be taken for granted. Every generation must perform its duty, add its weight, and help pull the wagon.
The Reagan Revolution was a great moment in history, and I am grateful to have been alive. Reagan said that gratitude opens a door to deeper wisdom. Reagan was a thinker, even though his detractors liked to pretend that he was unsophisticated and even simple. History has borne out that Reagan achieved a lot and certainly he changed the tenor of the time. I am mindful, however, that the Reagan Revolution was not and is not completed, not to its full extent as I understood it then.
I know there are disagreements within the conservative movement, in terms of just what the Reagan Revolution entailed. But I was a student of politics at the time and listened intently to what Reagan said. I am confident in the assertion that Reagan would not have supported the runaway spending in Washington, or the fearful concentration of power in the federal government that has occurred since he left office.
Let me suggest a few more things he may have done. He no doubt would have supported some version of the War on Terrorism, possibly even before 9/11. You know I remember being shocked and dismayed while at Ft. Bragg going through an Individual Terrorism Awareness Class in July 2000 (over a year before 9/11 when Bill Clinton was president)—and finding out, the administration actually knew who Osama bin Laden was. They knew he had declared war on the United States. For the life of me I can’t imagine why, but most of the Army did not know this, and the American people sure didn’t know until that fateful autumn day in 2001.
When the planes crashed into the twin towers I was in Kuwait, still helping contain Saddam Hussein in the Southern No-Fly Zone. Reagan was more strategic than either Clinton or George W., and he usually had his priorities straight. Reagan would have taken out the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11 the way George W. Bush did. My sense is the invasion of Iraq in 2003 would have been superfluous, because he would have taken care of Saddam Hussein the very first time he violated terms of the March 1991 truce—instead of putting up with more than a decade of risky expensive international containment paid for by the American taxpayer! In no wise would Reagan have supported the indefinite undeclared warfare we see today, or embarked on the same level of democratic nation-building. His foreign policy was of the realist school and tended to be bi-partisan.
On the domestic spending front, he would have used his veto many times over the last decade to be sure and probably would have taken on Republican and Democrat pork. We never would have doubted his intention to nominate strict constructionist judges for the Supreme Court—judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade.
I don’t believe he would have sanctioned the loss of freedom in a cynically named “Patriot Act” without sunset provision or oversight of the Executive Branch, or without reading it. I can’t imagine he would have continued to leave our borders unsecured either, in the wake of drug violence, kidnappings and murder—particularly since he tried a one-time amnesty program, which was expressly predicated on a national requirement to secure the southern border and to regulate immigration.
Of course this is hypothetical conjecture. We can’t know for sure what President Reagan would or would not have done, in lieu of George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama. Like every other president, Reagan came into office with a set of goals and objectives; his actual record inevitably falls short and is mixed—he reduced overall government spending during his first term only to see it go up again in his second. Then there’s the debate over what constitutes his actual historic legacy, not to mention what unfinished legacy remains for those of us who count ourselves among his philosophic heirs.
To me the political environment today is reminiscent of the Reagan Revolution. Reagan’s agenda developed in the late 1970s and put into practice in the early 1980s received momentum during a period of financial crisis, and represents a similar critique to what is espoused by the Tea Party in the wake of today’s financial crisis. (And we thought Carter was bad!). For every action, government still has an equal and opposite government program. Government still subsidizes error, drags down the economy, burdens posterity with debt. Ronald Reagan’s speeches are full of references to the necessity of fiscal responsibility—of spending less and reducing the deficit; of returning to limited constitutional government; of free enterprise and free market solutions.
What this indicates to me is that the progressives joined in the battle again, after Reagan. They conducted a counterattack and have made headway. Capitalism may have won internationally, but socialists are rife in this country and continue to drive home their agenda. It is perhaps true that no political battle is ever won once and for all. That is why Reagan cautioned that our freedom cannot be handed down in the bloodstream—it can never be taken for granted. Every generation must perform its duty, add its weight, and help pull the wagon.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Reclaiming the Constitution - Part 2 (Issue #487)
Ted Cruz and Mario Loyola are distinguished scholars, who make the argument that the Founders’ careful, intentional constraints on the power of the federal government have all but vanished from the Constitution. A reinterpretation of the Commerce Clause is a notable example, such that, the American people are vulnerable to the onset of tyranny owing to a willful neglect of the instrument of our governance. The original framework of federalism has grown fragile, and in some ways substantially collapsed.
After the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, the Framers returned to their homes to engage in debates centered on the state ratification conventions that would decide the fate of the proposed Constitution. Three prominent Federalists—John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and the proposed Constitution’s principal author, James Madison—published a series of essays in defense of the proposed Union, which came to be known as The Federalist Papers. Motivated by a deep concern for internal order and public safety, the Federalists argued that the proposed Constitution would pose no danger to individual liberty or to self-government in the States.
As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45, “the States will retain, under the proposed Constitution, a very extensive portion of active sovereignty,” chiefly through the specific enumeration of limited powers for the federal government. Furthermore, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” For this reason, and a host of others that Federalist No. 45 was meant to catalogue, “[t]he State government will have the advantage [over] the Federal government.”
Hence the Federalists—advocates of a strong national government—expected that the States would retain more than enough power and scope to enforce the constitutional limitations on the federal government. This conception lasted well into the 19th century. In 1824, the Supreme Court held in the famous case of Gibbons v. Ogden that navigation and commerce across state lines fall within the federal government’s power to regulate commerce “among the several States, with foreign nations, and with the Indian tribes.” Gibbons stands for the principle that “the sovereignty of Congress, though limited to specific objects, is plenary as to those objects.” But Chief Justice John Marshall shared James Madison’s vision of the federal system: their view of a federal government of plenary authority within its enumerated powers was predicated entirely on their foundational assumption that those powers would be few and limited, and that States would remain the major presumptive agents of regulation and self-government.
If Congress was supposed to be able to regulate all commerce, there was no reason for the Constitution’s drafters to qualify the word “commerce” with the phrase “among the several States” in the first instance. The Court observed: “The genius and character of the whole government seem to be that its action is to be applied to all the external concerns of the Nation and to those internal concerns which affect the States generally; but not to those which are completely within a particular state….” In Gibbons the Supreme Court observed that “inspection laws, quarantine laws, health laws of every description, as well as law for regulating the internal commerce of a State” were but a few examples “of that immense mass of legislation” not surrendered to the federal government. It was only because they were so sure of the stringent limitations on the scope of federal power, and the preeminence of States with respect to most areas of legislation, that Marshall, and the Federalists generally, felt so confident asserting the supremacy of federal law within its domain.
In Virginia’s ratification debates, Patrick Henry, a leader of the anti-Federalist movement, had railed against the proposed Constitution: “To all common purposes of Legislation it is a great consolidation of Government.” The Federalists agreed that a general consolidation of power would be dangerous and potentially tyrannical. But they saw little risk that would happen, given the power of the States and the “advantages” Madison thought they would have over the federal government. For most of the early history of the Republic, the Federalists proved right—the States were able to frustrate the concentration of power in federal hands. During the rest of the 19th century, the commerce power was relied on not to justify the exercise of federal power, but rather to strike down state laws that discriminated against interstate commerce. The idea was that States were “preempted” from regulating within areas of exclusive federal regulatory power, such as interstate commerce. Otherwise, states remained sovereign in their respective substantial orbits.
Indeed at the dawning of the 20th century, the Supreme Court was still a major obstacle to federal overreach. This changed with the ambitious legislative initiatives of the Progressive Era and the New Deal, which President Franklin Roosevelt then bolstered at the start of his second term in 1937 with a threat to increase the size of the court by adding pro-New Deal justices. Intimidated, the Supreme Court acquiesced to New Deal legislation and began to steadily demolish all meaningful limits on the federal government’s power to regulate commerce.
The doctrine that anything with a “direct effect” on interstate commerce could be regulated under the federal commerce power was replaced by a rule allowing regulation of anything with a “substantial effect” on commerce (even if indirect). After that came the doctrine that anything which, if “aggregated” across the Nation, had a “substantial effect” on interstate commerce, was properly within the federal commerce power. The post-New Deal Supreme Court all but erased the limits on the Commerce Clause. The fear of the Anti-Federalists now appears justified: If the power to regulate virtually all human activity is granted to the federal government in the simple phrase “commerce among the several States,” what was left for the States or for the people? Small wonder that the federal government has been expanding relentlessly, growing from a 19th century average of 4 percent of GDP to a peacetime peak of 27 percent in 2010.
After the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, the Framers returned to their homes to engage in debates centered on the state ratification conventions that would decide the fate of the proposed Constitution. Three prominent Federalists—John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and the proposed Constitution’s principal author, James Madison—published a series of essays in defense of the proposed Union, which came to be known as The Federalist Papers. Motivated by a deep concern for internal order and public safety, the Federalists argued that the proposed Constitution would pose no danger to individual liberty or to self-government in the States.
As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45, “the States will retain, under the proposed Constitution, a very extensive portion of active sovereignty,” chiefly through the specific enumeration of limited powers for the federal government. Furthermore, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” For this reason, and a host of others that Federalist No. 45 was meant to catalogue, “[t]he State government will have the advantage [over] the Federal government.”
Hence the Federalists—advocates of a strong national government—expected that the States would retain more than enough power and scope to enforce the constitutional limitations on the federal government. This conception lasted well into the 19th century. In 1824, the Supreme Court held in the famous case of Gibbons v. Ogden that navigation and commerce across state lines fall within the federal government’s power to regulate commerce “among the several States, with foreign nations, and with the Indian tribes.” Gibbons stands for the principle that “the sovereignty of Congress, though limited to specific objects, is plenary as to those objects.” But Chief Justice John Marshall shared James Madison’s vision of the federal system: their view of a federal government of plenary authority within its enumerated powers was predicated entirely on their foundational assumption that those powers would be few and limited, and that States would remain the major presumptive agents of regulation and self-government.
If Congress was supposed to be able to regulate all commerce, there was no reason for the Constitution’s drafters to qualify the word “commerce” with the phrase “among the several States” in the first instance. The Court observed: “The genius and character of the whole government seem to be that its action is to be applied to all the external concerns of the Nation and to those internal concerns which affect the States generally; but not to those which are completely within a particular state….” In Gibbons the Supreme Court observed that “inspection laws, quarantine laws, health laws of every description, as well as law for regulating the internal commerce of a State” were but a few examples “of that immense mass of legislation” not surrendered to the federal government. It was only because they were so sure of the stringent limitations on the scope of federal power, and the preeminence of States with respect to most areas of legislation, that Marshall, and the Federalists generally, felt so confident asserting the supremacy of federal law within its domain.
In Virginia’s ratification debates, Patrick Henry, a leader of the anti-Federalist movement, had railed against the proposed Constitution: “To all common purposes of Legislation it is a great consolidation of Government.” The Federalists agreed that a general consolidation of power would be dangerous and potentially tyrannical. But they saw little risk that would happen, given the power of the States and the “advantages” Madison thought they would have over the federal government. For most of the early history of the Republic, the Federalists proved right—the States were able to frustrate the concentration of power in federal hands. During the rest of the 19th century, the commerce power was relied on not to justify the exercise of federal power, but rather to strike down state laws that discriminated against interstate commerce. The idea was that States were “preempted” from regulating within areas of exclusive federal regulatory power, such as interstate commerce. Otherwise, states remained sovereign in their respective substantial orbits.
Indeed at the dawning of the 20th century, the Supreme Court was still a major obstacle to federal overreach. This changed with the ambitious legislative initiatives of the Progressive Era and the New Deal, which President Franklin Roosevelt then bolstered at the start of his second term in 1937 with a threat to increase the size of the court by adding pro-New Deal justices. Intimidated, the Supreme Court acquiesced to New Deal legislation and began to steadily demolish all meaningful limits on the federal government’s power to regulate commerce.
The doctrine that anything with a “direct effect” on interstate commerce could be regulated under the federal commerce power was replaced by a rule allowing regulation of anything with a “substantial effect” on commerce (even if indirect). After that came the doctrine that anything which, if “aggregated” across the Nation, had a “substantial effect” on interstate commerce, was properly within the federal commerce power. The post-New Deal Supreme Court all but erased the limits on the Commerce Clause. The fear of the Anti-Federalists now appears justified: If the power to regulate virtually all human activity is granted to the federal government in the simple phrase “commerce among the several States,” what was left for the States or for the people? Small wonder that the federal government has been expanding relentlessly, growing from a 19th century average of 4 percent of GDP to a peacetime peak of 27 percent in 2010.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Redistricting and a Look Back at the Last Time it happened in Texas, 2003-2004 (Issue #486)
Recently there was a survey of incoming elected officials involving trivia, and it was compared to the same survey taken of the public at large. In this case the public did better than the crop of elected officials these days—and fully 20% of elected officials in the survey thought the Electoral College was a school that teaches those who aspire to higher office! While that is awful, the public and elected officials might be forgiven if they didn’t understand redistricting. I’m an historian. I’ve got a Masters degree from Oxford in American History and specializing in political history, and I can tell you there’s precious little in “majors” programs or in graduate education about redistricting. Not many elections or candidacies in the past hinged on the process like they do today.
The Founders probably did not anticipate a modern gerrymander (it was considered a scandal the first time it happened in Massachusetts in 1812). They would also not have predicted the overwhelming monopoly of political power by two national parties; or the post-modern national polarization and growth of government services and dependent constituents, which has caused election races to go on forever and redistricting to become a cutthroat business, rather than a process that aims to arrive at the fairest possible representation. No, formal education did not prepare me for the experience of redistricting, when I ran for U.S. Congress in the 2004 Republican Primary—starting out in District 11, which had a Democrat incumbent, and ending up two months before the Primary Election inside a brand new District 31 with a freshman Republican incumbent! The arrangement was decided by state legislators in committee behind closed doors. The impetus in the middle of the decade (not tied to any census) came from a new Republican majority in Austin—in coordination with the National Republican Congressional Caucus and then-U.S. House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay (Sugarland, TX).
Here are two observations with some associated points that I gleaned from my experience in 2003-2004. First, redistricting frustrates campaign planning and execution during the cycle in which it happens. Campaigns for office and particularly for U.S. Congress typically begin the summer before the primary, i.e., in my case the summer of 2003 for a March 9, 2004 election. The new district lines then, however, were not announced in the summer because the legislature did not get it done. The Governor called special sessions but these likewise dragged on (in part because Democrats kept running away to prevent a quorum). Preliminary lines were announced in October 2003, and these were highly contested so the matter went to the courts. In the meantime, candidates grappled with whether to suspend campaigns in large areas, bet on the new lines, or run in preexisting lines and hope they didn’t change too much. In a political sense the district lines were not actually finalized until a district court upheld the plan in January 2004, just two months before the Primary Election.
Therefore for seven months of the nine month primary campaign, I campaigned almost exclusively in District 11 (not 31). That’s not too bad if the districts had been close, but they were not. The old District 11 had 9 ½ counties in it; the new District 31 has 7 ½ counties in it—but only 4 ½ counties actually overlapped. That meant that I was spending time and scarce campaign funds working in 5 counties that were not in the District! I was spending inordinate time in Waco too (part of District 11) and almost no time in Round Rock (brought in by the redistricting).
Secondly, redistricting potentially pits the proverbial “Establishment” or party organization against newcomers or challengers. I happen to like Congressman John Carter very much and consider him and his wife Erika to be friends. He turned out to be a great conservative bulldog too for the people of Central Texas. After the last redistricting, however, one should recall that there was only ½ a county similarity between the new District 31 and the old District 31—and that was southern Williamson County (mostly Round Rock). The old District 31 stretched from southern Williamson County all the way to Houston. Congressman Carter had been elected to that district two years earlier, before inheriting the current District 31. Today’s District 31 stretches from Williamson County northward to Erath County nearly at the outskirts of Ft. Worth!
In terms of becoming a new “incumbent” at the time, well people in 7 of 7 ½ counties had actually never voted for “the Judge”—only one county (Williamson) was familiar with its long-term County Judge who served there 20 years before running for Congress. Carter tells the wonderful story of his being prompted by a sense of patriotism to run for Congress after the 9-11 attacks in 2001. Notwithstanding, other primary challengers who invest sizeable amounts of time, money and heart in their campaigns (and especially if they stand for tangible ideas and policy positions) are not necessarily dissuaded from completing the primary race, just because political elites redraw a line. Not only is it a free country (more or less), but no one should ever assume that they can deliver the people’s choice on a silver platter without a vote. In fact the redistricting was every bit as much a frustration for Carter, perhaps more so than it was for me. It certainly cost his campaign more to run in a new district than it would have to simply run for reelection in an old one. When there is no redistricting to affect the cycle, there typically is no primary challenger unless a party incumbent creates a scandal or performs very poorly. No one, for instance, thought seriously to challenge “the Judge” in a primary race in 2006, 2008 or 2010, i.e., after the people in the district had in fact voted for him and he performed admirably.
The Party, however, invests the title of “incumbent” on a Congressman who owns a district “number.” The District in an almost virtual sense is determined by a number and based on influence more than anything on a process that is not conducted in public. The outcome is not based on specific constituents or counties or land area, on claims of representation or plausible relationship with any favorite son. The number of a district resides with those who draw the lines in the state legislature and place it on a map or into a computer program regardless of town hall meetings. Redistricting is a partisan tool and also an insider/”Establishment” tool. Candidates and potential candidates are not consulted unless they happen to be incumbents, and even then their influence is limited. Redistricting is perhaps the least democratic aspect of our entire elective political system.
The Founders probably did not anticipate a modern gerrymander (it was considered a scandal the first time it happened in Massachusetts in 1812). They would also not have predicted the overwhelming monopoly of political power by two national parties; or the post-modern national polarization and growth of government services and dependent constituents, which has caused election races to go on forever and redistricting to become a cutthroat business, rather than a process that aims to arrive at the fairest possible representation. No, formal education did not prepare me for the experience of redistricting, when I ran for U.S. Congress in the 2004 Republican Primary—starting out in District 11, which had a Democrat incumbent, and ending up two months before the Primary Election inside a brand new District 31 with a freshman Republican incumbent! The arrangement was decided by state legislators in committee behind closed doors. The impetus in the middle of the decade (not tied to any census) came from a new Republican majority in Austin—in coordination with the National Republican Congressional Caucus and then-U.S. House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay (Sugarland, TX).
Here are two observations with some associated points that I gleaned from my experience in 2003-2004. First, redistricting frustrates campaign planning and execution during the cycle in which it happens. Campaigns for office and particularly for U.S. Congress typically begin the summer before the primary, i.e., in my case the summer of 2003 for a March 9, 2004 election. The new district lines then, however, were not announced in the summer because the legislature did not get it done. The Governor called special sessions but these likewise dragged on (in part because Democrats kept running away to prevent a quorum). Preliminary lines were announced in October 2003, and these were highly contested so the matter went to the courts. In the meantime, candidates grappled with whether to suspend campaigns in large areas, bet on the new lines, or run in preexisting lines and hope they didn’t change too much. In a political sense the district lines were not actually finalized until a district court upheld the plan in January 2004, just two months before the Primary Election.
Therefore for seven months of the nine month primary campaign, I campaigned almost exclusively in District 11 (not 31). That’s not too bad if the districts had been close, but they were not. The old District 11 had 9 ½ counties in it; the new District 31 has 7 ½ counties in it—but only 4 ½ counties actually overlapped. That meant that I was spending time and scarce campaign funds working in 5 counties that were not in the District! I was spending inordinate time in Waco too (part of District 11) and almost no time in Round Rock (brought in by the redistricting).
Secondly, redistricting potentially pits the proverbial “Establishment” or party organization against newcomers or challengers. I happen to like Congressman John Carter very much and consider him and his wife Erika to be friends. He turned out to be a great conservative bulldog too for the people of Central Texas. After the last redistricting, however, one should recall that there was only ½ a county similarity between the new District 31 and the old District 31—and that was southern Williamson County (mostly Round Rock). The old District 31 stretched from southern Williamson County all the way to Houston. Congressman Carter had been elected to that district two years earlier, before inheriting the current District 31. Today’s District 31 stretches from Williamson County northward to Erath County nearly at the outskirts of Ft. Worth!
In terms of becoming a new “incumbent” at the time, well people in 7 of 7 ½ counties had actually never voted for “the Judge”—only one county (Williamson) was familiar with its long-term County Judge who served there 20 years before running for Congress. Carter tells the wonderful story of his being prompted by a sense of patriotism to run for Congress after the 9-11 attacks in 2001. Notwithstanding, other primary challengers who invest sizeable amounts of time, money and heart in their campaigns (and especially if they stand for tangible ideas and policy positions) are not necessarily dissuaded from completing the primary race, just because political elites redraw a line. Not only is it a free country (more or less), but no one should ever assume that they can deliver the people’s choice on a silver platter without a vote. In fact the redistricting was every bit as much a frustration for Carter, perhaps more so than it was for me. It certainly cost his campaign more to run in a new district than it would have to simply run for reelection in an old one. When there is no redistricting to affect the cycle, there typically is no primary challenger unless a party incumbent creates a scandal or performs very poorly. No one, for instance, thought seriously to challenge “the Judge” in a primary race in 2006, 2008 or 2010, i.e., after the people in the district had in fact voted for him and he performed admirably.
The Party, however, invests the title of “incumbent” on a Congressman who owns a district “number.” The District in an almost virtual sense is determined by a number and based on influence more than anything on a process that is not conducted in public. The outcome is not based on specific constituents or counties or land area, on claims of representation or plausible relationship with any favorite son. The number of a district resides with those who draw the lines in the state legislature and place it on a map or into a computer program regardless of town hall meetings. Redistricting is a partisan tool and also an insider/”Establishment” tool. Candidates and potential candidates are not consulted unless they happen to be incumbents, and even then their influence is limited. Redistricting is perhaps the least democratic aspect of our entire elective political system.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Reclaiming the Constitution - Part 1 (Issue #485)
Two distinguished scholars have written an essay that should alarm Americans, but also spur them to action. Ted Cruz served as Solicitor General for the State of Texas—the chief appellate lawyer for the State— from 2003 to 2008. He was the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas, and when appointed, was the youngest Solicitor General in the United States. He was named by Texas Lawyer magazine as one of the “25 Greatest Texas Lawyers of the Past Quarter Century,” by American Lawyer magazine as one of the “50 Best Litigators under 45 in America,” and by National Law Journal as one of the “50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America.” A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, he previously served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court; as Domestic Policy Advisor to President George W. Bush on the 2000 Bush-Cheney Campaign; and as Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Mario Loyola began his career in corporate finance law. Since 2003, he has focused on public policy, dividing his time between government service and research and writing at prominent policy institutes. He served in the Pentagon as a special assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and on Capitol Hill as counsel for foreign and defense affairs to the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee. He has also worked as a state policy advisor for Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and written extensively for national and international publications, including features for National Review and The Weekly Standard, and op-eds in The Wall Street Journal.
The two scholars combined research and writing talent in an essay they entitle, “Reclaiming the Constitution: Towards an Agenda for State Action” produced for the Center for Tenth Amendment Studies, part of the Texas Public Policy Foundation—the state’s most influential free-market think tank. Given their previous employ with some notable and long-serving Republicans, their assessment is even more striking because it implicates both political parties. To the extent that both political parties have overseen and been complicit in the massive growth and rise in power of the federal government at the expense of States and individual rights, then both parties are responsible for undermining the Constitution and laying down hard pavement on the road to serfdom.
Indeed, the steady expansion of the federal government since the early 20th century has arrived at a crisis point today. The federal government is pushing further and further into areas of traditional state governance—and intruding deeper into our lives. This threat to liberty—one that James Madison thought the several States would be strong enough to resist—is now apparent to millions of Americans, many of whom are participating in the Tea Party movement. Assaults on the constitutional constraints meant to limit federal power, combined with the relentless expansion of the federal bureaucracy, has led to a steady erosion of the constitutional constraints on federal power—raising the very dangers to self-government and individual liberty that the Framers feared might lead to tyranny. Though the Federalists—advocates of a strong national government—expected that the States would retain more than enough power and scope to enforce the constitutional limitations on the federal government, the dawn of the industrial age, and America’s rise to Great Power status abroad by the start of the 20th century opened the door to an era of steadily expanding federal power.
For more than a hundred years, the federal government has been expanding its power and reach. The steady concentration of power in Washington has been accompanied by a steady intrusion into areas of state authority that the Framers assumed the federal government would never be involved in. In the Framers’ conception of democracy, state based self-government and individual liberty went hand in hand. It was for this reason that they insisted on a federal government of strictly limited powers. They enshrined this ideal in the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Today the expansion of the federal government proceeds at an unprecedented pace. The last decade has witnessed an expansion of federal power virtually on a par with the trillions of dollars in federal debt added over the same period. The current administration has launched what many Americans see as an inevitable federal takeover of health care. It has undertaken environmental regulatory actions of historic sweep, seeking to regulate manifold areas of traditional state jurisdiction, and smothering less-favored industries in regulatory uncertainty. It has unleashed the greatest explosion in federal spending and borrowing in our history. These policies not only endanger our economic future—they erode the constitutional constraints that were meant to shield local self-government and individual liberty from the dangerous accumulation of power in Washington. That is why the balance between state and federal powers matters. That is why the Tenth Amendment matters.
The Tenth Amendment, however, is much more than a legal construct. It is an expression of the American tradition of self-governance. The propensity to self-organize spontaneously at the local level to solve problems that had been observed by Alexis de Tocqueville—and felt so painfully by the British Army—was essential to American democracy. The Constitution had been designed to protect it, not supplant it. And while a respect and deference to state authority both predated and was implied in the Constitution itself, in the end the Tenth Amendment was deemed necessary to assure that self-governance would never give way to tyranny. In this sense, the Tenth Amendment, coming at the end of the Bill of Rights, was something of a summation of the Framers’ whole notion of American democratic republicanism—and a salutary warning that those powers granted to the federal government needed to be kept strictly limited within the Constitution’s constraints, or else the States and individuals who formed the Union, and the Union itself, would be imperiled. Today it is imperative that States begin to take action, in order to stop federal overreach and to restore the Constitution’s limits on government power. We must, in short, start reclaiming the Constitution quickly, if we would remain a free people.
Mario Loyola began his career in corporate finance law. Since 2003, he has focused on public policy, dividing his time between government service and research and writing at prominent policy institutes. He served in the Pentagon as a special assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and on Capitol Hill as counsel for foreign and defense affairs to the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee. He has also worked as a state policy advisor for Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and written extensively for national and international publications, including features for National Review and The Weekly Standard, and op-eds in The Wall Street Journal.
The two scholars combined research and writing talent in an essay they entitle, “Reclaiming the Constitution: Towards an Agenda for State Action” produced for the Center for Tenth Amendment Studies, part of the Texas Public Policy Foundation—the state’s most influential free-market think tank. Given their previous employ with some notable and long-serving Republicans, their assessment is even more striking because it implicates both political parties. To the extent that both political parties have overseen and been complicit in the massive growth and rise in power of the federal government at the expense of States and individual rights, then both parties are responsible for undermining the Constitution and laying down hard pavement on the road to serfdom.
Indeed, the steady expansion of the federal government since the early 20th century has arrived at a crisis point today. The federal government is pushing further and further into areas of traditional state governance—and intruding deeper into our lives. This threat to liberty—one that James Madison thought the several States would be strong enough to resist—is now apparent to millions of Americans, many of whom are participating in the Tea Party movement. Assaults on the constitutional constraints meant to limit federal power, combined with the relentless expansion of the federal bureaucracy, has led to a steady erosion of the constitutional constraints on federal power—raising the very dangers to self-government and individual liberty that the Framers feared might lead to tyranny. Though the Federalists—advocates of a strong national government—expected that the States would retain more than enough power and scope to enforce the constitutional limitations on the federal government, the dawn of the industrial age, and America’s rise to Great Power status abroad by the start of the 20th century opened the door to an era of steadily expanding federal power.
For more than a hundred years, the federal government has been expanding its power and reach. The steady concentration of power in Washington has been accompanied by a steady intrusion into areas of state authority that the Framers assumed the federal government would never be involved in. In the Framers’ conception of democracy, state based self-government and individual liberty went hand in hand. It was for this reason that they insisted on a federal government of strictly limited powers. They enshrined this ideal in the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Today the expansion of the federal government proceeds at an unprecedented pace. The last decade has witnessed an expansion of federal power virtually on a par with the trillions of dollars in federal debt added over the same period. The current administration has launched what many Americans see as an inevitable federal takeover of health care. It has undertaken environmental regulatory actions of historic sweep, seeking to regulate manifold areas of traditional state jurisdiction, and smothering less-favored industries in regulatory uncertainty. It has unleashed the greatest explosion in federal spending and borrowing in our history. These policies not only endanger our economic future—they erode the constitutional constraints that were meant to shield local self-government and individual liberty from the dangerous accumulation of power in Washington. That is why the balance between state and federal powers matters. That is why the Tenth Amendment matters.
The Tenth Amendment, however, is much more than a legal construct. It is an expression of the American tradition of self-governance. The propensity to self-organize spontaneously at the local level to solve problems that had been observed by Alexis de Tocqueville—and felt so painfully by the British Army—was essential to American democracy. The Constitution had been designed to protect it, not supplant it. And while a respect and deference to state authority both predated and was implied in the Constitution itself, in the end the Tenth Amendment was deemed necessary to assure that self-governance would never give way to tyranny. In this sense, the Tenth Amendment, coming at the end of the Bill of Rights, was something of a summation of the Framers’ whole notion of American democratic republicanism—and a salutary warning that those powers granted to the federal government needed to be kept strictly limited within the Constitution’s constraints, or else the States and individuals who formed the Union, and the Union itself, would be imperiled. Today it is imperative that States begin to take action, in order to stop federal overreach and to restore the Constitution’s limits on government power. We must, in short, start reclaiming the Constitution quickly, if we would remain a free people.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Question Socrates: Part II. Getting it Right this Time! (Issue #484)
From a Socrates all-intelligence-source view of worldwide competition, the nature of generating, maintaining and measuring economic health becomes apparent. Information is in fact highly usable and can be scientifically rendered to make close to optimum decisions, and to direct the necessary course changes in a logical, systematic and strangely intuitive fashion. The economic health of a country, state, region, private or public organization, is dictated by its competitive advantage in the world marketplace, that is to say, its ability to sell goods and services.
The foundation of all competitive advantage is a matter of satisfying customer needs better than the competition. Satisfying customer needs is accomplished with technology (defined as any application of science to accomplish a function). To satisfy customer needs better than the competition, an organization or region must exploit technology more effectively than its competition does. Technology exploitation is both the acquisition and utilization of technology (and note that research and development is just one of the many mechanisms for exploitation). To be most effective, exploitation will have aspects that are both offensive and defensive, relative to competitors. Various competitors will attempt to outmaneuver each other in the acquisition and utilization of technology, like chess players moving pieces on a game board all trying to excel at satisfying their customers’ needs better than the other guy. In so doing, competitors constantly seek to acquire and maintain a competitive advantage through technology-based planning.
Technology-based planning, not economic-based planning, is by far the most effective foundation for the full range of decision-making needed desperately in this country. Counter-intuitively, almost all current plans to tackle our economic crisis address science and technology as it were nothing more than a global research and development and education race with each country attempting to “out-R&D” and “out-educate” all the other countries to get to the finish line first. To those who propose such plans, winning the race requires little more than America increasing its R&D and education spending—again, back to manipulating the economics rather than manipulating the technology.
Fortunately recent legislation introduced by Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) begins to address U.S. competitiveness through sophisticated acquisition and utilization of technology, and the continued strategic use of technology-based planning. Wolf is one of the first congressional leaders to make the shift in thinking so essential to re-entering the path towards real and sustainable prosperity. With the recent mid-term elections over, socialism and shared scarcity schemes seem less likely than before, but the GOP and its new class of Tea Party freshmen have yet to find a consensus over specific policies to pursue. It is time to reexamine a smarter path than throwing good money after bad at the fiscal problems—indeed a path that Reagan first charted nearly thirty years ago but then was unable to pursue to completion when the big spenders in both political parties took over and led us to the terrible brink of economic ruin. Says Michael Sekora, now the president of Quadrigy, a technology-based strategy consulting firm based in Austin, “[We] are where we were back in 1983,” but he adds this time there really is no room for error.
The prospects for our economy do not look good, even if political fortunes have improved. Hard-nosed documentaries based on economic numbers and keen historical analysis, such as “Generation Zero” predict a double-dip recession or depression, or hyperinflation to begin in 2011. Of course, as Reagan was fond of saying, it is within our power to mold our destiny. Clearly it depends much on what the new Congress actually does. Good decisions, much less the attendant actions required based on those decisions, may not come easily. In the current climate there is not a lot of positive excitement for anything that smacks of an earmark for research or proof of principle or prototype, etc., much less something grandiose and “strategic” that sounds more than a little like industrial policy. Lawmakers are going to have to use their better judgment in the national interest. Worst case they certainly won’t be committing the first million dollars of wasted taxpayer money, with our without requisite good intentions. Best case we could avert disaster and regain economic preeminence. If that be the case, then it is critically important when it comes to a methodology for implementation, that this include decentralization of information and power, such that, the new “Socrates” is not an exclusive centralized planning tool for the federal government. Make it the province of States from the beginning. Start with Texas and Virginia.
The foundation of all competitive advantage is a matter of satisfying customer needs better than the competition. Satisfying customer needs is accomplished with technology (defined as any application of science to accomplish a function). To satisfy customer needs better than the competition, an organization or region must exploit technology more effectively than its competition does. Technology exploitation is both the acquisition and utilization of technology (and note that research and development is just one of the many mechanisms for exploitation). To be most effective, exploitation will have aspects that are both offensive and defensive, relative to competitors. Various competitors will attempt to outmaneuver each other in the acquisition and utilization of technology, like chess players moving pieces on a game board all trying to excel at satisfying their customers’ needs better than the other guy. In so doing, competitors constantly seek to acquire and maintain a competitive advantage through technology-based planning.
Technology-based planning, not economic-based planning, is by far the most effective foundation for the full range of decision-making needed desperately in this country. Counter-intuitively, almost all current plans to tackle our economic crisis address science and technology as it were nothing more than a global research and development and education race with each country attempting to “out-R&D” and “out-educate” all the other countries to get to the finish line first. To those who propose such plans, winning the race requires little more than America increasing its R&D and education spending—again, back to manipulating the economics rather than manipulating the technology.
Fortunately recent legislation introduced by Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) begins to address U.S. competitiveness through sophisticated acquisition and utilization of technology, and the continued strategic use of technology-based planning. Wolf is one of the first congressional leaders to make the shift in thinking so essential to re-entering the path towards real and sustainable prosperity. With the recent mid-term elections over, socialism and shared scarcity schemes seem less likely than before, but the GOP and its new class of Tea Party freshmen have yet to find a consensus over specific policies to pursue. It is time to reexamine a smarter path than throwing good money after bad at the fiscal problems—indeed a path that Reagan first charted nearly thirty years ago but then was unable to pursue to completion when the big spenders in both political parties took over and led us to the terrible brink of economic ruin. Says Michael Sekora, now the president of Quadrigy, a technology-based strategy consulting firm based in Austin, “[We] are where we were back in 1983,” but he adds this time there really is no room for error.
The prospects for our economy do not look good, even if political fortunes have improved. Hard-nosed documentaries based on economic numbers and keen historical analysis, such as “Generation Zero” predict a double-dip recession or depression, or hyperinflation to begin in 2011. Of course, as Reagan was fond of saying, it is within our power to mold our destiny. Clearly it depends much on what the new Congress actually does. Good decisions, much less the attendant actions required based on those decisions, may not come easily. In the current climate there is not a lot of positive excitement for anything that smacks of an earmark for research or proof of principle or prototype, etc., much less something grandiose and “strategic” that sounds more than a little like industrial policy. Lawmakers are going to have to use their better judgment in the national interest. Worst case they certainly won’t be committing the first million dollars of wasted taxpayer money, with our without requisite good intentions. Best case we could avert disaster and regain economic preeminence. If that be the case, then it is critically important when it comes to a methodology for implementation, that this include decentralization of information and power, such that, the new “Socrates” is not an exclusive centralized planning tool for the federal government. Make it the province of States from the beginning. Start with Texas and Virginia.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Question Socrates: Part I. Back to the Future (Issue #483)
As the country searches for a solution to our economic meltdown, it becomes more apparent that we have to examine some deep-rooted causes and not just events of the past few years. Indeed, America’s declining competitiveness has been at least partially visible for decades, albeit the last time the country seriously addressed the issue from a strategic standpoint was during the Reagan years in the 1980s.
Pundits and policy-makers alike throughout 2010 continued with their myopic fascinations, focusing on manipulation of funds to the detriment of every other approach—i.e., calling for stimulus packages, more tax revenues, sundry cost-cutting measures, etc. What they miss or do not know is that our country’s former economic greatness came about through techniques involving technology, not selfish or stupid shell games with money. Understanding the difference between economic-based planning and technology-based planning is perhaps the key to identifying what we have been doing wrong. More importantly, shifting our thinking away from the accepted economic-based solutions enables us to find real and more complete answers to our financial crisis.
Under the Reagan administration, Michael C. Sekora initiated and directed a program called the Socrates Project within the U.S. Intelligence community, in order to address America’s declining competitiveness. The first part of the Socrates mission was to determine the true source of America’s declining competitiveness. To accomplish this, the Socrates team utilized all-source intelligence to assemble for the first time in history a bird’s-eye holistic view to understand competition worldwide.
In terms of scope and completeness, this bird’s-eye view went far beyond the narrow slices of data that were (and still are) available and sadly thought to be sufficient to the professors, professional economists, and consultants who traditionally address the questions of competitiveness. Conclusions that the Socrates team derived about competitiveness in general, and about the U.S. situation in particular, turned out to be in direct opposition to the preponderance of what most of the professors, economists and consultants had been saying for years and which decision makers in the U.S. had accepted as irrefutable and as underlying, presumptive truths. Had the Socrates Project team been adequately supported and empowered and had their observations informed national policy in terms of economic strategy and investment, the current crisis may have been averted. At this juncture, moreover, it is only a technology based strategy and associated data mapping from the modern equivalent of Socrates that will save the United States of America, enabling it to win in global competition against China and any other country.
What the Socrates team determined was at the source of the nation’s economic decline was that at the end of WWII decision-makers throughout the U.S. shifted away from technology-based planning, which had been used to build the U.S. into an unequalled superpower. The U.S. began adopting more economic-based planning and, in just a few years after World War II, the same had become the standard and unchallenged foundation for decision-making throughout US industry, government and academe. At the same time, the rest of the world continued using and refining a technology-based approach—including especially China and India, which aggressively used it to start building themselves into the next economic superpowers.
In economic-based planning the foundation of every decision is a matter of how to most effectively acquire and utilize funds, either to generate maximum profit as in the case of a company, or in the case of government and non-profit organizations to accomplish certain objectives. For a country this can mean changing tax rates and interest rates; tax incentives for home ownership or research and development; portfolio management of federal R&D funds; or seed capital for start-up companies. The measure of the effectiveness of said manipulation of the funds is also fund-based, i.e., a country’s trade balance, its GDP, standard of living, budget deficits or surplus, etc. As a result, the person viewed as the one most capable of making decisions for the nation’s economic health is the economist. The economist determines how to correctly manipulate funds on the front end of something (for example, to decrease interest rates) in order to generate a particular measure of success on the back end (such as, to decrease unemployment payments).
The empirical reality, however, is that there is rarely agreement among economists about what kind of manipulation of funds on the front end is required to generate any particular measure of success on the back end. Even when a general consensus is reached on a particular course of action, the chosen course of action produces results that, more often than not, only roughly match what the economist predicted.
Pundits and policy-makers alike throughout 2010 continued with their myopic fascinations, focusing on manipulation of funds to the detriment of every other approach—i.e., calling for stimulus packages, more tax revenues, sundry cost-cutting measures, etc. What they miss or do not know is that our country’s former economic greatness came about through techniques involving technology, not selfish or stupid shell games with money. Understanding the difference between economic-based planning and technology-based planning is perhaps the key to identifying what we have been doing wrong. More importantly, shifting our thinking away from the accepted economic-based solutions enables us to find real and more complete answers to our financial crisis.
Under the Reagan administration, Michael C. Sekora initiated and directed a program called the Socrates Project within the U.S. Intelligence community, in order to address America’s declining competitiveness. The first part of the Socrates mission was to determine the true source of America’s declining competitiveness. To accomplish this, the Socrates team utilized all-source intelligence to assemble for the first time in history a bird’s-eye holistic view to understand competition worldwide.
In terms of scope and completeness, this bird’s-eye view went far beyond the narrow slices of data that were (and still are) available and sadly thought to be sufficient to the professors, professional economists, and consultants who traditionally address the questions of competitiveness. Conclusions that the Socrates team derived about competitiveness in general, and about the U.S. situation in particular, turned out to be in direct opposition to the preponderance of what most of the professors, economists and consultants had been saying for years and which decision makers in the U.S. had accepted as irrefutable and as underlying, presumptive truths. Had the Socrates Project team been adequately supported and empowered and had their observations informed national policy in terms of economic strategy and investment, the current crisis may have been averted. At this juncture, moreover, it is only a technology based strategy and associated data mapping from the modern equivalent of Socrates that will save the United States of America, enabling it to win in global competition against China and any other country.
What the Socrates team determined was at the source of the nation’s economic decline was that at the end of WWII decision-makers throughout the U.S. shifted away from technology-based planning, which had been used to build the U.S. into an unequalled superpower. The U.S. began adopting more economic-based planning and, in just a few years after World War II, the same had become the standard and unchallenged foundation for decision-making throughout US industry, government and academe. At the same time, the rest of the world continued using and refining a technology-based approach—including especially China and India, which aggressively used it to start building themselves into the next economic superpowers.
In economic-based planning the foundation of every decision is a matter of how to most effectively acquire and utilize funds, either to generate maximum profit as in the case of a company, or in the case of government and non-profit organizations to accomplish certain objectives. For a country this can mean changing tax rates and interest rates; tax incentives for home ownership or research and development; portfolio management of federal R&D funds; or seed capital for start-up companies. The measure of the effectiveness of said manipulation of the funds is also fund-based, i.e., a country’s trade balance, its GDP, standard of living, budget deficits or surplus, etc. As a result, the person viewed as the one most capable of making decisions for the nation’s economic health is the economist. The economist determines how to correctly manipulate funds on the front end of something (for example, to decrease interest rates) in order to generate a particular measure of success on the back end (such as, to decrease unemployment payments).
The empirical reality, however, is that there is rarely agreement among economists about what kind of manipulation of funds on the front end is required to generate any particular measure of success on the back end. Even when a general consensus is reached on a particular course of action, the chosen course of action produces results that, more often than not, only roughly match what the economist predicted.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
God and New Years (Issue #482)
When New Years come, they seem to come suddenly. New Year comes always as a surprise, with nary a warning; then raising its head, forcing itself upon our minds a day after Christmas, it sings the dirge. Death as yet undefeated. The winter kills a tender reed. We reflect upon it for less than a week, and recognize if briefly, New Year upon New Years’ nearly imperceptible creeping of Time: Time the thief, Time the Blighter, Time O Most Unmerciful. Then we do it again like nothing happened.
People sometimes regret their fading memories, but in fact the sum of them would probably kill an elephant. It wasn’t only sin that severed spirit from this world—not one sin or a million collected the whole world over. Remember it was on that day when the children of Adam learned of good and evil, that man and woman entered into finite time and generations began to live and die. No it was the sum total of sin and error across all time and space, which the Lord Jesus Christ took upon Himself and obliterated when He rose again. On the cross Jesus felt as if His Father God had forsaken him, and in a single moment of finite time it may very well be, because God doth not behold death (because He cannot die), nor existential Sin (because He is pure and perfect). God brought man to the portal nevertheless, even to the eye of a needle through which we may enter in with Christ, into the glorious Kingdom of Heaven.
The Godhead resides outside (as well as inside) time. Not so with us. With Him there are no solar “New Years.” All things are always New and fresh and equally Old and true, and also Wonderful. We count our years on earth because we haven’t very many. The wise make use of their time. The foolish squander it. If you ask me what life is, I will tell you that it is only time. Every New Year turning is like a bell that says your wash is almost done or the goose nearly cooked. Dust becomes dust, whether you exercise it, medicate it, intoxicate it or pretend it doesn’t exist. One might be very angry, or grateful, that God gives us so little time.
The impact upon men’s and women’s minds of thinking past time and beyond a single solar New Year is fundamental to reason and to accumulated knowledge, and indeed to civilization itself. This ability to think past finite time entails learning history among other subjects, but it critically involves learning His Story. That is because thinking past time is inherent to a reverence for and/or even the mere reference to God. There is nothing else can take His Place in our hearts or in thinking. The People of these United States have erred terribly to try and extinguish His presence from public schools and the public square. They have sinned in accepting and abetting the restrictions on freedom chiefly brought about for this purpose.
Minds without the ballast of God are easily wrecked. They fall victim to storms and madness. They substitute greedily almost every other god to fill the intellectual and the moral void. Such minds accept respective conditions of slavery, because they can never adequately measure the price or the joys of freedom: whether slavery to the will of other men and governments, or addictions to material substances, or release to the sucking hold of a psychological pit—all in order to relieve the pain of life in temporal finite time, and to escape the haunting at every New Year.
I tell you that there is another way to view things, and it puts it on the line as it must be put. Maybe the world ends at the stroke of midnight tonight, or maybe not until December 21, 2012 or any other date that you prefer. Maybe it never ends, but even scientists say that the sun will burn out someday. To tell the truth the point is that you are supposed to live in this world but with a fundamental reference outside of it. That’s what it means to live in but not of the world. Do your best—sure, but also live outside of finite time the way our Lord instructed. That’s a big part of what it means to have that mind in us which was also in Christ Jesus (ex: I Corinthians 2:16). If you do this then you are and will be a potent force for good in the world. If you don’t then you are like the chaff or worse like chattel, particularly in this day and age of decay and omnipotent secular federal government. Oh yeah, the physical realm is still a dust to dust proposition but with a difference. You can leave your signature, you can make your mark; right wrongs and injustices, give evil a hard time; win one for the Gipper, and glorify God—this New Year, and the next, and the next after Next.
People sometimes regret their fading memories, but in fact the sum of them would probably kill an elephant. It wasn’t only sin that severed spirit from this world—not one sin or a million collected the whole world over. Remember it was on that day when the children of Adam learned of good and evil, that man and woman entered into finite time and generations began to live and die. No it was the sum total of sin and error across all time and space, which the Lord Jesus Christ took upon Himself and obliterated when He rose again. On the cross Jesus felt as if His Father God had forsaken him, and in a single moment of finite time it may very well be, because God doth not behold death (because He cannot die), nor existential Sin (because He is pure and perfect). God brought man to the portal nevertheless, even to the eye of a needle through which we may enter in with Christ, into the glorious Kingdom of Heaven.
The Godhead resides outside (as well as inside) time. Not so with us. With Him there are no solar “New Years.” All things are always New and fresh and equally Old and true, and also Wonderful. We count our years on earth because we haven’t very many. The wise make use of their time. The foolish squander it. If you ask me what life is, I will tell you that it is only time. Every New Year turning is like a bell that says your wash is almost done or the goose nearly cooked. Dust becomes dust, whether you exercise it, medicate it, intoxicate it or pretend it doesn’t exist. One might be very angry, or grateful, that God gives us so little time.
The impact upon men’s and women’s minds of thinking past time and beyond a single solar New Year is fundamental to reason and to accumulated knowledge, and indeed to civilization itself. This ability to think past finite time entails learning history among other subjects, but it critically involves learning His Story. That is because thinking past time is inherent to a reverence for and/or even the mere reference to God. There is nothing else can take His Place in our hearts or in thinking. The People of these United States have erred terribly to try and extinguish His presence from public schools and the public square. They have sinned in accepting and abetting the restrictions on freedom chiefly brought about for this purpose.
Minds without the ballast of God are easily wrecked. They fall victim to storms and madness. They substitute greedily almost every other god to fill the intellectual and the moral void. Such minds accept respective conditions of slavery, because they can never adequately measure the price or the joys of freedom: whether slavery to the will of other men and governments, or addictions to material substances, or release to the sucking hold of a psychological pit—all in order to relieve the pain of life in temporal finite time, and to escape the haunting at every New Year.
I tell you that there is another way to view things, and it puts it on the line as it must be put. Maybe the world ends at the stroke of midnight tonight, or maybe not until December 21, 2012 or any other date that you prefer. Maybe it never ends, but even scientists say that the sun will burn out someday. To tell the truth the point is that you are supposed to live in this world but with a fundamental reference outside of it. That’s what it means to live in but not of the world. Do your best—sure, but also live outside of finite time the way our Lord instructed. That’s a big part of what it means to have that mind in us which was also in Christ Jesus (ex: I Corinthians 2:16). If you do this then you are and will be a potent force for good in the world. If you don’t then you are like the chaff or worse like chattel, particularly in this day and age of decay and omnipotent secular federal government. Oh yeah, the physical realm is still a dust to dust proposition but with a difference. You can leave your signature, you can make your mark; right wrongs and injustices, give evil a hard time; win one for the Gipper, and glorify God—this New Year, and the next, and the next after Next.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Merry Christmas to All! (Issue #481)
I watched a classic film at the Beltonian Theater (www.BeltonianTheater.com) last week. I’m also looking forward to seeing others before Christmas and again before New Years while holidays last. The thing that struck me this time about “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) was that while it was over sixty years old, it was as marvelous as ever today on the big “silver screen.” Literally generations have watched this story depicted on film and enjoyed it the same as me.
Christmas is similar, in that, generations over the course of many centuries have heard and read and seen reenacted the Story about a special babe, born to a virgin on one holy night. Travelers reported seeing him lying in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes. The birth is as joyful an event to contemplate now as it was then, and as marvelous to hear that Story again as it was on the first day it was told.
There was a married couple named Joseph and Mary who loved each other, and they travelled across country to a little town called Bethlehem. The young bride was very pregnant and so the trip was hard, but they had to go there in order to pay their taxes, because those were the instructions from the Roman government. The weather was cool—cold when the sun went down. They arrived in town when it was evening and there was no lodging left, nothing at the inn where Joseph had expected to find room. But they were able to go out where the animals were kept, and there they found shelter from the cold.
In northern countries elsewhere houses are traditionally built adjoining stalls and barns, because the body heat from animals helps keep the people warm. The place where Joseph and Mary resorted to was quite a bit warmer than the outside air. The manger was normally used as a trough or box to hold hay for the animals to eat, but it made a perfect crib or bed for a baby. Mary brought the swaddling clothes, the clean warm wraps she planned to put around her newborn.
The night was clear and beautiful. A large, unusually bright star shone almost directly above their shelter. Mary delivered her baby easily, and as they had discussed they named him Jesus. Jesus was the son of Man (since his mother was Mary) and also the Son of God (his Father). Joseph was Jesus’ step-father therefore, because Mary had been impregnated by the Holy Spirit and angels had explained this both to Mary and Joseph before their wedding. Indeed, outside the place where Jesus was born shepherds would report that angels and a “multitude of the heavenly host” were attending and happily announced this great and historic Event to them (see Luke 2:8-14).
Imagine: God didn’t think Mary needed to be eighteen or to finish college first before having a child. Mary didn’t mind nor did Joseph, who was also quite a bit older than Mary. Even without the extramarital pregnancy, Mary’s relationship with Joseph would appear scandalous today. God didn’t ask them (or us), however, for permission or about the wisdom of His plan. He informed them and they accepted it, because in those days they knew some things better than us. To use a Biblical metaphor, like the clay which ought not to question what reason is in the Potter’s hand. Subordination was clearly understood as between the Creator and all He creates.
Miracle attends the birth of every human child. The birth of Jesus was singularly spectacular, however, because he was the coincidence of Man and God on earth. Jesus beheld a perfect, all-powerful eye upon the world wherever he went. His existence and being as such, gave proof of so much, namely the proof of God’s plan and of Life beyond the veil of matter. Jesus Christ was and is the living proof of Purpose and Power, that Love is stronger than hate and Life the ultimate conqueror over death.
Without that first glorious Christmas morning when Jesus drew his breath and smiled his first smile, and looked up at Mary with an immense joy and love radiating back at him from a mother’s heart—nothing, absolutely nothing else would be the same. “It’s a Wonderful Life” would not play at a movie or dinner theater. The story would be dark, incomplete, unfulfilled if written. Life itself would be accidental, love a temporal cheat. That is why Christmas is the most important Birthday in the world. Moreover, we all have an invitation to His party. A multitude of the heavenly host are still attending every year and celebrating, announcing the Good News to those who have never heard. Whenever we sing our “Silent Night” and other sacred carols, we sing our Lord’s “Happy Birthday” song. Merry Christmas to all!
Christmas is similar, in that, generations over the course of many centuries have heard and read and seen reenacted the Story about a special babe, born to a virgin on one holy night. Travelers reported seeing him lying in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes. The birth is as joyful an event to contemplate now as it was then, and as marvelous to hear that Story again as it was on the first day it was told.
There was a married couple named Joseph and Mary who loved each other, and they travelled across country to a little town called Bethlehem. The young bride was very pregnant and so the trip was hard, but they had to go there in order to pay their taxes, because those were the instructions from the Roman government. The weather was cool—cold when the sun went down. They arrived in town when it was evening and there was no lodging left, nothing at the inn where Joseph had expected to find room. But they were able to go out where the animals were kept, and there they found shelter from the cold.
In northern countries elsewhere houses are traditionally built adjoining stalls and barns, because the body heat from animals helps keep the people warm. The place where Joseph and Mary resorted to was quite a bit warmer than the outside air. The manger was normally used as a trough or box to hold hay for the animals to eat, but it made a perfect crib or bed for a baby. Mary brought the swaddling clothes, the clean warm wraps she planned to put around her newborn.
The night was clear and beautiful. A large, unusually bright star shone almost directly above their shelter. Mary delivered her baby easily, and as they had discussed they named him Jesus. Jesus was the son of Man (since his mother was Mary) and also the Son of God (his Father). Joseph was Jesus’ step-father therefore, because Mary had been impregnated by the Holy Spirit and angels had explained this both to Mary and Joseph before their wedding. Indeed, outside the place where Jesus was born shepherds would report that angels and a “multitude of the heavenly host” were attending and happily announced this great and historic Event to them (see Luke 2:8-14).
Imagine: God didn’t think Mary needed to be eighteen or to finish college first before having a child. Mary didn’t mind nor did Joseph, who was also quite a bit older than Mary. Even without the extramarital pregnancy, Mary’s relationship with Joseph would appear scandalous today. God didn’t ask them (or us), however, for permission or about the wisdom of His plan. He informed them and they accepted it, because in those days they knew some things better than us. To use a Biblical metaphor, like the clay which ought not to question what reason is in the Potter’s hand. Subordination was clearly understood as between the Creator and all He creates.
Miracle attends the birth of every human child. The birth of Jesus was singularly spectacular, however, because he was the coincidence of Man and God on earth. Jesus beheld a perfect, all-powerful eye upon the world wherever he went. His existence and being as such, gave proof of so much, namely the proof of God’s plan and of Life beyond the veil of matter. Jesus Christ was and is the living proof of Purpose and Power, that Love is stronger than hate and Life the ultimate conqueror over death.
Without that first glorious Christmas morning when Jesus drew his breath and smiled his first smile, and looked up at Mary with an immense joy and love radiating back at him from a mother’s heart—nothing, absolutely nothing else would be the same. “It’s a Wonderful Life” would not play at a movie or dinner theater. The story would be dark, incomplete, unfulfilled if written. Life itself would be accidental, love a temporal cheat. That is why Christmas is the most important Birthday in the world. Moreover, we all have an invitation to His party. A multitude of the heavenly host are still attending every year and celebrating, announcing the Good News to those who have never heard. Whenever we sing our “Silent Night” and other sacred carols, we sing our Lord’s “Happy Birthday” song. Merry Christmas to all!
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Increasing Business Revenues Helps Fix Budget Gap, Reduce National Debt (Issue #480)
No duh—more business income translates into more in tax monies collected, and so theoretically, more with which to meet budget shortfalls and pay down our astronomical national debt. Almost exclusively, however, discussion about deficits and debt reduction inevitably centers on how best to reduce government spending or to increase taxes. Mostly liberal proponents of increasing taxes argue over what level the tax rates should be increased to and for which segments of the population. Proponents of decreased spending, debate over which federal programs should be trimmed or eliminated altogether. The choice poses a classic false dichotomy, given that a rising tide lifts all boats. Even if cutting government spending is clearly part of the answer, it isn’t exclusively all that is required or at least all that proves helpful. President Reagan knew it was possible to grow the whole pie larger, and a free market economy should never be viewed as a “zero-sum” game.
Of course today with the accumulated national debt and annual budget deficits climbing to new highs, and the nation’s economic health anemic at best, the dichotomy (false or not) becomes untenable. Increasing the tax rates and cutting federal spending programs cannot be done without considerable pain and political difficulty, not to mention without disturbing perhaps the majority of Americans who will be affected in some way. Obama’s deficit commission stated that making reductions for sustainable levels of debt and deficits would necessitate large tax increases or major spending cuts and quite probably some of each. Even if these are done, however, given those structural dislocations in the current economy, it is not very likely that the measures will do enough in time to turn this economy around to any long-term satisfaction of the American people. The fact is that both options in isolation or together merely share (and also redistribute) scarcity.
Without a doubt spending should not be profligate, and taxes should be fairly levied and impose the least burden possible. Notwithstanding, the more effective answer to reducing debt and alleviating deficits, is to grow the economy and increase business revenues. Significant and sustainable increases in the revenues of businesses, however, are unlikely using the standard approach and economic shell games of today, whether off-shoring of jobs, lay-offs of domestic labor, or selling off various assets and subsidiaries to foreign buyers. To achieve any real or sustainable increases in revenue, businesses must increase and maintain their competitive advantage in domestic and foreign markets. Moreover, a true competitive advantage is a matter of producing goods and providing services that customers want to purchase because the products and services satisfy customer needs better than the competition. If a business is not excelling at satisfying customer needs, then any other perceived “competitive advantage” equates to little more than rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
Under President Reagan, Michael C. Sekora directed a program called the Socrates Project within the U.S. intelligence community. Socrates enabled the United States years ago to foresee America’s present economic crisis, and it also identified the means to rebuild the country’s competitiveness and to turn things around. George Herbert Walker Bush scrapped the program for a globalized, one-world vision and supposed “New World Order.” In his scheme of things he was willing to tolerate the movement of American wages downward, willing to see well-paying and secure manufacturing jobs sent abroad to other countries. It is high time now, however, particularly since the last election that we start to complete Ronald Reagan’s economic legacy by returning America to its preeminent position in the world. The United States should pursue national strategy to this end.
The Socrates Project utilized all source intelligence and determined by examining competition worldwide that the U.S. and its organizations had begun losing competitive advantage in the marketplace after World War II as a result of switching from technology-based planning to economic-based planning as the foundation of most decision-making. Socrates also foresaw that if the U.S. continued to rely upon economic-based planning with its inherent degradation of competitive advantage, the economic health of the U.S. would eventually go into a catastrophic freefall where no amount of economic maneuvering would be able to stop it. Socrates “saw” that China via an aggressive use of technology-based planning was, in effect, rapidly building itself into the next world superpower atop the wreckage of U.S. manufacturing industries and systemic failure to apply technology strategically to marketplace coordination and real goods and services output. China was outmaneuvering the US and its organizations in the acquisition and utilization of worldwide technology purposefully, in order to decimate America's ability to generate competitive advantage long-term and to ensure a maximum competitive advantage across the full range of markets and industries well into the future.
The Socrates Project developed a highly advanced form of technology-based planning called automated innovation to restore America’s competitiveness. In automated innovation, the process for acquiring and utilizing technology for a competitive advantage, including research and development, is automated so that it can be executed with unprecedented speed, efficiency and agility. Automated innovation enables the U.S. and its major public and private organizations to consistently outmaneuver China in the exploitation of technology, in order to acquire and maintain maximum competitive advantage. Automated innovation would thereby greatly increase corporate revenues too. A Socrates Project system was deployed under Reagan and is credited with helping bring our country back economically after the devastating Carter years, when so many key industries were losing position in global competition. After the first President Bush abolished the Socrates Project, the basis of the Socrates initiative moved into the private sector where it was refined since the 1980s.
Contemporary debate in terms of how best to reduce the U.S. national debt and close federal budget deficits must include a third leg as it were, and not just the tired rhetorical tug-of-war between the need and desire to increase taxes or to cut spending. What needs to happen is that private businesses must increase their revenues in a significant and sustained way, in order to grow the economic pie and bring in more tax revenue towards retiring the debt and living within budget means. Political debate must include more than the usual suspects. Corporations and businesses have to refrain from mere economic shell games that claim profit as they hollow out their insides or lay off more American workers.
Businesses grow when the tax and trade policies are less regressive, when public-private partnerships produce the tools they need to have a real technology-based competitive edge. The U.S. Government and various State Governments should look into tech-based planning and associated tools, in order to fully address their sagging economies and mounting debt burdens. The problems we face are unique and systemic and not entirely cyclic in nature. To address the economic health of the U.S., Congress should move resolutely towards reexamination of President Reagan’s Socrates Project and the swift deployment of an upgraded and reconstituted Socrates system enabled with 21st century technology, in order to usher in automated innovation and return us to the deliberate path of sustained economic prosperity and a choice of what’s best for America.
Of course today with the accumulated national debt and annual budget deficits climbing to new highs, and the nation’s economic health anemic at best, the dichotomy (false or not) becomes untenable. Increasing the tax rates and cutting federal spending programs cannot be done without considerable pain and political difficulty, not to mention without disturbing perhaps the majority of Americans who will be affected in some way. Obama’s deficit commission stated that making reductions for sustainable levels of debt and deficits would necessitate large tax increases or major spending cuts and quite probably some of each. Even if these are done, however, given those structural dislocations in the current economy, it is not very likely that the measures will do enough in time to turn this economy around to any long-term satisfaction of the American people. The fact is that both options in isolation or together merely share (and also redistribute) scarcity.
Without a doubt spending should not be profligate, and taxes should be fairly levied and impose the least burden possible. Notwithstanding, the more effective answer to reducing debt and alleviating deficits, is to grow the economy and increase business revenues. Significant and sustainable increases in the revenues of businesses, however, are unlikely using the standard approach and economic shell games of today, whether off-shoring of jobs, lay-offs of domestic labor, or selling off various assets and subsidiaries to foreign buyers. To achieve any real or sustainable increases in revenue, businesses must increase and maintain their competitive advantage in domestic and foreign markets. Moreover, a true competitive advantage is a matter of producing goods and providing services that customers want to purchase because the products and services satisfy customer needs better than the competition. If a business is not excelling at satisfying customer needs, then any other perceived “competitive advantage” equates to little more than rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
Under President Reagan, Michael C. Sekora directed a program called the Socrates Project within the U.S. intelligence community. Socrates enabled the United States years ago to foresee America’s present economic crisis, and it also identified the means to rebuild the country’s competitiveness and to turn things around. George Herbert Walker Bush scrapped the program for a globalized, one-world vision and supposed “New World Order.” In his scheme of things he was willing to tolerate the movement of American wages downward, willing to see well-paying and secure manufacturing jobs sent abroad to other countries. It is high time now, however, particularly since the last election that we start to complete Ronald Reagan’s economic legacy by returning America to its preeminent position in the world. The United States should pursue national strategy to this end.
The Socrates Project utilized all source intelligence and determined by examining competition worldwide that the U.S. and its organizations had begun losing competitive advantage in the marketplace after World War II as a result of switching from technology-based planning to economic-based planning as the foundation of most decision-making. Socrates also foresaw that if the U.S. continued to rely upon economic-based planning with its inherent degradation of competitive advantage, the economic health of the U.S. would eventually go into a catastrophic freefall where no amount of economic maneuvering would be able to stop it. Socrates “saw” that China via an aggressive use of technology-based planning was, in effect, rapidly building itself into the next world superpower atop the wreckage of U.S. manufacturing industries and systemic failure to apply technology strategically to marketplace coordination and real goods and services output. China was outmaneuvering the US and its organizations in the acquisition and utilization of worldwide technology purposefully, in order to decimate America's ability to generate competitive advantage long-term and to ensure a maximum competitive advantage across the full range of markets and industries well into the future.
The Socrates Project developed a highly advanced form of technology-based planning called automated innovation to restore America’s competitiveness. In automated innovation, the process for acquiring and utilizing technology for a competitive advantage, including research and development, is automated so that it can be executed with unprecedented speed, efficiency and agility. Automated innovation enables the U.S. and its major public and private organizations to consistently outmaneuver China in the exploitation of technology, in order to acquire and maintain maximum competitive advantage. Automated innovation would thereby greatly increase corporate revenues too. A Socrates Project system was deployed under Reagan and is credited with helping bring our country back economically after the devastating Carter years, when so many key industries were losing position in global competition. After the first President Bush abolished the Socrates Project, the basis of the Socrates initiative moved into the private sector where it was refined since the 1980s.
Contemporary debate in terms of how best to reduce the U.S. national debt and close federal budget deficits must include a third leg as it were, and not just the tired rhetorical tug-of-war between the need and desire to increase taxes or to cut spending. What needs to happen is that private businesses must increase their revenues in a significant and sustained way, in order to grow the economic pie and bring in more tax revenue towards retiring the debt and living within budget means. Political debate must include more than the usual suspects. Corporations and businesses have to refrain from mere economic shell games that claim profit as they hollow out their insides or lay off more American workers.
Businesses grow when the tax and trade policies are less regressive, when public-private partnerships produce the tools they need to have a real technology-based competitive edge. The U.S. Government and various State Governments should look into tech-based planning and associated tools, in order to fully address their sagging economies and mounting debt burdens. The problems we face are unique and systemic and not entirely cyclic in nature. To address the economic health of the U.S., Congress should move resolutely towards reexamination of President Reagan’s Socrates Project and the swift deployment of an upgraded and reconstituted Socrates system enabled with 21st century technology, in order to usher in automated innovation and return us to the deliberate path of sustained economic prosperity and a choice of what’s best for America.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Automated Innovation Revolution Key to Rebuilding, Advancing U.S. Economy (Issue #479)
To rebuild America’s competitiveness, it was obvious from the vantage point of the Socrates intelligence project, established by Michael C. Sekora during Reagan’s second term that America had to re-introduce technology-based planning as the foundation for decision-making. On the other hand, the U.S. could not simply revert to or adopt the same level of technology-based planning U.S. decision-makers had before World War II in industry or the public sector. In order to regain economic health and sustain economic superpower status, U.S. decision-makers needed to execute a level of technology-based planning designed in the Information Age and surpassing that being executed in China, India and elsewhere.
To borrow terminology from our World War II Pacific strategy, what the US needed to do was to leap-frog the technology-based or “tech-based” planning of those other countries. Part of the arduous analysis required in order to do this entailed the Socrates team mapping out the evolution of tech-based planning literally since the dawn of mankind. In so doing, two more things became obvious. First, tech-based planning (and mankind itself) makes an evolutionary leap forward every few hundred years—for example, the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, and so on. Second, mankind appeared altogether poised to make the next big evolutionary leap forward with tech-based planning, what Sekora referred to as the automated innovation revolution.
In the automated innovation revolution, the entire process for acquiring and utilizing technology (research and development, tech-alliances, etc.) is standardized and automated. The result is that the acquisition and utilization of technology can be executed with previously unimaginable speed, efficiency and agility—producing an endless, rapid stream of products and services based on technology breakthroughs that are automatically generated and utilized at amazingly fast rates. Resources become unified spontaneously through the application of usable information.
The Socrates team saw that if the U.S. was to generate and lead the automated innovation revolution, it would ensure America’s competitiveness and economic health for many future generations. The Socrates team designed, built and demonstrated a proof-of-principle version of the automated innovation system. The Socrates Project’s automated innovation system would generate another major benefit for the U.S., in that, it enabled public and private organizations throughout the U.S. to work together in a self-determined, highly symbiotic fashion—the result being that technology and the full range of various resources throughout the U.S. might be utilized in a highly coherent but flexible and independent fashion, increasing the competitive advantage of the U.S. and its private and public organizations, and still be fully compatible with democratic-republican principles and the free enterprise system.
A briefing was prepared and shown to President Reagan and his key advisors, which demonstrated conclusively both the threat posed by China’s and India’s tech-based planning approach, as well as the unprecedented, long-term competitive advantage the U.S. would be able to capture by generating and leading the automated innovation revolution. A relatively straightforward deployment of interface terminals to access the world’s technology information using advanced artificial intelligence software and all source intelligence data, would enable symbiotic relationships between U.S. public and private organizations to develop. A quick consensus emerged in the Reagan Administration that the full Socrates automated innovation system should be built and installed at a separate and independent government agency to support U.S. industry and a few government agencies with a valid need for the information.
President Reagan viewed “Socrates” as an innovative and prudential step for the United States to take for practical and self-interested reasons, given some grim long-term economic predictors. He also averred with the Socrates team that it would probably lead mankind into its next evolutionary step and that it was far better for the United States to set terms and parameters in this step rather than, say, China. Indeed, deployment of an automated innovation system would address the pressing economic challenges posed by China and India and the ever increasing likelihood that America would find herself displaced as the world’s premier economic powerhouse. At the same time and just as importantly, if the system were implemented deliberately for access by multiple users and using objective protocols with the proper oversight mechanism, the system would amount to having a brand new and powerful tool for superior performance with virtually no down side—the caveat for deployment being, that it must remain true to cherished American principles of private property, individual initiative, limited government and free markets.
Unfortunately before the draft executive order could be finalized and signed by President Reagan, his second term came to an end. By that time moreover, Reagan had personal health issues to attend to, albeit he did leave with full confidence that his vice-president and incoming president, George H.W. Bush would continue with “Socrates” to complete his impressive economic legacy. When Bush came into office, however, he abolished the Socrates Project in deference to Japanese demands; to reap a so-called post-Cold War “peace dividend”; and to usher in his own idealized “new world order” policy of unabashed globalism—without the same priority being given to parochial or exclusive U.S. economic interests.
Today with the U.S. having lost industry after industry overseas, and Americans’ standard of living in rapid decline, it is past time to complete the task that President Reagan charted. A legislatively authorized Socrates-like project would be a fitting tribute to the man whose 100th birthday anniversary we celebrate in February 2011. More critically, the automated innovation system is a necessary key to America’s economic wellbeing moving forward in the Information Age, against cutthroat market and currency manipulations being waged by authoritarian regimes and aggressive, culturally competing nation-states. The U.S. must generate and lead the automated innovation revolution, but while it is still possible to do so, the time is also far spent in terms of America’s economic eclipse. We must therefore move quickly and with resolution to do it, before it is too late and unsettling downward trends become irreversible.
To borrow terminology from our World War II Pacific strategy, what the US needed to do was to leap-frog the technology-based or “tech-based” planning of those other countries. Part of the arduous analysis required in order to do this entailed the Socrates team mapping out the evolution of tech-based planning literally since the dawn of mankind. In so doing, two more things became obvious. First, tech-based planning (and mankind itself) makes an evolutionary leap forward every few hundred years—for example, the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, and so on. Second, mankind appeared altogether poised to make the next big evolutionary leap forward with tech-based planning, what Sekora referred to as the automated innovation revolution.
In the automated innovation revolution, the entire process for acquiring and utilizing technology (research and development, tech-alliances, etc.) is standardized and automated. The result is that the acquisition and utilization of technology can be executed with previously unimaginable speed, efficiency and agility—producing an endless, rapid stream of products and services based on technology breakthroughs that are automatically generated and utilized at amazingly fast rates. Resources become unified spontaneously through the application of usable information.
The Socrates team saw that if the U.S. was to generate and lead the automated innovation revolution, it would ensure America’s competitiveness and economic health for many future generations. The Socrates team designed, built and demonstrated a proof-of-principle version of the automated innovation system. The Socrates Project’s automated innovation system would generate another major benefit for the U.S., in that, it enabled public and private organizations throughout the U.S. to work together in a self-determined, highly symbiotic fashion—the result being that technology and the full range of various resources throughout the U.S. might be utilized in a highly coherent but flexible and independent fashion, increasing the competitive advantage of the U.S. and its private and public organizations, and still be fully compatible with democratic-republican principles and the free enterprise system.
A briefing was prepared and shown to President Reagan and his key advisors, which demonstrated conclusively both the threat posed by China’s and India’s tech-based planning approach, as well as the unprecedented, long-term competitive advantage the U.S. would be able to capture by generating and leading the automated innovation revolution. A relatively straightforward deployment of interface terminals to access the world’s technology information using advanced artificial intelligence software and all source intelligence data, would enable symbiotic relationships between U.S. public and private organizations to develop. A quick consensus emerged in the Reagan Administration that the full Socrates automated innovation system should be built and installed at a separate and independent government agency to support U.S. industry and a few government agencies with a valid need for the information.
President Reagan viewed “Socrates” as an innovative and prudential step for the United States to take for practical and self-interested reasons, given some grim long-term economic predictors. He also averred with the Socrates team that it would probably lead mankind into its next evolutionary step and that it was far better for the United States to set terms and parameters in this step rather than, say, China. Indeed, deployment of an automated innovation system would address the pressing economic challenges posed by China and India and the ever increasing likelihood that America would find herself displaced as the world’s premier economic powerhouse. At the same time and just as importantly, if the system were implemented deliberately for access by multiple users and using objective protocols with the proper oversight mechanism, the system would amount to having a brand new and powerful tool for superior performance with virtually no down side—the caveat for deployment being, that it must remain true to cherished American principles of private property, individual initiative, limited government and free markets.
Unfortunately before the draft executive order could be finalized and signed by President Reagan, his second term came to an end. By that time moreover, Reagan had personal health issues to attend to, albeit he did leave with full confidence that his vice-president and incoming president, George H.W. Bush would continue with “Socrates” to complete his impressive economic legacy. When Bush came into office, however, he abolished the Socrates Project in deference to Japanese demands; to reap a so-called post-Cold War “peace dividend”; and to usher in his own idealized “new world order” policy of unabashed globalism—without the same priority being given to parochial or exclusive U.S. economic interests.
Today with the U.S. having lost industry after industry overseas, and Americans’ standard of living in rapid decline, it is past time to complete the task that President Reagan charted. A legislatively authorized Socrates-like project would be a fitting tribute to the man whose 100th birthday anniversary we celebrate in February 2011. More critically, the automated innovation system is a necessary key to America’s economic wellbeing moving forward in the Information Age, against cutthroat market and currency manipulations being waged by authoritarian regimes and aggressive, culturally competing nation-states. The U.S. must generate and lead the automated innovation revolution, but while it is still possible to do so, the time is also far spent in terms of America’s economic eclipse. We must therefore move quickly and with resolution to do it, before it is too late and unsettling downward trends become irreversible.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Unfinished Legacy: President Reagan and the Socrates Project (Issue #478)
President Reagan established a proud legacy during his two terms in office, the philosophical hallmarks of which were a reduction in the size of the federal government and empowerment of the private sector of the economy. What is not fully appreciated is that Reagan intended another aspect, which should still be added. Reagan started a process whereby he would overlay this aspect through executive order, at least initially. Unfortunately his attempt to provide a technology strategy and vision did not survive the follow-on George Herbert Walker Bush administration.
The executive order was drafted towards the end of his second term and would have created a government agency somewhat on par with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The agency would have answered directly to the White House and had the mission and the means to enable U.S. government organizations and American companies to work together in a highly coherent and unprecedented fashion. Reagan essentially tried to provide the marketplace, as well as select government planning agencies, with new tools that were possible with the onset of the Information Age.
Reagan was convinced that this additional aspect would ensure not only America’s economic survival, but also its preeminence and continued economic superpower status. On the basis of his draft executive order, Michael C. Sekora established a prototype program called the Socrates Project within the U.S. intelligence community. The program was aimed at improving America’s economic efficiencies and reducing the frictional components of the marketplace through better information, particularly in those domains relating to technology. The program design was meant specifically to address an apparent decline in U.S. manufacturing and competitiveness worldwide. The Socrates Project’s mission was two-fold: to determine the underlying cause of America’s declining competitiveness; and to use this determination to propose the subsequent development of means to reverse the economic decline.
To determine the cause of America’s declining competitiveness, the Socrates team used all source intelligence to generate a holistic, bird’s eye view of competition worldwide. The team’s view and understanding went well beyond the inferior data that is still the best available to most university professors, think tank analysts and consultants, in terms of scope and completeness.
What the Socrates team determined was that the source of America’s declining competitiveness followed an epochal shift in thinking that took place after World War II. It was not directly related to investment or to patterns of destruction, so much as it was based on the decision-makers’ response to post-war political and economic conditions. At the end of World War II decision-makers throughout the U.S. began shifting away from technology-based planning and began adopting economic-based planning instead. Within a few years, the economic-based planning model had become the standard, all-but-unchallenged foundation for decision-making throughout U.S. industry, government and academe. At the same time, much of the rest of the world continued refining and utilizing technology-based models of planning.
In technology-based planning the foundation for decision-making is the acquisition and utilization of technology, where technology is defined as any application of science to accomplish a function, in order to produce a better product or service. Based on targeted information, technology can be manipulated, offensively and defensively in a chess-like way, in order to acquire and maintain competitive advantage. In contrast, economic-based planning models lead to manipulation of funds as the foundation for decision-making. The measure of success based on economic-based thinking, is the efficiency at which one manipulates so-called economic drivers. Economic manipulation, unlike its technological counterpart is unrelated to anything real or tangible and is not even integrally coordinated with the nation’s wealth or productive outputs per se.
What was also obvious to the Socrates team from their unique bird’s eye view of competition, was that countries like China and India were using technology-based planning to catch up and further, to undercut America’s ability to generate or regain competitive advantage. Indeed, they were rapidly transforming themselves into world economic superpowers as our status slipped and the U.S. position was being eclipsed. While we in the U.S. were coming up with increasingly sophisticated economic shell games to maximize profits, China and India were systematically outmaneuvering us in the acquisition and utilization of technology to eliminate our ability to produce products and services that had competitive advantage in foreign markets, and increasingly in our own domestic markets.
With the global bait and switch nearly completed and the United States suffering through its worst recession since the Great Depression, Reagan’s initiative with Socrates seems positively prescient. With revitalized conservatism in vogue again since the last election, tea partiers and conservatives in the next Congress would do well, not only to follow the fiscally prudent “Roadmap for America’s Future” laid out by Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), but to revisit the national strategic level effort required which Ronald Reagan suggested before we got into this mess.
The executive order was drafted towards the end of his second term and would have created a government agency somewhat on par with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The agency would have answered directly to the White House and had the mission and the means to enable U.S. government organizations and American companies to work together in a highly coherent and unprecedented fashion. Reagan essentially tried to provide the marketplace, as well as select government planning agencies, with new tools that were possible with the onset of the Information Age.
Reagan was convinced that this additional aspect would ensure not only America’s economic survival, but also its preeminence and continued economic superpower status. On the basis of his draft executive order, Michael C. Sekora established a prototype program called the Socrates Project within the U.S. intelligence community. The program was aimed at improving America’s economic efficiencies and reducing the frictional components of the marketplace through better information, particularly in those domains relating to technology. The program design was meant specifically to address an apparent decline in U.S. manufacturing and competitiveness worldwide. The Socrates Project’s mission was two-fold: to determine the underlying cause of America’s declining competitiveness; and to use this determination to propose the subsequent development of means to reverse the economic decline.
To determine the cause of America’s declining competitiveness, the Socrates team used all source intelligence to generate a holistic, bird’s eye view of competition worldwide. The team’s view and understanding went well beyond the inferior data that is still the best available to most university professors, think tank analysts and consultants, in terms of scope and completeness.
What the Socrates team determined was that the source of America’s declining competitiveness followed an epochal shift in thinking that took place after World War II. It was not directly related to investment or to patterns of destruction, so much as it was based on the decision-makers’ response to post-war political and economic conditions. At the end of World War II decision-makers throughout the U.S. began shifting away from technology-based planning and began adopting economic-based planning instead. Within a few years, the economic-based planning model had become the standard, all-but-unchallenged foundation for decision-making throughout U.S. industry, government and academe. At the same time, much of the rest of the world continued refining and utilizing technology-based models of planning.
In technology-based planning the foundation for decision-making is the acquisition and utilization of technology, where technology is defined as any application of science to accomplish a function, in order to produce a better product or service. Based on targeted information, technology can be manipulated, offensively and defensively in a chess-like way, in order to acquire and maintain competitive advantage. In contrast, economic-based planning models lead to manipulation of funds as the foundation for decision-making. The measure of success based on economic-based thinking, is the efficiency at which one manipulates so-called economic drivers. Economic manipulation, unlike its technological counterpart is unrelated to anything real or tangible and is not even integrally coordinated with the nation’s wealth or productive outputs per se.
What was also obvious to the Socrates team from their unique bird’s eye view of competition, was that countries like China and India were using technology-based planning to catch up and further, to undercut America’s ability to generate or regain competitive advantage. Indeed, they were rapidly transforming themselves into world economic superpowers as our status slipped and the U.S. position was being eclipsed. While we in the U.S. were coming up with increasingly sophisticated economic shell games to maximize profits, China and India were systematically outmaneuvering us in the acquisition and utilization of technology to eliminate our ability to produce products and services that had competitive advantage in foreign markets, and increasingly in our own domestic markets.
With the global bait and switch nearly completed and the United States suffering through its worst recession since the Great Depression, Reagan’s initiative with Socrates seems positively prescient. With revitalized conservatism in vogue again since the last election, tea partiers and conservatives in the next Congress would do well, not only to follow the fiscally prudent “Roadmap for America’s Future” laid out by Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), but to revisit the national strategic level effort required which Ronald Reagan suggested before we got into this mess.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
When there’s Not a Lot to be Thankful For (Issue #477)
One out of every ten workers is unemployed and a much higher percentage is left piecing together part-time gigs just trying to make ends meet. Half of all marriages end in divorce and forty percent of all babies are born out of wedlock, this in addition to the more than a million babies aborted every year as a form of birth control or convenience or because a mistake was made. More than half of unmarried relationships are also on the rocks, albeit they are certainly entered into and ended at an ever quicker pace. Technology has geared us for speed not accuracy, information instead of knowledge. And who has the time for wisdom, whether it doth cry or not? Our people are increasingly distracted, error prone, fidgety, unable to focus, tethered to alarms and bells and ringtones, games and virtual realities that are not their own.
President Obama just promised jobs to India. Meanwhile thousands of American young adults with college education find it hard to get their first job, at least one modestly commensurate with their level of education. It takes them ten years to pay off their education loan. More Twenty-Somethings are in fact living at home with parents or grandparents now. Sixty-Somethings who want to retire can’t, because they lost half of their retirement savings in the financial collapse of 2008.
The United States finds herself in a swirl of crisis dynamics—at once economic, social and political. We truly haven’t seen structural problems of this magnitude since the Great Depression. The economy is in something of a free fall, as yet hidden from view by the Fed and U.S. Government while China eats our lunch. We elected a Chief Executive two years ago with hardly any experience and a penchant for proposing Marx as the solution. The rest of the political class couldn’t lead themselves out of a wet paper bag. The only caveat: it simply remains to be seen if the new “Class of 2010,” though well-meaning, has any clue at all about what to do next. And you say that we should celebrate Thanksgiving? Well, what exactly for?
If one is graceful, one is well, full of grace. If one is hopeful, then full of hope. Thanksgiving implies being thankful (full of thanks) or grateful (full of gratitude), which still begs the question why be that at all? It really doesn’t make much sense, considering that gratitude applies to things we already have. Unless my gratitude prepositions me for getting more or at least not losing something, then what good is it? Should I be grateful for fixing the tire when the tire is fixed? How about some assurance that it never goes flat again? (I’d rather be assurance-and-insurance-full). If God would just do that, i.e., shower His blessings in advance, before they are needed or wanted or even asked for, it would be a lot more efficient. Otherwise, as Eddy Arnold sang it so well, “Make the World Go Away” and I reckon I’ll be grateful for that. That is, unless there’s more to this thing called Life than a pocket full of posies.
There’s a story in the Bible about Jesus healing ten lepers (Luke 17:12-19). Only one of them, after he’d been healed, thought enough about it to pause and get down on his knees and actually thank God. It wasn’t as if Jesus was going to take back the healing! And yet Jesus recommended the actions of the one grateful man over the inaction of nine who were simply thankless. Now that’s interesting. If one is graceless, one is less or without grace. If one is hopeless, then without hope. Being thankless implies ingratitude or the absence of thanks. The implication being that there must be a quality missing: something good, something of innate value that should have been there but wasn’t. Gratitude is that missing quality in the example, and its presence may bear a relation to something received or to some other circumstance of living, but it really isn’t dependent on anything. God could have kept the lepers from getting their disease in the first place. Why be grateful for a healing, especially when one is healed?
Now consider the counsel King David gave to the people of Israel. He told them to give thanks to God under any and every circumstance. Not only because “Both riches and honor come from [God]” and He rules over all and is able “to make great and to give strength to all” (I Chronicles 29:12), but because an offer of thanksgiving is payment of “vows unto the most High” (Psalms 50:14). That is to say, it is a dedicating of oneself in service and to a certain way of life; it is an active promise of love and fidelity. The promise is also ‘for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health’ as with marriage. Thanksgiving therefore is an affirmation of one’s relationship to God and not to things or to however well things are going, nor even to His blessings. Thanksgiving is a duty but not one that is negative or coerced. It is a voluntary expression of love and loyalty to God and His great project called Life. People do it, and Nations do it. Moreover, it is always the right thing to do, even when there’s not a lot that’s obvious to be thankful for.
President Obama just promised jobs to India. Meanwhile thousands of American young adults with college education find it hard to get their first job, at least one modestly commensurate with their level of education. It takes them ten years to pay off their education loan. More Twenty-Somethings are in fact living at home with parents or grandparents now. Sixty-Somethings who want to retire can’t, because they lost half of their retirement savings in the financial collapse of 2008.
The United States finds herself in a swirl of crisis dynamics—at once economic, social and political. We truly haven’t seen structural problems of this magnitude since the Great Depression. The economy is in something of a free fall, as yet hidden from view by the Fed and U.S. Government while China eats our lunch. We elected a Chief Executive two years ago with hardly any experience and a penchant for proposing Marx as the solution. The rest of the political class couldn’t lead themselves out of a wet paper bag. The only caveat: it simply remains to be seen if the new “Class of 2010,” though well-meaning, has any clue at all about what to do next. And you say that we should celebrate Thanksgiving? Well, what exactly for?
If one is graceful, one is well, full of grace. If one is hopeful, then full of hope. Thanksgiving implies being thankful (full of thanks) or grateful (full of gratitude), which still begs the question why be that at all? It really doesn’t make much sense, considering that gratitude applies to things we already have. Unless my gratitude prepositions me for getting more or at least not losing something, then what good is it? Should I be grateful for fixing the tire when the tire is fixed? How about some assurance that it never goes flat again? (I’d rather be assurance-and-insurance-full). If God would just do that, i.e., shower His blessings in advance, before they are needed or wanted or even asked for, it would be a lot more efficient. Otherwise, as Eddy Arnold sang it so well, “Make the World Go Away” and I reckon I’ll be grateful for that. That is, unless there’s more to this thing called Life than a pocket full of posies.
There’s a story in the Bible about Jesus healing ten lepers (Luke 17:12-19). Only one of them, after he’d been healed, thought enough about it to pause and get down on his knees and actually thank God. It wasn’t as if Jesus was going to take back the healing! And yet Jesus recommended the actions of the one grateful man over the inaction of nine who were simply thankless. Now that’s interesting. If one is graceless, one is less or without grace. If one is hopeless, then without hope. Being thankless implies ingratitude or the absence of thanks. The implication being that there must be a quality missing: something good, something of innate value that should have been there but wasn’t. Gratitude is that missing quality in the example, and its presence may bear a relation to something received or to some other circumstance of living, but it really isn’t dependent on anything. God could have kept the lepers from getting their disease in the first place. Why be grateful for a healing, especially when one is healed?
Now consider the counsel King David gave to the people of Israel. He told them to give thanks to God under any and every circumstance. Not only because “Both riches and honor come from [God]” and He rules over all and is able “to make great and to give strength to all” (I Chronicles 29:12), but because an offer of thanksgiving is payment of “vows unto the most High” (Psalms 50:14). That is to say, it is a dedicating of oneself in service and to a certain way of life; it is an active promise of love and fidelity. The promise is also ‘for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health’ as with marriage. Thanksgiving therefore is an affirmation of one’s relationship to God and not to things or to however well things are going, nor even to His blessings. Thanksgiving is a duty but not one that is negative or coerced. It is a voluntary expression of love and loyalty to God and His great project called Life. People do it, and Nations do it. Moreover, it is always the right thing to do, even when there’s not a lot that’s obvious to be thankful for.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Election of 2010: Analysis and Prospectus (Issue #476)
When the smoke finally cleared, Election Day November 2nd turned out to be about as big as conservatives could have hoped. If expectations soared unrealistically high in some areas (many hoped the GOP might retake the Senate but had to be content flipping six seats), still elsewhere those expectations were exceeded (as with the conservative sweep across the country at state level). Democrats lost control of nineteen state legislative chambers and eleven governorships. In Texas, Republicans expanded their two vote majority in the state house to almost fifty.
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi may yet serve as Minority Leader in the U.S. House next session, but she is defanged without her Speaker’s gavel. Democrats have started to reorganize with or without White House direction, inventing an “Assistant-to-the-Leader” position basically to promote moderation inside the Democrat leadership. Considering that come January 2011 for the first time in more than six decades there will be fewer than two hundred Democrats in the House, it probably isn’t such a bad move.
The year 1994 was considered a wave election by Republicans too, but that “revolution” fizzled when President Clinton beat a very fast track back to the center. This time the wave election turned out to be a veritable tsunami—nearly twice as big with Republicans picking up 60 seats in the House. President Obama also seems far less likely to dance a soft shoe; and anyway, the Tea Party contingent of the GOP, which did not exist in 1994, will hardly be impressed. Clinton took everyone’s breath away, and even his opponents swooned when he declared ‘the Era of Big Government’ to be over. It was a lie. Now Tea Partiers and conservative stalwarts know better and won’t fall for the line again.
The mid-term election is more akin to the Reagan Revolution of 1980 in terms of its size and its professed ideological purpose. In an article by Lou Cannon appearing in Politics Daily, he attributes four factors to the results of the election in terms of Republican resurgence. Accordingly, “The first [factor] is public dismay with the slow pace of the recovery. The second and related factor is the perceived ineffectiveness of the stimulus and various government bailouts. The third is reaction to Obamacare, which the White House wrongly expected would become popular after it became law…. [and the] fourth factor, both effect and cause, is the tea party….” This litany of causal factors is more or less complete and indeed now common wisdom, except that Cannon overly limits his explanation about the tea party in his piece. The Tea Party as such, is more than just a populist reaction to the serious economic downturn. Yes it bears resemblance to other populist backlashes, except this one has a history and a serious accumulation of discontent dating back years even before the tea party movement coalesced in 2009.
The oversight is worth pointing out, because what is behind the Tea Party also offers causal explanation for the Republican tidal wave. The additional factor is correctly identified as a simmering brand of strict Constitutional construction, which has mostly been maligned, shoved aside or overlooked since the 1960s. It is an insistence no less populist but altogether separate. It is a subsurface and traditional inclination of a majority of the American people and is defensive aggressive in its nature, which explains its robust reappearance. Classically it is a response to tyranny or perceived tyranny and is a distinctive conservative lineament of political philosophy very closely aligned, by extrapolation to the Founding Fathers’ worldview. Its critique of the current social, economic and political milieu has it that government is indeed too big, and also too powerful, too intrusive, too much “in the way,” too overbearing and monitoring, as with Big Brother or the stereotypical Nanny. It is also far too costly of late, and—to the extent that the federal government no longer respects its legal and constitutional bounds, may constitute an impediment to Freedom writ large (which is after all the American project), as well as a physical and moral threat to the People themselves.
A “neo-federalist” wing of the Republican Party with direct Southern and Middle American historical roots has been kept down for years by the GOP establishment and most recently by domination of the neo-conservative wing, which reached its zenith of power during the years of George W. Bush. States rights and Tenth Amendment advocates are now demanding their day in the sun, and the intramural strife will be clearly in play as the GOP seeks next year to integrate its newfound friends in the Tea Party, much like swallowing an anaconda.
The Election of 2010 could very well herald a new era of conservative dominance, whatever its eventual stripe. While winning elections is hard work, however, it is only the first step towards what one hopes will be effective governance. Tea Party freshmen are going to Congress for a purpose, but they are going to need continuing grassroots support and a constant store of encouragement and concrete ideas to get anything done over the long haul. The enthusiasm of new Tea Party members in Congress will also eventually have to translate into specific policy actions that really do help “restore the Republic” according to the Constitution and Founders’ Intent, if that’s what they want to accomplish. Policies and legislation are most definitely required to put Americans back to work and to achieve full and sustained economic recovery—and sooner rather than later, as the Democrats found out. There is also the long and intentionally ignored political imperative that the United States must secure her borders; and then address the sheer magnitude of legal and illegal immigration, ensuring it reaches a reasonable and assimilative level.
The new kids on the block are going to have a lot of work to do. The Tea Party “revolution” could very well fizzle like others before, if they fail to repeal Obamacare or compromise too much with the president on this issue; if they are unable to get government spending under control, or reverse the trend of ballooning national debt. If the Republican Party establishment is seen to subvert the tea party effort, there will almost certainly be a third party alternative for an increasingly large number of disaffected conservative voters inside the GOP’s base, and this could portend a potential realignment or collapse of the Third American Party System.
The best thing that could emerge from the Election of 2010 is a new and more conservative consensus, marked by serious bipartisan hard work and honest efforts to address the crisis dynamics in our economy and polity. Another more likely scenario is that we could be looking at two more years of not only divided, but also gridlocked government leading up to the Election of 2012. If this happens of course, what’s hot is likely to get hotter and what’s a problem is likely to get worse. Arguably only when one of the two major parties (possibly with the help of a strong independent contingent) takes charge of two branches of government (usually the Congress and Executive Branch), does gridlock give way to a period of significant political and economic achievement—the next one presumably stamped by clear conservative branding, but only as it emerges from the Republican dustup. .
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi may yet serve as Minority Leader in the U.S. House next session, but she is defanged without her Speaker’s gavel. Democrats have started to reorganize with or without White House direction, inventing an “Assistant-to-the-Leader” position basically to promote moderation inside the Democrat leadership. Considering that come January 2011 for the first time in more than six decades there will be fewer than two hundred Democrats in the House, it probably isn’t such a bad move.
The year 1994 was considered a wave election by Republicans too, but that “revolution” fizzled when President Clinton beat a very fast track back to the center. This time the wave election turned out to be a veritable tsunami—nearly twice as big with Republicans picking up 60 seats in the House. President Obama also seems far less likely to dance a soft shoe; and anyway, the Tea Party contingent of the GOP, which did not exist in 1994, will hardly be impressed. Clinton took everyone’s breath away, and even his opponents swooned when he declared ‘the Era of Big Government’ to be over. It was a lie. Now Tea Partiers and conservative stalwarts know better and won’t fall for the line again.
The mid-term election is more akin to the Reagan Revolution of 1980 in terms of its size and its professed ideological purpose. In an article by Lou Cannon appearing in Politics Daily, he attributes four factors to the results of the election in terms of Republican resurgence. Accordingly, “The first [factor] is public dismay with the slow pace of the recovery. The second and related factor is the perceived ineffectiveness of the stimulus and various government bailouts. The third is reaction to Obamacare, which the White House wrongly expected would become popular after it became law…. [and the] fourth factor, both effect and cause, is the tea party….” This litany of causal factors is more or less complete and indeed now common wisdom, except that Cannon overly limits his explanation about the tea party in his piece. The Tea Party as such, is more than just a populist reaction to the serious economic downturn. Yes it bears resemblance to other populist backlashes, except this one has a history and a serious accumulation of discontent dating back years even before the tea party movement coalesced in 2009.
The oversight is worth pointing out, because what is behind the Tea Party also offers causal explanation for the Republican tidal wave. The additional factor is correctly identified as a simmering brand of strict Constitutional construction, which has mostly been maligned, shoved aside or overlooked since the 1960s. It is an insistence no less populist but altogether separate. It is a subsurface and traditional inclination of a majority of the American people and is defensive aggressive in its nature, which explains its robust reappearance. Classically it is a response to tyranny or perceived tyranny and is a distinctive conservative lineament of political philosophy very closely aligned, by extrapolation to the Founding Fathers’ worldview. Its critique of the current social, economic and political milieu has it that government is indeed too big, and also too powerful, too intrusive, too much “in the way,” too overbearing and monitoring, as with Big Brother or the stereotypical Nanny. It is also far too costly of late, and—to the extent that the federal government no longer respects its legal and constitutional bounds, may constitute an impediment to Freedom writ large (which is after all the American project), as well as a physical and moral threat to the People themselves.
A “neo-federalist” wing of the Republican Party with direct Southern and Middle American historical roots has been kept down for years by the GOP establishment and most recently by domination of the neo-conservative wing, which reached its zenith of power during the years of George W. Bush. States rights and Tenth Amendment advocates are now demanding their day in the sun, and the intramural strife will be clearly in play as the GOP seeks next year to integrate its newfound friends in the Tea Party, much like swallowing an anaconda.
The Election of 2010 could very well herald a new era of conservative dominance, whatever its eventual stripe. While winning elections is hard work, however, it is only the first step towards what one hopes will be effective governance. Tea Party freshmen are going to Congress for a purpose, but they are going to need continuing grassroots support and a constant store of encouragement and concrete ideas to get anything done over the long haul. The enthusiasm of new Tea Party members in Congress will also eventually have to translate into specific policy actions that really do help “restore the Republic” according to the Constitution and Founders’ Intent, if that’s what they want to accomplish. Policies and legislation are most definitely required to put Americans back to work and to achieve full and sustained economic recovery—and sooner rather than later, as the Democrats found out. There is also the long and intentionally ignored political imperative that the United States must secure her borders; and then address the sheer magnitude of legal and illegal immigration, ensuring it reaches a reasonable and assimilative level.
The new kids on the block are going to have a lot of work to do. The Tea Party “revolution” could very well fizzle like others before, if they fail to repeal Obamacare or compromise too much with the president on this issue; if they are unable to get government spending under control, or reverse the trend of ballooning national debt. If the Republican Party establishment is seen to subvert the tea party effort, there will almost certainly be a third party alternative for an increasingly large number of disaffected conservative voters inside the GOP’s base, and this could portend a potential realignment or collapse of the Third American Party System.
The best thing that could emerge from the Election of 2010 is a new and more conservative consensus, marked by serious bipartisan hard work and honest efforts to address the crisis dynamics in our economy and polity. Another more likely scenario is that we could be looking at two more years of not only divided, but also gridlocked government leading up to the Election of 2012. If this happens of course, what’s hot is likely to get hotter and what’s a problem is likely to get worse. Arguably only when one of the two major parties (possibly with the help of a strong independent contingent) takes charge of two branches of government (usually the Congress and Executive Branch), does gridlock give way to a period of significant political and economic achievement—the next one presumably stamped by clear conservative branding, but only as it emerges from the Republican dustup. .
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Special Category of Hero (Issue #475)
Tom Brokaw wrote an introduction to the coffee table book called Medal of Honor containing portraits of Medal winners some years ago. In it he recounts the arbitrary sort of way that veterans may be regarded by their government or fellow citizens depending upon the time in history. Veterans know this better than most, because a distance of inches or time measured in seconds is often the dividing line twixt life and death on the battlefield, or even in training. Timing is everything as they say. Being at the right time and place makes all the difference. Even mistakes, all but inevitable, will figure in to how things turn out. A mistake or shortcoming can evoke guilt in some, ironic gratitude in others. Veterans of the Korean Conflict were, according to Brokaw, “caught in the backwater of World War II.” Americans were so preoccupied with their own lives at that point that the bloody conflict received very little public attention. Then as we were consumed by the assassination of President Kennedy and the terrible social and political upheavals that followed in the sixties and seventies, to include bitter divide over the Viet Nam War itself, regard for the veteran and his sacrifice actually receded. It stayed sour to some degree until after the First Gulf War.
There are also family members or friends one may know, who may or may not have been veterans, but who are or were bigger than life characters. The fact that no one knows them makes it no less of the truth. God keeps the full and complete record. History is poorly written, even at its best. Most soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coastguardsmen serve and sacrifice nearly anonymously. In a similar way, the politics swirling before, during and after every conflict or engagement, and constant these days throughout every tour of duty, remains a separate reality, unimpressive for the most part, subordinate certainly to the daily tasks and the military missions of all who serve in uniform—with the possible exception of some top brass, who have to answer to the civilian political leadership! When there is a civil-military dispute, the top brass voice their concern or position to political leaders, but then support and implement whatever decision is duly and legally reached. If disagreements are fundamental or some political embarrassment ensues, top brass may very well have to resign—but this is far preferable, so that the bulk of forces remains insulated from all the furious tempests in teapots that have nothing to do with the proximity of life and death issues in a day’s work, or the short and long-term physical wellbeing of men and women defending our nation.
Defense of American’s homes and Homeland remains paramount under any circumstance, disagreement or no, just as every man and woman who joins the armed services swears to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies foreign and domestic. The American fighting man or woman is a thinking man or woman too. The special category of hero we cultivate, and sometimes celebrate knows what he is doing, or at least knows in advance what he might do if the training and conditioning kick in. American heroes show forth more moral courage than animal courage. The American soldier who wields his weapon is as deadly, say, as the Hun was in his day—but they are not the same equivalent moral agents, even if sentimentality and an immediate reference to the civilized order must wane until the blood cools and safety will allow it.
American veterans comprise a special category of hero precisely because of who they were going into military service. In a democratic-republic such as ours, the young recruit represents us going in. He or she represents the collective responsibility we share to protect and defend our way of life. So we send our best, and we literally send our hope—out of the city, off the farm, from small towns and neighborhoods they go. Frequently they delay college or their career, and place young family life on hold, or else put it through the lonely hardship of separation. The new recruit represents every citizen, indeed he is a surrogate for the same: to bear the assigned risk; to meet the many challenges, to accomplish the mission, to master skill and craft, to face the enemy. And so, notwithstanding an exquisite execution of violence or the longsuffering execution of mundane duties, the American veteran is heroic, who returns home bringing the same good he brought into service back with him. Indeed, he often packs more of a positive nature and value in his rucksack than what he at first had, in terms of those hallmark signs of military service: maturity, discipline, self-confidence, teamwork, learning and yes, even humanity.
There are also family members or friends one may know, who may or may not have been veterans, but who are or were bigger than life characters. The fact that no one knows them makes it no less of the truth. God keeps the full and complete record. History is poorly written, even at its best. Most soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coastguardsmen serve and sacrifice nearly anonymously. In a similar way, the politics swirling before, during and after every conflict or engagement, and constant these days throughout every tour of duty, remains a separate reality, unimpressive for the most part, subordinate certainly to the daily tasks and the military missions of all who serve in uniform—with the possible exception of some top brass, who have to answer to the civilian political leadership! When there is a civil-military dispute, the top brass voice their concern or position to political leaders, but then support and implement whatever decision is duly and legally reached. If disagreements are fundamental or some political embarrassment ensues, top brass may very well have to resign—but this is far preferable, so that the bulk of forces remains insulated from all the furious tempests in teapots that have nothing to do with the proximity of life and death issues in a day’s work, or the short and long-term physical wellbeing of men and women defending our nation.
Defense of American’s homes and Homeland remains paramount under any circumstance, disagreement or no, just as every man and woman who joins the armed services swears to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies foreign and domestic. The American fighting man or woman is a thinking man or woman too. The special category of hero we cultivate, and sometimes celebrate knows what he is doing, or at least knows in advance what he might do if the training and conditioning kick in. American heroes show forth more moral courage than animal courage. The American soldier who wields his weapon is as deadly, say, as the Hun was in his day—but they are not the same equivalent moral agents, even if sentimentality and an immediate reference to the civilized order must wane until the blood cools and safety will allow it.
American veterans comprise a special category of hero precisely because of who they were going into military service. In a democratic-republic such as ours, the young recruit represents us going in. He or she represents the collective responsibility we share to protect and defend our way of life. So we send our best, and we literally send our hope—out of the city, off the farm, from small towns and neighborhoods they go. Frequently they delay college or their career, and place young family life on hold, or else put it through the lonely hardship of separation. The new recruit represents every citizen, indeed he is a surrogate for the same: to bear the assigned risk; to meet the many challenges, to accomplish the mission, to master skill and craft, to face the enemy. And so, notwithstanding an exquisite execution of violence or the longsuffering execution of mundane duties, the American veteran is heroic, who returns home bringing the same good he brought into service back with him. Indeed, he often packs more of a positive nature and value in his rucksack than what he at first had, in terms of those hallmark signs of military service: maturity, discipline, self-confidence, teamwork, learning and yes, even humanity.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Voting about Faith, America’s Survival (Issue #473)
This week I attended a funeral. A three-year old special needs child had passed away. The sun broke through the overcast day, when the gates of Heaven opened up to receive her—at least that’s how it seemed to all the believers gathered there at the graveside singing hymns, mourning, and bearing witness to how precious a little life can be.
People of faith believe that identity is always intact. God keeps us safe with Him, where we are always looking and acting our best in the image He created us in. People of faith believe their purpose extends beyond the temporal material world and into Eternity. Everything in this physical life therefore is couched in the context of a relatively brief mortal existence on earth, and the Life and Time indestructible elsewhere. People of faith tend to live according to discretion and morals, by virtue of a continuous reference to the Life that is to come. This reference smoothes out some emotional rough edges, allays disappointment, enables forgiveness to occur, and displaces class envy. The crash or the burn-out, or so-called “postal” bouts of anger and revenge, are more often characteristic of someone without faith or someone who enters into a crisis of faith.
In politics faith has implications too. Government is seen as a portion, or mere functional piece, of that relatively brief mortal existence here on earth. Caesar is to be respected certainly, but a person’s natural rights—even a little person’s—are more important. Government is subordinated to one’s spiritual journey. Government is subordinated to certain values, which constitute the duty of a faithful and faith-filled people to their God. People of faith are always, potentially, revolutionary. The Declaration of Independence is their civil creed.
The First Amendment to the Constitution had once established a useful firewall, even as the advance of secularism continued over two centuries to affect the democratic society at large. States even towards the end of the Twentieth Century remained sovereign with respect to most matters of religion, in the context of our federated Republic. Within the states themselves moreover, a high regard for matters of the spirit and of religion, provided for a libertarian approach that gave space and freedom for entire communities of faith to deviate from the majority norms in their pursuit of happiness. People also knew how to mind their business then. Property more or less ensured privacy, because it wasn’t lightly taken away, or heavily taxed, or invaded by the government. The advance of secularism, coupled with a corrosive leveling form of democracy, eventually dismantled the federalist construct of our government and has all but killed the Constitution. It was only a matter of time before every remaining pocket of religious freedom and faith-based “deviant” institution would be under attack.
Today any semblance of resistance to the secular norm is quashed at every level of government and society. A consolidated national democratic and secular majority-will, skewed, corrupted and expressed by a conformist and no-longer-federal government, invades every family and household in the country. People of faith are about to be extinguished—or rather, the faith of the people, which is the real aim of attack. Ironically, faith can inform and cause people to respond in two very different ways whenever their Caesar presumes upon the prerogatives of their God and His people. It is, of course possible, to take solace and comfort from the fact that life is short and there are sure rewards and perfect justice in Heaven. The other way is to live heroically, knowing that whatever the cost or ultimate sacrifice, it is well worth the teaching and the example of the Lord, in order to bring His Prayer to fruition: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). It is certainly worth the fight if done in defense, and for the future of freedom and the future of America’s posterity. It is worth voting too when the ballots are not bullets, and when a peaceful way forward presents itself in order to bring about political revolution.
There is indeed a time for every season, but much involves the choice that free men and women make as it were, in time. People without faith will vote for their stomachs every time. They will give in to fear and to fearful political exhortations of envy, because they never see beyond the grave. They empower government to take from others what they think they need, and acknowledge no higher authority than their own selfish greed and that of greed’s henchman, the bureaucrat with a badge and snub-nosed gun. After all, they have nothing else to reconcile, nothing more to redeem, nothing to justify outside the narrow confines of incidental breath and an accidental heartbeat. The truth is that it was never unconstitutional according to the Founders’ Original Intent to have prayer in schools, public or otherwise—it is entirely unconstitutional, however, to have the Federal Government telling sovereign states what they can and cannot do and defining what is or isn’t allowed in their schools.
The underlying problem has never been about prayer or monuments. It isn’t about how or whether to teach objectivity, critical thinking, logic or the scientific method. It sure isn’t about studying Chinese in kindergarten, and whether to double up on increasingly ungraded math and science homework! The crisis in schools is massive, and the failure to educate readily apparent. The solution, as with so much else, involves transmission and receipt of our cultural inheritance and of history again. It involves preparing kids and young people for the workplace and for society, concentrating on skills but also on discipline and character. Education will fix itself, when the Republic is restored and the American people, including all people of faith are free again. The biggest problem we face today isn’t phonics or bilingualism. It isn’t the amount of money thrown at something, or the quality of teachers in low-income neighborhoods. It has everything to do with the Federal Government and its massive overreach in terms of raw power. It has to do with entire branches of the Federal Government, which no longer serve the best interests of the American people! The solution has to do with knocking the Federal Government back down to a proper constitutional size and scope. GOOD CHRISTIAN: IF YOU VALUE ANYTHING AT ALL IN THIS LIFE, YOU MUST VOTE!
People of faith believe that identity is always intact. God keeps us safe with Him, where we are always looking and acting our best in the image He created us in. People of faith believe their purpose extends beyond the temporal material world and into Eternity. Everything in this physical life therefore is couched in the context of a relatively brief mortal existence on earth, and the Life and Time indestructible elsewhere. People of faith tend to live according to discretion and morals, by virtue of a continuous reference to the Life that is to come. This reference smoothes out some emotional rough edges, allays disappointment, enables forgiveness to occur, and displaces class envy. The crash or the burn-out, or so-called “postal” bouts of anger and revenge, are more often characteristic of someone without faith or someone who enters into a crisis of faith.
In politics faith has implications too. Government is seen as a portion, or mere functional piece, of that relatively brief mortal existence here on earth. Caesar is to be respected certainly, but a person’s natural rights—even a little person’s—are more important. Government is subordinated to one’s spiritual journey. Government is subordinated to certain values, which constitute the duty of a faithful and faith-filled people to their God. People of faith are always, potentially, revolutionary. The Declaration of Independence is their civil creed.
The First Amendment to the Constitution had once established a useful firewall, even as the advance of secularism continued over two centuries to affect the democratic society at large. States even towards the end of the Twentieth Century remained sovereign with respect to most matters of religion, in the context of our federated Republic. Within the states themselves moreover, a high regard for matters of the spirit and of religion, provided for a libertarian approach that gave space and freedom for entire communities of faith to deviate from the majority norms in their pursuit of happiness. People also knew how to mind their business then. Property more or less ensured privacy, because it wasn’t lightly taken away, or heavily taxed, or invaded by the government. The advance of secularism, coupled with a corrosive leveling form of democracy, eventually dismantled the federalist construct of our government and has all but killed the Constitution. It was only a matter of time before every remaining pocket of religious freedom and faith-based “deviant” institution would be under attack.
Today any semblance of resistance to the secular norm is quashed at every level of government and society. A consolidated national democratic and secular majority-will, skewed, corrupted and expressed by a conformist and no-longer-federal government, invades every family and household in the country. People of faith are about to be extinguished—or rather, the faith of the people, which is the real aim of attack. Ironically, faith can inform and cause people to respond in two very different ways whenever their Caesar presumes upon the prerogatives of their God and His people. It is, of course possible, to take solace and comfort from the fact that life is short and there are sure rewards and perfect justice in Heaven. The other way is to live heroically, knowing that whatever the cost or ultimate sacrifice, it is well worth the teaching and the example of the Lord, in order to bring His Prayer to fruition: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). It is certainly worth the fight if done in defense, and for the future of freedom and the future of America’s posterity. It is worth voting too when the ballots are not bullets, and when a peaceful way forward presents itself in order to bring about political revolution.
There is indeed a time for every season, but much involves the choice that free men and women make as it were, in time. People without faith will vote for their stomachs every time. They will give in to fear and to fearful political exhortations of envy, because they never see beyond the grave. They empower government to take from others what they think they need, and acknowledge no higher authority than their own selfish greed and that of greed’s henchman, the bureaucrat with a badge and snub-nosed gun. After all, they have nothing else to reconcile, nothing more to redeem, nothing to justify outside the narrow confines of incidental breath and an accidental heartbeat. The truth is that it was never unconstitutional according to the Founders’ Original Intent to have prayer in schools, public or otherwise—it is entirely unconstitutional, however, to have the Federal Government telling sovereign states what they can and cannot do and defining what is or isn’t allowed in their schools.
The underlying problem has never been about prayer or monuments. It isn’t about how or whether to teach objectivity, critical thinking, logic or the scientific method. It sure isn’t about studying Chinese in kindergarten, and whether to double up on increasingly ungraded math and science homework! The crisis in schools is massive, and the failure to educate readily apparent. The solution, as with so much else, involves transmission and receipt of our cultural inheritance and of history again. It involves preparing kids and young people for the workplace and for society, concentrating on skills but also on discipline and character. Education will fix itself, when the Republic is restored and the American people, including all people of faith are free again. The biggest problem we face today isn’t phonics or bilingualism. It isn’t the amount of money thrown at something, or the quality of teachers in low-income neighborhoods. It has everything to do with the Federal Government and its massive overreach in terms of raw power. It has to do with entire branches of the Federal Government, which no longer serve the best interests of the American people! The solution has to do with knocking the Federal Government back down to a proper constitutional size and scope. GOOD CHRISTIAN: IF YOU VALUE ANYTHING AT ALL IN THIS LIFE, YOU MUST VOTE!
Monday, October 11, 2010
Loss of Manufacturing is the Federal Government’s Fault (Issue #471)
Anne Marie Cox of Catholic News Service (CNS) reported on the president during his recent campaign swing through four states. On September 29th President Barack Obama visited a Mid-West family in a Des Moines, Iowa neighborhood and spoke to a group assembled in backyard lawn chairs. The local parish priest, Father Michael Amadeo of the Holy Trinity School, was the last one to pose a question. The priest shared a story about a parishioner. Apparently the 55-year-old father had lost his manufacturing job over one year ago and the family was struggling. The priest asked what the president’s economic policies would do in the next year to help people in that circumstance. If anyone were looking for hope, however, they might as well have phoned a call center in India.
President Obama responded that many of the manufacturing jobs simply will not return, because modern factories are so efficient and require fewer workers. Moreover, some jobs are moving overseas where wages are cheaper. His concluding advice was for the unemployed man to keep his skills honed and to be ready when the economy finally turns around again. The president plugged clean energy as a promising business alternative and then left. Not only was the president less than empathetic to the priest’s question or the plight of unemployed man, his administration has got its economics all wrong and government policies are sure to drag this recession all the way to Kingdom Come.
The following analysis is taken from Tom Pauken’s excellent book, Bringing America Home (2010). In it he details those policies behind our nation’s marked economic decline. A central reason for huge trade deficits and the shift of economic power from Main Street to Wall Street is a business tax system that gives private-equity moguls incentives to take imprudent risks with the companies they control. In this respect, they have a distinct advantage over owners of U.S. companies who would like to run their businesses in a tried and true conservative fashion or pursue capital accumulation-based strategies, but find that our tax structure “disincentivizes” them. The United States has a corporate income-tax rate of 35 percent. That rate is an economic incentive for financiers to load a company up with high levels of corporate debt in order to avoid taxation. It is a no-brainer—you can write off debt on your taxes, but savings and investments get taxed heavily. No rational businessman would want his company to accumulate significant savings if the interest on those savings is taxed at 35 percent.
American businesses that have their plants and employees in the United States also do not operate on a level playing field with our trading partners or competitors. Every major trading country in the world except for the United States provides a tax advantage for domestic manufacturers. Even as other countries have removed tariffs over the past four decades, they have been careful to put into place value-added taxes or VATs that provide their companies with a significant economic advantage over foreign businesses. Austin business economist David Hartman has developed data on the effects of a border-adjusted VAT. Starting with France in the mid-1960s, European countries began adopting border-adjusted VATs that now average 19 percent. All Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, made up of over 30 developed countries—all except the United States, that is—have since adopted VATs or their equivalents averaging 18 percent. As a result, U.S. goods carry the full burden of federal, state, and local taxes, plus an added tax averaging 18 percent when they are shipped to foreign markets. To make matters worse, foreign goods that are shipped into the United States enjoy an 18-percent VAT abatement—yet are subject to none of the taxes imposed on U.S. manufacturers.
It really is small wonder that so many big companies have moved their manufacturing outside the United States. It is more of a wonder why the rest haven’t gone! The hollowing out of our manufacturing base and the resultant unemployment and regrettable socio-economic inequalities that have been produced, were predictable. They were caused by the federal government’s regressive tax and trade policies. The president shows every indication of perpetuating the same policies of what Doug Ingram has called a design for “exporting prosperity.” In the past ten years the United States has lost one-third of its manufacturing jobs. Obama did not start the problem, but Obama’s deficits after less than two years in office already exceed President George W. Bush’s after eight years. Unemployment is stuck at nearly ten percent and is likely to remain there for two more years. The Democrat Congress, for the first time in recent memory has not even passed a part of the proposed budget out of committee for the fiscal year that already began. In other words, the president honestly can’t give much hope to the priest in reply to his question. Either the president doesn’t know what to do in the next year, or else his intent is for more of the same that got us in this mess in the first place.
President Obama responded that many of the manufacturing jobs simply will not return, because modern factories are so efficient and require fewer workers. Moreover, some jobs are moving overseas where wages are cheaper. His concluding advice was for the unemployed man to keep his skills honed and to be ready when the economy finally turns around again. The president plugged clean energy as a promising business alternative and then left. Not only was the president less than empathetic to the priest’s question or the plight of unemployed man, his administration has got its economics all wrong and government policies are sure to drag this recession all the way to Kingdom Come.
The following analysis is taken from Tom Pauken’s excellent book, Bringing America Home (2010). In it he details those policies behind our nation’s marked economic decline. A central reason for huge trade deficits and the shift of economic power from Main Street to Wall Street is a business tax system that gives private-equity moguls incentives to take imprudent risks with the companies they control. In this respect, they have a distinct advantage over owners of U.S. companies who would like to run their businesses in a tried and true conservative fashion or pursue capital accumulation-based strategies, but find that our tax structure “disincentivizes” them. The United States has a corporate income-tax rate of 35 percent. That rate is an economic incentive for financiers to load a company up with high levels of corporate debt in order to avoid taxation. It is a no-brainer—you can write off debt on your taxes, but savings and investments get taxed heavily. No rational businessman would want his company to accumulate significant savings if the interest on those savings is taxed at 35 percent.
American businesses that have their plants and employees in the United States also do not operate on a level playing field with our trading partners or competitors. Every major trading country in the world except for the United States provides a tax advantage for domestic manufacturers. Even as other countries have removed tariffs over the past four decades, they have been careful to put into place value-added taxes or VATs that provide their companies with a significant economic advantage over foreign businesses. Austin business economist David Hartman has developed data on the effects of a border-adjusted VAT. Starting with France in the mid-1960s, European countries began adopting border-adjusted VATs that now average 19 percent. All Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, made up of over 30 developed countries—all except the United States, that is—have since adopted VATs or their equivalents averaging 18 percent. As a result, U.S. goods carry the full burden of federal, state, and local taxes, plus an added tax averaging 18 percent when they are shipped to foreign markets. To make matters worse, foreign goods that are shipped into the United States enjoy an 18-percent VAT abatement—yet are subject to none of the taxes imposed on U.S. manufacturers.
It really is small wonder that so many big companies have moved their manufacturing outside the United States. It is more of a wonder why the rest haven’t gone! The hollowing out of our manufacturing base and the resultant unemployment and regrettable socio-economic inequalities that have been produced, were predictable. They were caused by the federal government’s regressive tax and trade policies. The president shows every indication of perpetuating the same policies of what Doug Ingram has called a design for “exporting prosperity.” In the past ten years the United States has lost one-third of its manufacturing jobs. Obama did not start the problem, but Obama’s deficits after less than two years in office already exceed President George W. Bush’s after eight years. Unemployment is stuck at nearly ten percent and is likely to remain there for two more years. The Democrat Congress, for the first time in recent memory has not even passed a part of the proposed budget out of committee for the fiscal year that already began. In other words, the president honestly can’t give much hope to the priest in reply to his question. Either the president doesn’t know what to do in the next year, or else his intent is for more of the same that got us in this mess in the first place.
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