My short answer hovers somewhere between “Maybe” and “No”-- but not for the reasons you’re thinking.
My answer is not cynical (at least I don’t think it is). My answer leans toward “No,” not because of party politics, but because of intra-party politics. Both parties have seen ideological battles recently and I suspect that this trend will accelerate.
The Republicans worked themselves into a snit over the special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional district, when county Republican chairmen/women chose New York State Senator Dede Scozzafava as the Republican nominee, only to have a third party (New York Conservative Party) candidate, Doug Hoffman, harness rank-and-file Republican disappointment with the decision and ride it to within a few hundred votes of victory after Scozzafava dropped out of the race and endorsed the Democrat.
Even more recently, Congressional Democrats, looking at polls showing that the American voter is becoming disenchanted with their agenda, have been having a hard time passing legislation because conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats and liberals have started to fight. This likely will continue now that President Obama has announced his decision to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan; a position anathema to the anti-war Left wing of the Democratic party.
Anti-war liberals, who until now have closely followed President Obama and his agenda, may feel liberated to criticize his decision. Liberal activists may likewise feel liberated to criticize him on this as well as other decisions they’ve held back on criticizing.
Some prominent Congressional Blue Dog Democrats are so disenchanted that they have announced within the past week or so that they will not run for re-election. This exodus might accelerate if President Obama’s and Congressional Democrat’s favorability numbers continue to fall.
Gallup just announced that President Obama’s approval rating is now 47%, the lowest level of any president at this point in his term since Gallup began polling in 1938. At 27%, Congress’ approval rating is even lower. Slightly more than one-third of Americans (36%) think that the country is on the right track.
How this will all play into the 2010 election – as well as its aftermath and hope for bipartisanship – is at this time murky.
On the Republican side, right after the 2010 Congressional elections, the 2012 presidential campaign will commence and Republicans will likely continue the process of defining for themselves what it means to be a Republican. This will pit social conservatives against fiscal conservatives against national security conservatives against conservative populists (or some combination thereof).
A final reason that bipartisanship will likely not prevail: Debt. Money and budgets will be tight. Some in Congress want to continue the spending spree while others want to restrain spending and pay down debt. This will cause a lot of strain in government at all levels, in Congress, in state governments and in local governments.
Most people have a hard time understanding and conceptualizing billions and trillions of dollars, but think of it this way: In 2006, $1 trillion was raised for federal coffers from income taxes. How much did you pay in income taxes that year?
We’re now approaching $10 trillion in debt, not counting the unfunded ticking time bombs of Social Security and Medicare. Take your personal 2006 tax number and multiply by 10. Daunting, isn’t it? Of course, we have nothing to worry about: Those wacky Congressional Budget Office (CBO) economists assume that the tax rate will have no effect on your willingness to work, so incomes will, at a minimum, remain stagnate and the government will continue to bring in the same amount of money.
As an aside, the same CBO reported on December 4th that our government – presently only two months into the 2010 fiscal year – is already $292 billion in the red, and posted a record $1.4 trillion of debt for fiscal year 2009, which ended September 30th.
This increasing debt load has put in jeopardy the United States’ AAA bond rating, according to Bloomberg News. Our debt is now 97.5% of our Gross Domestic Product, defined as the total amount of all goods and services produced in the United States in one year.
The challenges of our debt coupled with the many other important issues that need to be addressed to reform our country for the future are what can bring people from both parties together to work in a bipartisan fashion without regard to entrenched interests. For the most part, the American people agree on the big issues. Our politicians at all levels need to shed narrow partisan interests and serve the needs of the American people.
In short, when times are tough, voters expect politicians to stop the clever games and “gotcha” politics and focus on the real needs – to make the tough decisions and not kick the can down the road. It is the hope that our elected leaders will realize the growing frustration of the American voter and get serious that leads me to give a final answer of “Maybe” to the question of bipartisanship.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Infrastructure
In an August 1859, speech on “the issues of the day” in Council Bluff, Iowa, private citizen Abraham Lincoln discussed the need for a transcontinental railroad. Three years later, in July 1862, President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Enabling Act into law, with the hope that the building of railroads would help not only with the war effort and unify the country, but also to facilitate the westward migration of immigrants and commerce.
The specifics of the Pacific Railroad Enabling Act might today be called a “public-private partnership.” In it, the government of the United States provided cash subsidies to the private companies building the railroad. In addition, the government gave the companies grants to federally-owned land with 400 foot right-of-ways, plus ten square miles of land (10 sections) adjacent to the track for each mile built. The land was given in a “checkerboard” fashion in order to leave land available for development by others who might want to buy from the government. The private companies, in turn, used the land they were given to issue bonds to raise additional private funds for railroad construction.
Anyone who has recently driven from Council Bluffs through Lincoln’s Illinois to Indiana knows that our present method of authorizing, paying for and building massive infrastructure projects in the United States is broken and needs to be fixed. It’s not just Interstate 80; the evidence is all around us. From the I-35 bridge that collapsed in Minnesota, to a nation-wide 1950s-era air traffic control system, to overloaded electricity grids in California, to subway systems in the Northeast where there are continuous public safety concerns, our country is literally falling apart.
In response to the financial downturn of the past two years, China has not resorted to fiscal stimulus gimmicks that merely push money out to states so that state officials can avoid making tough choices, they have chosen to make significant infrastructure improvements that will enhance their competitiveness in the world market. One example of Chinese foresight is that they are building a network of high-speed passenger and freight railroads to better link production centers, markets and ports. By high-speed, we’re talking about trains that will travel in excess of 200 miles per hour.
This is smart investment and a component of what we in the United States will need to do more of to remain competitive in light of rising China, India and Brazil. At the national level, we need to do away with business-as-usual and authorize infrastructure projects that meet the criteria of making us safer, more resilient, more competitive and future-oriented.
National goals need to be set for projects which are really needed and which serve strategic national interests. These should not be set by Congress but by a public-private commission, of which the 9-11 Commission is an example. The 9-11 Commission’s recommendations were presented to Congress and voted on apart from the usual Congressional committee process.
This will mean doing away with outdated laws that constrict the building of significant national infrastructure. For example, states can presently veto the building of electric transmission lines if they cross from a neighboring state. This serves narrow parochial interests and is absurd when it comes to the goal of providing power to a nation. It burns time, energy and money – ultimately costs consumers more money while providing less power.
Positive change will also mean more transparency and accountability when it comes to funding. In 1981, there were ten Congressional earmarks in the surface transportation bill. In the 2005 authorization there were more than 6,000 Congressional earmarks. We need to get back to a system where these sorts of funding decisions are made on the basis of merit rather than political considerations. All levels of government, federal, state and local, need to take responsibility to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely, accountably and transparently. Absent this, political fiefdoms, rather than needed infrastructure, will be built.
Coupled with increased transparency and accountability, we should cut red tape and encourage innovation, flexibility and incentives to get the job done. As an example, a 1994 earthquake in Northridge, CA, demolished the overpass bridges on Interstate 10, one of the most heavily used freeways in the nation. One estimate put the cost of unrealized productivity, gasoline consumption from alternative routes and delays in shipping to be at least $1 million each day. Governor Wilson was told that the repair of the bridges would take two years and two months (26 months) due to legal public hearing requirements.
Fortunately, the California code confers emergency powers to the governor, including the authority to suspend burdensome regulations for the duration of a declared emergency. Governor Wilson promptly suspended the public hearing requirement and cut red tape. He also added a bonus/penalty provision to the bridge reconstruction bid process. For each day in advance of the agreed upon completion date, the winning bidder would receive a bonus of $200,000 (substantially less than the $1 million estimated economic cost suffered for each day I-10 was closed); and for each day that the contractor was late, the contractor would incur a penalty of $200,000. The winning bidder made almost as much on the bonus as on the bid; and I-10 was restored to public use not in two years and two months but in two months and two days. The result was not only a completed project and improved traffic flow, but a reduction in time of approximately 85% from what was initially estimated and an economic savings of roughly $60 million.
Finally, we need to revisit the way in which we finance infrastructure projects. Presently, we do this by way of yearly appropriation, which is an incredibly inefficient way to fund major projects, like roads, ports, dams, airports, etc. A better way is illustrated by the process we use to fund major military platforms. In this instance, we use a single appropriation to fund the entire cost of a multi-year project like an aircraft carrier. In this way, the contractor knows that the entire amount is available and work will not have to start and stop due to the vagaries of the legislative process. In short, we need capital budgets for infrastructure projects rather than the piecemeal funding process presently used by governments.
Public-private partnerships also are an option, with government working hand-in-hand with private industry to develop, build or manage infrastructure projects. This model is increasingly being used in the Northeast. Within the past week, Connecticut reached a 30-year agreement with a private consortium to build, manage, repair and maintain the state’s rest areas. It is a win-win agreement.
Do nothing, and we can wait and watch while our national infrastructure falls around our ears. We need to find the political will to change. Using the four broad criteria outlined above, we will move away from the business-as-usual, overly political process we now have, and get back to strategic infrastructure investments of the kind that Lincoln used to help our country emerge as a world power.
The specifics of the Pacific Railroad Enabling Act might today be called a “public-private partnership.” In it, the government of the United States provided cash subsidies to the private companies building the railroad. In addition, the government gave the companies grants to federally-owned land with 400 foot right-of-ways, plus ten square miles of land (10 sections) adjacent to the track for each mile built. The land was given in a “checkerboard” fashion in order to leave land available for development by others who might want to buy from the government. The private companies, in turn, used the land they were given to issue bonds to raise additional private funds for railroad construction.
Anyone who has recently driven from Council Bluffs through Lincoln’s Illinois to Indiana knows that our present method of authorizing, paying for and building massive infrastructure projects in the United States is broken and needs to be fixed. It’s not just Interstate 80; the evidence is all around us. From the I-35 bridge that collapsed in Minnesota, to a nation-wide 1950s-era air traffic control system, to overloaded electricity grids in California, to subway systems in the Northeast where there are continuous public safety concerns, our country is literally falling apart.
In response to the financial downturn of the past two years, China has not resorted to fiscal stimulus gimmicks that merely push money out to states so that state officials can avoid making tough choices, they have chosen to make significant infrastructure improvements that will enhance their competitiveness in the world market. One example of Chinese foresight is that they are building a network of high-speed passenger and freight railroads to better link production centers, markets and ports. By high-speed, we’re talking about trains that will travel in excess of 200 miles per hour.
This is smart investment and a component of what we in the United States will need to do more of to remain competitive in light of rising China, India and Brazil. At the national level, we need to do away with business-as-usual and authorize infrastructure projects that meet the criteria of making us safer, more resilient, more competitive and future-oriented.
National goals need to be set for projects which are really needed and which serve strategic national interests. These should not be set by Congress but by a public-private commission, of which the 9-11 Commission is an example. The 9-11 Commission’s recommendations were presented to Congress and voted on apart from the usual Congressional committee process.
This will mean doing away with outdated laws that constrict the building of significant national infrastructure. For example, states can presently veto the building of electric transmission lines if they cross from a neighboring state. This serves narrow parochial interests and is absurd when it comes to the goal of providing power to a nation. It burns time, energy and money – ultimately costs consumers more money while providing less power.
Positive change will also mean more transparency and accountability when it comes to funding. In 1981, there were ten Congressional earmarks in the surface transportation bill. In the 2005 authorization there were more than 6,000 Congressional earmarks. We need to get back to a system where these sorts of funding decisions are made on the basis of merit rather than political considerations. All levels of government, federal, state and local, need to take responsibility to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely, accountably and transparently. Absent this, political fiefdoms, rather than needed infrastructure, will be built.
Coupled with increased transparency and accountability, we should cut red tape and encourage innovation, flexibility and incentives to get the job done. As an example, a 1994 earthquake in Northridge, CA, demolished the overpass bridges on Interstate 10, one of the most heavily used freeways in the nation. One estimate put the cost of unrealized productivity, gasoline consumption from alternative routes and delays in shipping to be at least $1 million each day. Governor Wilson was told that the repair of the bridges would take two years and two months (26 months) due to legal public hearing requirements.
Fortunately, the California code confers emergency powers to the governor, including the authority to suspend burdensome regulations for the duration of a declared emergency. Governor Wilson promptly suspended the public hearing requirement and cut red tape. He also added a bonus/penalty provision to the bridge reconstruction bid process. For each day in advance of the agreed upon completion date, the winning bidder would receive a bonus of $200,000 (substantially less than the $1 million estimated economic cost suffered for each day I-10 was closed); and for each day that the contractor was late, the contractor would incur a penalty of $200,000. The winning bidder made almost as much on the bonus as on the bid; and I-10 was restored to public use not in two years and two months but in two months and two days. The result was not only a completed project and improved traffic flow, but a reduction in time of approximately 85% from what was initially estimated and an economic savings of roughly $60 million.
Finally, we need to revisit the way in which we finance infrastructure projects. Presently, we do this by way of yearly appropriation, which is an incredibly inefficient way to fund major projects, like roads, ports, dams, airports, etc. A better way is illustrated by the process we use to fund major military platforms. In this instance, we use a single appropriation to fund the entire cost of a multi-year project like an aircraft carrier. In this way, the contractor knows that the entire amount is available and work will not have to start and stop due to the vagaries of the legislative process. In short, we need capital budgets for infrastructure projects rather than the piecemeal funding process presently used by governments.
Public-private partnerships also are an option, with government working hand-in-hand with private industry to develop, build or manage infrastructure projects. This model is increasingly being used in the Northeast. Within the past week, Connecticut reached a 30-year agreement with a private consortium to build, manage, repair and maintain the state’s rest areas. It is a win-win agreement.
Do nothing, and we can wait and watch while our national infrastructure falls around our ears. We need to find the political will to change. Using the four broad criteria outlined above, we will move away from the business-as-usual, overly political process we now have, and get back to strategic infrastructure investments of the kind that Lincoln used to help our country emerge as a world power.
Immigration
The United States of America is a success. We have the largest economy in the world and are among the largest in terms of both population and land area. Over the past 402 years we have successfully integrated millions of people of every race, creed and color. Each who came contributed to our success and became an “American.”
It is important that people want to come here. It is, in fact, essential. We need them to grow, remain dynamic and young; Europe discourages immigration and is increasingly becoming older.
We need immigration, but we also need an honest dialog about immigration that addresses current realities and challenges without falling back on charges of racism and xenophobia.
The last major piece of legislation that dealt with immigration, 1986’s Simpson-Mizzoli bill, promised three things:
1. Government would control the borders;
2. An effective employer verification program would ensure that only legal workers were hired; and,
3. A one-time amnesty would be granted for people illegally in the United States.
Once passed and amnesty granted, however, the government broke its promise to the American people and failed to follow-through on the first two provisions of the bill.
We need legal immigration and we need to address the realities brought about by the failure of the federal government to follow the Simpson-Mizzoli law. According to recent polling data, the American people agree broadly on a number of things that specifically address immigration and which should be incorporated into the solution:
•Americans support the expansion of the H-1B and H-2B visa programs (63-29), which make it easier for those immigrants with sought-after skills and knowledge to emigrate easily. We need educated immigrants to continue to innovate and grow economically.
•By 83 to 16 Americans support a worker visa program.
•Americans support a system by which immigration centers in foreign countries help people find jobs in the United States and to allow people to apply for worker visas (84-14).
•By a margin of 89-11, Americans support tamper-proof identification cards with biometric identifiers, such as photos and fingerprints, to track foreign workers. However, by 73-20, they wisely don’t believe that the federal government can administer such a program. Instead, this should be outsourced to Visa, Master Card or American Express, so that employers would have the benefit of 24/7 real-time verification so that forged or stolen cards can be immediately detected.
•Americans believe (93-6) that foreign workers who have made their way through the process should take an oath to obey the laws of the United States while here, and that they be immediately deported if they break the law.
•By 78-20, Americans believe that there should be heavy fines levied against businesses that knowingly hire illegals, and, by 83-15, support Internal Revenue Service audits of companies caught hiring illegals to make certain that taxes have been paid.
We all know, however, that there are millions of illegal workers already in the United States. What should we do about them? First, follow the current law and absolutely control the borders of the United States. This is a national security issue as much as an immigration issue.
Recognizing the fact that there are millions here illegally, we need to follow the advice of the American people, reflected above, and ask each illegal worker to come forward and answer one simple question: Do you wish to become a guest worker or a citizen? Failure to come forward will result in immediate deportation once caught.
If the individual wishes to remain a guest worker, he or she will have to obtain the worker visa mentioned above as well as pay a fine. If after one year he or she has not obtained a card, then he or she will be deported, along with any family also here illegally. Children of illegals born in the United States will be stripped of citizenship and also deported. I know this is harsh, but to be effective, this needs to have teeth.
For those who wish to become citizens, they will need to obtain the paperwork for permanent residents, begin the citizenship process and also pay a fine. However, we need to ensure not only that they become citizens, but that they become Americans. They must be mandated to attend citizenship classes that teach American history and they must learn English. It would be best if vouchers to pay for these classes are provided to the individuals so that they could take the classes offered, for money, by local schools. This will tie them and their families into the broader community.
Finally, it will also mean that English should become the official language of government. This is not to say that all other languages will be outlawed but that English only will be used in official government documents. Proficiency in the English language is a requirement of citizenship.
If politicians and elites had the good sense of the American people and implemented the ideas above, the issue of illegal immigration will soon be resolved and we can concentrate on growing our economy.
It is important that people want to come here. It is, in fact, essential. We need them to grow, remain dynamic and young; Europe discourages immigration and is increasingly becoming older.
We need immigration, but we also need an honest dialog about immigration that addresses current realities and challenges without falling back on charges of racism and xenophobia.
The last major piece of legislation that dealt with immigration, 1986’s Simpson-Mizzoli bill, promised three things:
1. Government would control the borders;
2. An effective employer verification program would ensure that only legal workers were hired; and,
3. A one-time amnesty would be granted for people illegally in the United States.
Once passed and amnesty granted, however, the government broke its promise to the American people and failed to follow-through on the first two provisions of the bill.
We need legal immigration and we need to address the realities brought about by the failure of the federal government to follow the Simpson-Mizzoli law. According to recent polling data, the American people agree broadly on a number of things that specifically address immigration and which should be incorporated into the solution:
•Americans support the expansion of the H-1B and H-2B visa programs (63-29), which make it easier for those immigrants with sought-after skills and knowledge to emigrate easily. We need educated immigrants to continue to innovate and grow economically.
•By 83 to 16 Americans support a worker visa program.
•Americans support a system by which immigration centers in foreign countries help people find jobs in the United States and to allow people to apply for worker visas (84-14).
•By a margin of 89-11, Americans support tamper-proof identification cards with biometric identifiers, such as photos and fingerprints, to track foreign workers. However, by 73-20, they wisely don’t believe that the federal government can administer such a program. Instead, this should be outsourced to Visa, Master Card or American Express, so that employers would have the benefit of 24/7 real-time verification so that forged or stolen cards can be immediately detected.
•Americans believe (93-6) that foreign workers who have made their way through the process should take an oath to obey the laws of the United States while here, and that they be immediately deported if they break the law.
•By 78-20, Americans believe that there should be heavy fines levied against businesses that knowingly hire illegals, and, by 83-15, support Internal Revenue Service audits of companies caught hiring illegals to make certain that taxes have been paid.
We all know, however, that there are millions of illegal workers already in the United States. What should we do about them? First, follow the current law and absolutely control the borders of the United States. This is a national security issue as much as an immigration issue.
Recognizing the fact that there are millions here illegally, we need to follow the advice of the American people, reflected above, and ask each illegal worker to come forward and answer one simple question: Do you wish to become a guest worker or a citizen? Failure to come forward will result in immediate deportation once caught.
If the individual wishes to remain a guest worker, he or she will have to obtain the worker visa mentioned above as well as pay a fine. If after one year he or she has not obtained a card, then he or she will be deported, along with any family also here illegally. Children of illegals born in the United States will be stripped of citizenship and also deported. I know this is harsh, but to be effective, this needs to have teeth.
For those who wish to become citizens, they will need to obtain the paperwork for permanent residents, begin the citizenship process and also pay a fine. However, we need to ensure not only that they become citizens, but that they become Americans. They must be mandated to attend citizenship classes that teach American history and they must learn English. It would be best if vouchers to pay for these classes are provided to the individuals so that they could take the classes offered, for money, by local schools. This will tie them and their families into the broader community.
Finally, it will also mean that English should become the official language of government. This is not to say that all other languages will be outlawed but that English only will be used in official government documents. Proficiency in the English language is a requirement of citizenship.
If politicians and elites had the good sense of the American people and implemented the ideas above, the issue of illegal immigration will soon be resolved and we can concentrate on growing our economy.
Darfur
“…there must be real pressure placed on the Sudanese government. We know from past experience that it will take a great deal to get them to do the right thing…The U.N. Security Council should impose tough sanctions on the Khartoum government immediately.”
“I am deeply concerned by reports that the Bush Administration is negotiating a normalization of relations with the Government of Sudan…This reckless and cynical initiative would reward a regime in Khartoum that has a record of failing to live up to its commitments…”
First, some background. Sudan’s population is mixed between those of Arab descent (the ruling group) and black Africans. The conflict in Darfur, Sudan, an area in Western Sudan roughly the size of France, began in February 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Army and Justice and Equality Movement in Darfur took up arms against the government, accusing it of oppressing black African Sudanese in favor of Arab Sudanese. After initial direct attacks on Darfurians by government forces, the Sudanese military recruited the Janjaweed, a militia group comprised primarily of nomads.
The Sudanese government has been accused of tampering with evidence, such as covering up the existence of mass graves, arresting and harassing journalists and humanitarian workers.
The United States government has described the conflict in Darfur as genocide, but so far the United Nations has stopped short of this characterization, even though in a report issued in 2005, the U.N. recognized the Sudanese government’s history of atrocities in Darfur, including mass murders, aerial bombing of civilians and widespread rapes.
There are various estimates on the number of human casualties, but the consensus numbers are at least 400,000 killed and 2 million people displaced and living in refugee camps in conditions that are quite literally hellishly overcrowded and rife with disease.
In late 2006, the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution calling for a 26,000-troop UN peacekeeping force to supplement a poorly-funded and ill-equipped African Union force. In response, the Sudanese government launched a major offensive in Darfur the very next day. In 2007, the UN mission in Darfur accused Sudan’s government of orchestrating and active participation in “gross violations” and called for international action to protect civilians there.
In mid-2008, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague filed ten charges of war crimes against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. These charges included three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity, and two of murder. ICC prosecutors claimed that al-Bashir "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part" three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity. On 4 March, 2009, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for president al-Bashir, though he has never been arrested or delivered to the court.
The two 2008 quotes from then-Senator Barack Obama noted above were meant to show that he was concerned about what was happening in the Darfur region of Sudan. Within the past two weeks, however, the Obama State Department has taken initial steps to normalize relations with the Government of Sudan, the very thing candidate Obama seemed to deplore in the campaign. What exactly will comprise the political and economic “menu of incentives and disincentives” the Obama Administration has in mind isn’t known. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said that the menu on offer is a “classified annex to our strategy.”
The “tough sanctions” championed by candidate Obama seem to have morphed into a vague promise of improved relations only on indications of, “whether or not progress is being made.” Really tough; this is certain to make the government of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir shake with fear.
This may surprise you, but I agree fully with the statements of candidate Obama. President al-Bashir has for years made small concessions to the international community in order to stay in power. Given what is happening in Darfur, this is unacceptable. Working in concert with the international community, we should now bring real pressure to bear on the Sudanese government. They will not change until the international community puts substantial overt pressure on them.
Is the conflict in Darfur a threat to our national security interests? Not directly; but it is certainly not in the interests of the United States for genocide to be occurring anywhere on the planet. It is morally repugnant and must not be tolerated in the 21st Century.
What can the United States do? In conjunction with our fellow UN Security Council members, we must develop a list of conditions, metrics and timetables that the Sudanese government must meet. The list will not be negotiated with the Sudanese; it will be imposed by the UN. This will not be easy, but it must be done.
Security Council member China, for one, has to be convinced. China has growing interests in Africa as a source for oil and other natural resources, and is generally reluctant to pressure other governments on human rights policies for fear of being criticized itself. Still, we need China to make this work – Russia too – so our diplomats need to earn their pay and convince China and Russia that it is in their interests to work with the world community on stopping the abuses in Darfur.
In my view, sanctions should be immediately imposed and loosened only once Sudan has shown progress toward the conditions the international community sets for Darfur. If they backtrack, sanctions must immediately be re-imposed. This is the exact opposite of what the Obama Administration has concluded. Here are three immediate sanctions I advocate:
1. Impose a no-fly zone over Darfur. This could be patrolled by an international force consisting of NATO, African Union, and the forces of any other nation willing to take on this responsibility.
2. Privately make it clear to President al-Bashir that the member states of the UN Security Council hold him personally responsible for the actions of his forces and militias, and that if the genocide continues and the situation on-the-ground doesn’t measurably improve in one month’s time, he will be forcibly removed from office and taken for trial before the international Criminal Court in The Hague.
3. A more robust international force to monitor the situation in Darfur, assist with the delivery of humanitarian supplies and repel any attacks on civilians in Darfur. Our troops are busy enough, but we could still provide training, communications and logistics support. The U.S. is beginning the process of standing up our Africa Command (Africom), and the use of African Union and other forces from the region to assist in Darfur under our supervision would help us to assess potential partners. Help in monitoring the situation in Darfur could result in increased U.S. support to their military forces going forward.
Candidate Obama was right. It’s my hope that President Obama’s engagement strategy turns out to be more robust than it presently appears or there will be hundreds of thousands of more people from Darfur killed or displaced.
“I am deeply concerned by reports that the Bush Administration is negotiating a normalization of relations with the Government of Sudan…This reckless and cynical initiative would reward a regime in Khartoum that has a record of failing to live up to its commitments…”
First, some background. Sudan’s population is mixed between those of Arab descent (the ruling group) and black Africans. The conflict in Darfur, Sudan, an area in Western Sudan roughly the size of France, began in February 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Army and Justice and Equality Movement in Darfur took up arms against the government, accusing it of oppressing black African Sudanese in favor of Arab Sudanese. After initial direct attacks on Darfurians by government forces, the Sudanese military recruited the Janjaweed, a militia group comprised primarily of nomads.
The Sudanese government has been accused of tampering with evidence, such as covering up the existence of mass graves, arresting and harassing journalists and humanitarian workers.
The United States government has described the conflict in Darfur as genocide, but so far the United Nations has stopped short of this characterization, even though in a report issued in 2005, the U.N. recognized the Sudanese government’s history of atrocities in Darfur, including mass murders, aerial bombing of civilians and widespread rapes.
There are various estimates on the number of human casualties, but the consensus numbers are at least 400,000 killed and 2 million people displaced and living in refugee camps in conditions that are quite literally hellishly overcrowded and rife with disease.
In late 2006, the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution calling for a 26,000-troop UN peacekeeping force to supplement a poorly-funded and ill-equipped African Union force. In response, the Sudanese government launched a major offensive in Darfur the very next day. In 2007, the UN mission in Darfur accused Sudan’s government of orchestrating and active participation in “gross violations” and called for international action to protect civilians there.
In mid-2008, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague filed ten charges of war crimes against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. These charges included three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity, and two of murder. ICC prosecutors claimed that al-Bashir "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part" three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity. On 4 March, 2009, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for president al-Bashir, though he has never been arrested or delivered to the court.
The two 2008 quotes from then-Senator Barack Obama noted above were meant to show that he was concerned about what was happening in the Darfur region of Sudan. Within the past two weeks, however, the Obama State Department has taken initial steps to normalize relations with the Government of Sudan, the very thing candidate Obama seemed to deplore in the campaign. What exactly will comprise the political and economic “menu of incentives and disincentives” the Obama Administration has in mind isn’t known. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said that the menu on offer is a “classified annex to our strategy.”
The “tough sanctions” championed by candidate Obama seem to have morphed into a vague promise of improved relations only on indications of, “whether or not progress is being made.” Really tough; this is certain to make the government of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir shake with fear.
This may surprise you, but I agree fully with the statements of candidate Obama. President al-Bashir has for years made small concessions to the international community in order to stay in power. Given what is happening in Darfur, this is unacceptable. Working in concert with the international community, we should now bring real pressure to bear on the Sudanese government. They will not change until the international community puts substantial overt pressure on them.
Is the conflict in Darfur a threat to our national security interests? Not directly; but it is certainly not in the interests of the United States for genocide to be occurring anywhere on the planet. It is morally repugnant and must not be tolerated in the 21st Century.
What can the United States do? In conjunction with our fellow UN Security Council members, we must develop a list of conditions, metrics and timetables that the Sudanese government must meet. The list will not be negotiated with the Sudanese; it will be imposed by the UN. This will not be easy, but it must be done.
Security Council member China, for one, has to be convinced. China has growing interests in Africa as a source for oil and other natural resources, and is generally reluctant to pressure other governments on human rights policies for fear of being criticized itself. Still, we need China to make this work – Russia too – so our diplomats need to earn their pay and convince China and Russia that it is in their interests to work with the world community on stopping the abuses in Darfur.
In my view, sanctions should be immediately imposed and loosened only once Sudan has shown progress toward the conditions the international community sets for Darfur. If they backtrack, sanctions must immediately be re-imposed. This is the exact opposite of what the Obama Administration has concluded. Here are three immediate sanctions I advocate:
1. Impose a no-fly zone over Darfur. This could be patrolled by an international force consisting of NATO, African Union, and the forces of any other nation willing to take on this responsibility.
2. Privately make it clear to President al-Bashir that the member states of the UN Security Council hold him personally responsible for the actions of his forces and militias, and that if the genocide continues and the situation on-the-ground doesn’t measurably improve in one month’s time, he will be forcibly removed from office and taken for trial before the international Criminal Court in The Hague.
3. A more robust international force to monitor the situation in Darfur, assist with the delivery of humanitarian supplies and repel any attacks on civilians in Darfur. Our troops are busy enough, but we could still provide training, communications and logistics support. The U.S. is beginning the process of standing up our Africa Command (Africom), and the use of African Union and other forces from the region to assist in Darfur under our supervision would help us to assess potential partners. Help in monitoring the situation in Darfur could result in increased U.S. support to their military forces going forward.
Candidate Obama was right. It’s my hope that President Obama’s engagement strategy turns out to be more robust than it presently appears or there will be hundreds of thousands of more people from Darfur killed or displaced.
Afghanistan
Our piecemeal approach to Iraq and Afghanistan are a mistake. I have long argued (since late 2001) that immediately after 9-11 we should have stated to the world our intention as a nation to defeat al-Qaeda and their extremist allies. We should have recognized it was a long-term venture and likened it to our commitment to defeat Soviet communism in the Cold War. In other words, that we view terrorism as a scourge to the civilized world and that we would lead a multi-year, multi-national coordinated military, diplomatic, trade and cultural effort of like-minded nations to eradicate it. This would give us the ability to implement an integrated national security strategy and architecture designed around our values and long-term security interests.
Unfortunately, the post 9-11 world didn’t unfold that way and we are now engaged on two foreign battlefields in military actions that most people – including many of those in the national security structure of the United States – view as disparate.
As a candidate for president, then-Senator Barak Obama said repeatedly that the fight in Afghanistan was the good war as compared to Iraq -- that it was a “war of necessity.” As president, Barak Obama stated in August of this year that our goals are to, “disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda and its extremist allies.”
Upon assuming the presidency, Mr. Obama named a new commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, charged with a strategic review and development of a go-forward plan. General McChrystal has made his recommendations to the president, yet it is only now that the debate on how to proceed has begun in the White House.
You would think that given his statements during the 2008 campaign and subsequent appointment of General McChrystal that President Obama would already have a fairly clear idea as to the broad course of action he would like to take in Afghanistan. If he believes what he has consistently said over the past year, that the fight in Afghanistan is a war of necessity and should be focused on the defeat of al-Qaeda, then the overriding consideration must be to support and strengthen Afghanistan in order to deny safe-havens to al-Qaeda and its extremist allies.
Muddling through with a strategy based upon political calculus rather than a military and diplomatic one would destroy the Obama presidency, and even more catastrophic, severely damage the long-term interests of the United States. One need only look at the Johnson presidency to see the parallels. The failure of President Johnson and his political advisors to let the military fight the war in Vietnam without the imposition of domestic political considerations led not only to our withdrawal and perceived defeat there, which was damaging enough, but it also led to an aggressive Soviet expansion in Latin America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.
Similarly, if we fail in Afghanistan the consequences will be far-reaching: al-Qaeda and extremist groups everywhere will know that America and the West are not serious and can be defeated if they are patient, cost us enough money and inflict enough pain; the al-Qaeda terrorist network and like-minded groups will again have a safe-haven in a lawless country; that these groups can continue unfettered in gaining immense amounts of cash to finance their operations through the opium trade; and, a destabilized Afghanistan could easily cause problems in neighboring countries.
Individuals and groups in Afghanistan and elsewhere are constantly judging the United States’ actions in the world based on their calculus, not our domestic political considerations. Failure, defeat or simply leaving where we have made a commitment makes them less likely to support or work with us in their country. These important potential internal allies will ask themselves, “Why risk everything if the Americans will leave when the going gets tough?”
So, what should we do? I agree with the President and his national security team’s assessment that the fight in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al-Qaeda has been ill-defined, under-resourced, under-funded and under-manned. I also agree with General McChrystal that we must implement a coherent and comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign built on the lessons learned in Iraq.
However, I would caution that Iraq and Afghanistan are inherently different and cannot be directly compared. Success in Afghanistan will be much harder than Iraq. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is backward, impoverished, tribal, mountainous, drug-ridden, decentralized, violent, has endemic corruption and a largely illiterate population. One important thing in common, though, is that the successful resolution of the challenges we face in Iraq and Afghanistan have ramifications for American foreign policy and our standing in the world long after we withdraw.
With this understanding as background, it is very important for President Obama to clearly and vividly articulate how he defines success in Afghanistan coupled with his vision of how Afghanistan will look after we leave. What are the mission parameters and how will we judge success?
At a minimum, one vision of success is a stable Afghanistan with a functioning government able to provide security to its population. It will likely take 15-20 years to get to this point.
What strategies would help to achieve this? Due to space limitations, I briefly outline the following:
Engaged military leadership. Those we ask to serve and lead troops in Afghanistan must fully understand counterinsurgency and align military strategy to the end-state vision articulated by the president. They must also understand where this fight fits into the larger national security strategy of the United States.
A coherent civil-military strategy. Many of our NATO allies (we must not forget that this is a NATO operation) have much more experience than do we in implementing these strategies. We have built our military to be a war-fighting force. Our troops excel at force-on-force and small-unit warfare, and they can help to provide a secure environment for the Afghan population – this is an important first step, but only one part of a broad civil-military strategy.
Other countries have forces and experience suited to additional areas of a successful civil-military strategy. These are based on linguistic skills and cultural and religious understanding of the population; capacity-building of political institutions, but especially training of the Afghan National Army as well as police forces, in which the French and British have a lot of experience (as do we); building and training a civil service and legal system based on merit rather than on tribal affiliations. Again, NATO and the United Nations can and should assist in these efforts, as well as non-governmental organizations, many of which have a wealth of experience.
A clearly-articulated and attainable mission. General McChrystal has advanced a military strategy, but this needs to be consistent with our overarching national security strategy. One area that I think we need to be cognizant of and integrate into our planning is that Afghanistan is not only a terrorist haven with a dysfunctional government, but it is also a narco-state. Anti-drug strategies need to be built into our mission parameters. Here, we can learn from our efforts in cooperation with the Columbians; we have roughly 20 years of experience that we can draw on to help combat the opium trade in Afghanistan.
Proper resources aligned to the attainment of mission goals. Without the equipment, manpower and financial resources, mission goals cannot be met.
Additional buy-in from our NATO allies. If President Obama outlines a clear and compelling vision and a realistic and properly-resourced strategy for reaching that vision, it is quite likely that our NATO allies will recommit themselves to the Afghan mission – perhaps other nations too. However, this is closely tied to…
Increased diplomatic efforts. We need to remind our NATO allies and like-minded countries that the United States of America is fully committed to success in Afghanistan. We need to also remind the international community, but especially Afghanistan’s neighbors, that there is more at stake than simply the people and government of Afghanistan. A destabilized Afghanistan could easily spill over and disrupt Pakistan, which has a nuclear arsenal. Afghanistan’s border countries are not as stable as they should be: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan all have tribal and inter-religious undercurrents that could be destabilized by a failed mission in Afghanistan. The Iranian leadership is looking increasingly shaky in terms of its hold on power. The entire region itself is an important crossroads for natural resources and trade, and this is clearly of interest both to China (which shares a border with Afghanistan) and India (which shares a border with Pakistan); we must find ways to tie these two countries, as well as Russia, to the mission in Afghanistan.
The United States cannot have a sustained, open-ended, on-the-ground military commitment to Afghanistan or indeed any country. However, pursuing strategies such as these would support and rally our troops in the field; strengthen the resolve of our allies and potential allies; show American leadership; allow us to come out on the other side with a clear victory for civilization; and, most importantly, help to ensure our long-term national security.
Unfortunately, the post 9-11 world didn’t unfold that way and we are now engaged on two foreign battlefields in military actions that most people – including many of those in the national security structure of the United States – view as disparate.
As a candidate for president, then-Senator Barak Obama said repeatedly that the fight in Afghanistan was the good war as compared to Iraq -- that it was a “war of necessity.” As president, Barak Obama stated in August of this year that our goals are to, “disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda and its extremist allies.”
Upon assuming the presidency, Mr. Obama named a new commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, charged with a strategic review and development of a go-forward plan. General McChrystal has made his recommendations to the president, yet it is only now that the debate on how to proceed has begun in the White House.
You would think that given his statements during the 2008 campaign and subsequent appointment of General McChrystal that President Obama would already have a fairly clear idea as to the broad course of action he would like to take in Afghanistan. If he believes what he has consistently said over the past year, that the fight in Afghanistan is a war of necessity and should be focused on the defeat of al-Qaeda, then the overriding consideration must be to support and strengthen Afghanistan in order to deny safe-havens to al-Qaeda and its extremist allies.
Muddling through with a strategy based upon political calculus rather than a military and diplomatic one would destroy the Obama presidency, and even more catastrophic, severely damage the long-term interests of the United States. One need only look at the Johnson presidency to see the parallels. The failure of President Johnson and his political advisors to let the military fight the war in Vietnam without the imposition of domestic political considerations led not only to our withdrawal and perceived defeat there, which was damaging enough, but it also led to an aggressive Soviet expansion in Latin America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.
Similarly, if we fail in Afghanistan the consequences will be far-reaching: al-Qaeda and extremist groups everywhere will know that America and the West are not serious and can be defeated if they are patient, cost us enough money and inflict enough pain; the al-Qaeda terrorist network and like-minded groups will again have a safe-haven in a lawless country; that these groups can continue unfettered in gaining immense amounts of cash to finance their operations through the opium trade; and, a destabilized Afghanistan could easily cause problems in neighboring countries.
Individuals and groups in Afghanistan and elsewhere are constantly judging the United States’ actions in the world based on their calculus, not our domestic political considerations. Failure, defeat or simply leaving where we have made a commitment makes them less likely to support or work with us in their country. These important potential internal allies will ask themselves, “Why risk everything if the Americans will leave when the going gets tough?”
So, what should we do? I agree with the President and his national security team’s assessment that the fight in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al-Qaeda has been ill-defined, under-resourced, under-funded and under-manned. I also agree with General McChrystal that we must implement a coherent and comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign built on the lessons learned in Iraq.
However, I would caution that Iraq and Afghanistan are inherently different and cannot be directly compared. Success in Afghanistan will be much harder than Iraq. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is backward, impoverished, tribal, mountainous, drug-ridden, decentralized, violent, has endemic corruption and a largely illiterate population. One important thing in common, though, is that the successful resolution of the challenges we face in Iraq and Afghanistan have ramifications for American foreign policy and our standing in the world long after we withdraw.
With this understanding as background, it is very important for President Obama to clearly and vividly articulate how he defines success in Afghanistan coupled with his vision of how Afghanistan will look after we leave. What are the mission parameters and how will we judge success?
At a minimum, one vision of success is a stable Afghanistan with a functioning government able to provide security to its population. It will likely take 15-20 years to get to this point.
What strategies would help to achieve this? Due to space limitations, I briefly outline the following:
Engaged military leadership. Those we ask to serve and lead troops in Afghanistan must fully understand counterinsurgency and align military strategy to the end-state vision articulated by the president. They must also understand where this fight fits into the larger national security strategy of the United States.
A coherent civil-military strategy. Many of our NATO allies (we must not forget that this is a NATO operation) have much more experience than do we in implementing these strategies. We have built our military to be a war-fighting force. Our troops excel at force-on-force and small-unit warfare, and they can help to provide a secure environment for the Afghan population – this is an important first step, but only one part of a broad civil-military strategy.
Other countries have forces and experience suited to additional areas of a successful civil-military strategy. These are based on linguistic skills and cultural and religious understanding of the population; capacity-building of political institutions, but especially training of the Afghan National Army as well as police forces, in which the French and British have a lot of experience (as do we); building and training a civil service and legal system based on merit rather than on tribal affiliations. Again, NATO and the United Nations can and should assist in these efforts, as well as non-governmental organizations, many of which have a wealth of experience.
A clearly-articulated and attainable mission. General McChrystal has advanced a military strategy, but this needs to be consistent with our overarching national security strategy. One area that I think we need to be cognizant of and integrate into our planning is that Afghanistan is not only a terrorist haven with a dysfunctional government, but it is also a narco-state. Anti-drug strategies need to be built into our mission parameters. Here, we can learn from our efforts in cooperation with the Columbians; we have roughly 20 years of experience that we can draw on to help combat the opium trade in Afghanistan.
Proper resources aligned to the attainment of mission goals. Without the equipment, manpower and financial resources, mission goals cannot be met.
Additional buy-in from our NATO allies. If President Obama outlines a clear and compelling vision and a realistic and properly-resourced strategy for reaching that vision, it is quite likely that our NATO allies will recommit themselves to the Afghan mission – perhaps other nations too. However, this is closely tied to…
Increased diplomatic efforts. We need to remind our NATO allies and like-minded countries that the United States of America is fully committed to success in Afghanistan. We need to also remind the international community, but especially Afghanistan’s neighbors, that there is more at stake than simply the people and government of Afghanistan. A destabilized Afghanistan could easily spill over and disrupt Pakistan, which has a nuclear arsenal. Afghanistan’s border countries are not as stable as they should be: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan all have tribal and inter-religious undercurrents that could be destabilized by a failed mission in Afghanistan. The Iranian leadership is looking increasingly shaky in terms of its hold on power. The entire region itself is an important crossroads for natural resources and trade, and this is clearly of interest both to China (which shares a border with Afghanistan) and India (which shares a border with Pakistan); we must find ways to tie these two countries, as well as Russia, to the mission in Afghanistan.
The United States cannot have a sustained, open-ended, on-the-ground military commitment to Afghanistan or indeed any country. However, pursuing strategies such as these would support and rally our troops in the field; strengthen the resolve of our allies and potential allies; show American leadership; allow us to come out on the other side with a clear victory for civilization; and, most importantly, help to ensure our long-term national security.
Insurance Bureaucrats v Government Bureaucrats
An oft-used argument on the political Left is that the United States is the only industrial country that doesn’t have nationalized healthcare. We have been debating this question since the Truman administration recommended a national healthcare system, so there must be a reason why it has gone on so long.
A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution does not reveal an intrinsic right to healthcare (an aside: 17 September is Constitution Day; you might take the opportunity to carve 15-30 minutes out of your day and read it. For me it is an annual ritual).
Yet, regardless of which side of the issue you happen to find yourself, there seems to be consensus around a few things. First is the notion that no one should be denied medical care if they need it. A second is that healthcare costs too much. A third is that the system we have needs reform.
If these three broad areas can be agreed upon, why are we still arguing? Some would solve these three problems by imposing on all Americans a government-run healthcare system. I disagree and am in the good company of millions of Americans who are uncomfortable surrendering to government bureaucrats the power to make their life-and-death healthcare decisions.
Some opposed to a government-run healthcare system argue that the government cannot control costs or eliminate waste. Others believe that in an effort to control costs, unaccountable, faceless “death panels” will use a government-devised formula to decide who receives care and who does not. Still others say that we cannot give the government control over one-sixth of the national economy (the size of healthcare spending in the US) because it is too expansionist and will only serve to politicize healthcare decisions.
These are all compelling arguments when one considers that the recent spate of bailouts, stimulus and government takeovers have been poorly conceived, badly managed, added trillions of dollars to our national debt, and failed to make a real difference in the lives of the average American family. This is not a partisan statement: The bailouts began under the Bush administration in May of 2008.
Although these are powerful arguments against a government-run healthcare system, they are not sufficient. The central question is a much more fundamental and much more American one: It is a question of freedom, choice and personal liberty.
The reason that healthcare is not in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is not that we are a callous nation; it is because unlike all the other nations, industrial or not, ours was established on the principle that each person is sovereign. Each and every individual is endowed by his or her creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Among the family of nations we are alone in the belief that We the People, simply by the fact of our existence, are imbued with all sovereign rights and power, and that we give a portion of it to form government which is subservient to the individuals who consent to its formation. In every other country in the world it is the exact opposite: The government (or monarch, dictator, etc.) is sovereign, holds all the power and rights, and bestows some of these to individuals. This is an important distinction. It is the difference of being a free citizen or a subject.
Healthcare decisions are intensely personal and intimate, and should be made privately and in concert with one’s doctor and family. They are decisions that do not lend themselves to a one-size-fits-all, bureaucratic, top-down mentality.
The fundamental questions you need to ask about the healthcare debate are these: Who owns your body: You or the government? Who has the right to make decisions that affect your body and your health? Are you a free citizen ready to exercise your freedom or are you a subject?
It is my belief that the reason the debate has gone on for 60 years is that some have forgotten the principles upon which our nation was founded. Those of us who advocate for a private healthcare system need to remind our fellow citizens of our unique heritage. Once we do, we can throw off the notion that government bureaucrats can tell us what kind of healthcare system we may have and we can then get on with the job of devising a private healthcare system befitting a free people.
[Note: In the 17 June Red and Blue column I offered for your consideration my prescription for what should be included in health reform legislation. To read it, please follow this link http://insideriowa.com/index.cfm?nodeID=18005&action=display&newsID=3665].
A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution does not reveal an intrinsic right to healthcare (an aside: 17 September is Constitution Day; you might take the opportunity to carve 15-30 minutes out of your day and read it. For me it is an annual ritual).
Yet, regardless of which side of the issue you happen to find yourself, there seems to be consensus around a few things. First is the notion that no one should be denied medical care if they need it. A second is that healthcare costs too much. A third is that the system we have needs reform.
If these three broad areas can be agreed upon, why are we still arguing? Some would solve these three problems by imposing on all Americans a government-run healthcare system. I disagree and am in the good company of millions of Americans who are uncomfortable surrendering to government bureaucrats the power to make their life-and-death healthcare decisions.
Some opposed to a government-run healthcare system argue that the government cannot control costs or eliminate waste. Others believe that in an effort to control costs, unaccountable, faceless “death panels” will use a government-devised formula to decide who receives care and who does not. Still others say that we cannot give the government control over one-sixth of the national economy (the size of healthcare spending in the US) because it is too expansionist and will only serve to politicize healthcare decisions.
These are all compelling arguments when one considers that the recent spate of bailouts, stimulus and government takeovers have been poorly conceived, badly managed, added trillions of dollars to our national debt, and failed to make a real difference in the lives of the average American family. This is not a partisan statement: The bailouts began under the Bush administration in May of 2008.
Although these are powerful arguments against a government-run healthcare system, they are not sufficient. The central question is a much more fundamental and much more American one: It is a question of freedom, choice and personal liberty.
The reason that healthcare is not in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is not that we are a callous nation; it is because unlike all the other nations, industrial or not, ours was established on the principle that each person is sovereign. Each and every individual is endowed by his or her creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Among the family of nations we are alone in the belief that We the People, simply by the fact of our existence, are imbued with all sovereign rights and power, and that we give a portion of it to form government which is subservient to the individuals who consent to its formation. In every other country in the world it is the exact opposite: The government (or monarch, dictator, etc.) is sovereign, holds all the power and rights, and bestows some of these to individuals. This is an important distinction. It is the difference of being a free citizen or a subject.
Healthcare decisions are intensely personal and intimate, and should be made privately and in concert with one’s doctor and family. They are decisions that do not lend themselves to a one-size-fits-all, bureaucratic, top-down mentality.
The fundamental questions you need to ask about the healthcare debate are these: Who owns your body: You or the government? Who has the right to make decisions that affect your body and your health? Are you a free citizen ready to exercise your freedom or are you a subject?
It is my belief that the reason the debate has gone on for 60 years is that some have forgotten the principles upon which our nation was founded. Those of us who advocate for a private healthcare system need to remind our fellow citizens of our unique heritage. Once we do, we can throw off the notion that government bureaucrats can tell us what kind of healthcare system we may have and we can then get on with the job of devising a private healthcare system befitting a free people.
[Note: In the 17 June Red and Blue column I offered for your consideration my prescription for what should be included in health reform legislation. To read it, please follow this link http://insideriowa.com/index.cfm?nodeID=18005&action=display&newsID=3665].
Limits of Corporate Constitutional Rights
The central legal question at issue in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission is whether or not a feature-length film critical of Senator Hillary Clinton intended to be shown in theaters and on-demand to cable subscribers is “political speech” subject to federal campaign finance laws. After hearing initial arguments, the Supreme Court of the United States ordered re-argument, expanding the scope of the case to focus on the constitutionality of limiting corporations’ independent spending during campaigns for the Presidency and Congress.
In a Red/Blue column in August we explored bipartisanship, and in a portion of that column I wrote about the role of money in politics. This is in many ways an extension of that. In the case of federal campaign finance laws, both Congress and the Court have interpreted financial expenditure as the equivalent of “political speech” in need of regulation.
From my perspective, however, the larger central questions of this case are these: Are corporations (for our purposes here defined as for profits, non-profits, advocacy groups, associations and unions) “persons” as defined in the Constitution of the United States? Are these corporate persons entitled to the same rights as corporal persons, including the First Amendment right of unfettered free speech?
To the first question, my answer is no. It has long been established legal doctrine that corporations are “persons” in the eyes of the law. However, unlike a real person, they are entities established by the state, and therefore subject to regulations that the state may impose. Real persons, as I have consistently argued in this series of Red and Blue articles, are endowed with all sovereign rights by virtue of the fact that they are living, breathing, human beings, and that we as humans living in community loan some of our rights to form government.
To the second question, my answer also is no. Though persons in the legal sense, entities of the state cannot have the same Constitutional rights as real persons because their rights are not inherent in their being but have been granted by the state on behalf of sovereign citizens.
Thus we are left with the legal question of what rights these corporations should have under the law to engage in “political speech” as defined by statute and regulation.
Corporations (for profits, non-profits, associations, unions, etc.) all have rights and they all have interests to promote and to protect. Congress and the Court first began to set limits on corporate speech early in the last century and have been working to refine where the line is since that time.
Generally, I am not one who thinks that the courts are the place where all arguments should be settled; the legislative branch, as representatives of the citizenry, is the place where most issues should be settled. However, in this case I think the Court needs to define the limits.
The Court must here engage in a balancing act between real persons, corporate entities and the political process. From one side, a real danger is that Congress will enact legislation that is too self-serving and so restrictive that they essentially protect themselves from any dissent or opposition that is critical of the incumbent. On another side is that if given too free of a rein, corporations, unions, advocacy groups, associations and the like, will flood the airwaves with ads that alternatively praise or vilify our elected representatives and those running to unseat them. The citizen is then left to make heads and tales of these competing claims, which isn’t bad and in fact is beneficial to the political process, but one can imagine how all this could easily get out of control and become so poisonous to the political process that the number of people actually voting would be suppressed even more that it is currently. It would also likely increase the amount of money in politics – production of political ads and air time is expensive; and it is more difficult for challengers to raise money.
In my view, it is likely that even if there is a sweeping away of restrictions and corporations as defined here are given more latitude to engage in the election process, that large corporations will decide not to and that issue advocacy groups and unions will engage.
My expectation is that large corporations and associations will keep using the levers they presently use to manipulate the political process: lobbying – a far more insidious process that allows them to remain in the shadows and to not expose their preferences on the airwaves for all to see. It would likely be far easier and safer to work with their office-holding allies to add pork to funding bills and favorable tax treatment to the tax code.
So, where will the Court come down? It seems from the analysis I’ve read that there are three solid votes on each side, with three up for grabs – including newly-minted Justice Sonya Sotomayor. The Court is expected to issue its decision in the spring.
For those interested in a fuller explanation and analysis of this case, along with the briefs of the two parties involved and the amicus briefs of other organizations with interests in this case, please visit: http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission.
(Snarky comment alert: Interestingly, I noted that The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press sided with Citizens United in its amicus brief. Is this to assure that the media’s one-sided coverage of the last presidential election is not considered advocacy that needs to be restricted?)
In a Red/Blue column in August we explored bipartisanship, and in a portion of that column I wrote about the role of money in politics. This is in many ways an extension of that. In the case of federal campaign finance laws, both Congress and the Court have interpreted financial expenditure as the equivalent of “political speech” in need of regulation.
From my perspective, however, the larger central questions of this case are these: Are corporations (for our purposes here defined as for profits, non-profits, advocacy groups, associations and unions) “persons” as defined in the Constitution of the United States? Are these corporate persons entitled to the same rights as corporal persons, including the First Amendment right of unfettered free speech?
To the first question, my answer is no. It has long been established legal doctrine that corporations are “persons” in the eyes of the law. However, unlike a real person, they are entities established by the state, and therefore subject to regulations that the state may impose. Real persons, as I have consistently argued in this series of Red and Blue articles, are endowed with all sovereign rights by virtue of the fact that they are living, breathing, human beings, and that we as humans living in community loan some of our rights to form government.
To the second question, my answer also is no. Though persons in the legal sense, entities of the state cannot have the same Constitutional rights as real persons because their rights are not inherent in their being but have been granted by the state on behalf of sovereign citizens.
Thus we are left with the legal question of what rights these corporations should have under the law to engage in “political speech” as defined by statute and regulation.
Corporations (for profits, non-profits, associations, unions, etc.) all have rights and they all have interests to promote and to protect. Congress and the Court first began to set limits on corporate speech early in the last century and have been working to refine where the line is since that time.
Generally, I am not one who thinks that the courts are the place where all arguments should be settled; the legislative branch, as representatives of the citizenry, is the place where most issues should be settled. However, in this case I think the Court needs to define the limits.
The Court must here engage in a balancing act between real persons, corporate entities and the political process. From one side, a real danger is that Congress will enact legislation that is too self-serving and so restrictive that they essentially protect themselves from any dissent or opposition that is critical of the incumbent. On another side is that if given too free of a rein, corporations, unions, advocacy groups, associations and the like, will flood the airwaves with ads that alternatively praise or vilify our elected representatives and those running to unseat them. The citizen is then left to make heads and tales of these competing claims, which isn’t bad and in fact is beneficial to the political process, but one can imagine how all this could easily get out of control and become so poisonous to the political process that the number of people actually voting would be suppressed even more that it is currently. It would also likely increase the amount of money in politics – production of political ads and air time is expensive; and it is more difficult for challengers to raise money.
In my view, it is likely that even if there is a sweeping away of restrictions and corporations as defined here are given more latitude to engage in the election process, that large corporations will decide not to and that issue advocacy groups and unions will engage.
My expectation is that large corporations and associations will keep using the levers they presently use to manipulate the political process: lobbying – a far more insidious process that allows them to remain in the shadows and to not expose their preferences on the airwaves for all to see. It would likely be far easier and safer to work with their office-holding allies to add pork to funding bills and favorable tax treatment to the tax code.
So, where will the Court come down? It seems from the analysis I’ve read that there are three solid votes on each side, with three up for grabs – including newly-minted Justice Sonya Sotomayor. The Court is expected to issue its decision in the spring.
For those interested in a fuller explanation and analysis of this case, along with the briefs of the two parties involved and the amicus briefs of other organizations with interests in this case, please visit: http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission.
(Snarky comment alert: Interestingly, I noted that The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press sided with Citizens United in its amicus brief. Is this to assure that the media’s one-sided coverage of the last presidential election is not considered advocacy that needs to be restricted?)
Preview of 2012
At this point in the process, it is way too early to know for certain whom the Republicans will nominate in 2012, but it is fun to speculate. The nomination battle will be shaped not only by those who throw their proverbial hat in the ring, but also by issues and events that they will not be able to control.
The Republican Party itself is evolving. In opposition across the board and no longer beholden to George W. Bush or majority leadership in either house of Congress, Republican candidates in 2012 will have more latitude to refashion the party in their own image than did John McCain. Still, candidates will have to toe the line for traditional Republican principles, and each will try to take up the mantle of Ronald Reagan.
Iowa and New Hampshire appear to be keeping their places as the traditional first fights, so that calculus drives some of what I relate below. A question both in these states and those that follow: will Republican voters respond to the personal appeal they feel toward the candidates or to their policy positions – or some combination of the two?
As of today, here is my breakdown of those who may enter the Republican nomination fight. Some possible 2012 contenders, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Nevada Senator John Ensign, have self-destructed over the past few months, so I have left them off the list.
Mitt Romney. By any measure the former Governor of Massachusetts is an attractive candidate. He has been through this process before, and Republicans have traditionally given the nomination to those who have previously been through the fight, paid their dues and waited their turn. His “Free and Strong America PAC” will keep him raising money and distributing it to Republican candidates across the country, thereby building his chit pile. If the economy is still in tough shape after the 2010 mid-term elections, Romney’s deep background in business and economic issues will be a benefit, doubly so if those who vote in the Republican primaries and caucuses focus on the economy rather than social issues, where Romney has had trouble in the past. He has the remnants of his 2008 campaign machinery in place and is a very effective organizer. Still, as much as I hate to say it, his Mormon faith may be his undoing.
Sarah Palin. The Republican establishment doesn’t like her. Millions of Republican pro-life, values voters and Second Amendment voters love her, and these are the people who vote in caucuses and primaries. She has tapped into a nerve in the Republican base that may surprise pundits and elites, especially if they continue to dismiss her as an intellectual lightweight and bumpkin that has no business in national politics; indeed, it may make her something of a conservative folk hero. Palin’s “Sarah PAC” raised $700,000 in the first half of the year; a substantial amount of money that she can spread around to Republican candidates in 2010. Her abrupt resignation last month as Alaska Governor may damage her, but if she plays her cards right, she can move past this and expand her base. She is young and can afford to wait – in about 20 years she’ll be the same age as Hillary Clinton when she first ran for president in 2008.
Newt Gingrich. If policy alternatives to those offered by the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats are needed, then Newt Gingrich can deliver. He is at once wonky, strategic and tactical in his thinking. Articulate and driven, he revived the Republican brand in the 1990’s with the Contract With America, and helped to balance the budget for four years while Speaker of the House. If in 2012 Republicans are looking for a senior statesman to match up against President Obama, then Gingrich may be their man. On the negative side, he has challenges in explaining some things in his personal life, and after a decade of Democrats using his name as the boogey man in direct mail appeals his negatives are still high. (Disclosure: I work for his American Solutions organization).
Mike Huckabee. Huckabee did very well in Iowa and with social conservatives throughout the country in 2008. He is articulate and likeable, but many fiscal conservatives are uncomfortable with his policies. He was able to straddle many of the issues between the positions of McCain and Romney in 2008, so it is hard to know where he comes down on a good number of them. Since the 2008 election cycle, Huckabee has settled into regular appearances, guest host gigs and his own show on Fox. One wonders if he would prefer to remain in this rather than doing what is needed for 2012. That said, he has been to Iowa to campaign for Bob Vander Plaats for governor.
Bobby Jindal. Yes, his response to the President’s Address to Congress earlier this year was too folksy, bland and underwhelming, yet he is intelligent, principled, personable, a hard worker and gaining more experience every day as Governor of Louisiana. His drawback is that he may be too young. If in 2012 the electorate think that Barack Obama is too young and inexperienced to be president, they are unlikely to elect someone younger. Like Palin, Jindal may be better with a few more years under his belt.
Tim Pawlenty. His announcement that he would not seek another term as Governor of Minnesota has been taken by many as a signal that he would like to run for president. He is young, smart, hard working and has good political sense. It is unclear whether he has the conservative credentials that the Republican base will be looking for. He is unknown in much of the country, but has been given high-profile speaking slots at a number of Republican gatherings this year, which suggests that he has establishment support and is viewed as somewhat of a policy wonk.
Charlie Crist. The Governor of Florida is busy seeking election to the senate in 2010 and is ambitious. He is fairly moderate, but tacking rightward for the Republican senate primary against former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio. He is popular in Florida, a very diverse state. He has raised a lot of money for the Republican senate primary in Florida, which proves that he can raise money nationwide and has friends in the right places. Still, his reputation as a moderate may hurt his chances at exciting the base of the Republican Party in caucuses and primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Haley Barbour. He is well known in Republican circles, as the former party chairman and current Governor of Mississippi, but his appeal outside of the South may be limited. He is an effective administrator, but his former job as a high-profile lobbyist in Washington, DC plays against type.
Ron Paul. He has an active and energetic base of support in the party and in the Libertarian Party that could be effective in an open nomination. He has proven he can raise money. Still, his views are outside of the traditional Republican mainstream and he may have gathered all the support out there for these views.
Wildcards: Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Jeb Bush, Rick Perry, Condi Rice, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Jim DeMint. Quickly:
•Giuliani: Puts New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania into play; more liberal than the base on social issues; doesn’t seem to have the passion for another run, and may seek the governorship of New York in 2010.
•Thompson: Has an effective and appealing message and could raise a lot of money if he is more aggressive than in his previous run.
•Bush: Smart, innovative, a very effective and popular Governor of Florida. But for his last name Republicans would be begging him to enter the race; he might have to wait until 2016 if he wants to run at all.
•Perry: He is a popular and effective Governor of Texas who has a primary challenge brewing with Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison eyeing the Governor’s Mansion. Might he opt out of the potential civil war in Texas Republican politics to run for president?
•Rice: The former Secretary of State’s name has been mentioned as a possible gubernatorial candidate in California, but she has so far demurred. My guess is that she flirts with running if only to boost her book sales.
•Cantor: The Number Two Republican in the House is young (45), smart and an effective communicator. He may be too young and so far has proven a good tactician; his policy positions are a bit more elusive.
•Ryan: Young, smart, telegenic and serious in submitting real, workable policy alternatives to what the Democrats are offering on entitlements and other issues, the Wisconsin Congressman and ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee has a bright future – just not yet, in my view.
•DeMint: A traditional Southern conservative, DeMint is not well known outside of his region, but could make a splash nationwide if he decides to run.
Again, this is my view as of this date. Remember that at this point four years ago, everyone knew that Hillary Rodham Clinton was going to be the Democratic nominee and Barack Obama was gearing up for his run for the Senate from Illinois.
The players and the game can shift radically.
The Republican Party itself is evolving. In opposition across the board and no longer beholden to George W. Bush or majority leadership in either house of Congress, Republican candidates in 2012 will have more latitude to refashion the party in their own image than did John McCain. Still, candidates will have to toe the line for traditional Republican principles, and each will try to take up the mantle of Ronald Reagan.
Iowa and New Hampshire appear to be keeping their places as the traditional first fights, so that calculus drives some of what I relate below. A question both in these states and those that follow: will Republican voters respond to the personal appeal they feel toward the candidates or to their policy positions – or some combination of the two?
As of today, here is my breakdown of those who may enter the Republican nomination fight. Some possible 2012 contenders, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Nevada Senator John Ensign, have self-destructed over the past few months, so I have left them off the list.
Mitt Romney. By any measure the former Governor of Massachusetts is an attractive candidate. He has been through this process before, and Republicans have traditionally given the nomination to those who have previously been through the fight, paid their dues and waited their turn. His “Free and Strong America PAC” will keep him raising money and distributing it to Republican candidates across the country, thereby building his chit pile. If the economy is still in tough shape after the 2010 mid-term elections, Romney’s deep background in business and economic issues will be a benefit, doubly so if those who vote in the Republican primaries and caucuses focus on the economy rather than social issues, where Romney has had trouble in the past. He has the remnants of his 2008 campaign machinery in place and is a very effective organizer. Still, as much as I hate to say it, his Mormon faith may be his undoing.
Sarah Palin. The Republican establishment doesn’t like her. Millions of Republican pro-life, values voters and Second Amendment voters love her, and these are the people who vote in caucuses and primaries. She has tapped into a nerve in the Republican base that may surprise pundits and elites, especially if they continue to dismiss her as an intellectual lightweight and bumpkin that has no business in national politics; indeed, it may make her something of a conservative folk hero. Palin’s “Sarah PAC” raised $700,000 in the first half of the year; a substantial amount of money that she can spread around to Republican candidates in 2010. Her abrupt resignation last month as Alaska Governor may damage her, but if she plays her cards right, she can move past this and expand her base. She is young and can afford to wait – in about 20 years she’ll be the same age as Hillary Clinton when she first ran for president in 2008.
Newt Gingrich. If policy alternatives to those offered by the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats are needed, then Newt Gingrich can deliver. He is at once wonky, strategic and tactical in his thinking. Articulate and driven, he revived the Republican brand in the 1990’s with the Contract With America, and helped to balance the budget for four years while Speaker of the House. If in 2012 Republicans are looking for a senior statesman to match up against President Obama, then Gingrich may be their man. On the negative side, he has challenges in explaining some things in his personal life, and after a decade of Democrats using his name as the boogey man in direct mail appeals his negatives are still high. (Disclosure: I work for his American Solutions organization).
Mike Huckabee. Huckabee did very well in Iowa and with social conservatives throughout the country in 2008. He is articulate and likeable, but many fiscal conservatives are uncomfortable with his policies. He was able to straddle many of the issues between the positions of McCain and Romney in 2008, so it is hard to know where he comes down on a good number of them. Since the 2008 election cycle, Huckabee has settled into regular appearances, guest host gigs and his own show on Fox. One wonders if he would prefer to remain in this rather than doing what is needed for 2012. That said, he has been to Iowa to campaign for Bob Vander Plaats for governor.
Bobby Jindal. Yes, his response to the President’s Address to Congress earlier this year was too folksy, bland and underwhelming, yet he is intelligent, principled, personable, a hard worker and gaining more experience every day as Governor of Louisiana. His drawback is that he may be too young. If in 2012 the electorate think that Barack Obama is too young and inexperienced to be president, they are unlikely to elect someone younger. Like Palin, Jindal may be better with a few more years under his belt.
Tim Pawlenty. His announcement that he would not seek another term as Governor of Minnesota has been taken by many as a signal that he would like to run for president. He is young, smart, hard working and has good political sense. It is unclear whether he has the conservative credentials that the Republican base will be looking for. He is unknown in much of the country, but has been given high-profile speaking slots at a number of Republican gatherings this year, which suggests that he has establishment support and is viewed as somewhat of a policy wonk.
Charlie Crist. The Governor of Florida is busy seeking election to the senate in 2010 and is ambitious. He is fairly moderate, but tacking rightward for the Republican senate primary against former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio. He is popular in Florida, a very diverse state. He has raised a lot of money for the Republican senate primary in Florida, which proves that he can raise money nationwide and has friends in the right places. Still, his reputation as a moderate may hurt his chances at exciting the base of the Republican Party in caucuses and primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Haley Barbour. He is well known in Republican circles, as the former party chairman and current Governor of Mississippi, but his appeal outside of the South may be limited. He is an effective administrator, but his former job as a high-profile lobbyist in Washington, DC plays against type.
Ron Paul. He has an active and energetic base of support in the party and in the Libertarian Party that could be effective in an open nomination. He has proven he can raise money. Still, his views are outside of the traditional Republican mainstream and he may have gathered all the support out there for these views.
Wildcards: Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Jeb Bush, Rick Perry, Condi Rice, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Jim DeMint. Quickly:
•Giuliani: Puts New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania into play; more liberal than the base on social issues; doesn’t seem to have the passion for another run, and may seek the governorship of New York in 2010.
•Thompson: Has an effective and appealing message and could raise a lot of money if he is more aggressive than in his previous run.
•Bush: Smart, innovative, a very effective and popular Governor of Florida. But for his last name Republicans would be begging him to enter the race; he might have to wait until 2016 if he wants to run at all.
•Perry: He is a popular and effective Governor of Texas who has a primary challenge brewing with Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison eyeing the Governor’s Mansion. Might he opt out of the potential civil war in Texas Republican politics to run for president?
•Rice: The former Secretary of State’s name has been mentioned as a possible gubernatorial candidate in California, but she has so far demurred. My guess is that she flirts with running if only to boost her book sales.
•Cantor: The Number Two Republican in the House is young (45), smart and an effective communicator. He may be too young and so far has proven a good tactician; his policy positions are a bit more elusive.
•Ryan: Young, smart, telegenic and serious in submitting real, workable policy alternatives to what the Democrats are offering on entitlements and other issues, the Wisconsin Congressman and ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee has a bright future – just not yet, in my view.
•DeMint: A traditional Southern conservative, DeMint is not well known outside of his region, but could make a splash nationwide if he decides to run.
Again, this is my view as of this date. Remember that at this point four years ago, everyone knew that Hillary Rodham Clinton was going to be the Democratic nominee and Barack Obama was gearing up for his run for the Senate from Illinois.
The players and the game can shift radically.
Economic Recovery - What We Know Will Work
“Bernanke Sees Slow Recovery as Skittish Consumers Cut Back”
“Job Cuts Outpace GDP Fall”
These are just two recent Wall Street Journal headlines that begin to outline for the public the dismal state of the U.S. economy. The stimulus packages and bailouts brought to us over the past 14 months by both the Bush and Obama administrations have clearly failed (remember: President Bush had a stimulus – rebates – in the Spring of 2008, followed by a housing stimulus in the Summer, followed by the Wall Street/TARP bailout in the Fall before the Obama stimulus package that passed Congress in February of this year and additional bailouts).
Add to this the introduction of tax-raising and job-killing legislation in both the energy and health care sectors which are currently working their way through Congress. Current projections have the accumulated debt for all this spending to top $23 trillion (nearly twice our nation’s GDP, and more accumulated debt than the combined borrowing of every president from George Washington to George W. Bush).
Remember in January when President Obama said that we must pass the $787 billion stimulus bill immediately – so quickly in fact that no member of Congress read the entire thing before passing it – so that the economy could stabilize and unemployment would be capped at 8 percent? Well, the national unemployment is presently 9.5 percent and rising; even the President has acknowledged that it will move into double digits. In California and Ohio, unemployment is already more than 11 percent; in California it is nearing 15 percent.
Finally, the Federal Reserve issued a widely-ignored report last week which judged that under current policies our economy will have an unemployment rate hovering around 10 percent with little job creation for the next five years; yes, you read correctly - five years without job growth. How would you like to be graduating from high school or college in the next few years and trying to find a job?
The headlines are simply catching up with what the American people already know: This is a terrible economy and there doesn’t seem to be any relief for families anywhere.
So, what about all that stimulus money? Has the $1.6 trillion in combined stimulus spent by Presidents Bush and Obama helped you, your retirement account, or your child’s college savings plan? Me either. Why keep pouring taxpayer money into firms like AIG, Citigroup, GM, Chrysler and the like to “save” them just so they can turn around and cut their payrolls, shed bad investments and improve their balance sheets while at the same time restricting credit and generally making life more difficult for the average American?
My contention is that all this stimulus and bailout money has largely been a payoff to Wall Street, the Left’s political allies and labor unions at the expense of the American taxpayer.
Einstein once said that to continue doing the exact same thing and expecting a different outcome is one definition of insanity. Well, rather than continue to do what is clearly failing and expecting a different result, we need a recovery plan that actually stimulates the underlying economy and helps the American taxpayer. We need to stop politician- and lobbyist-dominated policies that reward political allies, and implement policies aimed at putting money back into the hands of the American people.
The late Jack Kemp once remarked that you can’t love jobs and hate job creators. That is where we need to focus: On small businesses and their employees. Small businesses create three out of every four jobs in the United States. We need to develop policies that will help them – and in turn, help America. These policies should embrace the following goals.
First, build on the 59-21 majority of Americans who believe cutting business taxes will produce more jobs than increased government spending (CBS News poll). Americans implicitly understand what creates economic growth and a vigorous national dialogue on these terms will expand public support for tax policies that actually create more jobs.
Second, offer tax changes which are big enough and bold enough to work. Even in its current, weakened state, America has a $12 trillion economy. A small tax-cut bill simply does not matter and will be absorbed without any effect (and those who bemoan deficit spending are hypocrites: the $787 billion stimulus past in February is pure deficit spending).
Third, the specifics of the tax cuts have to be vivid enough that people understand how it will affect their economic security. People will feel more compelled to support a government plan that puts money in their wallet instead of in the hands of bureaucrats.
Fourth, economic freedom should be returned to the American people - not centralized in Washington. Politician-bureaucrat-lobbyist centered schemes which benefit the few inevitably bring about corruption, political favoritism, and increased poverty for the majority. For long-term economic health, a small business and entrepreneur-focused, pro-growth alternative will reverse the damages done by power driven elites.
Fifth, tax cuts must be paid for with serious cuts in spending. Our current economic predicament was, in large part, caused by problems created by excessive debt. As part of our recovery, we have to return to the path of fiscal responsibility and renew a call for a balanced budget.
With these goals in mind, the following tax cuts should be at the heart of an alternative vision to achieve a fundamental shift from politicians to small business, from lobbyists to entrepreneurs, and from bureaucrats to investors:
A two-year, 50% reduction in the Social Security and Medicare tax for both the employee and the employer. This provision would guarantee that virtually everyone who pays federal taxes (many of whom do not pay income tax but do pay payroll taxes) will have an immediate boost in income and that small businesses will see a dramatic increase in available cash to hire more people or make investments for the future. This reduction would also help the cash flow problems of state and local governments, which also have to pay the employer's match.
In the present economy, most businesses cannot afford to give their employees a pay raise. This will give every employee a boost in take-home pay and help them and their families through this difficult time.
The revenue loss to the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds would be transferred from the general fund (a better use for the money than the TARP funds or the $787 billion stimulus package – only 10 percent of which has so far been spent).
Permanently match the Chinese capital gains rate, which is zero. This is the rate Alan Greenspan testified in the late1970s was best for economic growth. It is also a relatively inexpensive thing to do in the current economy because people are going to have smaller gains.
Match the Irish corporate tax rate of 12.5%. America has had the highest corporate tax system in the world (if you combine federal and state taxes). Moving to a 12.5% corporate tax rate and combining it with zero capital gains will make America the most desirable economy in the world in which to invest.
Eliminate the death tax permanently. Inheritance is the most powerful accumulator of capital and eliminating the death tax has been consistently supported by over 75% of the American people. Remember: taxes have already been paid on this money. It is fundamentally immoral for a person to have to visit the funeral home and the IRS in the same week.
Give President Obama the Opportunity to Keep His Word. Adopt the best of the small business tax proposals announced by candidate Obama in October 2008 and forgotten by the Obama Administration in 2009.
Similar ideas implemented by the state legislature will help to improve Iowa’s economy as well. A recently published study by the American Legislative Exchange Council showed that Iowa ranked 46th in competitiveness among the 50 states, and 35th in relationship of policies to performance. By improving the tax and regulatory framework, especially when compared to states that border Iowa, we can vastly improve the state’s finances, position the state for economic growth, add jobs, and improve the lives of citizens.
“Job Cuts Outpace GDP Fall”
These are just two recent Wall Street Journal headlines that begin to outline for the public the dismal state of the U.S. economy. The stimulus packages and bailouts brought to us over the past 14 months by both the Bush and Obama administrations have clearly failed (remember: President Bush had a stimulus – rebates – in the Spring of 2008, followed by a housing stimulus in the Summer, followed by the Wall Street/TARP bailout in the Fall before the Obama stimulus package that passed Congress in February of this year and additional bailouts).
Add to this the introduction of tax-raising and job-killing legislation in both the energy and health care sectors which are currently working their way through Congress. Current projections have the accumulated debt for all this spending to top $23 trillion (nearly twice our nation’s GDP, and more accumulated debt than the combined borrowing of every president from George Washington to George W. Bush).
Remember in January when President Obama said that we must pass the $787 billion stimulus bill immediately – so quickly in fact that no member of Congress read the entire thing before passing it – so that the economy could stabilize and unemployment would be capped at 8 percent? Well, the national unemployment is presently 9.5 percent and rising; even the President has acknowledged that it will move into double digits. In California and Ohio, unemployment is already more than 11 percent; in California it is nearing 15 percent.
Finally, the Federal Reserve issued a widely-ignored report last week which judged that under current policies our economy will have an unemployment rate hovering around 10 percent with little job creation for the next five years; yes, you read correctly - five years without job growth. How would you like to be graduating from high school or college in the next few years and trying to find a job?
The headlines are simply catching up with what the American people already know: This is a terrible economy and there doesn’t seem to be any relief for families anywhere.
So, what about all that stimulus money? Has the $1.6 trillion in combined stimulus spent by Presidents Bush and Obama helped you, your retirement account, or your child’s college savings plan? Me either. Why keep pouring taxpayer money into firms like AIG, Citigroup, GM, Chrysler and the like to “save” them just so they can turn around and cut their payrolls, shed bad investments and improve their balance sheets while at the same time restricting credit and generally making life more difficult for the average American?
My contention is that all this stimulus and bailout money has largely been a payoff to Wall Street, the Left’s political allies and labor unions at the expense of the American taxpayer.
Einstein once said that to continue doing the exact same thing and expecting a different outcome is one definition of insanity. Well, rather than continue to do what is clearly failing and expecting a different result, we need a recovery plan that actually stimulates the underlying economy and helps the American taxpayer. We need to stop politician- and lobbyist-dominated policies that reward political allies, and implement policies aimed at putting money back into the hands of the American people.
The late Jack Kemp once remarked that you can’t love jobs and hate job creators. That is where we need to focus: On small businesses and their employees. Small businesses create three out of every four jobs in the United States. We need to develop policies that will help them – and in turn, help America. These policies should embrace the following goals.
First, build on the 59-21 majority of Americans who believe cutting business taxes will produce more jobs than increased government spending (CBS News poll). Americans implicitly understand what creates economic growth and a vigorous national dialogue on these terms will expand public support for tax policies that actually create more jobs.
Second, offer tax changes which are big enough and bold enough to work. Even in its current, weakened state, America has a $12 trillion economy. A small tax-cut bill simply does not matter and will be absorbed without any effect (and those who bemoan deficit spending are hypocrites: the $787 billion stimulus past in February is pure deficit spending).
Third, the specifics of the tax cuts have to be vivid enough that people understand how it will affect their economic security. People will feel more compelled to support a government plan that puts money in their wallet instead of in the hands of bureaucrats.
Fourth, economic freedom should be returned to the American people - not centralized in Washington. Politician-bureaucrat-lobbyist centered schemes which benefit the few inevitably bring about corruption, political favoritism, and increased poverty for the majority. For long-term economic health, a small business and entrepreneur-focused, pro-growth alternative will reverse the damages done by power driven elites.
Fifth, tax cuts must be paid for with serious cuts in spending. Our current economic predicament was, in large part, caused by problems created by excessive debt. As part of our recovery, we have to return to the path of fiscal responsibility and renew a call for a balanced budget.
With these goals in mind, the following tax cuts should be at the heart of an alternative vision to achieve a fundamental shift from politicians to small business, from lobbyists to entrepreneurs, and from bureaucrats to investors:
A two-year, 50% reduction in the Social Security and Medicare tax for both the employee and the employer. This provision would guarantee that virtually everyone who pays federal taxes (many of whom do not pay income tax but do pay payroll taxes) will have an immediate boost in income and that small businesses will see a dramatic increase in available cash to hire more people or make investments for the future. This reduction would also help the cash flow problems of state and local governments, which also have to pay the employer's match.
In the present economy, most businesses cannot afford to give their employees a pay raise. This will give every employee a boost in take-home pay and help them and their families through this difficult time.
The revenue loss to the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds would be transferred from the general fund (a better use for the money than the TARP funds or the $787 billion stimulus package – only 10 percent of which has so far been spent).
Permanently match the Chinese capital gains rate, which is zero. This is the rate Alan Greenspan testified in the late1970s was best for economic growth. It is also a relatively inexpensive thing to do in the current economy because people are going to have smaller gains.
Match the Irish corporate tax rate of 12.5%. America has had the highest corporate tax system in the world (if you combine federal and state taxes). Moving to a 12.5% corporate tax rate and combining it with zero capital gains will make America the most desirable economy in the world in which to invest.
Eliminate the death tax permanently. Inheritance is the most powerful accumulator of capital and eliminating the death tax has been consistently supported by over 75% of the American people. Remember: taxes have already been paid on this money. It is fundamentally immoral for a person to have to visit the funeral home and the IRS in the same week.
Give President Obama the Opportunity to Keep His Word. Adopt the best of the small business tax proposals announced by candidate Obama in October 2008 and forgotten by the Obama Administration in 2009.
Similar ideas implemented by the state legislature will help to improve Iowa’s economy as well. A recently published study by the American Legislative Exchange Council showed that Iowa ranked 46th in competitiveness among the 50 states, and 35th in relationship of policies to performance. By improving the tax and regulatory framework, especially when compared to states that border Iowa, we can vastly improve the state’s finances, position the state for economic growth, add jobs, and improve the lives of citizens.
The Problem of Iran
Iran has plagued the United States for the past 30 years. I would argue that Iran has declared war on us; we have simply not engaged in this war. Consider that in 1979 Iran seized our Embassy in Tehran (an act of war) and held hostage our diplomats (an act of war) for 444 days; through Iran’s direct funding of proxy groups 220 U.S. Marines were killed by a truck bomb in Lebanon when their barracks was bombed in 1983 (asymmetrical warfare); chants of “Death to America” have echoed in Tehran for 30 years; presently the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are actively working with various splinter groups to train, equip, fund and attack Coalition forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Despite these “serious provocations,” every president since the 1979 Iranian Revolution (Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush) has failed to see Iran’s ruling mullahs for what they are: ruthless and determined enemies at war with the United States. Iran’s neighbors in the Middle East know this and fear Iran; that is why they are paralyzed to act. They would rather we and the Israelis take the brunt of Iran’s ire than to challenge them. These countries do not necessarily fear Iran taking direct military action against them, but rather that Iran will unleash proxies (such as Hamas and Hezbollah) in asymmetrical warfare against them, destabilizing their own populations, as has been done in Lebanon and Israel.
After several days of opposition protest against the “irregularities” of the recent presidential election in Iran, President Obama finally made a tepid statement of support for free and fair elections. In response, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said directly to President Obama, “You should know that if you continue (to criticize the repression of protestors) the response of the Iranian nation will be strong…The response of the Iranian nation will be crushing. The response will cause remorse.”
The New York Times reports that yesterday (July 7, 2009) “…Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his first televised address since Iran’s disputed elections, calling them the “freest” and “healthiest” in the world, while opposition leaders seeking to revitalize their movement demanded an end to the government crackdown and the release of hundreds of arrested protesters.” Yes, at the direction of Iran’s leadership, the same Revolutionary Guards actively working against us in Iraq are stepping up their brutal tactics to silence protestors and opposition groups within Iran – as indeed they have been doing since 1979.
Also yesterday, reports The Wall Street Journal, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen stated in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that Iran is within one to three years of building a nuclear weapon. Add to this the sobering fact that Iran already possesses and has tested missiles that can reach Israel and parts of Europe, and you can see why we and the rest of the world need to be concerned.
As I mentioned earlier, for the past three decades American presidents have been reaching out to Iran, both overtly and through back-channel communications, with offers of normalized relations, secret arms deals, apologies for past U.S. transgressions, etc., and it has yielded nothing. The clerics in charge are as theocratic and anti-American now as they were in 1979.
So, faced with an Iranian theocracy that supports international terrorism, barbarically represses opposition parties and is illegally pursuing nuclear weapons, what is an American president to do?
As I wrote in an earlier Red/Blue piece on U.S. foreign policy, we must use every instrument of national power in dealing with problems around the world; we cannot rule out anything. This is especially true when thinking about how to deal with a dangerous regime like Iran. Our response must necessarily be a combination of diplomacy, rallying allies to collective action, public support for freedom and openness, and yes, covert action aimed at regime change.
Dealing effectively with Iran exposes a multitude of very real and very hard problems that concern regional stability, nuclear material and devices, international oil supplies (beyond the Gulf – check a map and you’ll see that Iran is the strategic lynchpin for the trans-shipment of oil supplies in the Middle East, Central and South Asia, which include countries such as Russia, India and China), the drug trade and all matter of other issues in a volatile crossroads of the world with a number of fragile nation states.
There are no good choices; yet we must act. We cannot let things go on without actively managing the problem of Iran. We must act in concert with our allies in the region as well as the Europeans of course; but we must also find a role for China, India and Russia – as President Obama said in Moscow earlier this week.
Despite the fact that Iran is on the march, I draw a comparison to the Soviet Union, which under Brezhnev was on a similar expansionist effort throughout the 1970s. Like the Soviet Union, Iran is crumbling within both economically and socially.
Much as we did in Poland in the early 1980s, the United States needs to work with our allies and lead the world in response to the Iranian threat. In Poland, the United States, the British and the Catholic Church worked together in a multi-layered strategy to topple the existing Soviet puppet regime. Public statements of support for freedom of assembly and free elections were coupled with statements that framed the struggle in moral terms. This was supplemented with intelligence and covert financial assistance to prop up opposition groups and those friendly to the West. Today, we’d call this asymmetrical warfare. It worked. It can work again.
Despite these “serious provocations,” every president since the 1979 Iranian Revolution (Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush) has failed to see Iran’s ruling mullahs for what they are: ruthless and determined enemies at war with the United States. Iran’s neighbors in the Middle East know this and fear Iran; that is why they are paralyzed to act. They would rather we and the Israelis take the brunt of Iran’s ire than to challenge them. These countries do not necessarily fear Iran taking direct military action against them, but rather that Iran will unleash proxies (such as Hamas and Hezbollah) in asymmetrical warfare against them, destabilizing their own populations, as has been done in Lebanon and Israel.
After several days of opposition protest against the “irregularities” of the recent presidential election in Iran, President Obama finally made a tepid statement of support for free and fair elections. In response, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said directly to President Obama, “You should know that if you continue (to criticize the repression of protestors) the response of the Iranian nation will be strong…The response of the Iranian nation will be crushing. The response will cause remorse.”
The New York Times reports that yesterday (July 7, 2009) “…Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his first televised address since Iran’s disputed elections, calling them the “freest” and “healthiest” in the world, while opposition leaders seeking to revitalize their movement demanded an end to the government crackdown and the release of hundreds of arrested protesters.” Yes, at the direction of Iran’s leadership, the same Revolutionary Guards actively working against us in Iraq are stepping up their brutal tactics to silence protestors and opposition groups within Iran – as indeed they have been doing since 1979.
Also yesterday, reports The Wall Street Journal, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen stated in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that Iran is within one to three years of building a nuclear weapon. Add to this the sobering fact that Iran already possesses and has tested missiles that can reach Israel and parts of Europe, and you can see why we and the rest of the world need to be concerned.
As I mentioned earlier, for the past three decades American presidents have been reaching out to Iran, both overtly and through back-channel communications, with offers of normalized relations, secret arms deals, apologies for past U.S. transgressions, etc., and it has yielded nothing. The clerics in charge are as theocratic and anti-American now as they were in 1979.
So, faced with an Iranian theocracy that supports international terrorism, barbarically represses opposition parties and is illegally pursuing nuclear weapons, what is an American president to do?
As I wrote in an earlier Red/Blue piece on U.S. foreign policy, we must use every instrument of national power in dealing with problems around the world; we cannot rule out anything. This is especially true when thinking about how to deal with a dangerous regime like Iran. Our response must necessarily be a combination of diplomacy, rallying allies to collective action, public support for freedom and openness, and yes, covert action aimed at regime change.
Dealing effectively with Iran exposes a multitude of very real and very hard problems that concern regional stability, nuclear material and devices, international oil supplies (beyond the Gulf – check a map and you’ll see that Iran is the strategic lynchpin for the trans-shipment of oil supplies in the Middle East, Central and South Asia, which include countries such as Russia, India and China), the drug trade and all matter of other issues in a volatile crossroads of the world with a number of fragile nation states.
There are no good choices; yet we must act. We cannot let things go on without actively managing the problem of Iran. We must act in concert with our allies in the region as well as the Europeans of course; but we must also find a role for China, India and Russia – as President Obama said in Moscow earlier this week.
Despite the fact that Iran is on the march, I draw a comparison to the Soviet Union, which under Brezhnev was on a similar expansionist effort throughout the 1970s. Like the Soviet Union, Iran is crumbling within both economically and socially.
Much as we did in Poland in the early 1980s, the United States needs to work with our allies and lead the world in response to the Iranian threat. In Poland, the United States, the British and the Catholic Church worked together in a multi-layered strategy to topple the existing Soviet puppet regime. Public statements of support for freedom of assembly and free elections were coupled with statements that framed the struggle in moral terms. This was supplemented with intelligence and covert financial assistance to prop up opposition groups and those friendly to the West. Today, we’d call this asymmetrical warfare. It worked. It can work again.
Education Policy
A recent article in The Economist magazine asks the question: Why, in a country like the United States where the storied work ethic is so valued, do American children work so little in school? On average, the American school year is 180 days. In OECD countries the average is 195; in Asia, more than 200. German children spend 20 days more in school than those in the U.S.; South Korean children more than 30 days more. Over 12 years of school, this works out to an additional year of school compared to the United States. This is not only a waste of time, but a waste of infrastructure if one considers the billions we spend each year on school facilities that sit idle four months of the year.
The Economist article goes on to note that American school days are shorter as well: 32 hours per week, on average, compared to 37 hours per week in Luxembourg, 44 hours in Belgium, 53 in Denmark and 60 hours per week in Sweden. Add to this that American school children do on average an hour’s worth of homework a day, whereas Japanese and Chinese children have more than three times that amount.
In 1983, the U.S. Department of Education released “A Nation At Risk,” a report on the state of U.S. education. Written by the professional educators and business people that comprised the commission, the report reads, in part, “Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world…the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very nature as a nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur – others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments…If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
Eighteen years later, the Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, co-chaired by former senators Gary Hart (D) and Warren Rudman (R), issued a report early in 2001 which stated that after a terrorist detonation of a weapon of mass destruction in the United States, the second most serious national security challenge facing us is our inadequate educational system; more serious than any conceivable conventional war.
My friend, Bob Compton, has produced a movie called Two Million Minutes (which equates to four years of high school) in which he features the school and study lives of two American high school students from a top-10 high school, two Indian students and two Chinese students. When it is finished, you understand the daunting task before us: we are in real trouble.
On his website (www.2mminutes.com), Bob has a simplified version of the multi-day exit exam for 10th graders in India (which is done in English – as is all education in India), an exam they must pass if they are to continue on the academic track and then on to college. Bob told me recently that nearly 5,000 people have taken his version of the test online (which is multiple choice; it is a written exam in India) and only one has passed – and he was Indian. By 10th grade in India, students have completed four years each of physics, literature, history, life sciences, geography – all taught by those who majored in these subjects, not by education majors.
Think of it this way: If our Olympic teams scored as they did in the 1950s or 1960s and won no medals it would be a national scandal. There would be TV specials lamenting the plight of sports in America. Coaches, trainers, athletes and Olympic Committee members would be hauled before Congress to explain themselves. Comparing our educational system to the rest of the industrialized world, one could say that we are aggressively preparing to compete in the 1956 Olympics – none of those scores will win medals in 2009.
We have evidence of what works to turn this around. We need only look to, replicate and implement successful models that incentivize students, teachers and parents to work together to rescue the educational systems that entrenched bureaucracies and calcified unions have destroyed. In cities and counties all across the United States, these aloof education bureaucrats and union officials have trapped both students and teachers in failed systems, while ignoring the demands of parents to improve. They have cultivated political power in local school boards as well as with local and state political leaders, so their entrenched interests are favored, trapping the children in their charge in failed systems.
We need to liberate children, teachers and parents. The types of innovations we need start with things like merit pay; increasing student-teacher ratios; revamping union rules to reward the best teachers; eliminating tenure; establishing measurable performance metrics for teachers; bonuses and incentives for new teachers; establishing community accountability rules for administrators; increasing the number of charter schools; increasing the length of the school year and the school day; increasing teacher pay; and, especially in our poorest areas where those parents with the least amount of education and ability to move to neighborhoods with good schools, provide parents with vouchers to allow them the flexibility to help their children receive a better education by sending them to the school of their choice. This is a moral obligation, for education is the key to a better life.
Liberation of students and teachers means that we should think about scrapping the state curriculum and replace it with strict educational standards that guarantee a certain level of knowledge and comprehensive exit exams, such as those in India, which must be passed to graduate. Teaching in teams, teachers must help students to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible using technology and the Internet to bridge gaps in knowledge and subject expertise. Teachers will therefore become mentors and learning guides rather than giving the same lecture semester after semester. Students will become engaged and active learners rather than passive audience members.
Ask any recent graduate if he or she could have completed high school in three years and almost all of them will answer, “Yes.” What a waste. Rather than consigning students and teachers to this, what if we incentivized them by giving each student who finishes high school in 3 years the equivalent of 85 percent of the fourth year as a scholarship for college, money to start a small business or buy a home; with 5 percent going to the school and 10 percent to the team of teachers that taught the student as a reward for work well done.
What I’ve started to describe are very bold steps. U.S. Education Secretary Arnie Duncan, who came with President Obama from Chicago, has started down the right path by challenging the status quo. Congress allocated $100 billion in federal stimulus money for education, $5 billion of which he has reserved for an incentive program for education innovation. The proof is in the pudding, of course, but Secretary Duncan plans to use the funds to address problems such as good teachers fleeing inner-city schools for the suburbs; doubling the number of charter schools; rewarding talented teachers with bonuses; and incentivizing excellence in math and science teaching to try to attract better teachers in those critical areas. These are all positive steps, but much more needs to be done to get us back to a gold medal in education.
As the “A Nation At Risk” report explained 26 years ago, failure to address the issue of education goes beyond the issues of our economic competitiveness, societal cohesion and national security; it threatens our democracy and survival as a nation.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.”
The Economist article goes on to note that American school days are shorter as well: 32 hours per week, on average, compared to 37 hours per week in Luxembourg, 44 hours in Belgium, 53 in Denmark and 60 hours per week in Sweden. Add to this that American school children do on average an hour’s worth of homework a day, whereas Japanese and Chinese children have more than three times that amount.
In 1983, the U.S. Department of Education released “A Nation At Risk,” a report on the state of U.S. education. Written by the professional educators and business people that comprised the commission, the report reads, in part, “Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world…the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very nature as a nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur – others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments…If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
Eighteen years later, the Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, co-chaired by former senators Gary Hart (D) and Warren Rudman (R), issued a report early in 2001 which stated that after a terrorist detonation of a weapon of mass destruction in the United States, the second most serious national security challenge facing us is our inadequate educational system; more serious than any conceivable conventional war.
My friend, Bob Compton, has produced a movie called Two Million Minutes (which equates to four years of high school) in which he features the school and study lives of two American high school students from a top-10 high school, two Indian students and two Chinese students. When it is finished, you understand the daunting task before us: we are in real trouble.
On his website (www.2mminutes.com), Bob has a simplified version of the multi-day exit exam for 10th graders in India (which is done in English – as is all education in India), an exam they must pass if they are to continue on the academic track and then on to college. Bob told me recently that nearly 5,000 people have taken his version of the test online (which is multiple choice; it is a written exam in India) and only one has passed – and he was Indian. By 10th grade in India, students have completed four years each of physics, literature, history, life sciences, geography – all taught by those who majored in these subjects, not by education majors.
Think of it this way: If our Olympic teams scored as they did in the 1950s or 1960s and won no medals it would be a national scandal. There would be TV specials lamenting the plight of sports in America. Coaches, trainers, athletes and Olympic Committee members would be hauled before Congress to explain themselves. Comparing our educational system to the rest of the industrialized world, one could say that we are aggressively preparing to compete in the 1956 Olympics – none of those scores will win medals in 2009.
We have evidence of what works to turn this around. We need only look to, replicate and implement successful models that incentivize students, teachers and parents to work together to rescue the educational systems that entrenched bureaucracies and calcified unions have destroyed. In cities and counties all across the United States, these aloof education bureaucrats and union officials have trapped both students and teachers in failed systems, while ignoring the demands of parents to improve. They have cultivated political power in local school boards as well as with local and state political leaders, so their entrenched interests are favored, trapping the children in their charge in failed systems.
We need to liberate children, teachers and parents. The types of innovations we need start with things like merit pay; increasing student-teacher ratios; revamping union rules to reward the best teachers; eliminating tenure; establishing measurable performance metrics for teachers; bonuses and incentives for new teachers; establishing community accountability rules for administrators; increasing the number of charter schools; increasing the length of the school year and the school day; increasing teacher pay; and, especially in our poorest areas where those parents with the least amount of education and ability to move to neighborhoods with good schools, provide parents with vouchers to allow them the flexibility to help their children receive a better education by sending them to the school of their choice. This is a moral obligation, for education is the key to a better life.
Liberation of students and teachers means that we should think about scrapping the state curriculum and replace it with strict educational standards that guarantee a certain level of knowledge and comprehensive exit exams, such as those in India, which must be passed to graduate. Teaching in teams, teachers must help students to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible using technology and the Internet to bridge gaps in knowledge and subject expertise. Teachers will therefore become mentors and learning guides rather than giving the same lecture semester after semester. Students will become engaged and active learners rather than passive audience members.
Ask any recent graduate if he or she could have completed high school in three years and almost all of them will answer, “Yes.” What a waste. Rather than consigning students and teachers to this, what if we incentivized them by giving each student who finishes high school in 3 years the equivalent of 85 percent of the fourth year as a scholarship for college, money to start a small business or buy a home; with 5 percent going to the school and 10 percent to the team of teachers that taught the student as a reward for work well done.
What I’ve started to describe are very bold steps. U.S. Education Secretary Arnie Duncan, who came with President Obama from Chicago, has started down the right path by challenging the status quo. Congress allocated $100 billion in federal stimulus money for education, $5 billion of which he has reserved for an incentive program for education innovation. The proof is in the pudding, of course, but Secretary Duncan plans to use the funds to address problems such as good teachers fleeing inner-city schools for the suburbs; doubling the number of charter schools; rewarding talented teachers with bonuses; and incentivizing excellence in math and science teaching to try to attract better teachers in those critical areas. These are all positive steps, but much more needs to be done to get us back to a gold medal in education.
As the “A Nation At Risk” report explained 26 years ago, failure to address the issue of education goes beyond the issues of our economic competitiveness, societal cohesion and national security; it threatens our democracy and survival as a nation.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.”
Healthcare - Free from Third Parties
The healthcare system in the United States is too expensive and fails to provide as good of care to citizens as the systems of Europe and Canada. Under our current system, costs will continue to rise, making healthcare unaffordable for a growing number of Americans. The free market has again failed.
This is the sort of nonsense that you’ll be increasingly hearing from Democrats as Congress wrestles with reforming our healthcare system. However, the free market has little to do with our present healthcare system.
Before you buy in to the arguments that we need a government-run healthcare system, consider: The health sector is roughly 16 percent of the American economy, and rising. The Medicare and Medicaid programs alone represent 23 percent of the federal budget (far more than defense), are growing, and consistently outpace inflation. Medicare’s unfunded liabilities alone are a breathtaking $89 trillion (that’s not a typo, folks) and is expected to go broke within a decade (Social Security will go broke about five years after that). The current national debt is $546,668 per household.
We are not alone in this staggering amount of debt; most Western countries are in the same boat. Who will finance this debt?
Congress is presently working on healthcare reform legislation, so there is no specific bill to discuss. The politics change with every news cycle – and sometimes within a news cycle. Senator Edward Kennedy, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee, has circulated a draft of a draft bill. The Congressional Budget Office scores, or estimates the cost, at approximately $1.6 trillion over 10 years, and that’s for starters. You can add that to the numbers above. Oh, and this $1.6 trillion will only cover 16 million of the 46 million currently not covered by health insurance.
Most of us have insurance through our employers, which is a buyer-seller-receiver healthcare model that distrusts the free market and limits an individual’s choice. We have a third-party payment system that is inefficient, confusing and paper-based, which invites fraud (a bureaucratic, paper-based system cannot keep up with fraud perpetrated through computer systems). All of this will be magnified in a government-run system.
In a government-run buyer-seller-receiver model, the buyer (government) gets nothing of direct value, so seeks to pay as little as possible and micromanages and second-guesses the seller (healthcare provider). The seller is beset with the feeling that the buyer suspects him of incompetence, greed or fraud – or all of them. The receiver (patient) of the seemingly free good or service has made no investment in this process and has no gratitude because he isn’t “paying” for it. He is never satisfied because he believes the good or service is his “right” as a citizen. He always wants more of it, with more convenience and with less personal accountability and responsibility. The buyer, unable to keep up with the receiver’s demands, will seek to pay the seller less and less for his services and/or limit what he will buy on behalf of the receiver.
A free market buyer-seller model is superior. In such a model, the seller (healthcare provider) offers the good or service to the buyer. The buyer (patient) checks out the good or service and decides whether or not it is worth purchasing at the stated price. There is a direct relationship between the doctor and patient, minimal paperwork, transparency of process, and efficient pricing.
Still not convinced? Let’s look at Massachusetts, where liberals’ dream of “universal coverage” was mandated by the state legislature in 2006.
The journal “Health Affairs” recently published a study by Sharon Long and Paul Masi of the left-leaning think tank The Urban Institute, which found that less than three years into the program there is a growing shortage of physicians, residents are enduring longer wait times and other restrictions on care. Long and Masi write, “Paradoxically, the increases in health care use…were coupled with the indications that some adults were having more difficulty obtaining care.”
What the authors see as a paradox is simple market economics at work. People will increasingly take advantage of a “free” good provided by the taxpayers. The authors note, seemingly without irony, “Although major expansions in coverage can be achieved without addressing health care costs, cost pressures have the potential to undermine the gains.” Ya think? This is precisely why we cannot implement such a scheme at the national level. Cost-shifting billions and billions of health care dollars doesn’t add value to patient care and quite simply threatens the future solvency of the United States.
What health care plan should we devise? Here, from the Center for Health Transformation, are patient-centered principles that should be a part of any health reform legislation:
• Every American should be encouraged and incentivized to take personal responsibility for his or her health
• Every American should have genuine access to quality, cost-effective care that best meets his or her individual needs
• Every American should have health insurance coverage (private or public) that is affordable, accessible and portable – no matter where he or she chooses to live or work
• Health care providers should deliver the best possible care based upon best evidence or best practice
• Every provider of care, from doctors and nurses to pharmacists and hospitals, should be interconnected with an electronic health record for every American
• Payment to providers should be based on the quality of the care delivered, not the number of transactions or services provided
• Cost, quality and performance information should be available and accessible to all consumers
• Government should promote and encourage competitive, market-based solutions in the private sector
• Government should offer effective, efficient an sustainable public programs only for those who need them
• Government should aggressively invest in targeted clinical research, laying the foundations for future breakthroughs and cures
Finally, for those still dubious of my premise, let me give one small example of the power of a real marketplace in health care: cosmetic surgery, which, apart from cases of disease or accident, is paid for directly by the consumer/patient, not by an insurer. According to a study from the National Center for Policy Analysis, “The real price of cosmetic surgery has declined over the past 15 years, despite substantial technological progress and a six-fold increase in demand.”
What we need is more free markets and less government control over our lives. The problem with the current system is that patients don’t control the resources; third parties do.
This is the sort of nonsense that you’ll be increasingly hearing from Democrats as Congress wrestles with reforming our healthcare system. However, the free market has little to do with our present healthcare system.
Before you buy in to the arguments that we need a government-run healthcare system, consider: The health sector is roughly 16 percent of the American economy, and rising. The Medicare and Medicaid programs alone represent 23 percent of the federal budget (far more than defense), are growing, and consistently outpace inflation. Medicare’s unfunded liabilities alone are a breathtaking $89 trillion (that’s not a typo, folks) and is expected to go broke within a decade (Social Security will go broke about five years after that). The current national debt is $546,668 per household.
We are not alone in this staggering amount of debt; most Western countries are in the same boat. Who will finance this debt?
Congress is presently working on healthcare reform legislation, so there is no specific bill to discuss. The politics change with every news cycle – and sometimes within a news cycle. Senator Edward Kennedy, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee, has circulated a draft of a draft bill. The Congressional Budget Office scores, or estimates the cost, at approximately $1.6 trillion over 10 years, and that’s for starters. You can add that to the numbers above. Oh, and this $1.6 trillion will only cover 16 million of the 46 million currently not covered by health insurance.
Most of us have insurance through our employers, which is a buyer-seller-receiver healthcare model that distrusts the free market and limits an individual’s choice. We have a third-party payment system that is inefficient, confusing and paper-based, which invites fraud (a bureaucratic, paper-based system cannot keep up with fraud perpetrated through computer systems). All of this will be magnified in a government-run system.
In a government-run buyer-seller-receiver model, the buyer (government) gets nothing of direct value, so seeks to pay as little as possible and micromanages and second-guesses the seller (healthcare provider). The seller is beset with the feeling that the buyer suspects him of incompetence, greed or fraud – or all of them. The receiver (patient) of the seemingly free good or service has made no investment in this process and has no gratitude because he isn’t “paying” for it. He is never satisfied because he believes the good or service is his “right” as a citizen. He always wants more of it, with more convenience and with less personal accountability and responsibility. The buyer, unable to keep up with the receiver’s demands, will seek to pay the seller less and less for his services and/or limit what he will buy on behalf of the receiver.
A free market buyer-seller model is superior. In such a model, the seller (healthcare provider) offers the good or service to the buyer. The buyer (patient) checks out the good or service and decides whether or not it is worth purchasing at the stated price. There is a direct relationship between the doctor and patient, minimal paperwork, transparency of process, and efficient pricing.
Still not convinced? Let’s look at Massachusetts, where liberals’ dream of “universal coverage” was mandated by the state legislature in 2006.
The journal “Health Affairs” recently published a study by Sharon Long and Paul Masi of the left-leaning think tank The Urban Institute, which found that less than three years into the program there is a growing shortage of physicians, residents are enduring longer wait times and other restrictions on care. Long and Masi write, “Paradoxically, the increases in health care use…were coupled with the indications that some adults were having more difficulty obtaining care.”
What the authors see as a paradox is simple market economics at work. People will increasingly take advantage of a “free” good provided by the taxpayers. The authors note, seemingly without irony, “Although major expansions in coverage can be achieved without addressing health care costs, cost pressures have the potential to undermine the gains.” Ya think? This is precisely why we cannot implement such a scheme at the national level. Cost-shifting billions and billions of health care dollars doesn’t add value to patient care and quite simply threatens the future solvency of the United States.
What health care plan should we devise? Here, from the Center for Health Transformation, are patient-centered principles that should be a part of any health reform legislation:
• Every American should be encouraged and incentivized to take personal responsibility for his or her health
• Every American should have genuine access to quality, cost-effective care that best meets his or her individual needs
• Every American should have health insurance coverage (private or public) that is affordable, accessible and portable – no matter where he or she chooses to live or work
• Health care providers should deliver the best possible care based upon best evidence or best practice
• Every provider of care, from doctors and nurses to pharmacists and hospitals, should be interconnected with an electronic health record for every American
• Payment to providers should be based on the quality of the care delivered, not the number of transactions or services provided
• Cost, quality and performance information should be available and accessible to all consumers
• Government should promote and encourage competitive, market-based solutions in the private sector
• Government should offer effective, efficient an sustainable public programs only for those who need them
• Government should aggressively invest in targeted clinical research, laying the foundations for future breakthroughs and cures
Finally, for those still dubious of my premise, let me give one small example of the power of a real marketplace in health care: cosmetic surgery, which, apart from cases of disease or accident, is paid for directly by the consumer/patient, not by an insurer. According to a study from the National Center for Policy Analysis, “The real price of cosmetic surgery has declined over the past 15 years, despite substantial technological progress and a six-fold increase in demand.”
What we need is more free markets and less government control over our lives. The problem with the current system is that patients don’t control the resources; third parties do.
Environmental Policy
Issues that encompass the environment, biodiversity and energy reform are among the most serious challenges confronting our nation today. In our political and policy discussions on these issues Americans seem to have split into two camps that simply shout at one another.
Why? For decades now, conservatives have abandoned the issue of the environment. In the face of the Left’s big-government, bureaucratic, litigious, coercive, high-tax and burdensome regulatory schemes which erode private property rights and individual freedom, Republicans have stood on the sidelines shouting, “No!” without offering competing solutions which fit our values. We end up sending the signal that we are anti-environment, anti-biodiversity and anti-energy reform.
Yet if one takes the time to examine the polling available on these issues, one can find a third camp into which the majority of Americans fall and to which no one is talking. Consider the following:
73 percent of Americans believe we can have both a healthy economy and a healthy environment
79 percent of Americans agree that we will solve our environmental problems faster and cheaper with innovation and new technology than with more litigation and more government regulation
•72 percent of Americans agree that entrepreneurs are more likely to solve America’s energy and environmental problems than bureaucrats
•68 percent of Americans agree that we don’t need to raise taxes to clean up our environment
•79 percent of Americans support giving large financial prizes to companies and individuals who invent new ways to successfully cut pollution
Conservation and a clean environment are supported by a majority of Americans, yet they don’t trust bureaucrats to do it. If anything, the views of the American people are consistent with conservative values and we must engage in the environmental debate with superior policies or be trapped in the constraining and destructive labyrinth of regulation the Left is constructing. Don’t believe me? Think about the Superfund program, which was supposed to clean up toxic sites. It is a cumbersome, rule-bound program in which billions upon billions of dollars have been absorbed in lawsuits, litigation and red tape instead of simply encouraging engineers and companies to get the job done efficiently. Trial lawyers have been getting rich at the expense of both the environment and the American taxpayer.
In his book Earth in the Balance, former Vice President Al Gore wrote, “We have titled so far toward individual rights and so far away from any sense of obligation that it is now difficult to muster an adequate defense of any rights vested in the community at large or the nation – much less rights properly vested in all humankind or in posterity.” What? Anyone who loves freedom and individual rather than collective rights has to ask, “Where do the rights of community, humankind and posterity reside? Where are they vested? Who is the arbiter of these rights?”
The very real danger in the Left’s pursuit of these collectivist and non-democratic “rights” is that our individual liberty and private property rights will be sacrificed in favor of what some elites in Washington, DC – or foreign capitals and international institutions – think is best for us, rather than allowing a free people to make their own choices.
No, rather than abandoning the debate, conservatives must embrace and fully engage in the debate. We must develop real world solutions that are positive, market-oriented, non-bureaucratic and respect the American traditions of individual and private property rights.
Presently, Congress is considering a cap and trade bill (the Waxman, Markey bill) that will substantially raise taxes on Americans while restricting our energy sources, which, of course, will raise the price of energy even more. Studies have shown that if implemented, the cap and trade bill will add an estimated $1,500 to $3,000 per year to each family’s energy bills. A similar bill (the Boxer, Warner, Lieberman bill) was rightly rejected in the last Congress.
There is hope. A recent study conducted by researchers at Yale and George Mason Universities found that 18 percent of Americans are so alarmed by the pronouncements of the high priests of climate change (Mr. Gore, et al) they would strongly support any and all policies that would reduce carbon emissions. Any policy, that is, except cap and trade, which had support from only 11 percent of survey respondents.
People instinctively know that schemes such as cap and trade are little more than stealth tax hikes on our energy consumption, which negatively impact family budgets, drive energy-intensive business (manufacturing) overseas, and make the cost of goods we produce and grow more expensive. That suppresses demand and slows economic growth.
Conservatives’ solutions to our environmental problems must combine concern for the environment and all the wonders of our natural world with a concern for freedom and economic growth. We have a convincing case that biodiversity and the environment can be better protected by embracing a system that encourages science, technology, entrepreneurship, creativity and free-markets, rather than the Left’s system with its focus on big government, more bureaucrats, more red tape, more litigation, more coercion, more taxes which results in less freedom and a stagnant economy.
Why? For decades now, conservatives have abandoned the issue of the environment. In the face of the Left’s big-government, bureaucratic, litigious, coercive, high-tax and burdensome regulatory schemes which erode private property rights and individual freedom, Republicans have stood on the sidelines shouting, “No!” without offering competing solutions which fit our values. We end up sending the signal that we are anti-environment, anti-biodiversity and anti-energy reform.
Yet if one takes the time to examine the polling available on these issues, one can find a third camp into which the majority of Americans fall and to which no one is talking. Consider the following:
73 percent of Americans believe we can have both a healthy economy and a healthy environment
79 percent of Americans agree that we will solve our environmental problems faster and cheaper with innovation and new technology than with more litigation and more government regulation
•72 percent of Americans agree that entrepreneurs are more likely to solve America’s energy and environmental problems than bureaucrats
•68 percent of Americans agree that we don’t need to raise taxes to clean up our environment
•79 percent of Americans support giving large financial prizes to companies and individuals who invent new ways to successfully cut pollution
Conservation and a clean environment are supported by a majority of Americans, yet they don’t trust bureaucrats to do it. If anything, the views of the American people are consistent with conservative values and we must engage in the environmental debate with superior policies or be trapped in the constraining and destructive labyrinth of regulation the Left is constructing. Don’t believe me? Think about the Superfund program, which was supposed to clean up toxic sites. It is a cumbersome, rule-bound program in which billions upon billions of dollars have been absorbed in lawsuits, litigation and red tape instead of simply encouraging engineers and companies to get the job done efficiently. Trial lawyers have been getting rich at the expense of both the environment and the American taxpayer.
In his book Earth in the Balance, former Vice President Al Gore wrote, “We have titled so far toward individual rights and so far away from any sense of obligation that it is now difficult to muster an adequate defense of any rights vested in the community at large or the nation – much less rights properly vested in all humankind or in posterity.” What? Anyone who loves freedom and individual rather than collective rights has to ask, “Where do the rights of community, humankind and posterity reside? Where are they vested? Who is the arbiter of these rights?”
The very real danger in the Left’s pursuit of these collectivist and non-democratic “rights” is that our individual liberty and private property rights will be sacrificed in favor of what some elites in Washington, DC – or foreign capitals and international institutions – think is best for us, rather than allowing a free people to make their own choices.
No, rather than abandoning the debate, conservatives must embrace and fully engage in the debate. We must develop real world solutions that are positive, market-oriented, non-bureaucratic and respect the American traditions of individual and private property rights.
Presently, Congress is considering a cap and trade bill (the Waxman, Markey bill) that will substantially raise taxes on Americans while restricting our energy sources, which, of course, will raise the price of energy even more. Studies have shown that if implemented, the cap and trade bill will add an estimated $1,500 to $3,000 per year to each family’s energy bills. A similar bill (the Boxer, Warner, Lieberman bill) was rightly rejected in the last Congress.
There is hope. A recent study conducted by researchers at Yale and George Mason Universities found that 18 percent of Americans are so alarmed by the pronouncements of the high priests of climate change (Mr. Gore, et al) they would strongly support any and all policies that would reduce carbon emissions. Any policy, that is, except cap and trade, which had support from only 11 percent of survey respondents.
People instinctively know that schemes such as cap and trade are little more than stealth tax hikes on our energy consumption, which negatively impact family budgets, drive energy-intensive business (manufacturing) overseas, and make the cost of goods we produce and grow more expensive. That suppresses demand and slows economic growth.
Conservatives’ solutions to our environmental problems must combine concern for the environment and all the wonders of our natural world with a concern for freedom and economic growth. We have a convincing case that biodiversity and the environment can be better protected by embracing a system that encourages science, technology, entrepreneurship, creativity and free-markets, rather than the Left’s system with its focus on big government, more bureaucrats, more red tape, more litigation, more coercion, more taxes which results in less freedom and a stagnant economy.
Future of the GOP
There are many things in American history about which the Republican Party can be proud, among which are: Lincoln freed the slaves and saved the Union; Theodore Roosevelt busted trusts, carried a Big Stick and established the National Park system; Eisenhower helped to establish the post-war security structures that won the Cold War, ended our involvement in Korea and started the interstate highway system; Reagan revitalized the American economy, brought low the Soviet Empire and reinvigorated the American spirit.
These are but a few of the many positive accomplishments attributable to Republican policies and Republican presidents. Lately, however, there has been a lot of soul-searching after Republicans at both the national level and in Iowa fared poorly in recent elections.
This should be the case. Voters aren’t buying our product. After all, Republicans’ general strength in the mind of the public is fiscal discipline and national security. If Republicans underperform on these two fronts – if they begin to act and spend like liberal Democrats – why shouldn’t the public want the real thing and vote for Democrats? The 2006 elections should have been a wake-up call for us when no incumbent Republican senator was re-elected.
Simply put, Republicans failed to live up to the expectations of the voting public, and the consequence of that failure has been that the public has bought Democratic policies that have been calibrated as an alternative. This strategy has so far been a successful one for Democrats, but soon we’ll learn whether or not their strategy and policies survive without President Bush as their foil.
A Google search for “the future of the Republican Party” returns 10,500,000 hits. Given this, it may be folly to think that I can add anything to this discussion, but it seems to me that if we Republicans want future success, we should examine elements of our past successes and apply them to today’s challenges.
First, every policy prescription that Republicans advocate should reflect the first principles that naturally flow from the Constitution, the underlying philosophy of our party and traditional American values of civility, accountability, hard work and fair play.
Second, we must not be the party of “no.” Republicans need to advance positive, real-life solutions to the most vexing issues of the day. When Democrats offer bad policies – and they do – we must show the public how our ideas and solutions are superior rather than shout “No!” from the sidelines.
Third, we need to stop our fixation on repairing the Republican Party brand and focus instead on improving life in America. By offering better solutions for the problems we face as Iowans and Americans, and communicating them in an effective and compelling way, voters will naturally gravitate to us. Our better solutions will attract not only Republicans, but also Independents and Democrats looking for a better way.
This was the magic of Reagan. In nearly every speech he gave, he appealed not to the narrow concerns of Republicans, but rather he communicated to all Americans. He encapsulated his message within American traditions, values and language that resonated with all our citizens. Reagan famously said that he would rather get 80 percent of what he wanted than to go over a cliff with his flag flying.
Fourth, let’s stipulate that we have the angry white guy vote. If we don’t have them, we’ll fail, but we cannot grow a sustained governing majority with this segment of voter alone. We need to build on that core group. We need to be inclusive. By inclusiveness, I don’t mean that five white guys in their 50s or 60s meet to decide how to approach an issue and then call some minorities, women and young people they know to sell them on the policy. By inclusiveness, I mean that minorities, women and young people need to have a place at the table and a role in designing Republican policies. This is how we will build a governing majority.
Finally, we must hold government accountable to the citizens it serves. Voters are looking for honesty and accountability. Republicans need to have the strength to tell the truth about the problems we face, even if it is our policies that have caused the problem, and tackle them directly with workable solutions on behalf of our citizens. Republicans have to stand with the people against special interests and the bureaucracy looking to hijack government institutions.
Our Grand Old Party needs to focus on the fundamentals that made it, and our country, great. Deep down, we all know the prescription; we just have to find the courage to take the medicine. Once we do, voters will again reward us at the ballot box.
These are but a few of the many positive accomplishments attributable to Republican policies and Republican presidents. Lately, however, there has been a lot of soul-searching after Republicans at both the national level and in Iowa fared poorly in recent elections.
This should be the case. Voters aren’t buying our product. After all, Republicans’ general strength in the mind of the public is fiscal discipline and national security. If Republicans underperform on these two fronts – if they begin to act and spend like liberal Democrats – why shouldn’t the public want the real thing and vote for Democrats? The 2006 elections should have been a wake-up call for us when no incumbent Republican senator was re-elected.
Simply put, Republicans failed to live up to the expectations of the voting public, and the consequence of that failure has been that the public has bought Democratic policies that have been calibrated as an alternative. This strategy has so far been a successful one for Democrats, but soon we’ll learn whether or not their strategy and policies survive without President Bush as their foil.
A Google search for “the future of the Republican Party” returns 10,500,000 hits. Given this, it may be folly to think that I can add anything to this discussion, but it seems to me that if we Republicans want future success, we should examine elements of our past successes and apply them to today’s challenges.
First, every policy prescription that Republicans advocate should reflect the first principles that naturally flow from the Constitution, the underlying philosophy of our party and traditional American values of civility, accountability, hard work and fair play.
Second, we must not be the party of “no.” Republicans need to advance positive, real-life solutions to the most vexing issues of the day. When Democrats offer bad policies – and they do – we must show the public how our ideas and solutions are superior rather than shout “No!” from the sidelines.
Third, we need to stop our fixation on repairing the Republican Party brand and focus instead on improving life in America. By offering better solutions for the problems we face as Iowans and Americans, and communicating them in an effective and compelling way, voters will naturally gravitate to us. Our better solutions will attract not only Republicans, but also Independents and Democrats looking for a better way.
This was the magic of Reagan. In nearly every speech he gave, he appealed not to the narrow concerns of Republicans, but rather he communicated to all Americans. He encapsulated his message within American traditions, values and language that resonated with all our citizens. Reagan famously said that he would rather get 80 percent of what he wanted than to go over a cliff with his flag flying.
Fourth, let’s stipulate that we have the angry white guy vote. If we don’t have them, we’ll fail, but we cannot grow a sustained governing majority with this segment of voter alone. We need to build on that core group. We need to be inclusive. By inclusiveness, I don’t mean that five white guys in their 50s or 60s meet to decide how to approach an issue and then call some minorities, women and young people they know to sell them on the policy. By inclusiveness, I mean that minorities, women and young people need to have a place at the table and a role in designing Republican policies. This is how we will build a governing majority.
Finally, we must hold government accountable to the citizens it serves. Voters are looking for honesty and accountability. Republicans need to have the strength to tell the truth about the problems we face, even if it is our policies that have caused the problem, and tackle them directly with workable solutions on behalf of our citizens. Republicans have to stand with the people against special interests and the bureaucracy looking to hijack government institutions.
Our Grand Old Party needs to focus on the fundamentals that made it, and our country, great. Deep down, we all know the prescription; we just have to find the courage to take the medicine. Once we do, voters will again reward us at the ballot box.
Foreign Policy Post-Bush
The world is made in our image. We made it following World War II when there was a vacuum of leadership and the United States stepped into that void. We remain there still, and will for the foreseeable future.
Despite our efforts over the ensuing decades, with successes and failures, the world is still a dangerous place and in some ways is becoming more so. This argues for robust American engagement and leadership. We are the only ones who can provide it.
Without being too Hobbesian, we must work with our friends and allies to continue to build a world of laws, rules and norms fashioned by, and consistent with, our nation’s principles. In this I am in full agreement with President Kennedy, who, in his inaugural address stated, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Later in that same speech, President Kennedy said this, “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”
On the international stage, we must design a foreign and defense policy that engages the world: allies, international institutions (most of which we built, by-the-way), non-aligned countries, and yes, our adversaries. We must not fear any country; rather, we must work with everyone, especially those countries struggling to throw off the failed policies of the past that have held them back, and help them to attain a modern, middle class society that is fully engaged and connected to the larger world. That doesn’t mean we need to finance the transition, but we need to be as supportive as we can through non-governmental organizations and international institutions.
Yet we must also realize that not all countries want to play by the established rules or be governed by international norms. We need to understand that there are leaders of some regimes that do not want to cooperate with their neighbors.
In these cases, we must work in concert with other civilized nations to confront these rogue regimes and their destructive leaders head-on. We need to draw for everyone a sharp distinction between those countries which operate within the community of nations and those who operate outside of this mutually agreed-upon structure. They must be confronted by the world; we must lead, or, at minimum, be willing to back up those countries most out front in meeting the challenges of dangerous and aggressive regimes. To do this, we must use every economic, diplomatic, cultural, legal, and, yes, military lever we have.
Going forward, our national security strategy must be based on a realistic assessment of the current security environment, with an eye toward the future threats we will likely face. There must be no sacred cows. For the United States in the 21st Century, the calculus of our national security challenges must include not only traditional defense and foreign policy areas, but needs to include a much wider set of threats, among which are: terrorism, proliferation, cyber-security, cultural and religious rifts, energy security, disease, poverty, science and technological innovation, corruption, transnational trafficking, international trade and economic policy.
In short, our government’s national security concerns cannot deal only with what is happening beyond our shores. Cohesive foreign and defense policy themes must permeate the entire structure of our national government.
In order to remain the strongest and most free country on earth, the United States must have the political will to engage and lead the world. That is where you come in. Push your elected officials to think about and address our nation’s place in the world, and educate them when they need help. When you travel overseas for business or pleasure, practice citizen diplomacy (see the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy in Des Moines for more information and practical guidance http://www.uscenterforcitizendiplomacy.org/index.php).
By engaging as a government and as citizens, we can continue to shape the world and the future in our image.
Despite our efforts over the ensuing decades, with successes and failures, the world is still a dangerous place and in some ways is becoming more so. This argues for robust American engagement and leadership. We are the only ones who can provide it.
Without being too Hobbesian, we must work with our friends and allies to continue to build a world of laws, rules and norms fashioned by, and consistent with, our nation’s principles. In this I am in full agreement with President Kennedy, who, in his inaugural address stated, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Later in that same speech, President Kennedy said this, “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”
On the international stage, we must design a foreign and defense policy that engages the world: allies, international institutions (most of which we built, by-the-way), non-aligned countries, and yes, our adversaries. We must not fear any country; rather, we must work with everyone, especially those countries struggling to throw off the failed policies of the past that have held them back, and help them to attain a modern, middle class society that is fully engaged and connected to the larger world. That doesn’t mean we need to finance the transition, but we need to be as supportive as we can through non-governmental organizations and international institutions.
Yet we must also realize that not all countries want to play by the established rules or be governed by international norms. We need to understand that there are leaders of some regimes that do not want to cooperate with their neighbors.
In these cases, we must work in concert with other civilized nations to confront these rogue regimes and their destructive leaders head-on. We need to draw for everyone a sharp distinction between those countries which operate within the community of nations and those who operate outside of this mutually agreed-upon structure. They must be confronted by the world; we must lead, or, at minimum, be willing to back up those countries most out front in meeting the challenges of dangerous and aggressive regimes. To do this, we must use every economic, diplomatic, cultural, legal, and, yes, military lever we have.
Going forward, our national security strategy must be based on a realistic assessment of the current security environment, with an eye toward the future threats we will likely face. There must be no sacred cows. For the United States in the 21st Century, the calculus of our national security challenges must include not only traditional defense and foreign policy areas, but needs to include a much wider set of threats, among which are: terrorism, proliferation, cyber-security, cultural and religious rifts, energy security, disease, poverty, science and technological innovation, corruption, transnational trafficking, international trade and economic policy.
In short, our government’s national security concerns cannot deal only with what is happening beyond our shores. Cohesive foreign and defense policy themes must permeate the entire structure of our national government.
In order to remain the strongest and most free country on earth, the United States must have the political will to engage and lead the world. That is where you come in. Push your elected officials to think about and address our nation’s place in the world, and educate them when they need help. When you travel overseas for business or pleasure, practice citizen diplomacy (see the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy in Des Moines for more information and practical guidance http://www.uscenterforcitizendiplomacy.org/index.php).
By engaging as a government and as citizens, we can continue to shape the world and the future in our image.
Iowa Supreme Court Same-Sex Marriage Decision
Alone among the family of nations, the United States’ founding document, declares we, as individuals, are “…created equal, that they are endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” Each of us is sovereign. We pool our sovereignty to form governments which serve us – not to rule over us. “We the People,” rule: not lawyers, bureaucrats, judges, or politicians. We the People. This declaration ascribes a universal morality to these beliefs.
Legitimate government flows from the people’s consent. Anything else is unjust. For the Founders of our Republic, wherever moral legitimacy is present, authority resides. The Constitution of the United States, and that of States like Iowa, is, then, something more than a rule book or organizational table, it represents the people’s collected wisdom and traditions, and creates a framework of those powers that the People have loaned to the Government. Thus, all who hold public office bind themselves by solemn oath to the Constitution as our representatives; surrogates whom we entrust to uphold our interests, not theirs.
The consent of the governed is not a blank check to pencil in any desire of the officials of one generation. Constitutions embody consent to the form of government; consent to the scope of government; and consent to the methods and effects of individual laws.
The Founders recognized explicitly that though the official power of government provides a means to obtain justice, it also provides the ambitious with a means to abuse power.
They further recognized that citizens should be burdened by government imposition as little as possible. Government-imposed burdens upon citizens are legitimate only under the following circumstances: the burden is necessary to achieve a just end; and the cost of the burden is outweighed by the benefits it provides. Government should have “…a decent respect to the opinions of mankind…;” in other words, to be responsive to its citizens and not enact laws and policies that are repugnant to them or their values.
Opinions, attitudes, and tastes change, and laws change to reflect them. If one reads the Federalist Papers, one learns that the agent of change, under the Constitution, and those of the states was to be the legislature. The judiciary was meant to be the most conserving branch, resistant to change, and enforcing the laws and Constitution as written. The executive, too, was to have energy and act with dispatch. Courts were to be deliberative and derive all power from the framing documents as they did not have the added legitimacy of being elected for a set time.
The Iowa Court’s same-sex marriage ruling destroys all of these carefully arranged constitutional protections. The Court’s unanimous ruling that the institution of marriage, known to the founders, the Civil War generation, and all civilized nations before now, violated the Iowa Constitution created at the state’s founding. In a stroke, the judiciary has changed the meaning, nature and substance of marriage in a manner resisted by the people of Iowa at all times and even to the present day. Recent laws passed by Iowa have been destroyed upon no authority but the asserted greater wisdom of these seven solons on the Court.
Whatever one’s views on the creation of a same-sex marriage right, the arrogance of judicial fiat should worry all Iowans. Space does not permit a recitation of all the consequences of this ruling but what is to prevent a Court to determine marriage of any kind is unconstitutional? After all, if all people are equal why should the state privilege one institution joining only two of them?
If not reined in, the Judiciary will now have no stopping point in dictating the forms of Government to the people of Iowa. Only a special session of the state legislature can reclaim for We the People our rightful ability to govern ourselves. The Judiciary, and their abettors in the media and academia believe they can seize this power in a stroke of a pen from its rightful owners, the citizens of Iowa.
Same-sex marriage advocates in the legislature should not think that this issue will go away. They ought not to be allowed to collude with this judicial usurpation by pointing to the Iowa Court’s decision and stating their hands are tied. Who commands the Iowa Constitution, the citizens of Iowa or the seven judges and their abettors? Are we citizens or subjects? Unless this is dealt with swiftly and democratically in the legislature now, every race in 2010 will have the gay marriage issue in the forefront. There is no economic issue that overrides whether we are allowed to make laws in this state, even if smug elites do not like them.
Almost immediately after the 2010 election, the 2012 Republican and Democratic presidential nominations will begin. Every Republican candidate seeking to become their party’s presidential nominee will crisscross the state using this issue to appeal to the GOP’s conservative core, which means that it will also be an issue in the 2012 state legislative races. Similarly, President Obama, an opponent of same-sex marriage, will once again have to straddle between the will of the people and the radical Jacobinism of his most rabid supporters. His position here will only highlight his indecisiveness, already becoming apparent in foreign affairs.
Passions on both sides of the gay marriage issue are enflamed. On the one side are those who in Woody Allen’s words “want what they want” and on the other those who wish to have a say in their own state’s laws. In order to avoid a destructive scorched earth battle lasting years, a special session is in order as soon as possible to determine the issue and lend it a patina of democratic legitimacy.
Legitimate government flows from the people’s consent. Anything else is unjust. For the Founders of our Republic, wherever moral legitimacy is present, authority resides. The Constitution of the United States, and that of States like Iowa, is, then, something more than a rule book or organizational table, it represents the people’s collected wisdom and traditions, and creates a framework of those powers that the People have loaned to the Government. Thus, all who hold public office bind themselves by solemn oath to the Constitution as our representatives; surrogates whom we entrust to uphold our interests, not theirs.
The consent of the governed is not a blank check to pencil in any desire of the officials of one generation. Constitutions embody consent to the form of government; consent to the scope of government; and consent to the methods and effects of individual laws.
The Founders recognized explicitly that though the official power of government provides a means to obtain justice, it also provides the ambitious with a means to abuse power.
They further recognized that citizens should be burdened by government imposition as little as possible. Government-imposed burdens upon citizens are legitimate only under the following circumstances: the burden is necessary to achieve a just end; and the cost of the burden is outweighed by the benefits it provides. Government should have “…a decent respect to the opinions of mankind…;” in other words, to be responsive to its citizens and not enact laws and policies that are repugnant to them or their values.
Opinions, attitudes, and tastes change, and laws change to reflect them. If one reads the Federalist Papers, one learns that the agent of change, under the Constitution, and those of the states was to be the legislature. The judiciary was meant to be the most conserving branch, resistant to change, and enforcing the laws and Constitution as written. The executive, too, was to have energy and act with dispatch. Courts were to be deliberative and derive all power from the framing documents as they did not have the added legitimacy of being elected for a set time.
The Iowa Court’s same-sex marriage ruling destroys all of these carefully arranged constitutional protections. The Court’s unanimous ruling that the institution of marriage, known to the founders, the Civil War generation, and all civilized nations before now, violated the Iowa Constitution created at the state’s founding. In a stroke, the judiciary has changed the meaning, nature and substance of marriage in a manner resisted by the people of Iowa at all times and even to the present day. Recent laws passed by Iowa have been destroyed upon no authority but the asserted greater wisdom of these seven solons on the Court.
Whatever one’s views on the creation of a same-sex marriage right, the arrogance of judicial fiat should worry all Iowans. Space does not permit a recitation of all the consequences of this ruling but what is to prevent a Court to determine marriage of any kind is unconstitutional? After all, if all people are equal why should the state privilege one institution joining only two of them?
If not reined in, the Judiciary will now have no stopping point in dictating the forms of Government to the people of Iowa. Only a special session of the state legislature can reclaim for We the People our rightful ability to govern ourselves. The Judiciary, and their abettors in the media and academia believe they can seize this power in a stroke of a pen from its rightful owners, the citizens of Iowa.
Same-sex marriage advocates in the legislature should not think that this issue will go away. They ought not to be allowed to collude with this judicial usurpation by pointing to the Iowa Court’s decision and stating their hands are tied. Who commands the Iowa Constitution, the citizens of Iowa or the seven judges and their abettors? Are we citizens or subjects? Unless this is dealt with swiftly and democratically in the legislature now, every race in 2010 will have the gay marriage issue in the forefront. There is no economic issue that overrides whether we are allowed to make laws in this state, even if smug elites do not like them.
Almost immediately after the 2010 election, the 2012 Republican and Democratic presidential nominations will begin. Every Republican candidate seeking to become their party’s presidential nominee will crisscross the state using this issue to appeal to the GOP’s conservative core, which means that it will also be an issue in the 2012 state legislative races. Similarly, President Obama, an opponent of same-sex marriage, will once again have to straddle between the will of the people and the radical Jacobinism of his most rabid supporters. His position here will only highlight his indecisiveness, already becoming apparent in foreign affairs.
Passions on both sides of the gay marriage issue are enflamed. On the one side are those who in Woody Allen’s words “want what they want” and on the other those who wish to have a say in their own state’s laws. In order to avoid a destructive scorched earth battle lasting years, a special session is in order as soon as possible to determine the issue and lend it a patina of democratic legitimacy.
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