The Second Amendment

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

That's it folks.  That's the entire text of the second amendment to the Constitution. I suspect that most people haven't actually read the text since their days in high school, if then, but they wax eloquent over what it does and doesn't mean.

For the first 140 years or so of the existence of the republic, there wasn't really much conversation about the second amendment.  At the beginning, regulation consisted largely of apprehended criminals being punished for their crimes and their guns being confiscated until they had served their time.  Most of the original delegates to the Constitutional Convention saw the second amendment as allowing the states to maintain militias, now called the National Guard, and guns were used for hunting.  Not hunting for sport mind you, hunting for food.  The concept of "leisure time" was most uncommon among any but the wealthiest citizens, which would have included the rich, white men who were the delegates.  And, of course, shooting was a central component of the military.

In 1939, the Supreme Court, in United States v Miller, ruled that interstate commerce in sawed off shotguns could be regulated by the government because a sawed off shotgun had nothing to do with with the maintenance of a well regulated militia.  Thus the right of the Congress to determine which weapons were or were not appropriately allowed in interstate commerce.  

Seventy years later, in 2008, the Court revisited that ruling in District of Columbia v Heller, and in that ruling overturned the DC hand gun ban saying that Miller was an anomaly since a sawed off shotgun could not possibly be used for any legal purpose.  That still allowed the government to determine what weapons could or could not be allowed in interstate commerce by determining if a specific type of weapon could be used for a legal purpose.

In 2010, in McDonald v City of Chicago, the Court strengthened the rights of the individual, outside of the well regulated militia, to possess weapons under the protection of the second amendment.  

So here we are.  Twenty six people are dead in Newtown, Connecticut.  There was a shooting at a hospital in Alabama today.  We've had a bunch of these horrific incidents over the past couple of decades.  What should we do?  There are twenty times more gun deaths in the U.S. than in the other twenty two wealthiest countries combined.  Eighty seven percent of all gun deaths of children in the twenty three wealthiest countries occur here.  And this despite that fact that overall crime and gun crime has declined in the U.S. over the past decade or so.

What the hell is going on?  As I see it, and that's what counts here because this blog is entitled "The World According to Me," we have made guns too easy to get and mental health services to hard to get.  Any solution must address both these issues.

I don't believe it is necessary, or appropriate to ban guns.  Also, I believe that ship has sailed.  Guns are part of American culture, for better and worse.  An outright ban will simply promote a huge black market in guns, think prohibition, and make criminals of perfectly law abiding citizens.  Not only that, target shooting is fun.  In my profligate youth, OK, not really so profligate, but while I was in summer camp, I enjoyed shooting and even earned the NRA rank of sharpshooter second bar.  In those days, the NRA was an advocate regulation of firearms.

Having said all that, I also advocate registration of all guns, background checks and mandatory safety and use classes before someone may purchase a gun.  Owners should be required to report any theft or loss of a weapon to the local police so a national data base of weapons that are no longer accounted for can be maintained.

Extra capacity ammunition clips and bullets that are designed exclusively to kill, like hollow points, as well as automatic weapons should be banned.  Current owners of such clips, bullets and weapons may keep them, but they must be registered.  Penalties for failure to register or report theft/loss should be steep and cost of registration should be moderate.  Concealed weapons permits should be allowed only for those who can prove a need and those permits should be granted very sparingly.

As for mental health and addiction services, right now the Affordable Care Act prohibits insurers from denying coverage on the basis of a prior existing condition.  In 2014, mental health and addiction services will be part of the essential benefits  package that must be offered by the health care exchanges and Medicaid, so accessibility is about to be dramatically increased.

This is all great, assuming people are aware of their need for assistance.  The stigma attached to using mental health services must be removed and friends and relatives of those who need these services have to be willing to step forward and steer patients to those resources.  These school shooting rampages of recent years have been largely perpetrated by young, white, middle and upper middle class males.  After the fact we learn of the warning signs that were missed by those in a position to direct the shooters to get help.  Parents, teachers and, frankly, the public at large need to be educated as to for what they are looking.

None of these proposed solutions will be fool proof and all will take time to accomplish.  But they are a start, and we definitely need to start.  It behooves the public to push the NRA to return to its original policy of advocating reasonable gun regulations.  Right now, the NRA is no less than an accessory to multiple murders.  That must stop.  How to convince the NRA?  Take it over.  Members elect the leaders of the organization.  We need to learn NRA governance structures and co-opt them in the name of public safety.

Finally, gun advocates keep saying that if all the teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary, or the movie goers in Aurora, Colorado had guns this could have been stopped.  Am I the only one who thinks that a kindergarten teacher with a gun locked in her/his desk drawer could not have been counted on to get to that gun before he /she was shot, or that hundreds of panicked movie fans firing their guns in the dark, smoky slaughterhouse that the assailant had created would merely have increased the death toll and engendered even more panic?  The idea that more guns in more hands is safer is patently absurd.  It is true that guns don't kill people, people kill people, but guns in the hands of unstable people make death more likely.

Standing on the Precipice

The election is over.  Now it's time to get to work to do the people's business.  First and foremost there is the fiscal cliff.  For those who have forgotten, let me describe briefly how we got to this point.  The fiscal cliff is a result of Congressional wrangling.  Back in 2011, the House Republican majority held the nation's credit rating hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling without major cuts in certain Federal programs.  The immediate crisis was averted by an agreement to set up a "super committee" that would be charged with reaching a settlement on issues of debt, taxes and deficits by the end of the year.  To the surprise of exactly no one, the committee was a dismal failure.  Because of the 2012 election, Congress and the President decided to kick the can down the road creating the fiscal cliff we face now.  The idea was that with the election over, the legislative and executive branches could tone down the rhetoric and actually accomplish something.  How that will work out remains to be seen.  In the mean time, I have the answers to the problems.  It's not necessary to thank me, I do it for love of country.

The Revenue Side

The Republicans will not tolerate increases in tax rates.  The President and the Democrats demand that the top income earners pay more.  If that doesn't sound like a recipe for success, it's because it isn't.  Yet with all the seeming rock and a hard place posturing, there have been some little cracks of light.  Boehner says he might accept revenue enhancers as long as the rates don't change and the President says he's not wedded to every step of his plan.  It's not much, but it is something.

At the end of the day, if all deductions for all tax payers are eliminated, there will not be enough money saved to make a significant dent in the debt.  Only an actual tax increase will do that.  I've been surprised at how many people don't grip the concept of "marginal rate."  What the President is proposing is an increase in the marginal rate.  So if you are making up to $250,000 in W-2 earnings, you will not pay more.  If you make more than $250,000 in W-2 earnings, the amount above $250,000 will be taxed at 39.6%, the same as during the Clinton years, only no oral sex.  That means that 98% of taxpayers will see no increase in their rates.  As for the claim that small businesses will be hamstrung, 97% of all small businesses don't pass the $250,000 mark either.  That remaining 3% includes hedge funds and financial firms that employ less than 50 people, not really small businesses.   During the Reagan Administration, the top marginal rate was 50%.  During the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations, the top marginal rate went from 91% to 70%.  So stop weeping for the top 2%, they've gotten richer and richer and everyone else has gotten poorer and poorer.

During the campaign, Romney and Ryan said they would close loop holes to raise revenue, but refused to disclose which loop holes they intended to close.  Here are my top picks.  Oil companies receive huge tax breaks through the tax code.  Enough already.  They don't need the help.  We have subsidized the production of ethanol, a fuel that uses more energy to be produced than it creates.  The double whammy is that the tax subsidy rewards agribusiness for diverting its corn crops from food to bad fuel.  This is not only expensive, it's counter productive.  The United States should pocket most of the saving and divert the rest to basic research into the development of alternative fuels.  

All tax breaks for corporate investment off-shore should be terminated.  Let the government keep 50% and spend the other 50% to help finance domestic manufacturing investment.  Other countries have a Value Added Tax (VAT) instead of a corporate income tax.  When their companies export, they are reimbursed for the VAT making their products cheaper when they enter other nations, like, for example, the U.S.  The VAT is a regressive tax, and I don't recommend it for us, but we have to do something to compensate for the unfair advantage granted to vendors from VAT countries.  Congressman Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have been working on what they call a border equity tax that adds back the VAT from other markets when their products land here, and grants tax relief equal to the VAT charged in receiving countries when our companies ship there.  This sounds like a solution, but it violates the rules of  the WTO and could spark tariff/trade wars with some trading "partners" like, say, China.  So the concept needs some more work.

Mitt Romney's late introduction of an amount of deductions allowed, first he said $15K, then $17K and then $25K, has some merit.  I think it works well for home mortgage interest deductions, but not so well for charitable giving.  I think the lower rate for capital gains should be graduated, so up to the first "x" amount of capital gains would be taxed at 15%, anything over that would be taxed as regular income.  Republicans, hey, there may be one who reads this, before you get your panties in a knot, Ronald Reagan's 1986 bipartisan tax reform plan eliminated the lower rate for capital gains altogether, so you're allowed to support the idea.  By allowing some level of capital gains, we would protect the earnings of those middle income Americans whose retirement consists of some capital gains.

The Spending Side

I'm not even going to dignify discussion of cuts to the social safety net programs such as food stamps, unemployment benefits etc.  These make up about 10% of the Federal budget and, thus, should be left alone.  Let's talk about the big three.

Medicare

Fixing Medicare isn't that hard.  It does require political courage.  I'll wait while you laugh about the slim chance that we'd ever see any of that from Congress.  Are you done?  OK, let's move on.  As the private insurance market and simple common sense demonstrate, the costs of medical care are highest for the oldest, sickest people.  This is why insurance companies eliminate prior existing conditions whenever they can, of course with Obamacare they can't do that anymore, and why there are lifetime caps on benefits, oh, and of course with Obamacare they can't do that anymore either.  Medicare covers only the most costly population, old farts like me.  If Medicare could tap into a healthy cohort to share the costs, its income would go up and its costs would decline.  For the last few years we have heard the Republicans and the Tea Party types who have gained control of the Republican Party whine about the evils of government sponsored healthcare.  We all remember the sign above.  If you were to ask most Medicare beneficiaries if they are satisfied with their coverage, they'd say that they are.  Even the Tea Party types like it, as shown in the numerous signs and "intellectual pygmy on the street" interview comments at Tea Party rallies.  Medicare isn't perfect and people have problems with it.  But they never have the problem of their insurer trying to throw them off the plan because Medicare is not for profit.  Personally, I love my Medicare and thanks to Obmacare routine screenings like mammograms, prostate exams, annual physicals, PAP smears and the like are now covered, and the Part D Drug Plan donut hole has been reduced by 25% this year, and will be reduced for each of the next three years until it is eliminated.  

Remember the $716 billion that Romney and Ryan said that President Obama had taken from Medicare?  Well they took the money from private insurance companies who were getting subsidies to offset the costs of Medicare Advantage plans and from hospitals that were overcharging Medicare.  Advantage plans were part of the Republican program passed in the Bush Administration in an attempt to a) inject private market competition into the senior health coverage business and b) lure as many seniors as possible away from traditional Medicare in an attempt to drive it out of business.  I'll bet you can guess how that worked out.  Even with the subsidies, the private market couldn't keep costs in check so now the President has decided that these plans will have to sink or swim without government help.  Part D drug coverage was another genius move by the GOP and Bush.  The program was instituted but not paid for from the budget.  Rather, it was financed by borrowing more money.  And I thought Republicans were against increasing the debt.  It was a huge giveaway to the big drug companies.  Just to make their profits higher, Medicare was prevented from negotiating for better prices.  So some of that $716 billion will close the donut hole that increases the costs of drugs for many Medicare beneficiaries, and not even the sickest ones.  I'm currently in the donut hole and I don't use a lot of prescriptions.  Virtually all of those I do use are generics.

Back to the topic at hand.  If Medicare were opened to everyone at any age, the demographics of the beneficiaries would become much more advantageous and the plan would be financed forever.  Another advantage would be that employers would no longer be in the healthcare business.  I have spoken to numerous small and mid-sized business owners and the one thing upon which they all agree is that they don't want to be in the healthcare business.  Medicare for everyone would accomplish that goal and lower their costs of doing business, making them more competitive in the international market place.

Defense Spending

President Eisenhower

Our defense department is still designed to fight the Cold War.  We have bases all over the world, whether we need them or not.  For example, why do we still have huge bases in Europe?  Germany, France, Italy, the UK etc. have their own sophisticated military establishments.  Let's pack up all the stuff in Europe and come home.  We could save billions of dollars just by doing that alone.  Why do we have a military presence in Japan?  End the World War II prohibition on Japan developing a full military presence, and let them handle it themselves.  More billions would be saved.  Because of North Korea, we still need a presence in South Korea, but that presence should be reduced and South Korea should assume additional responsibility for its own military needs.  That's more billions.

We need to stop building weapons systems that the military doesn't want or need.  Technology has proven to be very effective.  Things like drones and cyber weapons have proven to be very effective  and they risk fewer American lives and cost a lot less.  We should always remember the warning of President Dwight Eisenhower, "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."

Social Security

Who pays more for Social Security, someone who earns $106K per year or someone who earns $200K per year?  The answer is that they pay the same amount.  Social Security taxes are taken out  of W-2 earnings up to a maximum of $106K.  Someone making $35K per year pays a higher percentage of his/her income for Social Security than someone earning $200K.  Does that seem fair to you?  It doesn't seem so fair to me.  To save Social Security, which, by the way, is in no danger until 2035, we need to increase its income.  The way to do that is to lift the cap.  The current system burdens lower income earners more than higher income earners.  Very simple don't you agree?  There are a couple of myths being batted around about Social Security's "problem."  One of the most  widely espoused is that when Social Security was instituted, the average life expectancy was 63 years old, while today it's something like 70  That is true as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.  Back in the day, the average life expectancy may have been 63, but once you made it past 63, your life expectancy was about what it is now.  Remember that infant mortality was quite high back then, so the average includes children who died from things that are now very preventable and now don't really cause death anymore.  Of course Christian Scientists and the whacko followers of Michelle Bachman, who think vaccines cause disease and death keep that average lower than it need be.

So there you have it.  All we need now is for the members of Congress to do is develop a little intestinal fortitude and a spine and we can move ahead.  I suspect that what will come out of all this will be a piecemeal approach that will do little more than kick the can down the road.  Ah but we can dream!

Enough Already and Sandy Too

After 50,000 Republican Primary Debates, a whole bunch of GOP primaries, over a billion dollars of ads by both candidates, their parties, super-pacs, 501c4's (I think it's c4), 3 Presidential and 1 Vice Presidential debate, seemingly endless hours of pontificating by MSNBC, Fox News, network news Sunday shows, Daily Shows and Colbert Reports, I assume you've decided for whom you will be voting.  Most of the people who are reading this made that decision some time ago I suspect.  Some have already voted in states where that is allowed, including Ohio where the Secretary of State did everything he could to prevent it from happening.  I have held off commenting for two reasons. First, there has been enough to read and watch without my two cents in the mix, and, second, I've been busy doing stuff as well as reading and watching everything I could.  Of course if you're one of my Facebook friends, I have posted a plethora of links.  Now it's time to vote.  First, let's take a little detour.

Here in New Jersey, we have early in-person voting at every county clerk's office in the state this weekend and tomorrow for the first time.  This is one of the after-effects of Sandy.  Governor Chris Christie decided that in order to protect the Constitutionally mandated right to vote, the opportunity to vote had to be expanded.  Christie, of whom I am not a fan, has demonstrated character in the face of adversity.  He is paying for it, but more about that in a bit.

Before the storm, during the storm and every day since the storm, the Governor has been a whirlwind of activity and executive decision making.  He warned, cajoled, threatened and browbeat those who live on the barrier islands down the Jersey Shore to leave.  He did everything he could to warn the rest of us as well.  His performance was not unique in the region.  Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg in NewYork, and Governor Malloy of Connecticut were at their best too.  But none of them is my Governor, so I'll focus on Christie.  One of the realities he faced was that the State of New Jersey could not possibility mobilize enough resources to meet the oncoming need.  More had to happen.

Serendipitously, the one elected official who could mobilize the necessary resources saw the need early as well.  Before the Sandy hit, President Obama called the Governor and they talked about what was about to happen.  The President and the Governor spoke repeatedly about the need and about how the United States government could help.  The critical connection between the two governments was handed to Craig Fugate, FEMA administrator, who was given Presidential clearance to wipe away any red tape or other obstacle and make it happen.  FEMA was on the ground here when the storm hit.  

During the storm, Christie kept up his drumbeat of information and effective use of state government authority to try to help those of us out in the storm.  Of course the Governor was out in it too.  The President and the Governor were in frequent communication, with each of them working to provide the kind of coordinated response New Jersey needed and would need going forward.

After Sandy blew through, the President and the Governor visited major scenes of destruction around the state together.  This was no George W Bush thirty-thousand foot fly-by,  they actually worked.  They met with victims and continued to make sure our needs were being met.  It hasn't been perfect, but it was very good.  At each stop, the Governor praised the President for the skill and attentiveness he was showing and the President praised the Governor for his dedication and responsiveness.  It was what we needed to see and hear.

Twelve days before all this, Governor Christie, who has been a strong surrogate for Mitt Romney, was slashing the President verbally all over the country.  He has been relentless.  It's the same line of attack Romney has made but with Christie's unique New Jersey bluntness.  What happened?  The answer is very simple, Chris Christie is the Governor of New Jersey, and he understands that while politics, particularly at the Presidential level, is a vicious blood sport, an elected leader's prime priority is meeting the needs of the populace.  So the Republican Governor and the Democratic President, who understands what the Governor understands, worked together and stood together to provide the resources needed to help the people of New Jersey.  We have all benefitted from this increasingly rare display of grown-up behavior.  Christie still supports Romney and the President continues to run against what Christie is for.  Whether you support them politically or not, you have to be happy to see them working for us.

Not everybody was so happy.  As they were appearing together, Fox News and some of Romney's supporters were attacking Chris Christie as a turncoat.  Fox demanded that Christie re-pledge his fealty to Romney.  In most GOP circles, Christie is being vilified.  How did the Governor respond to all the noise?  When asked about the kerfuffle at a stop down the Jersey Shore, Christie's response said it all, "There are 2 million people in my state without electricity, do you really think I give a damn about Presidential politics?"  No, Governor, the people of New Jersey do not.

As you vote, think about the Governor and the President, and think about all you have seen and heard.  Are the candidates for whom you are about to vote seem to be more committed to us or to themselves?  Are they more interested in getting the job done or in screwing the other side for political points?  Vote carefully as if your life depends on it, because, one day, it may, literally.

20 Game Winners/.300 Hitters

I went to Yankee Stadium a few weeks ago. I'm not a Yankee fan, I'm a Mets fan, but the tickets were free and food was free, so what the heck? Above all, I love baseball. I love it's pace, it's finesse and the skill to play the game at an advanced level.  I got to see future Hall of Fame members Albert Pujols and Derek Jeter and young phenom Mike Trout, who did not disappoint.

Being at the Stadium, with all its ersatz grandeur and tributes to Yankee greats, I thought about why there are virtually no 20 game winners anymore and why so few players hit over .300.  The answers are emblematic of the changes the professional game has undergone over the years.  I remember watching a doubleheader between the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants.  Some will remember that most Sundays featured doubleheaders.  The starting pitchers in the first game were the aces of the bullpens, Don Newcombe of the Dodgers and Johnny Antonelli of the Giants.  In the second game, both Newcombe and Antonelli came back in relief.  Admittedly this was unusual for Antonelli, but it was not so uncommon for Newcombe, who also served as a pinch hitter from time to time because the man could hit.  Since the advent of free agency, this could never happen.  I don't pine for the days when players were basically indentured servants.  Can you imagine how much Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Stan Musial or Ted Williams would make today?

In those days, there were multiple 20 game winners and .300 hitters every year.  As I said, I've been thinking about what has changed.  I think it's the advent of the pitch count.  A hundred pitches is the regular limit for virtually all pitchers today.  That means that they don't generally pitch deep enough into the game to get a win, or they are relieved by specialists for the 7th inning, the setup guy and the closer.  Managers don't feel any compulsion to keep the starter in the game since he has a gaggle of relievers upon whom he can call when there is even a hint of trouble.  Under these circumstances, winning 20 games is nearly impossible.

As for the demise of the .300 hitter, it's related.  When there weren't specialists to bail out a team, the starter stayed in the game and was more vulnerable with each pitch.  Today, a batter rarely sees a tired pitcher.  So a position player will be more likely to succumb to his fatigue after say, 5 innings or so and then ends up facing fresh rested arms as the game goes on.  Add to that the fact that there are a lot more teams, so the talent pool is diluted, and guys who would never have gotten out of the minors are suddenly on major league rosters both as pitchers and position players.

As the season reaches its end, I have lots of respect for those few hitters who are at or above .300, and pitchers who are approaching 20 wins.  

Collateral Damage

Every four years, we New Jersey residents have to renew our drivers' licenses during our birth month.  This is my time.  New Jersey was one of the first states to institute the digital licensing procedure which prevents virtually all forgeries.  In theory this helps protect us from terrorists too.  I don't know how, so don't ask me.

Historically I've gone to a small DMV office in Wyckoff, NJ, around mid-month in the early afternoon.  While the process is a pain in the neck, it only takes about a half hour to complete.  DMV employees are not Nobel laureates, or even smart enough to do much more than dress and feed themselves and get to work, but it's not a great place to work since none of the clientele are particularly happy to be there, so Nobel laureates are reluctant to work there.  I went online to get the address of the Wyckoff office, after all it had been four years, only to learn that the office has been closed to cut costs.

The nearest office is now in Oakland, NJ.  So I fed the address to my map bitch and she led me the 30 minutes or so it took to get to Oakland, about 10 or 15 minutes further than Wyckoff.  The office was buzzing with a lack of activity.  There were a few bored DMV workers moving at regular DMV worker speed and about a gazillion clients sitting around, fuming, and waiting to be called. 

A woman seated next to me complained that the Wyckoff office at its worst was better than Oakland.  Another woman was trying keep her young child from becoming so bored that the rest of us would turn on her and throw them both out of the office.  The obligatory State Trooper was protecting this secure government location by watching the maintenance staff change light bulbs outside in the hall of the DMV office.  As one seat next to me opened a lady sat down and declared that we couldn't expect better service from the government.  Then I lit the fuse.  I said, "This is what you get when you fire public employees." KABOOM she turned to me and said, "I'm for anything that makes government smaller."  My response? "Well then you don't get to complain about how long it takes."  I think we're not friends. 

Since 2009, 600,000 public sector employees have lost their jobs.  Guess what, those folks bought cars and electronics and housewares and dinners at restaurants, and they took vacations.  In short, all those politicos who say they want to revive the economies of their states have removed 600,000 job creators from the marketplace.  Do they really want to create jobs or are they simply posturing?  If you have to renew your driver's license in New Jersey or a bunch of other states, you'll have 2 or 3 hours to ponder these issues.  As for me, I'm good until July of 2016.

America's Christian Jihad

The Christian right wing from Tea Party to Member of Congress, would have us believe that the United States was founded and designed to be a Christian nation.  They maintain that the revered founding fathers were true Christians and that they meant for the country they founded to be a truly Christian country.  Hogwash.  

Anyone who knows anything of the reasons for the early emigration of Europeans to the New World knows that most fled religious persecution from nations that considered themselves Christian and demanded allegiance to their versions of religion.  The very concept of a government run according to Christian doctrine was an anathema to them.

Thomas Jefferson wrote: Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.  

George Washington said: The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.  

These days, we are being driven to a fundamentalist Christian theocracy that accepts the Bible as literal truth and refutes science as violating the "truth" of God's world.  You don't have to be an atheist to see this as a recipe for disaster for the great American experiment.  Should we really require that the mythology of "creationism" be treated as having equal merit to evolution?  

These theocrats have been successful in spinning the anti-establishment clause of the first amendment to be 180º from the actual meaning intended by the authors of the Constitution.  They are claiming that freedom of religion should supersede civil rights.  Catholic institutions are claiming that they can deny their civil employees rights granted by the civil government such as contraception in the name of protecting religious freedom.  In fact, the Constitution intends to protect civil society from the abuses of an intrusive clergy.

Jefferson wrote: In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

John Adams said: This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.

This general skepticism about religion isn't surprising when you remember that the U.S. Constitution  is a product of the Enlightenment of the 18th century and that, unlike the vast majority of Americans at the time, the wealthy elite who were the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were well read and very aware of the writings of Enlightenment philosophers in Europe.

If the United States of America is to retain its prominence in the future, we must work to protect ourselves from religious zealots and their Christian Jihad.

The Supremes and Us

You could have knocked me over with a feather when the Supremes upheld the Affordable Care Act this morning.  When I learned that Chief Justice John Roberts was the deciding vote, I was just plain stunned by disbelief.  What happened here?  How did Roberts end up on this end of a law he clearly dislikes?

The Supreme Court demonstrated its outside the fray quirkiness yet again.  In 1803, cast your minds back, Chief Justice John Marshall first used judicial review in a Federal court.  The Constitution doesn't grant that power to the courts, Marshall just took it.  Judicial review had been used in a very limited way in state courts prior to that, but Marshall's application of the principle to Federal law was new.  There was no legal objection from the United States, so judicial review became part of the law of the land.  Over the 200 plus years since Marbury v Madison, judicial review has become the most significant responsibility of the court.  Left and right have railed against judicial activism when the courts haven't seen things their way, but the principle has stood firm.

So how does this factor into today's decision beyond the usual prerogatives of the Supreme Court?  When the Justice Department mounted its defense against suits aimed at overturning the law, there was a debate about how to defend the individual mandate.  One side wanted to use the constitutional  power of the U.S. to regulate interstate commerce to justify the individual mandate.  The other side wanted to use the constitutional power of the U.S. to levy and collect taxes to justify the mandate.  Personally, based on my extensive experience in constitutional law (OK, so I don't have actual experience in constitutional law but I was a history major in college and have read a bunch of stuff), I favored using the taxing power because I believe there are adequate precedents already.  We are all compelled to pay into Social Security and Medicare as well as unemployment insurance and withholding.  The Administration opted to use the commerce clause because opponents would find the concept of a tax a ripe, juicy target for political attack in these days of the reign of King Grover of Norquist, the most powerful person in the country.

Turns out that the Chief Justice agreed with me (so there!).  The Court's majority ruled that using the commerce clause was unconstitutional.  While Roberts agreed with that, he said that it was constitutional under the taxing power and, therefore, joined the minority, who still felt that the commerce clause was OK, to uphold the law.  Pretty neat, huh?  I'll bet Scalia and Alito wet themselves when Roberts told them.  As usual Thomas displayed his desire to get out of all this and get back to the copy of "Long Dong Silver" he keeps in his office, and the one at his home.

Before the Tea Party types get their panties all in a knot, here are a few things that the law does.

1. Allows children to stay on their parent's plan until they turn 26. (currently 18 million families are using this benefit that is already in place).
2. Children cannot be denied coverage because of prior existing conditions. (in effect now)
3. Closes the Medicare Part C donut hole. (The donut hole is already 25% less thanks to the law.)
4. Provides Medicare recipients with free preventative screenings to reduce costs.
5. Removes lifetime caps on insurance benefits.
6. Prohibits insurance cancellation for people who get sick while covered.
7. Regulates what percentage of premium dollars insurers may use for non-medical costs such as CEO salaries, advertising and administration, and requires that consumers get rebates if those ceilings are exceeded. (this went in effect last November, and you may be getting a check from your insurance company in August if they were guilty)
8. Gives tax credits to small businesses (less than 50 employees) who agree to offer insurance to their employees.
9. Prevents insurers from charging more for women than men (2014).
10. Insurers are not allowed to decline coverage for adults with prior existing conditions (2014).
11. Requires insurers to allow free mammograms and other preventive services.

There are lots of additional things too but you get the idea.  Typically, pollsters have found that people who say they oppose the law approve the things it does.  Go figure. 

So while this SCOTUS has pissed me off plenty, I'm happy with today's ruling.  While the best performance by the Supremes I've ever seen was during the annual Motown Review from the balcony of the Apollo Theatre in New York at a midnight Saturday show back in 1964, this performance was pretty satisfying, although I do miss Diana Ross. 

Government Should Be Run Like A Business

Over the years, we have all heard folks from candidates, to pundits, to personal contacts put forth the idea that government would function better if it were run like a business.  This year that concept is a significant part of Mitt Romney's appeal to voters as he seeks the Presidency.  Having spent more time in business than Mitt Romney, I feel that I have some experience upon which I can draw to evaluate this oft repeated claim.

Any business has but one goal, to make money for its owner or owners, be it a privately held company or a public company.  There may be a formal mission statement or just an informal mission statement, as in the case of smaller enterprises.  These statements generally talk about the products and/or services the company sells and includes a commitment to serve customers at the highest level.  In fact, the reason to fulfill the mission statement is to make money.  This isn't a bad thing.  I would say that it's a good thing.  Setting a positive tone for customers and employees does have an effect upon the ability to earn the income necessary to keep the business going and workers gainfully employed. 

When a business decides to chart a course of action, management needs to formulate a plan, evaluate the positives and negatives of the plan, muster the resources and move forward.  The plan may involve hiring or firing employees at various levels.  Any plan includes some level of risk.  It is the responsibility of management to minimize and manage risk, but the company is in control of the actions it takes.  If plans fail and the enterprise can't survive, it ceases to exist.  While such an occurrence is devastating to employees and, in the case of smaller companies, the owner(s), the impact doesn't extend beyond the local realm, unless it's a large organization that is geographically diverse, in which case the suffering is more widespread, but more about that later.  

Government is fundamentally different.  It isn't narrowly focused on making money, in fact, historically it has demonstrated its greatest effectiveness when it runs short term deficits.  Stakeholders are not limited to those who have chosen to invest in it.  It does not have the option to settle on a course of action and then pursue it, making quick course corrections as required.  Those who oppose management do not have the option to withdraw from its operations.  Its reach is pervasive.  Not only that, but management includes divergent opinions as to what actions to pursue and how to pursue them.  Today, parts of management are diametrically opposed to each other.

They key to business success is being right more often than being wrong.  The key to government success is addressing the needs and desires of wildly different interest groups while special interest groups snipe at those governing from all sides.

To posit that it is either possible or beneficial to apply the principles of private enterprise to governing is either naïve or manipulative.  Government is frequently called to act when private enterprise won't or can't.  Government has to step in to stop secession in the 19th century. No one else would or could.  This is true of all wars.  Government is the only entity with the resources or ability to muster the resources necessary to further the nation's priorities.  Even mercenaries require the support of nation-states to pursue actions.

Closer to the point, government must make priority decisions involving levels of risk that no sane private enterprise would make.  When GM and Chrysler teetered on the brink of failure, there was no private financial resource willing or able to step in.  Mitt Romney publicly opted to let them fail, assuming that some relic would emerge from the collapse at some point.  President Obama made the tough call to put the resources of the public into the industry to protect millions of jobs.  Was it a gamble?  Yes.  But the government officials who oversaw the application of the funds managed them well and the companies have come back, protecting American workers.  Even the failure of Solyndra is an example of what government can and should do.  Solyndra was developing a new approach to harnessing solar power.  The results were promising but success was by no means a given.  The Administration stepped in to underwrite this start up in part because the risk was unacceptable to private sources of capital.  The bet was lost because the process didn't pan out and the people running Solyndra were unethical, to put it nicely.

Today the Republicans point to Solyndra as a failure but are happy to excuse Jamie Dimon, of JP Morgan Chase, whose eyes closed mismanagement caused the company to lose $2 billion and still counting.  Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were poured into Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, PNC and the rest under the Bush Administration's TARP program and no one gave it a second thought when they failed to use the money to lend to small and medium sized businesses as they had been asked to do by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.  Instead, they used it to pay bonuses, buy competitors (PNC bought National City Bank while its middle market clients sucked wind).

Republicans accuse the Obama Administration of "picking winners and losers," but that is what every administration does.  The Bush 41 Administration picked the wealthy, financial sectors, defense industries, oil industry and the like to be the winners.  The incumbent administration has opted to focus attention on small and mid-sized businesses, middle and lower income earners, alternative energy producers and so forth.  These are decisions based upon the philosophical points of view of those in government.  Our job, as voters, is to decide what view of our society coincides most with our own, and vote accordingly.

We need to call the "run government like a business" thing what it is, misguided.  Government is not a business even though corporate interests are investing massive amounts of capital to gain sway over those who are in the government to push them to make it easier for those interests to make money.

God, Religion and All That

Which is more important, that you believe in God or that God believes in you?  Excluding atheists and most agnostics, I believe most people would say that the latter is more important.  I am neither an atheist nor an agnostic, but my concept of God, cultivated through years of, well, OK, I have no special credentials, is reasonably unconventional.  I'll lay it out for you, and you can tell me if it's unconventional or not.

I don't believe in the anthropomorphized God with the six-pack abs on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  I don't believe that God is a third party.  I do believe that God is the massive chaos that is our existence.  Note that I did't say that God created the massive chaos, but rather that God is the massive chaos.  Within that maelstrom of randomness lie possibilities.  Given the random chance that a vast array of possibilities interact at the right random moment, our universe might form.  Further, that haphazard occurrence might set in motion a series of seemingly disconnected stray events that lead to us.  That it took such an huge span of time and a complex evolutionary process speaks to the very randomness of it all.


As I see it, the magnificence of God is that within the swirling maelstrom of existence there are seemingly endless possibilities that, given the right combination of circumstances, could lead to virtually anything.  Of course my concept means that God can't and doesn't answer prayers or "care" about us or, really, anything else.  Thus we come to religion.


For as  long as higher functioning mammals have roamed the earth, they have been curious as to how they got here, why things happen and what can they do to control their destinies.  Early religions developed because they seemed to provide some answers.  Over time, tribal or family or clan leaders used religion as a tool to create civil societies and use the supposed power of deities for a wide variety of social purposes from creating health rules to establishing the dominance of some over others.  The more humans learned, the more complex and sophisticated their religious and societal structures became.


Modern religions are very regimented and organized indeed.  And yet a common refrain of religious leaders and adherents when something happens that seems to be inexplicable within their frameworks, is to say something to the effect of "We cannot know God's mind." Of course, they are right because God doesn't have a mind.  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Because they can.  It's not very soothing to the troubled hearts and minds of those afflicted, but it's true.  Heaven and hell?  Ridiculous.  God has nothing to do with religion.


So let's get to marriage.  Marriage is one of those societal institutions created to provide communal structure.  It have been pretty effective in doing that.  When religion was the pre-eminent vehicle of social organization, mating came under its purview and marriage was the result.  It was done in the context of religion because everything was done in the context of religion.  Civil governments merely recognized the supremacy of the religious order rather than create a parallel system.  It's worked pretty well for a long time, sort of.  The only problem was that in those early and, frankly, not so early societies, women were seen as chattel property of their families and could be bartered or sold into marriage.  Biblical marriage included polygamy and a whole bunch of other seemingly bizarre  arrangements.  Love was just not a factor.


In recent centuries, the concept of romantic love has entered the picture and screwed things up.  Some cultures, and you know who you are, still treat women as chattel.  I can't speak for other countries, but the United States has embraced the notion of romantic love.  In addition, the Constitutional prohibition of government establishment of religion has required the creation of a civil marriage system parallel to the religious system.  That civil alternative grants the right to religious authorities to act as agents of the state performing marriage rights in the religious system.


One of the effects of the civil marriage system has been the facilitation of marriage between partners of different religions.  There's been a lot of consternation over this among religious leaders and devout adherents.  We Jews, being a minority religion, have been slammed pretty hard.


In my salad days, I was dating a really terrific Catholic woman.  She had it all.  But I couldn't bring myself to marry  someone who wasn't Jewish.  She felt the same way, so we broke it off.  Fortunately, I met a terrific Jewish woman who had it all and then some, and we've been married for over thirty years.  My former girlfriend hasn't been so fortunate.  While I haven't actually spoken to her, a common friend has, and she never married.  When it comes to kids, I've found that the desire to have them date within the culture is trumped by getting to know the people they are dating and seeing how happy they make my progeny.  Still, given the fact that I am a secular Jew, entirely non-religious, I find it curious that this carries any weight in my consideration at all.  Turns out, it's not the religion, but the cultural roots, principles and ideals surrounding it that are important.


When it comes to same sex marriages, I have to say I don't care who marries who.  It's none of my business, and it's none of any government's business.  No one is telling any religious institution that it has to perform same sex marriage rituals.  In fact, one of the nice things about having a civil marriage path is that marriage can be religion free.  Those who oppose same sex marriage on religious grounds are intent on imposing their beliefs on others, and that is just un-American.  Of course there is Robin Williams' rationale for supporting same sex marriage.  He famously asked why gay people shouldn't be as miserable as the rest of us.


There is one question raised by a former student of mine on Facebook.  He asked if we should be free to marry whomever we want, what about polygamy?  I'm not talking about compelling twelve year olds to marry, but just in principle, why should we care?  If you are OK with same sex marriage, are you OK with polygamy?

The Failure of the American Experiment

Everyone is talking about the massive flow of anonymously donated money into the Presidential campaign, and with good cause.  Hundreds of millions of dollars will be used to try to sway the electorate to support principally Mitt Romney, that's where the money is, by attacking Barack Obama.  But this is just one part of the overall scenario being plotted by the right wing.  There's more, much more.

The right is hedging its bets.  Mitt Romney has proven to be a less than inspiring figure.  The religious right doesn't trust his Mormon faith.  The political right is wary of his willingness to change positions whenever it seems to suit him politically, and they properly see Obamacare as merely a national application of the Romneycare that Romney sponsored in Massachusetts.  So while they want a Republican in the White House, they aren't resting there.  Tens of millions of dollars have already been spent against Democratic incumbents and candidates for the Senate and House of Representatives, and they are prepared to spend tens of millions more to keep the House and take over the Senate.

Here's what's going on as I see it, and this is my blog, so, you know...  These folks have learned that divided government doesn't work.  This is a lesson that monopolists during the industrial revolution learned.  Being in complete control makes life really easy.  Teddy Roosevelt broke up those business monopolies, but only American voters can keep a check on government.  So the strategy is to control all three branches of government and then pass the laws they believe will make it very hard for the opposition to take it back.

State governments have been playing their parts already.  The voter fraud laws that Republican states have been passing are thinly veiled attempts to suppress turnout among the elderly, poor and young voting blocks that generally vote Democrat.  These laws are no more than modern versions of the poll tax of yore.  There is no voter fraud in the United States to speak of.  The old party machines that registered dead people have all been demolished.

The GOP members of Congress have focused on pushing right wing social issues, and those who tell us to shrug it off as mere campaign rhetoric are being disingenuous because if the Republicans get control of the Senate and White House and continue to control the House, they have promised to enact these laws.

Unlike too many liberals, the Republicans understand that the key issue in this and any other election is who will be appointing the judges, not just to the Supreme Court, but to the lower courts too.  They have failed to fill judgeships under the Obama Administration because their agenda demands that they hold off until they take the Presidency so those appointments will be of ultra right wing jurists and overturning decades of settled law can accelerate even more than it has under the Roberts Court.

What I'm saying here is that there is a right wing agenda that has been developing over the years since the ascendance of Ronald Reagan, who couldn't win a primary in today's GOP by the way.  Their patience is paying off.  The press has been cowed into timidity, except for Fox News the aggressive coordinating mouthpiece for the radical right.  The American public has been pushed to the right by the inability of a gutless, spineless Democratic leadership to press the cause of liberalism.

Only concerted efforts to inform and convince American voters that their interests are and have always been best advanced by liberals.  Not only will it take money to help neutralize the plutocrats that dominate the political process but it will also take organizing and hitting the streets.  We need to pitch in if we want to protect our rights.

The End of the American Century

When last we met, I talked about the failure of the United States to preserve its manufacturing base and called for a national manufacturing policy.  Today I want to address some of the reactions I received.   So get a beverage and/or a snack and let's get to it.

You may recall that I think the concept of the level playing field to be a fiction.  The first step to prosperity is to re-tilt the playing field toward us.  This sounds simple but it isn't.  The World Trade Organization erects many barriers to fair trade.  Tariffs and quotas are largely off the table unless we can make an effective case for dumping by our competitors.  Please remember that we don't have trading partners, only competitors.  Of greater difficulty is overcoming the opposition of those who are benefitting from the current situation.

My earlier comments resulted in my getting a few emails lauding "free trade."  (n.b. Why do people send me emails instead of just posting in that comment box under the blog post itself?)  They rehashed the usual arguments about the supposed benefits.  They also rely on the belief that there is such a thing as free trade.  Hey folks, there is no free trade.  Manipulating currency and using banking rules to help your homeland companies is not free trade.  Establishing quality criteria that only your homeland companies can meet without expensive testing that must be conducted in your homeland labs and takes weeks to complete is not free trade.  Looking aside as your homeland companies violate intellectual property laws while rigorously enforcing them against foreign companies, including the actual IP holders, is not free trade.

Wake up and smell the melamine laced coffee!  Until the United States gets the spine to address these issues, we will continue to suffer from repeated economic rape by off shore competitors.  Until the United States stops using the tax code to reward companies for exporting American jobs, we will continue to be pistol whipped by foreign competitors.  The Federal government is so incapacitated by partisan conflict that it can't decide anything.  That is our fault.  We voters need to clear out the inflexible ideologues who are allowing our nation to suffer continued body blows.  This group is made up of right wing radicals and cowardly Democrats.  Our votes matter.  The future of the country depends on the use of our power to make our government do what must be done.  If we don't act, the era of American ascendancy will end, and we will only be able to look back on the American Century and weep what we have given up.

Please share your views.  Guess what? You can use that box right under this post!  Nifty, huh?

The Austerity Prescription

For nearly a year, I've been asking if someone, anyone, can point to any country, anywhere, that has used austerity successfully to end economic distress.  So far no one has been able to answer my question.  Yet today we are facing a very real possibility that we will be see austerity become the   remedy of choice on January 20, 2012, if Mitt Romney becomes the POTUS.  Should that happen, my assumption is that the Republicans will continue to hold the House of Representatives and take the Senate as well.  If that is the case, the policies of the GOP, specifically the Ryan Budget that passed the House of Representatives, will become the law of the land.  What does that mean?

Rather than dwell on their individual proposals, let me place them in context.  These policies are typical of the austerity programs that have been implemented in Europe, except that the Europeans have increased taxes to make sure everyone pays their fair share.  So how has it gone across the pond?  Has austerity worked?

The U.K. turned to the Tories who implemented the austerity régime there.  At the time, the U.K. was growing very slowly, but its debt was manageable.  So how has it been going?  Thanks to austerity, the U.K. announced last week that it has fallen back into the recession from which it had emerged.  The national debt has ballooned.  The unemployment rate has shot up.  That sounds like a good result, don't you think?

Spain was running a budget surplus when it took the austerity route.  Today it is sitting on a significant national debt.  Unemployment has surged, and economic growth has come to a stop.  Another strong positive result for austerity, eh?

Those who oppose President Obama's policies always like to say that we are headed to becoming another Greece.  While there are any number or reasons why the United States is not heading in that direction, like, for instance, that there is a ready market for U.S. debt instruments at record low interests, in the area of 1%, the results of austerity should be instructive.  Not only is Greece's debt increasing, but the unemployment rate is higher and there is massive civil unrest.

Ireland is experiencing the same negative affects as the other poster children for austerity.  In our own history we have seen the same thing.  In the last quarter of the 19th century, austerity measures gave the country its longest period of economic distress bookended by the panic of 1873 and the panic of 1893.  Herbert Hoover's reaction to the crash of 1929 was austerity that gave us Great Depression.

With all this evidence of the effects of austerity, why do the Republicans want to implement it in the United States now?  I have no idea.

Free Trade - Worshipping A False God

For close to three decades we have been told about the coming of the post-industrial age in the U.S. and of the many benefits of moving beyond the age of factories and industrial production to the glorious world of intellectual and creative power that will follow.

Those of us who live in the world of reality have been skeptical, but the policy wonks, talking heads and pundits drank the cool aid in huge gulps and worship at the alter of the false god of "free trade."  Barriers to trade have dropped like flies, unless you want to export, and off shore manufacturers have stuffed our stores with their goods and our manufacturing base has dried up.  How did we let this happen?  Who is responsible for this?  The short answer to the last question is that we are all responsible.  We have stood idly bye lapping up cheap goods made by subsidized factories that pollute on a massive level, use raw materials that endanger their workers, and sometimes users, e.g. melamine in pet food, or lead paint on toys, steal intellectual property as a matter of course and still play the part of innocents when cited for their abuses.  Isn't it ironic that people have shopped at Wal-Mart for years buying exactly the things that will put their own employers out of business and cost them their jobs?

I wonder why other countries strive to increase their manufacturing bases and stress industrial development while the United States has allowed them to do so by transferring our manufacturing base to theirs.  Are we so much smarter?  Do we know something about economic reality that they don't?  Frankly, we are not smarter, nor do we know something they don't.  Our policy makers from the Nixon Administration to the Obama Administration have been cheerfully manipulated by those governments and large corporations who stand to benefit most from the freedom to kill our manufacturing base.  GE is currently running heart-warming ads about creating jobs in the U.S.  That's all good until we look at the context, which is that for every job GE creates in this country, it creates two or more overseas.  GE and its compatriots are not the answer, they are part of the problem.

Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have repeated the litany that we want free trade as long as we get a level playing field and then they have told us that whatever free trade agreement they were trying to pass through a clueless Congress addresses the issues that tilt the playing field.  Hogwash! China, India, Pakistan and the rest have no interest in a level playing field.  They want and will insist upon keeping the playing field tilted to them.  The only country in the world that actually develops trade policy based upon the naive belief that there will ever be a level playing field is the United States.  At the recent Second Annual Conference on the Renaissance of American Manufacturing, at which I was a panelist (applause here), Dr. Ralph Gomory, a research fellow at NYU, highlighted this issue and explained that our trading competitors, we have no partners, particularly China, are simply pursuing that age old policy of mercantilism.  Their goal is to have raw materials and technology flow to their factories and markets to be open to the manufactured goods those factories make.  They use all manner of economic enticement to lure companies into playing the roles they want them to play, and large companies, having the flexibility and resources to move, do so.

What can we do about it?  First and foremost, we can stop being the only industrialized country without a national manufacturing policy.  For the first time in decades there seems to be a bi-partisan consensus that the country has to do something to spur industrial renewal in this country, so we need to avoid political side shows.  At the conference I mentioned in the last paragraph, I spoke with other small and mid-sized manufacturers in attendance and I asked them two questions: 1) have you ever made a decision about operating your business in which taxes were the key issue.  The unanimous response was "no."  Big companies can move because they have the resources, but small and mid-sized companies can't, so taxes are something that are one factor, but we can't control them, so you just operate in world as it exists.  2) What is the single item of cost and effort you would like to have removed from your business life?  The unanimous response was health insurance.  They, we, want to have our people insured if only because effective health care means lower absenteeism, but we really don't want to pay for it or have to worry about its operation.  The solution unanimously preferred is Medicare for all.  Everyone gets covered, everyone pays in, and businesses can focus on business.  

Those who argue the tax issue are either missing the point or lying.  A couple of weeks ago, Japan dropped its corporate tax rate and the U.S. became the highest taxed country in the world, or did it?  Unlike other countries, we don't have a Value Added Tax (VAT).  If you add Japan's corporate tax to the VAT, their rate is right up there with ours, and some countries are higher.  What difference does it make?  When a company in a VAT country exports, it gets a rebate of its VAT payments for its exports.  So if the VAT is 15%, the price at which a product is sold off shore is immediately decreased by 15% increasing the competitive price of the product in the foreign market.  If both countries are VAT countries, it sort of cancels out.  But the U.S. is not a VAT country, so when our companies export, the full cost of the tax remains attached to the product, and then the receiving country's VAT is added as if it were made there.  The swing could be 30% or more!  Now add to that subsidies and currency manipulation, and you have a condition in which the American exporter cannot compete there and can't compete here either.

Why don't we have a VAT?  There are historical, political and operational reasons.  After World War II, France asked the United States to allow a 2% VAT to help its products compete and foster rebuilding a nation devastated by the war.  The Eisenhower Administration agreed as part of the nation's policy of helping Europe rebuild quickly in the face of Soviet expansionism.  Part of that agreement was a prohibition against the U.S. doing the same thing.  Over the years, the VAT carve out spread with the prohibition attached.  The VAT has frequently been called a national sales tax because it operates as regressively as a sales tax, even though it is not a sales tax.  Generally the U.S. has resisted the concept of regressive taxation.  The theoretical trade off for the VAT is a reduction in income tax rates, such as Japan has just done.  There is justifiable skepticism about whether or not our government would enact a significant income tax reduction.  In our current hyper political atmosphere, even though a VAT is not on the table, exactly how rates should change is a point of contention regarding current tax law, with the Republicans supporting rate cuts at the higher end of the income scale and Democrats supporting increases at the higher end of the income scale.

We must stop nipping around the edges trade policy, accept the reality of our current situation, and refuse to let the playing field tilt toward any country but ours.  Stop whining that it's not fair.  "Fair" doesn't enter into the equation, just ask China.  Our market is still the main target of the mercantilist countries.  We need to press that advantage to rebuild and reinvigorate our manufacturing base.  Thus far, one of the only things about which Democrats and Republicans agree is the export of our manufacturing base.  Progressives or Tea Party members, we must make sure that those who would govern our nation will care more about us than about jobs created in China by U.S. multi-nationals.

Campaigns: My Life on the Trail

In case you haven't noticed, the campaign season is in full swing, from town councils to President of the United States, candidates are either already duking it out, or are about to start duking it out.  As hard as it may be to believe, I have actually campaigned for office.  Based on that experience and my involvement in many other campaigns, I've recognized some realities of the world of political campaigning that I'd like to share with you.

These observations are bi-partisan and non-partisan, and it seemed like a good idea to get them out there before the flying crud gets too deep, and it will.  

I ran for Mayor of a small town of under 6000.  Understand that I didn't intend to run, but somehow I ended up as a candidate.  Having moved from New York, it just seemed logical to me to join my local party political club.  To my surprise, after just a year, I was the president of the club and tasked with the job of finding two council and a mayoral candidate.  The council candidates were fairly easy to find.  One was an incumbent and the other a well known local resident.  No one wanted to run for mayor.  The incumbent, our opponent, was well known and liked and looked like he should be the mayor.  To this day, long after his political career has ended, "Mr. Mayor" is still on his mailbox.  It was sort of like running against everyone's grandpa or cherished uncle.

The party faithful had signed the nominating petition awaiting for the name of the candidate to be written in.  On the last night before the deadline, having called everyone anyone could think of, I had only lived in town two years so I knew no one, the senior member of the nominating committee turned to me and said, "Noblesse oblige, baby, it's you."  Thus was my glorious campaign launched.

Clearly, I was doomed.  I understood that my task was to avoid screwing up and help the two council candidates get elected.  The traditional method of campaigning in my town, as in most small towns, was knocking on doors and going to meet-and-greets hosted by generous party faithful.  It was tough to get real excited about this since I knew victory was not an option.  On most weekend afternoons, I put our two year old son, Dan, in his stroller and we went door to door.  I shouldn't have been surprised that most people were amiable and friendly.  They were happy to talk, particularly those who supported the opposition, who wanted to slow me down so I would reach fewer homes, a fact I was too thick to understand until I spent a nice afternoon chatting with my next door neighbor and returned home to learn that he was my opponent's campaign manager. Was I pissed off? You bet.

In spite of those few disappointments, I fell into the trap of campaigning.  I began to believe that I could actually win.  The more I canvassed, the more convinced I became that victory was not only achievable, but actually within reasonable grasp.  Of course I was wrong.  Victory was never either possible or within reach.  But, and here's the point, a candidate must believe in his/her ability to win in order to carry on.  This is true at every level.  As the election nears, reality may rear its ugly head, as it must have for John McCain and John Kerry, but by then the commitment is so total, that there is no alternative to working hard if only to salvage some of your self respect.

A campaign is a bubble that surrounds the candidate with people who want him/her to win and who stoke him/her with good news that is either true or mere wishful thinking.  At lower levels like town government, there are no polls to inject any sense of reality.  At higher levels information fed to the candidate is sanitized so as to avoid freaking him/her out and maintain morale.

At the Presidential level, there is a difference if you are the incumbent or the challenger.  The incumbent is on the job, not just campaigning, so along with the intense advantages of incumbency and the bully pulpit of the Presidency, you are "in the world" all the time.  The challenger is always in the position of having been campaigning for a long time, much longer these days than in election cycles past.  You have fought and survived an amazingly grueling round of primaries.  Everything that could have been hurled at you has been hurled at you, whether true or fiction.  Now, here you are, ready to go head to head with an incumbent whose presence has been almost illusory during the miserable process you have weathered.  You are pretty well convinced that having taken all you have taken already, you are ready to meet the challenge ahead, whether you are or aren't, and win, whether you have a real shot or don't.

In my case, I walked into the school to vote feeling pretty confident that I had done well enough to upset the incumbent Mayor.  Everyone involved with the campaign assured me they had heard good things.  Of course I lost by a two-to-one margin.  My running mates lost too, although less convincingly.  

As we move along toward election day, I hope you will use my experience as a cautionary tale that helps you empathize with both candidates you support and those you oppose.  Running for office is a difficult thing.  You are just out there.  No one cares about your advisers, it's your name and ego on the line.  By the way, even though I got hammered, I'm glad I ran.  I learned lots and gained a deep regard for the electoral process, no matter how screwed up it seems currently.  I cannot encourage you enough to take the step.  Speak out for what you believe and have the courage of your convictions.  Run for office, it will be among the most frustrating, annoying, wonderful and exhilarating things you have ever done, just keep your eyes wide open and don't talk only to those who support you.  Good luck to those who are making the run in 2012, except for those that I don't support, of course.

Who Needs All That High Fallutin' Book Learnin'?

Have you noticed that there seems to be a developing sub-text of questioning the value of post high school education in American society.  This line of thought has been slithering about our culture for many years.  It poked it's head up above the general din of the national conversation when Rick Santorum accused President Obama of elitism for pressing to broaden opportunities for post secondary education.  But that was just a public exposure of this particular philosophy, not a causal event.  I'm not interested in the political side of this issue today, so the Santorum-Obama dust up will have to wait, or may now be irrelevant since Santorum's fifteen minutes seems to be over.  I am interested in talking about the underlying discussion.

Essentially, the question is, "Is a college degree worth the cost of tuition?"  After all, in the current economic environment, unemployment is hovering over 8%, and college grads who are already unemployed face similar challenges to those faced by everyone else who is currently unemployed.  Why pay anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 a year to be unemployed?  If we look inside those statistics we can get a more nuanced picture.  Unemployment among recent college graduates is 4.1%.  Among high school graduates the rate is 8.7%.  Even college dropouts are doing better than high school graduates. Their unemployment rate is 7.7%.  As for high school dropouts, the rate is 13.8%.  Job prospects are significantly better for college grads.

The corollary question attached to the value of a degree is how does having or not having a degree impact pay levels?  The average high school graduate is making $30,400 a year.  The average college graduate is making $52,200 a year.  Advanced degrees make a difference too.  Masters degree holders are earning an average of $62,300 a year.  Over a lifetime of work the effect is dramatic.  High school grads will earn an average of $1.2 million.  College grads will earn an average of $2.1 million.  Acknowledging that these are all averages, and that there are enormous variations that comprise them, it seems clear to me that the question of the value of a college degree is incontestable.

But even that is not my point today.  There are reasons why education is so prized that are not tangible.  My belief is that education provides benefits that are valuable beyond their cost.  Primary among these is that the process permits our culture to endure through generations.  Education is not only about what we learn, but about how to learn.  In elementary school we learn information of a basic nature.  We are introduced to mathematics, which provides a context for analysis of what we see and we learn the concepts of mathematical manipulation that allow us to evaluate the quantitative nature of our world.  The study of our language and, if we are fortunate, other languages provides means of communication with others.  Languages have been shown to be important in understanding mathematical concepts and advanced mathematical concepts like music.  Reading allows us to be exposed to the vast diversity of our existence.  Science is the very essence of everything, and the introductory concepts to which we are exposed opens a door to an astounding array of explanations of what things are, how things happen and why things happen.  History explains how we got here and reveals the patterns of behavior that have made societies what they are and helps us understand why they do what they do.  Art hones analytical skills.  It trains us to see how colors, textures, space and perspective inter react.  Art is math, history and science all rolled into a single area of study that then invites us to "play" with those concepts.  Above all, school teaches us to be social beings.  One of my big complaints about home schooling is that there is little or no social component, and the occasional play date doesn't overcome that shortcoming.  In sum, elementary education gives us information and teaches us to use that information as a problem solving tool.

Secondary education expands our knowledge base and refines our problem solving skills.  We are trained to draw upon all our fields of study to find solutions to questions that arise in life, academic and non-academic.

Higher education is less about acquiring information for its own sake and more about applying it to address increasingly complex issues.  This is where we are our most innovative.  A lifetime of learning to study, learn, evaluate and predict lead to developing truly new approaches that enhance experiencing the world for everyone.

As education becomes reduced purely to test statistics, we lose the thing that has made the United States great: thinking outside the box.  Sorry about the cliché.  During the time when the test scores of Japanese students were cited as examples of the inferiority of the American education system, a Japanese customer told me that the reason the U.S. is so advanced is that we encourage students to question, while other nations reward rote learning.  The higher the level of educational training, the more diverse the problem solving skill set becomes.

This is what I find disturbing.  Exactly how do we expect to remain the driver of innovation and creativity, from the sciences to the arts, when we are doing everything we can to direct education toward being no more than vocational training?  Vocational training is an important component of the overall spectrum of educational opportunity, but it cannot become its central tenet.  As a nation we must stress the value of learning for its own sake so that the United States doesn't become a society of well trained drones.  That, I fear, is what we face today.