It has been said that democracy is the worst form of
government, except for all the other forms that have been tried. And we don’t actually live in a “democracy,”
we live in a republic, but that’s here nor there for this discussion. But for
all our faults, we’re still closer to getting it right than any civilization
our size in recorded history. We’re just
so darn polarized. Of course, that’s
because all the people on the other side of the argument are stupid. No matter which side you’re on. That’s what it boils down to. We have so little regard for the opinions of
others. Actually, that’s not true. We have GREAT regard for the opinions of
those who agree with us. So much so that
we usually blindly take their statements as fact. And when they are proven irrefutably to be
wrong, they were merely “inaccurate,” or “misquoted.” Whereas the “other” side, when they’re wrong
(which they are by definition), they’re intentionally obfuscating with
nefarious intent (lying). Or they’re
stupid.
Discussion is healthy, bickering isn’t, and most political
discussions these days are just bickering.
I don’t see anyone on either side of the aisle bringing us together
anytime soon. We seem to be all fresh
out of statesmen. We desperately need a Lincoln,
a Churchill, a Reagan, even a Bill Clinton, who at least knew how to be
reasonable and make a deal with those who disagreed with him.
Still, it amazes me that we’re debating some of the things
we’re most partisan about, when some aspects of it seem to be such common
sense. Here’s a few:
1. Oil
and gas production. We are a
carbon-based-energy economy, and that won’t change anytime soon. For now, today, we have to “drill, baby,
drill.” Yes, we must invest in
alternative energy. The oil will run
out, perhaps not in the 20 years some alarmists predict, but it is a finite resource. The Earth isn’t making any more of it. Furthermore, and this astounds me that people
don’t seem to understand this, we have to drill where the oil is. We can’t
“move” the oil from, say, the ANWR, to a place we’d rather drill (downtown
Detroit comes to mind). And as far as
alternatives go, the safest, most reliable source we currently have on the
table is… nuclear power. It is abundant,
clean, and if managed with some reasonable level of oversight, safer than fossil
fuels. It can work, if we’ll recognize that the well documented “disasters” almost
always occurred from preventable causes, and conversely accept the fact that
government is the necessary oversight body with the power and resources to
effectively force Machiavellian corporations to take all the necessary
safeguards to minimize the risks, which are perfectly manageable with a little
common sense. One promising alternative may be thorium. But no one will research it because you can’t
make a weapon out of it.
2. Immigration.
Call it “amnesty” if you want, but
deporting 11 million people and telling them to come back in the right way is
not a workable solution. The problem
isn’t that they’re here, so much as it is that their consuming resources
without sharing responsibilities. The
nation exists for its citizens, and that comes with the responsibility to
contribute to the good of the society under whose blessings you prosper. Make a law that’s comprehensible and can be
followed, then enforce it, but that law has to include a path to citizenship,
which out to be the goal for both sides.
But as a well-known legal proverb says, “If you’re not part of the
solution, there’s good money to be made prolonging the problem.”
3. Gun
control. A firearm is an inanimate object. It has no will and no conscience. If the trigger is pulled, it’s going to send
a projectile in a straight line at an extremely high rate of speed. But the responsibility for that projectile
lies with the handler, not the firearm.
No gun ever hurt anyone without the intervention, or careless lack
thereof, of a human being. It’s a tool. One with the potential to prevent harm or to
cause it. Handling one is a great
responsibility, one that most reasonable adults are capable of assuming. But many are not, and there must be some way
to protect the rest of us from them.
Some common sense restrictions on firearms ownership and handling are
perfectly reconcilable with my constitutionally guaranteed freedom of ownership. One of those is a background check. And for a background check to be effective,
it has to include all information relevant to making a reasonable
decision. The piecemeal system we
currently have is not effective, but the answer is to fix the system, not impose
blanket restrictions on the law-abiding.
We make you take a test to drive a car; I’d be okay making you take a
test to own a gun. And for those who
don’t like the Second Amendment; change
it. The Constitution provides a
perfectly valid method for doing just that.
It’s been done 27 times, one of which directly repealed a previous
amendment. Your problem is not enough
people agree with you to change it. But
they’re stupid, of course. Which
apparently means more than half of us are stupid. Reading the news, I’m not sure I’d dispute
that.
4. Fiscal
Responsibility. Deficit spending, in the
long haul, is unsustainable. I’m not a
math whiz. I failed College Algebra
three times before finally getting a grad assistant I could understand and
getting a “B.” I got a mercy “C” in
Elementary Calculus, something I had to have to graduate. But I can do basic math. If you spend more than you make, eventually,
you can’t even pay the minimum payments on your credit cards. If your bills are more than your income, you
have some variation of two choices: decrease your bills; increase your
income. If you’re a government, there
seems to be a third option: do absolutely nothing. That’s not technically true, they’re not
doing nothing. They’re steadily running
up the credit cards. But for now,
interest expense (about 6.5% of the 2013
federal budget) pales in comparison to spending. Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme
ever devised. The payout is
unsustainable and increasing at an incredible rate. In 1940, there were 159 taxpayers funding the
system for every one recipient. In 2010,
it was 2.9 to 1. If the average annual
benefit is about $14,000 (and it is), each of those not-quite three people must
contribute over $4,800 a year to maintain the status quo. That would make just this one tax the 4th
largest item in my monthly budget, behind rent, food, gas, and child
support. And the numbers don’t get
better going forward. While employment
remains stagnant, 10,000 new Baby Boomers turn 65 every day. Most estimates say a couple retiring in 2014
will incur a quarter million dollars in healthcare expenses during retirement,
and with costs and life expectancies both rising, the problem only gets
worse. As for increasing revenue, of the
239 million tax returns filed in 2012, only about 268,000 of them show more
than $1 million in adjusted gross income.
If you took a million dollars from every one of them, it would
amount to just over 30% of the estimated $882.7 billion Social Security spent
in fiscal 2013. Social Security,
Medicare and Medicaid combine to account for 47.9% of all federal budget
outlays. By comparison, the official US
budget for fiscal 2013 allocated $672.9 billion for the US military; 17.7% of
total budget outlays, and the US Dept. of Education had a budget of $71.9
billion; just 1.9% of the total. Completely
wiping out the Department of Education, Department of Homeland
Security, Department of Energy, Department of Justice, NASA, the National Intelligence Program, the Department of the Interior,
Department of Commerce, the US Army Corps of Engineers,
the Environmental Protection
Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the Small Business Administration would
fund less than 30% of the Department of
Health and Human Services. All $3.45
trillion of this amounts to what I recently laughably heard called “Draconian
Republican austerity.” So when Bush
spent $2.9 trillion in 2008 it was “irresponsible,” but when Obama spends $3.45
trillion it’s “Draconian austerity??”
What should be cut and what shouldn’t is
open for debate. The fact that we spend unsustainable
sums of money shouldn’t be.
5. “The
Russian Bear Awakes and Remembers His Claws.” Or “You Can Go Home Again…If You
Have Automatic Weapons and Armored Personnel Carriers.” Ignoring signs for years that Vladimir Putin
wants to, as the man who inspired my blog, Mike Bratton, recently said, is
“trying to get the band back together,” the western world has looked on in
bewildered impotence as Russian Troops (sorry, Vlad, nobody bought the
“military surplus” routine) just forcibly lopped off the southern 1/4th
of a sovereign country, almost without firing a shot. Despite explicit, unequivocal statements in
the weeks leading up to the invasion, Vlad rode in on a white Russian horse to
“save” the ethnic Russians suffering under the iron boot of… wait, that was Viktor Yanukovych who sent snipers into
the streets. Now the same depleted
military that was unable to save Yanukovich is unable to save Ukraine. Ask
Neville Chamberlain how much repeated assurances of non-aggression and
restraint mean. And don’t think you can
brush me aside by calling “Godwin,” the parallels between Crimea/Sudetenland
are patently obvious. Furthermore, at least a sizable portion of
Crimea doesn’t want to be saved from Russia.
As unfathomable as I find it, many of these ethnic Russians WANT to be
Russian (Soviet) again. Perhaps not the
overwhelming majority that Putin claims in the “free and unhindered” referendum
held under occupation with only two choices, niehter of which was “remain in
existing Ukraine,” but likely a majority.
And in his 18 March speech should have removed all doubt in all but the
most delusional minds. It’s a shopping
list. “This is where we’re going
next. These are
Russian territories, and we will regain what was robbed and plundered from us.”
Trans-Dniester, eastern Ukraine, part of Kazakhstan, Byelorussia
and Estonia are next, and he may be more justified there than in Crimea. There’s real evidence that some of those
places really are discriminating against ethnic Russians where lingering
anit-Soviet sentiment is strong. The
speech is replete with references to “Russian military glory” and “inseparable part[s] of Russia.”
But most troubling, he may be right about some things. One of the foundational principles of post-feudal
government is the right of the people to remove a government that does not suit
their desires and institute a preferable one.
And he’s right that we tend to be selective in our support for this
principle. The Colonies did just that in
1776. The Confederacy did just that in
1861 (although that didn’t work out so well for them). And Kosovo did it in 2008. Russian troops, or should I say, more Russian
troops, are massing on the borders of eastern Ukraine, conducting more
“training exercises.” (“It’s a training exercise,” “we have no intention
to cross Ukraine’s borders or engage in any aggressive actions,” “We do not
want Ukraine’s division.” Who in their right mind believes this?? “Don’t want Ukraine’s division… any more than
we’ve already divided it.” The question
is: what can we do? The answer,
unfortunately, is “not much,” if we even want to. Our leaders piously lecturing Putin about “21st
century behavior” are laughable, and that’s just the reaction we’re
getting. Nothing short of direct
military intervention is going to stop Putin, and current US leadership
certainly doesn’t have the backbone, and probably not the support of the American
people to do that. Iraq and Afghanistan
have left us broke and isolationist. How
little has changed since World War One a hundred years ago, or since 1938, or
since Russo-Georgia in 2008. I’m not
saying we should march in with troops,
I’m simply saying that’s what it will take. Russia has the stomach, if not the economy for
it. Putin’s speech lauded the
“bloodless” nature of the recent upheaval.
It’s likely to stay that way, and Russia’s USSR re-incarnation is not
likely to stop as long as it stays bloodless.
Such is human history, such is human nature, and that hasn’t changed
much, either.
