Independent Caucus

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.