Independent Caucus

No Obama In Berlin?

Obama did not travel to Berlin for the commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years hence. The wall "fell" when the East Germans opened the Brandenburg Gate rather than forcibly dispurse the thousands of East Germans who had gathered there after a sequence of events had given hope that liberation from Soviet control and physical separation from the "west" was at hand. The date was November 9, 1989.

The wall had been there for over 30 years. As President Kennedy said during his great speech at the wall in 1961, as the wall was being constructed, it was the physical as well as symbolic divider between the governing doctrines of democracy and communism, of liberty and totalitarianism. The opening of the gate on November 9, 1989 was the physical as well as symbolic end to communism and totalitarianism in Europe. It was the end of the Cold War, and with that, it was the true and final end to World Wars I and II. And it was the end to the conflict which had been the primary concern of all past U. S. presidents back to Truman.

And President Obama stays home? He sends...a video? Oh my God...

Thankfully, Hillary was there. Symbolically, Hillary is always more than just Secretary of State. But, still...

How does President Obama expect to make good on his campaign promise to forge better ties with Europe if he is going to snub their most significant historical commemorations?

Hillary's been all around the world and back recently, with her trip to Pakistan. News reports of that trip were that notables accompanying her on that trip, as the trip wore on, looked progressively more exhausted. But not Hillary. So, she travels well. Good. But, for goodness sakes, President Obama, go with her to Berlin! Don't pass on Berlin. Don't send an emissary. Don't send a VIDEO - holy jeez - just freaking be there! JFK is rolling over. And so is President Reagan, whose "...bring down this wall!" speech stoked tremendous hope in East Germans and all under Soviet control that the west had not forgotten about them.

He sent a video...

I can't believe that...

Palin Illogic Strikes Again

Sarah Palin gave a speech at a large pro-life fundraiser in Wisconsin. She reasoned that if Democrats don't value the unborn, what's to keep them from devaluing seniors next, or those whose health care becomes too expensive?

Hmm, I don't know, elections? Maybe the fact that seniors vote, in high percentage. And that those with costly health care are often seniors, and in any case represent a large group of voters.

So, I don't know, Sarah, maybe the fact that we are a democracy will keep that from happening.

Geitner

You know what, I don't care if he is a smart guy, whiz kid, the "only" person who could be Treasury Secretary, in the manner the Obama administration characterized his nomination, and so on.

I can't stand him.  He can't answer a question.  How much smarts does that take?  Apparently, quite a lot.  If that's the case, I'd prefer someone far dumber for Treasury Secretary.

People like Geitner fail to realize our government is a government of the people.  Well, let's just say it is, anyway.  It is SUPPOSED to be.  It runs afoul of that in various ways, but hopefully it is known that we are supposed to be a government of the people.  That is critical, that we know and accept that, because even though we will inevitably stray from that principle, it means that corrective actions will ever be in the direction of that principle.  In other words, I'm ok with a lack of perfection, so long as we all know what perfection is.  And perfection is a government of the people, accountable to the people, and for the people.  And that means being able to answer a @#$%^ing question.

So, like I said, I can't stand Tim Geitner.  David Gregory, on Meet The Press this morning, asked him, and pressed him on several easy, simple, and very clear questions, and each time Geitner, rather arrogantly, if you ask me, refused to answer, electing to answer some other unasked question instead.  If we had an Of-The-People board, that performance right there should be enough to get him yanked as Treasury Secretary.

Our Of-The-People board are our elections.  Since the President chooses the Treasury Secretary, our Of-The-People board is the presidential election, and those things only come along every four years.  And I appreciate the reasons for that.  Stability with accountability.  That's what the Founders were after, and they thought a four-year presidential term satisfied that.  I'm not saying it doesn't.  Well, maybe I kinda am.  Actually, what I'm saying is I can't stand Geitner and I don't want to have to listen to him not answer questions in the future.

But, you know, honestly, there is such a long line of that thing.  A long history.  President Bush and his Attorney General never answered questions about how and why certain U.S. Attorneys were fired.  These were THEIR U.S. Attorneys.  U.S. Attorneys they chose.  But, apparently, after one term as THEIR U.S. Attorneys, the Bush administration was not satisfied with the kind of prosecutions they were bringing and, more likely, not bringing.  Or so we all have to assume.  Because they couldn't answer a @#$%^ing question either.

In the parliamentary form of government, the far more common form of democracy than ours, as soon as there is a "loss of confidence" in Parliament (the result of the current Prime Minister, equivalent to our President, losing a No-Confidence vote), the government changes.  Well, the Prime Minister changes.  There can still be plenty of yahoos in the parliament.

Pelosi preached "open government" in making her case in 2006 for Democrats taking control of the House.  Obama emphasized it as well, criticizing the Bush administration for being secretive, overusing the classification process to keep information from the public and the Congress - which, they did - but then he lets a yahoo like Geitner give these consistently evasive interview performances.

Honestly, if I were Meet The Press, if I were David Gregory, I would do what the White House has done to Fox News.  I would say, "No more."  I would say, "Why have on the Treasury Secretary just because he's the Treasury Secretary?"  That makes Meet The Press into the political equivalent of the red carpet at the Oscars - a vehicle for showing on TV people of noteworthy political office, and that's all.  You are a political paparrazi of sorts.  That's all you are.  You are not journalists seeking answers in the "vigorous and free press" sense that our Founders expected the press to play.  You are showing names and faces.  You are not digging for answers, explanations, explications - because you won't be getting any out of Tim Geitner.

I think Meet The Press should agree, internally, "Look, regardless what happens with the economy, the banking system, the dollar, the deficit, both here and around the world, let's not invite Geitner.  Let's invite perhaps any of his deputies who are either untested in interviews or tested and have shown a willingness to answer questions.  And let's not shy from it.  Let's have it be obvious as it would be that we want to talk to just about any knowledgeable person besides Geitner on these matters, including his underlings.  But no more Tim.  We are officially 'done'.  Do we all agree?"

I would LOVE for that conversation to take place over at NBC news.  They would show so much enviable moxie to do that.  And if anyone ever asked them publicly about it, they should proudly own up, and say, "Yeah, we had a meeting of the news division.  We cited habitual unwillingness to answer a question.  And we concluded we are journalists, and we are getting nothing from this source, so we shall ask our questions and seek our answers elsewhere."  That would be BEAUTIFUL.  And it would be a check, a balance of the free-market, free-press kind on public officials acting that way.  Because you can guarantee that Geitner would be embarrassed by it, and so would the administration.

And, by the way, and very similarly, I think that the Obama administration should similarly avoid Fox News if their assessment is, as nearly everyone's is, that Fox is strongly, powerly, obviously and clearly biased in favor of Republicans (not "conservatives", mind you, though they will tell you that, wrongly, but in favor of Republicans), and that a Democrat President, congressman, senator, bill, initiative, etc, cannot and will not get any kind of fair treatment on that network.  Why continue to go there?  Why continue to waste the resources sending them there?  Why continue to do that?  And, as with Meet The Press and Geitner, they should be very open about it.

Elections have consequences.  So does being secretive and evasive.  So does being biased and prejudicial.  Particularly if you are going to call yourself a news organization.

By the way, I think Republicans would be reasonable to do the same to MSNBC.  Rachel Maddow and company will never give Republicans a fair shake there.  That network is a mouth-piece for the DNC, in the same way Fox is for the RNC.  Those are choices.  Choices have consequences.  The right consequence as far as I am concerned would be for fair, informed, and well-reasoned people to play "keep away" from those networks, and for real news journalists to play "keep away" from Tim Geitner and those like him.

Let the Marketplace decide, but what if it says 'No'?

You know, there are some common and predictable things that politicians and pundits and callers and anyone who fancies himself or herself political, like to beat their chests about, dress themselves up in, proudly pin to their hat or sleeve or whatever, and, well, you get the point.  All of which makes me want to throw up.

So, what are these common things?  Just to brainstorm on these in no particular order:  "conservative", "free-market", "cut taxes", "family values".  That's enough.

Politicians, pundits, all of them, when they talk about these things, it becomes readily apparent they have no idea what any of them are, or how, as principles, they should impact public policy and law.

Now, that's a sweeping generalization, to be sure.

Some people know.  But very, very few, I find.

Those who proudly call themselves "conservatives" in recent years have favored, let's see:  (1) unpaid-for wars and nation-building in lands far, far away; (2) a marriage amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman; (3) a significant broadening of the federal government's ability to snoop on its citizens without first convincing a member of the judicial branch (i.e. a judge) of any good cause for doing so, a.k.a. the "Patriot" Act, if ever there was a more poorly named law; an lastly (4) a gutting of agencies like the EPA and of environmental protections in general (under George W. Bush).

Now, anyone who has looked up the definition of conservative knows conservatives are for (1) a relatively small federal government; (2) no debt - not just no deficit, but no debt, and paying one off quickly if one comes about; (3) an eschewing of foreign entanglements and nation-building; (4) individual liberty and privacy protections, including the government staying out of your bedroom; (5) oh, and conservation (see the similarity with that word?) and environmental protections.

You can't believe, or maybe you can, how many buggers wrap themselves in the word "conservative" and vigorously go after policies expressly not conservative.

"Free-Market" is the one that gets me, particularly as respects the current healthcare debate.  A lot of Republicans (a LOT, as they often say on Monty Python) will say, "I'm against a government takeover of healthcare.  I prefer the free-market determine our healthcare system."

Ok, great.

"But you want balanced budgets, right?"

"Absolutely I do?"

"Well, you realize that our free-market system has evolved into something where we have the most expensive healthcare per capita in the developed world, and an annual inflation rate in the cost of health care which is continuing to accelerate that fact, causing more and more businesses each year to have to stop providing coverage for employees, and creating a trendline for the cost of Medicare which is unsustainable and will bankrupt the U.S. Treasury, right?"

"Balderdash.  I don't believe a word of it."

"Well, are you for people losing their health insurance?"

"Absolutely not."

"So, how will you stop more and more companies from dropping coverage?  You know, that's happening.  I can show you the numbers."

"Well, you let them buy it in the free market!"

"What if they have a pre-existing condition?  Insurance companies don't want them.  They know day-one if they write those folks their profits will decrease, so they refuse to write them.  Do you want them to be uninsured?"

"Well, absolutely not.  My wife has a pre-existing condition."

"Ok, so, then, how does the free market get them covered?"

"Well..er..well, well I can tell you this!..the answer is not government-run healthcare!"

And so it goes.

I, personally, am for a free-market solution so long as the free-market provides one.  If it doesn't, then I'm for some other solution.

Call me crazy.

Trust me, there are lots of things a free market won't give you that you very much want, such as clean air and clean water and beautiful parks, like Yellowstone and Yosemite, and no 7-11 or, worse, sex shop buying the house right next to you and moving in.

The free market goes wherever and does whatever it believes will give it the lowest expenses and the highest profits.  End of story.  That's your free market.

If the free market were going to provide health insurance coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, people who have lost their jobs and are temporarily out of work, and people of low incomes - here's a news flash for all you free-marketers - IT WOULD HAVE.

Or, is it your belief that we just have to give the free market a little more time?  Kind of in the same way Republicans are always looking to the next election rather than help to govern during the time following the last one, and Palestinians are always somehow hoping that Israel will catch some plague and just go away.

I like the free market.  A LOT.  And it's a useful tool but it does not solve all things.  Healthcare is one of them, I hope you will grant me.  And, if you are a good, loyal Republican, I hope you will call out your own party, your own representatives, your own fellow Republican lunch mates around the lunch table, when they start beating their chests about a free-market solution for healthcare.  Just ask them, "How would that work, exactly?"

Party of No...No, Really...

Hello again.  I'm back.  And honestly I can't at all recall, should anyone who knows me be surprised, what bill I heard being reported on CSPAN radio this morning which, as with healthcare (well, sans Olympia Snow), was garnering absolutely no support among Republican members in committee.

I think it was the environment, i.e. global warming, i.e. a bill to reduce greenhouse gases.  But I can't begin to swear to it.  It's simply too long ago.  This morning, is.

All I recall is Republicans were unified in their opposition.

This is really quite dumb.  And now I can't say that much more about it, because I can't remember the bill.  But, no support?  When you have a President who at least said (continues to say, though with little action to back it up far as I can tell) that he wishes to be post-partisan, any Republican can thereby assume that this President would be thrilled at the prospect of one or several Republicans taking a public position in favor of one of his legislative priorities.  Not just that, but you'd think they'd be interested in stopping the bleeding from the last election.  Ok, last several.  Now, Republicans are anxiously awaiting 2010, but, what if they are disappointed again?  Will they anxiously await 2012, 2014, 2016?  In other words, will they continue to steadfastly oppose working with Democrats until they can have their cake and eat it too, regardless how many elections that takes to occur?  It sounds to me similar to the political strategy the Palestinians use with respect to Israel.  They don't care if it takes 5 years or 500 years to bring down Israel, they are going to continue trying, and continue opposing Israel's existence, and leave themselves a non-country for however long that takes.

Isn't it a little better to see if you can work something out?  Now, that takes two to be sure.  Dems have to be open to conceding a few things which Republicans want, and it can't be ticky-tack things.  It has to be real things.  And for that Dems should receive a few real things, and all of that with both Republican and Democrat backing.

Party of 'No' is a loser.  It's a non-starter.  It's dumb.  I wonder, with healthcare, Republicans wanted tort reform and interstate competition most.  It came up in every press conference they had.  So, what if the entire Republican contingent of the Senate Finance Committee went to Max Baucus (the Chair) and said you will get our votes - every single one of them - both in committee and on the floor and in a conference bill with the House, if you give us tort reform and interstate competition.  FURTHER, what if they had told the President that?  Do you think that would have made the Dems and Obama go "Hmmmmm"?  You bet your butt it would.  But nooooooooooooooooooooo.  "No" was all that came from the part of "No".  And it's all that continues to come.  Stupid.  A lost opportunity, to be sure.  A historic lost opportunity.

What are you going to do with these two parties?...they are not worthy of us.  We vote in the Republicans, we get Tom Delay and his and George Bush's form of partisan lawmaking.  We vote for the Dems, and we get Nancy Pelosi and Obama and their form of partisan lawmaking.  It's not worth any of us.  But, where to turn now????....

Party of No

I've been doing a lot of criticizing of Democrats lately, mostly privately, to be sure, since I'm such a flaming lib....

There has been a lot of lunchtime conversation.  I've expressed my continuing but now not-at-all unexpected disappointment in the Speaker, and my less unexpected disappointment in the President for his 'D' grade so far, by my assessment, of being the post-partisan president he campaigned he would be.

Just to share one of these, at yesterday's lunch table, I said to our mix of Republican-leaning and Democrat-leaning lunch mates that being post-partisan has ever and can only mean working hard on occasion within your own party for something the other party expressly wants.  In a game of pick-up between the Ravens' ownership and the Steelers' ownership, a post-partisan individual presiding over the pick-up of players - and, lets just say, for the sake of argument, from the results of a national vote cognizant that 52% of the country favors the Steelers and 48% the Ravens - allows the pick-up of players to commence back and forth between Ravens and Steelers, but (1) lets the Steelers choose first, and (2) after perhaps 5 picks each have been made, on the 6th pick, lets the Steelers pick two players instead of one, where the Ravens will be able to do the same, but later in the pick-up, when fewer good players are available.

By contrast, the pick-up presider does not allow the Steelers to fully choose their team, then allow the Ravens to choose theirs from whatever is left.  Yet, our legislative committee process basically works that way, where all-power resides with committee chairpersons who are 100% from the majority party.  That's our system of "democracy", and literally I've maintained for years that that word richly deserves to be placed in quotes when applied to how legislation is made in the Congress.  We do well with our regular elections (generally viewed as fair, and if you think that's a given, just look around the world, Iran, Afghanistan; it's not a given at all), with our constitutional system (truly revolutionary at its inception), our checks and balances, our judicial review of laws to make sure they are constitutional, our bill of individual rights which cannot be usurped by any law.  These things help to make us a great republic and a great democracy, to be sure, but the tremendous outlier in all of that is the domination of the lawmaking process by the current majority party in the Congress, even if it is the slimmest of majorities, with nearly 50% of Americans (a.k.a. "the represented" in this democracy) whose preferences do not lie with the sitting majority.

Now, just to finish the thought about Obama's failure to be post-partisan, specifically as respects healthcare legislation, the President from the start had to know two things: (1) legislation to emerge from the usual legislative committee process would produce starkly partisan bills, and (2) the only remedy to that reality would be him playing the role of "presider" (not "decider") to enforce that Republicans get some of what they want.  That's if he wanted to be post-partisan.  He's a smart man, and those are two easy conclusions.  That he did not do that says to me, either (1) he lost his will and his courage to be post-partisan, or (2) he never intended to be post-partisan during all of that campaigning.  I happen to think it's #1, which is only slightly less reprehensible than #2, since the office of President of the United States should be, if not, expressly reserved for the courageous.

Anyway, if President Obama, once the legislative process had meandered to its predictable result, had said to Republicans, "Write down your top 5 things, the top 5 things you want in a healthcare bill," and to Democrats he had said the same thing, knowing full well by that advanced point in the debate what the 5 things would be on each side, then said to Democrats, "Choose 3 or your 5" and to Republicans, "Choose 2 of your 5, and they may not directly contrast with the 3 the Democrats have already chosen," then you would have a truly bi-partisan, or "post-partisan" healthcare bill.

And the contents of that bill would have included, for Republicans, the much-wanted features of medical malpractice tort liability reform and interstate competition for insurance; and for Democrats it would have included a public option and an employer mandate.

And there's your post-partisan bill.  A bill where not just 52% of the electorate had their wishes represented in Washington, but more like 90% of the electorate had their wishes represented in Washington.

That bill - as I described it - is the "unicorn" bill, the one capable of 80 votes in the Senate.

But you will never see that bill.

And you will never see it because (1) such bill is incapable of ever coming out of the legislative committee process as currently structured, and (2) because the man sitting in the Oval Office did not play the role of presider.

And now it's off to work, before I had time to truly talk about what I had intended, and to which this post is titled "Party of No".  So, that still to come.  It will be titled something like "Party of No..No, Really..."

How, When They Don't Care?

How do you stop the Taliban when they don't care?  One of the Yahoo headlines this morning was "Teams of gunman launch attacks in Pakistan, killing 39".  They took place in Lahore, Pakistan's second largest city, in its largest province, Punjab.

Imagine reading that teams of gunman killed 39 in L.A.  That's what it would be like.  Imagine reading that 39 were killed, that all the attackers were killed, but knowing there were many more of them out there, around, in the Hollywood hills, or Pasadena, or Santa Monica, planning, recruiting, and waiting to do it again.  Another 39, or by their hopes, hopefully more.

Authorities quoted in the article said that none of the attackers had any illusion or interest in having their lives extended by one more day.

And how do you fight that?  I think you try to understand it first.  But how does one do that when it all seems so senseless?

A logical first question would be 'What are they fighting and so willingly dying...for?'  It's not because, best as I can tell, the government of Pakistan is oppressing them, denying them personal rights or liberties or basic guarantees of fairness or equal protection or any of those things which meet our western definitions of liberty and equality.  They are Muslim, we all know.  So is 95% of Pakistan!  So it's not like they are denied rights to practice their religion.  That's not why they're dying.

With no other worries or wants, would these same people be offing themselves?..you know, just because they want to, because maybe they believe something tantalizingly good is awaiting them in the afterlife?  Honestly, I can't be sure, not having talked or supped or walked with a single Taliban.  But I doubt it.  In a purely analytical exercise of attempting through deduction to understand the Taliban, I would draw a line through that one.

Afghanistan and the badlands of Pakistan have for centuries, say again, for centuries been tribal, with tribes only cooperating markedly with one another when threatened by an invader, whether Alexander the Great, the USSR, the Americans, or now, jointly, the Americans and Pakistan, and, if you want, throw in NATO in there as well.  So, is it a state they want?  To be sure, an Islamic state, under Sharia law?  They haven't wanted a state over those many centuries - why do they want one now so badly they are willing to volunteer so readily for an early death?  And once again, I don't think it's just a suicidal nature that lets them kill themselves with such Monty Pythonesque ease.

So, I don't think they want a nation so badly.  They just haven't over the centuries and it makes no sense why all of the sudden they want one now.  Even when the Taliban were officially in charge of Afghanistan prior to 9/11, they, like the current government, controlled Kabul and some other more populated areas, but the hinter areas were controlled by warlords.  You passed or you didn't based on their whim, their turnpike fee, their levy, their tariff, their law, whatever.  The Taliban were, to be sure, the dominant warlord, if you think of them that way.  They were the baddest of the bad asses around, with the most numbers, the most guns.  And various things, frankly, and coarsely, my apologies, pissed them off, like women's ankles, girls' schools, literacy in general, a too-short beard, and certainly anyone who challenged them, the latter getting you a certain death sentence, on the center line, in the soccer stadium, with all watching and hopefully learning from others' mistakes.

I feel quite comfortable in thinking that such was then and would be now more than a sufficient accomplishment for them to stop killing themselves; but shy of that, I wonder if anything would be.

There is a CarFax commercial on now, where the used-car salesman says to the interested buyer, "What can I do to put you in this car today?"  To which the buyer replies, "Show me the CarFax."  And the salesman says, "Anything else?"

I don't know if there's "anything else" that the Taliban would find satisfactory shy of their opportunity and, but possibly for the U.S., enviable prospects of reacquiring their status as baddest of the bad asses in Afghanistan.  It's essentially tribal thinking, just on a large enough scale that it seems geopolitical.  The geography involved is just large enough.  Mostly, the Taliban are geopolitical because they successfully gave shelter and succor to another group of bad asses who successfully brought down two landmark buildings right here in America, and have launched a lot of other fateful strikes around the world.  I don't think we fear that the Taliban might play its strong tribal hand, as people from that part of the world have done for centuries, and come out on top.  The fear of the Taliban is a fear of an improved lot for Al Qaeda, and what that might portend.  And it's a general revulsion and repugnance at a dual-use soccer stadium.

America is faced with a decision whether she has the treasure and, even, the ability, by force of arms and a compelling alternative dialectic which is democracy, to make Afghanistan and the tribal regions of Pakistan something they have never been - ever.  We are pretty good, here.  Pretty capable.  Critically in debt, and yet every year able to achieve a domestic product that keeps other people and other nations buying that debt.  We are, have become, to both our credit and detriment, that new company, critically in debt, but wonderfully promising and compelling such that its stock price just continues to rise.  But can America invest her capital in remaking Afghanistan into something it never remotely has been?  Or do we have the tools now, which we didn't before 9/11, or weren't effectively using, to keep a watchful eye on Afghanistan, and bomb the livin' bejeeziz out of it, or areas of it, if we see the areas once again being host to Al Qaeda and like groups?

In answering the question for yourself, I would counsel against thinking America, in her current fiscal straits, can take on another guaranteed-to-be-long-term project of unknowable cost other than it's huge. If the value of the dollar falls too much further, you will see a fulsome effort on the part of an increasing number of countries to dump the dollar as their reserve currency.  If you are not a soldier, or a member of a military family, then your life more than likely has been rather remote from adverse affects which could be tied to the decisions to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan to date.  It won't be if the world drops the dollar as its reserve currency.  In assessing the threat of Al Qaeda, the treat of another 9/11, and what to do about it, assess the threat of America launching into an economic downturn which takes literally decades to crawl out of, and whether your answer on what to do about Al Qaeda reduces or increases that risk.  Because I guarantee you that President Obama and his advisers are working through that question right now.  It's General McChrystal's job to think like a soldier, Obama's to think like a national leader, and not of just any country, but the richest and most influential country on this earth...for now.

We Need a Federal Balanced-Budget Amendment..Who's With Me?

Why?

Well, for the same reason you need a credit-card limit.

Or the inhibiting factor of the potential for a bad credit score.

Or the knowledge that your mom or your dad or some sponsor aren't going to pay back your debts; you are, and with interest.

Because buying stuff is too much fun.

For any given year, our recent presidents - Reagan and forward, with the exception of Clinton - along with the Congress, have with seeming ease bought expensive things NOW for which they did not have the funds NOW.

The funds NOW are the taxes the federal government collects in any given year.  To state the obvious, just like with you and me, if the federal government pays for stuff in that same year costing in excess of those collected taxes, then it borrows funds, with interest, to make up the difference.

Without any law or amendment specifically banning it, presidents prior to Reagan going all the way back to Washington expressly avoided borrowing except during a time of war or national emergency, such as the Great Depression.  And, without any law or amendment requiring them to, presidents who followed the presidents who were forced to borrow during time of war or national emergency, worked diligently to pay down and pay off the debt accumulated because of those events.

With and since Reagan, everything changed.  And we haven't gone back.  And we need to.  Our currency is steadily devaluing.  Things priced in dollars are either more expensive, or their price is more volatile, or both, such as with oil.  Foreign governments around the world have kept their "rainy-day fund" invested in dollars (known as their national reserves) because historically its value could be counted upon to remain, well, valuable.  Now that, over multiple presidents, it's proved to be steadily less valuable - and, even more consternating, that those presidents haven't seemed to care too much about that - has prompted more and more of these foreign governments, as they observe the steadily dwindling value of their currency reserves, to "make noise" about the prospect of replacing the dollar with the Euro or some other currency.  That would be a very bad thing.  Trust me.  Or, don't trust me, and return to the blog on some other occasion where that will be the topic.  But, as economists readily acknowledge when this topic comes up, that a switch away from the dollar as the world's reserve currency would bring a rapid increase in the inflation rate and interest rates in this country.

Also, the other thing past presidents have realized is that debt doesn't look good, that it's not the hallmark of a great nation to be in debt, much less a lot of debt, much much less now the greatest debtor nation in the world, as the U.S. currently is.

And they also realized, past presidents, and as you and I realize, that, boy, that interest payment is a real bugger.  You get NOTHING for that.  Well, you get something, it's just that something seems like nothing pretty quickly after you bought the thing you couldn't pay for.  You got the THING.  And you got it NOW, and not later.  But, boy how quickly the fun and seeming benefit of that wanes.  And what you are left with is that interest payment.  The seemingly never-ending interest payment.  Past presidents saw that amount and it ticked 'em off.  They quite rightly saw that as money they had to pay out of the taxes collected that year on something not at all fun, not at all on roads or national parks or space programs or ships or whatever, but pay to those holding our debt, and where an increasing number of those are foreigners, meaning those dollars won't at least recirculate in our economy, but leave our shores entirely.  We become, nationally, poorer, quite simply.

Past presidents hated all of that.  All of it.  Reagan and forward?..including Obama now, unless he dramatically changes course..and with the exception of Clinton..don't seem to care.  Think little of it.  Well, those holding dollars as their reserve currency think a lot of it.  A lot.

So I don't know if something entered the water supply and infected American presidents in recent times to act in such a way, or what.  I just know it needs to stop.  And, if it's a disease that is to blame, the same disease infected congresses over that same period.  They are all..sick..in effect..and they need healing.  And a federal balanced-budget amendment is the thing, I assert.

Just look at the states.  Look at California, recently.  They got into huge budgetary trouble, and only found the will to correct that because they HAD TO BY LAW.  California, like the other states, all have state constitutional requirements to balance the budget.  It's only right and correct, because one of our founding gripes against the British, and one of our founding principles for government in this country, was "no taxation without representation".  Remember that?  The states do.  That's why they can only incur "circumstantial" debt, i.e. debt due to unforeseen circumstances, like not as much revenue coming in as they thought in a given year due to an economic downturn which heavily impacted their state, or something like that.  And, once they have incurred that circumstantial debt, they do as past presidents USED to do, and pay off the debt as quickly as possible with expressed fiscal (taxes) and budgetary (spending) programs to accomplish that.

See, if you do otherwise, then it's taxation without representation, quite simply.  Because, if a government borrows, then the (un)collected taxes it used to buy stuff NOW, it must raise and collect LATER.  And "who", since collected taxes don't come from trees, constitutes "LATER"?  Well, later voters.  Voters in later years.  And every year a new crop of voters turns voting age.  So, at least the portion of "later voters" which new voters represent, are voters whom the previous government taxed without the expressed voting approval of those voters.  Your vote IS your representation, your means to that, and so those previous governments, to the extent they loaded you up with their uncollected taxes was the extent to which they taxed you without your voting consent.  This is all such a statement of the obvious, that I want to acknowledge that, so that you all don't think that I think that you don't know.  I don't want to insult anyone's intelligence.  I write these obvious things to underscore the indictment of historical proportions of these presidents and congresses.

Anyway.  For those of you who followed news with regard to California, they passed legislation after round-the-clock negotiations across party lines which addressed their budgetary deficit with a combination of tax increases and budget cuts, both of significant size.  It's the only way a deficit is ever eliminated.  It's exactly the formula which the only fiscally-responsible president since Reagan used to balance the federal budget and take it into surplus during his administration.

So the proposal is a very simple one.  Not new.  Not novel.  In fact, ubiquitous among states, cities, counties, municipalities:  a requirement not to tax without representation, a requirement - but for emergency circumstances - for the federal government to not spend more than it collects in a given fiscal year.

Think of the national debates that the ability of the government to borrow for what it wants allows us to NOT have.  When Reagan wanted to develop his "Star Wars" anti-missile system, he would have had to have raised taxes to pay for it, or asked for cuts in federal programs to pay for it.  I think..hmmm...in either case, that might have generated some national debate.

When George W. Bush wanted to fight Iraq without any significant financial or military support of other countries, he would have either had to (1) convince those other countries to participate, or (2) raise taxes to pay for it, or (3) ask for cuts in federal programs to pay for it.  I think that would have generated some debate.  It would have been a healthy, and a good, and an important debate.  But it would have been a lot of work, and George W. Bush wanted it now, so he borrowed the money.

You see my point.  Not only does the dwindling value of the American currency threaten all of us, but the ability of our government and its seeming willingness and readiness to borrow and devalue the currency further literally denies us important national debates we would otherwise, but for its ability to borrow, have!  The loss of debate, my friendly blog readers, IS the loss of representation.  It's the loss in the amount of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, make no mistake.

So here's the amendment language:

The Congress shall pass no law which shall cause projected federal spending to exceed projected federal revenues for the current or a future fiscal year, but for a state of emergency declared by the President and approved by a 60 percent plus one vote in each house of the Congress; further, upon recognition that a federal debt has occurred, the Congress shall, but for such declared state of emergency, pay down the principal of the federal debt each fiscal year until the debt is fully paid.

Having My Doubts About Ron Paul

I've started to read Ron Paul's book, End The Fed, and my doubts about Congressman Paul are rising.

I have always had a reasonably favorable opinion of him for these reasons:  (1) he didn't sound like every other text-book republican, revering Reagan and parroting his supply-side theories while giving little credible voice to the accumulation of debt which Reagan, and Bush after, and Bush II after, championed and indulged in; (2) he showed personal and political courage as to (1); (3) he consistently and repeatedly railed against deficit spending in times other than national emergency such as WW II.  His protestations against the Fed were always a bit opaque to me, more than a bit.  I never quite followed them, and further, they never really jived with what I knew of the Fed or its role as the U.S. central bank.  But, I certainly left open the possibility of critical gaps in my knowledge.  And that's why I was happy and excited to read the book.

But my concern is rising, as I said, and if it keeps going that way, it's going to chip away at my above 3 reasons for generally thinking favorably of Paul, for the simple reason that it's going to chip away at my opinion of  him personally, and that affects everything else.

Specifically, in this case, I am talking about his blatant out-of-context quote of Ben Bernanke on p.10.  People who quote out of context do so quite consciously, particularly if they are scholarly, have access to the full text from which the quote was drawn, and use footnotes assiduously, as does Dr. Paul.  There was something about the quote which SEEMED out of context right from the start.  So I used his footnote, and I checked.

Here's the excerpt Paul quoted, from Bernanke's remarks to the National Economists Club in November of 2002:

"The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.  By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars for those goods and services.  We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation."

And this was Paul's comment following the quote:

"I'm not sure that the Fed governor has ever been so frank about the Fed's power.  To be sure, he was not condemning it.  He was explaining it.  He believes in it.  Like the eighteenth-century money crank, John Law, whose antics fueled the Mississippi Bubble, Bernanke believes he as discovered the magic means to prosperity."

The reason why the Bernanke quote sounded out of context, is because at the place in the book where it occurs, Paul is railing against Fed actions following the economic crisis of 2008 which include, according to him, a large increase in "the monetary base" to an unprecedented level.  I put that in quotes because I still need to find out what he meant by that.  If he meant that the Fed injected the big increase he cited (from $856 billion to $1749 billion) directly into the economy in the form of newly printed money, then I believe he is mistaken, because that amount clearly would have been inflationary, and inflation has remained low.  But Paul was clearly expressing the fear that Fed actions could and would be inflationary, and true enough, the Bernanke quote is clearly describing how to generate more inflation.  But here's why the Bernanke quote seemed out of context - the Fed's primary mission is maintaining LOW inflation.  So for Bernanke to be describing how the printing of money is both easy and inflationary is both (1) an obvious point, and (2) something he only would be discussing in the context of a discussion on combating DEFLATION.  So I looked it up.

From Bernanke's remarks, here's the paragraph immediately before and immediately after the one Paul quoted (the part Dr. Paul quoted is in blue):

"The conclusion that deflation is always reversible under a fiat money system follows from basic economic reasoning. A little parable may prove useful: Today an ounce of gold sells for $300, more or less. Now suppose that a modern alchemist solves his subject's oldest problem by finding a way to produce unlimited amounts of new gold at essentially no cost. Moreover, his invention is widely publicized and scientifically verified, and he announces his intention to begin massive production of gold within days. What would happen to the price of gold? Presumably, the potentially unlimited supply of cheap gold would cause the market price of gold to plummet. Indeed, if the market for gold is to any degree efficient, the price of gold would collapse immediately after the announcement of the invention, before the alchemist had produced and marketed a single ounce of yellow metal.

What has this got to do with monetary policy? Like gold, U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services. We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.

Of course, the U.S. government is not going to print money and distribute it willy-nilly (although as we will see later, there are practical policies that approximate this behavior).8 Normally, money is injected into the economy through asset purchases by the Federal Reserve. To stimulate aggregate spending when short-term interest rates have reached zero, the Fed must expand the scale of its asset purchases or, possibly, expand the menu of assets that it buys. Alternatively, the Fed could find other ways of injecting money into the system--for example, by making low-interest-rate loans to banks or cooperating with the fiscal authorities. Each method of adding money to the economy has advantages and drawbacks, both technical and economic. One important concern in practice is that calibrating the economic effects of nonstandard means of injecting money may be difficult, given our relative lack of experience with such policies. Thus, as I have stressed already, prevention of deflation remains preferable to having to cure it. If we do fall into deflation, however, we can take comfort that the logic of the printing press example must assert itself, and sufficient injections of money will ultimately always reverse a deflation."

My reaction to that is it's blatantly and reprehensively out of context.  To insert a Bernanke quote on deflation in the midst of a discussion of the threat of runaway inflation of the like and kind of "Weimar Germany" (as Paul refers to 5 paragraphs earlier) is shameless.  I mean it gets my sharpest rebuke, over and beyond plagiarism.  With plagiarism, you are taking credit for someone else's words.  What Paul did was another form of lying.  Words and paragraphs require their context to convey their meaning.  By lifting that paragraph, he manufactured an unintended meaning to buttress his belief.

That just sucks.  And if I meet the man, I'm going to ask him about it.

I don't know how that quote could have been an "accident", or anything but intended.  But, I'm willing to grant him or his editor, if someone different, a mulligan and keep reading.  If I find another such cynical and calculated effort as that, I hope those of you out there who support him will talk to me at length, and tell me why I should, because that kind of thing speaks to the guy's character, and it's not right.

Obama's Czars

I have a good friend who regularly makes me think about issues such as this.  And since I haven't posted too much to this blog...ok, anything to this blog...over the summer, and since I had already replied in email form, as I have done before with emails to this friend I post here my reply for those of you who may have also been thinking about this question of "Obama's czars".

Let me know what you think.  I'm sure my readers, if I still have any after such a long break, of the political right will find some way to characterize my reply to my friend as evidence of my true, deeply held liberalism.  It's funny.  In my day job as a software developer it is often my job, particularly when something appears to be wrong with a given piece of software, to attempt to discover the source of the problem by looking for predictable behavior, albeit of an abnormal and undesired kind.  It's so funny how predictably readers representing the political right will never comment (favorably, one would hope, for consistency's sake) on points I make which are right out of traditional conservatism, and yet are ever ready and willing to pull the trigger on calling me a lib.  It's so funny.  But it is indeed predictable.  If you don't believe me, read back through the history of posts and comments some time when you are home with the flu, and, perhaps really needing to get some sleep.  Haha.  Actually, I've always found this blog and its comments quite interesting, otherwise why would I ever have messed with it?  But you'll find it's true.  It's very similar - this penchant the right has, as well as the far left, for overlooking, denying in effect, the existence of independents in the same way as unicorns, as something which can't possibly exist.  They don't want to think you're a little like them.  I guess they don't know how to process that, or it just leaves them feeling yucky.  They want to see you, and legitimize you, and with that themselves, as either one of them or not at all one of them.  It's reminiscent of, during the Jim Crow period in our legislative past, how the law defining what it was to be legally "negro", and thereby legally required to use the negro lunch counter or bathroom or whatever, was the "One-Drop rule", that is if you had one drop of African blood in you, then you were legally negro, and bound by the Jim Crow laws as such.  Here's the relevant entry and link from Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule):

"The one-drop rule was a tactic in the U.S. South that codified and strengthened segregation and the disfranchisement of most blacks and many poor whites from 1890-1910. After Supreme Court decisions in Plessy v. Ferguson and related matters, White-dominated legislatures felt free to enact Jim Crow laws segregating Blacks in public places and accommodations, and passed other restrictive legislation."

My Republican readers, friends, and work colleagues maintain that if I am one-drop liberal, or really, it's funny, not even that, but rather one-drop different in my policy view from them on something, then I am a lib, and can be discounted as such with that one syllable and a wave of the hand.

While I react to that predictable result with a nonplussed shake of the head, it doesn't form or impact the foundation of my friendships.  That foundation is built on other stuff.  I do wish the far right and the far left would change, though, and stop wearing their place on the political spectrum like a football jersey, where you can only wear one jersey at a time and only ever of your home team.  It seems....well....just....dumb...I guess...and I miss the fascinating and illuminating debates which never take place because of it, both here on this blog, in Washington, in the car, at the lunch table.  But I digress....

Here's my email reply to my friend about Obama's czars:

Yeah, I've heard of these czars.  Here's what I don't know:  are they cabinet-like?

The first question to answer there is what is it to be cabinet-like.

My understanding of it is that the executive branch is the enforcement arm of the government, as distinguished from the legislative arm and the judicial arm, and that its enforcement universe is divided up into different areas, each headed by a cabinet position, and within each area is one or more agencies accountable to its agency director, certainly, but above that to its affiliated cabinet secretary, and where the agencies are charged with writing the detailed regulations needed to enforce the laws as passed by Congress.

I'm not aware of any of that accountability changing under Obama's presidency.  The federal agencies are still responsible for regulations and enforcement of same, and they report up through their particular cabinet secretary, who is accountable to Congress.

But a president is also charged with leading the country - leading in terms of vision, direction, bully-pulpit, etc - on policy domestic and foreign.  To that end, he needs a college of advisers, in effect, each of whom having potentially some associated staff and resources in the same way as a cabinet head true enough, but functioning not in an executive capacity but an advisory capacity.  Their advice, if taken and communicated or even dictated possibly to a given cabinet head for implementation, could certainly become policy and impact all or some of us, but in that sense it's flowing through an elected president and a confirmed cabinet secretary, who, if he or she strongly disagreed with the policy, could quite publicly resign for the Senate and all of us to see, and then, of course, be free to speak publicly in the media as to why he or she resigned.

So, I don't see the issue.  I mean, unless these czars are effectively dictating, even with the president's knowledge and approval, policy in the regulatory and enforcement domain of cabinet-level departments without the particular cabinet secretary ever hearing about it or learning of it, that is, quite secretly, whereby if called upon to testify in a typical oversight hearing conducted by the congress the Secretary would have to claim no knowledge of it, because only in such circumstance would such oversight be impeded, then I don't see the issue.

I've heard some others complain about these czars.  I heard a Republican congressman, during morning business, speak for a minute or so about his objection to these czars on CSPAN the other morning.  So I may be missing something or not be informed enough here.  What is the issue as far as you see it?