Common Sense 4 US

Constitution vs. Constitution, and the Oath of Office

2012-02-09T09:50:00.000-05:00

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a bit of stir the other day when she recommended that the Egyptians look to the Republic of South Africa’s Constitution vice the US as they start to draft their own.

Several thoughts occur:

First, it is worth taking a look at the Republic of South Africa’s Constitution and see what it says. It is an interesting document. The first thing you notice is that it is long, really long. Whereas our Constitution can fit on a couple of routine printed pages, the RSA constitution is well over 100 pages long, and it is an exceptionally legalistic document. Several things jump out at you when you read it: the central government controls everything - the constitution defines everything they could think of - down to definitions of various types of municipalities, make up of the municipal councils, etc., identifying types of municipalities by size, and so on.

The national legislature defines the budgets for the nation as a whole, including the provinces and the cities/towns; the national legislature can use deficit spending and take out loans willy-nilly, but provinces and cities/towns have to justify them and are year to year; political parties are nationally funded, and so on...

Also, the supreme court overseas the entire court system which reaches right down to the local courts, and it has the authority to tell the president and the national legislature that they are acting unconstitutionally; the president is clearly the weakest of the three branches of government; and there is a long and tortuous list of rights, which include nearly everything that a liberal lawyer could think of to include as to rights.

Of note, they spend so a great deal of time listing ‘rights’ (and rights include a whole host of entitlements) - a lot of them, pages of them, yet there is no right to defend yourself (or of the right to bear arms - God forbid). One might suggest that this right is implied. Yet, if you read through all the other rights, why they would include all those and leave out the right to defend yourself is a mystery.

All in all, I think one reason Judge Ginsburg (and others) might like this constitution more than the one she swore to uphold - it that is written so that the central government is all-powerful, and most importantly, lawyers run the central government. What's not to like (from her perspective)? One additional fun fact, RSA Judges are approved by the legislature, but no judge can be nominated until approved by the 'Judicial Service Commission' which is run by the chief justice. Nice...

All of this begs an interesting question, which is rarely discussed: What is a right? (More accurately, what is a natural right? Though there are some, those of the new world order, and I suspect Judge Ginsburg would find herself in that group, who would dispute that there is a natural right as separate and distinct from any other kind of right.) Natural rights, of course, are rights that come from God. To answer that question, the simplest description is: those rights that exist apart from government, not because of any government. A natural right predates government and exists despite government, not because of government. If it doesn't satisfy that requirement it is not a right. Our Constitution was drafted by people who recognized natural rights as apart from anything else that a government or court might attempt to create. Those who drafted the RSA constitution did not recognize the difference.

Second, there is nothing wrong with liking something from another country: I love Australian wines. But, Justice Ginsburg isn’t just someone; she’s a Supreme Court Judge. The Judge must either be truly naïve to believe that she could just make a simple statement that ‘for them, perhaps they might try X’ without really thinking much more about it than if she were suggesting a new soft drink, and that no one would really remark that a Supreme Court Judge didn’t rise in defense of our Constitution or, we must assume that she really does like other constitutions more than ours.

While Judge Ginsburg may truly believe in all the rights enumerated in the RSA constitution, the fact is that as a Supreme Court Judge she gave up some rights. So does everyone else who takes the oath of office. He is the simple truth: once you take that oath things change. And with seniority comes more responsibility. When Private Jones, USMC takes an oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution’ he is laying his life on the line. He loses some rights (he can go to prison for not showing up to work on time…). Same for a Congressman, Judge or President. Except more so. I don’t expect them to adhere to the famous toast ‘our country right or wrong,’* I insist on it.

Consider schoolboys talking about their mom: it doesn’t matter if Johnny’s mom always had hot chocolate chip cookies and your mom didn’t; you’re still a lousy son if you didn’t say ‘my mom’s best.’ If you don’t feel the need to defend our country and our institutions from the outside, then you should leave the job. It is all well and good for us, inside the fence-line, to argue and fight. Outside the fence-line it is expected that you will defend mom.

As senior ambassadors of our nation – and a Supreme Court Judge is as senior an ambassador as you can get, short of the President – they must embody the best of our nation and they must embrace our nation. They are no longer private citizens. As long as they remain in their offices, they can’t like someplace else to live, they can’t prefer another type of government, they can’t wish they were born someplace else. If they want that, don’t take the job. We have the right to expect a certain degree of loyalty from our senior public officials. After all, we expect it from Private Jones, and we expect him to be ready to put his life on the line. In the end, I fully expect every public official to be not only ready to defend our country from comment and slander, I expect them to defend our country and be ready to die for our country. If this be parochialism, so be it.

* The complete quote, from Captain Stephen Decatur, 1816, is “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.”

What Next For North Korea?

2011-12-19T11:19:00.000-05:00

Kim Jong Il is dead. While there will be many questions asked about what happens next, the most important one is this: what should the US do with this opportunity? And it is important to view this as an opportunity.

First, consider what is happening inside North Korea right now, and probably for at least several months and perhaps the next several years: there is a very real power struggle going on. Kim Jong Un is now the new titular head of state, though there was reportedly an arrangement in which his aunt and uncle would act as regents for some period of time. Like much in North Korea, much of this is both speculative, and, because of the nature of power in such an extreme dictatorship, whatever the situation was the minute before Kim Jong Il’s death, it has probably changed since his death two days ago.

It is important to remember that while Kim Jong Il lived, despite what many people had reported, there was virtually no chance of regime change by other members of the government. There would be no revolt or palace coup, no seizure of power by a ‘praetorian guard’ or a close and trusted advisor. This was because of how Kim Il Song (Kim Jong Il’s father) and Kim Jong Il had constructed the real power structure in North Korea. Everything flowed through first the father, and after the early 1980s increasingly through the son. Beginning some time in the 1980s Kim Jong Il was personally responsible for the promotion of every officer in the armed forces to the rank of colonel and above. They were appointed by him, they served at his pleasure. And they were rewarded by him. The standard of living enjoyed by generals and ministers and other senior functionaries all was controlled by Kim. The houses they lived in, the food they ate, the clothing they and their families wore, the furniture, cars, alcohol, etc., etc., etc., all came directly from Kim. Loyalty to Kim was the price of admission, and promotion was conditional on ever more loyalty.

That Kim Jong Il, with a GDP of just $20 billion, and a population of 21 million – living on perhaps 1500 calories per day per person – was able to keep his own country under control, while managing to keep the US, the ROK, Japan, China and Russia – the three largest economies in the world, the other two in the top 10, with combined GDPs nearly 1,000 times greater than North Korea and with combined populations almost 100 times North Korea’s - all off balance and all wanting to entice him into continued ‘6 Power’ talks is a testimony to how well organized and how capable he was. (It is necessary to note that Kim Jong Il was also completely evil. But he was as bright and capable as anyone on the international scene.)

Kim Jong Il knew he wasn’t well, and like his father, attempted to set up one of his sons to replace him. His father (born on the day the Titanic sank) lived into his 80s. If Kim Jong Il had done so, he would have provided his son Kim Jong Un more than 14 years of ‘apprenticeship’ before he came to power. Fortunately or unfortunately, that is not the case. Now, he – Kim Jong Un - will have to work out his own understanding of power, without the benefit of his father’s (evil but accurate) insights.

What is likely to happen?

While there is reason to be concerned, the situation is manageable. Kim Jong Un will face a number of factions within the government. It is likely that the bulk of the army will remain completely loyal. The army leadership has been selected for their loyalty, lack of adventurous spirit, and willingness to follow. Despite various comments by many who should know better, the bulk of the army leadership does not want to attack south. They know that doing so would be the last act of the nation of North Korea, and that they would all likely die violent deaths. When you are living in the fairly luxurious accommodations, that is hardly an enticing choice. So, they will attempt to establish control over Kim Jong Un, make him one of theirs, and continue things as they have been – living one day and one week at a time, managing a decrepit, nuclear-armed state.

Some in the army may be tempted to seize control, and throw the Kim family out of power. The justification would be that the younger Kim is unfit to rule and that the nation needs new directions and new goals. Doubtless the population believes this. Scenes of hundreds of thousands of North Koreans weeping mean little to nothing. The North Korean people have been trained for three generations (or more, if you include the occupation by Japan from late in the 19th century until the end of World War II) to provide when asked the answer the central government wants. Standing around weeping after the announcement of his death doesn’t mean they are stupid, they are just doing what they need to do to survive. Nevertheless, coups by the army would likely fall one way: seize Kim Jong Un, displace the current regents, and rule through Kim Jong Un as a mouthpiece. This keeps the current power structure in place, and provides a smoke screen as the new leaders engage in their own ‘house-cleaning’ and their own internal struggle to establish who exactly is top man. Less likely they would publicly displace Kim Jong Un and the regents and establish an entirely new government. If this happens, it would be an indication that some real risk takers are running the new government.

There may also be an attempt by others in the government – but outside the army – to seize power in what would have to be a strictly ‘palace coup,’ This would almost certainly involve using Kim Jong Un as their puppet in order to keep the army at arms length.

In all three cases, we could expect to see a number of senior figures suddenly retiring. The fewer ‘retirements’ we see, the more likely it is that Kim Jong Un and the regents are running the show.

What will the Chinese Do?

The situation on the Korean Peninsula is one that presents mainly headaches and few benefits to Beijing. While China for many years said that they wanted a united peninsula, by the mid 1980s it became fairly obvious that the only real possibility for a united peninsula was one controlled by the Republic of Korea. That would mean a real democracy on China’s border, and one with a close alliance with the US. That is something China does not want. Add to that the historic perspective that every time over the past 2000 years that the Korean peninsula has been united China has had to fight a bloody war over it, and the Chinese position on Korea became more nuanced. In short, pushing a resolution of the Korea problem into the distant future became a real option for China.

Accordingly, when the Soviet Union collapsed, China stepped in to provide fuel, rice and monetary support to North Korea to keep it barely viable. China was, however, never interested in making North Korea comfortable enough that it might try something truly ‘adventurous.’ Minor provocations that would lead to more frenzied peace talks were one thing, enough food and fuel to plan real military operations quite another.

Now, with the death of Kim Jong Il, China finds itself with an untried leader on this potentially dangerous piece of ground. From China’s perspective, what it must not do is lead to a greater US presence in East Asia. China’s interests will be to keep things quiet and stable, and keep everyone looking elsewhere. Direct and concerted US focus on the Koreas will only stir a confrontation China does not want right now. (If this is not so, then the Chinese leadership is considerably less competent then they appear, and considerably less competent than Kim Jong Il was.) China will move to provide support to Kim Jong Un, and to establish itself as the clear ‘power broker’ in support of Kim. Kim Jong Un will find them an inviting ally who will guarantee his smooth transition to power. The Chinese may be tempted to move Chinese troops into North Korea to ensure greater stability. Doing so would be a clear sign the Chinese view Kim Jong Un as incapable of leading and that it is necessary to establish a vassal state. The political costs to the Chinese would be large.

What Should the US Do?

All of which begs a simple question: what should the US – in concert with its allies in Seoul (and to a lesser extent Tokyo - though Japan’s role in any action must be kept well hidden) – do with the new regime in Pyongyang?

The answer is this: we need to make a dramatic offer to Kim Jong Un to guarantee the safety of his nation and the well-being of his people. Kim Jong Un has a chance to start with a clean slate. It is unlikely that he knows that. But the US could tell him so. Secret contact would need to be made that makes it clear that the US and the ROK are placing the sins and evils of the Kim Il Song and Kim Jong Il regimes behind them, and then make an offer to Kim Jong Un that we (the US and the ROK) can begin immediate aid to the North, tied to a gradual demilitarization of North Korea, and a transition to a federated Korean Peninsula. The specifics of such a federation are almost irrelevant. What Kim Jong Un needs to realize is that he has a brief window – perhaps less than a year – during which the west would be politically able to deal with him as a legitimate ruler, vice a continuation of the criminal regimes of his father and grandfather. In his turn, Kim would need to take real actions to defuse the powder-keg that is North Korea. But such actions could be worked out among north and south Koreans – as Koreans – with the US providing guarantees. Opening of borders, provisions of food and building materials for infrastructure (power, water, roads), and the construction of better housing, with labor provided by north Korean army units (which need not be immediately decommissioned, just separated from their weapons and fighting positions), would be initial steps to transition soldiers from army units into the productive sectors of a new economy. Certainly the Koreans on both sides of the DMZ would be able to develop such a transition plan if given adequate opportunity.

It has been said by various ROK economists that rebuilding North Korea to the point that the north, as part of a unified Korea, was not an economic drag on the south (consider east Germany’s economic drag on unified Germany), would require an investment of at least 200% of the GDP of the ROK. That equates to roughly $2 – 2.5 trillion. Working out a gradual transition over a period of 10 years or so makes that a manageable figure. A dramatic political collapse, followed by economic integration of the failed state with the ROK would almost certainly cause an economic nightmare in the ROK, and one that would likely spread to China and Japan.

If we miss this chance, the situation in North Korea will in all likelihood go through several ‘flair-ups’ and provocations, and then within a year or two settle into a gradual state of continued decay. If Kim Jong Un develops into as talented a leader and manager as his father, he may be able to maintain that slow, gradual decay and prevent the political and economic catastrophe that we should all be hoping to avoid. Meanwhile the 20 million citizens of North Korea will continue to suffer. If he fails to develop as his father did, we will face real turmoil and collapse, or the rise of an even more dangerous and capable dictator.

We have a strange but unique opportunity to change all that – if we are willing to use it. Like Assad in Syria, we have a chance to start again. We missed that chance in 2000 in Syria. Let’s not miss the chance this time, to dramatically change – and improve – the situation on the Korean Peninsula.

Dire Times

2011-09-29T16:11:00.000-04:00

In the summer of 1814 General Prevost attempted to invade the US and push down the Hudson River valley and cut the US in two. He was defeated at the Battle of Plattsburg by forces under General Macomb, after Prevost’s naval squadron was smashed on Lake Champlain by a squadron led by Lieutenant MacDonough. Earlier in the summer (in August) the British had occupied Washington, burned the Capitol and the White House (it is white now, instead of off white, because it was painted in 1815 to cover up the burn marks), then attacked Baltimore.

Why is this significant? Because while all this was going on the nation had elections for Congress. Similar and arguably no less dire elections were held in 1862 and 1864 in the midst of the Civil War. And why is all this significant? Because we have a governor – an elected official – who just a few days ago called for suspending elections in 2012 so Congress could focus on the economy. On the 27th, at a talk she gave at a Rotary Club, Governor Perdue suggested:

"I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover."

Apparently the governor is claiming that the situation is more dire than 1814 or 1862 or 1864. But wait, now the governor and her aides say she was just engaged in sarcasm.

There are many times when sarcasm or hyperbole can be effective tools for bringing clarity to an issue. But an elected official suggesting that it’s time to suspend the democratic process is neither humorous nor appropriate under any circumstances. When some suggested that New York City’s elections be suspended for several months after the attack of September 11th they were roundly – and rightly – condemned.

This is and should be a sensitive issue because it is the one thing that truly keeps government responsive to the people: the elected officials have to get re-elected. If you take that away you end up with a tin-pot dictatorship and the old saw ‘one man, one vote, one time.’ We as a nation have held elections on time no matter what else is happening – storms, wars, flooding, influenza, depression. There are some things that are beyond the pale – ask Governor Allen and his remark when running for Senate a few years ago. One remark ended his campaign. I would suggest that those who speak so cavalierly about suspending the very essence of democracy should be treated at least as badly as those who spew forth remarks of any other kind. We have a guaranteed freedom of speech in this country, but it is guaranteed by the Constitution, that document that the governor swore to defend and yet seems so nonchalant about ignoring.

Just as a reminder, per Article 3, Section 4 of the Constitution of the State of North Carolina the governor shall take: “an oath or affirmation that he will support the Constitution and laws of the United States and of the State of North Carolina …”

What Does It Mean?

2011-08-08T20:25:00.000-04:00

"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.' – Humpty Dumpty, Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

All this time I thought we were living, well, on earth. Apparently, I was wrong. I thought that when the President and Congress said that they were going to reduce the debt, they meant they would make it smaller. That is how my several dictionaries define ‘reduce,’ to make something smaller. At least, that is what it says on this side of the mirror. But, apparently Washington DC is not on this side of the mirror. Instead, we have something else again.

Let me explain.

As of a week ago, the US had an official debt of $14.3 trillion dollars. Some very ‘clever’ economists in Washington had forecasted that by 2021 that debt would grow to some $26.4 trillion. Let’s be clear, this is over the next ten years – it hasn’t happened yet – it’s in the future. Then, a great many people stood around and argued for several weeks and by the time all was said and done, they said they had reduced the debt by more than $2 trillion.

What had they done? Well, in fact, what they had done is to reduce that number – the $26.4 trillion – to $24.3 trillion.

That’s what just happened. Our government (they work for us, not the other way around) – took in about $2.3 trillion in revenue last year and spent $3.7 trillion, a $1.4 trillion difference. That difference, and the debt from previous administrations stretching back into the mists of time, now total $14.3 trillion. The rational mind would suggest that this has to stop, and soon. But our government doesn’t quite see it that way. In fact, the current Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecast yearly revenues to rise to $5 trillion by 2021, but yearly expenses to rise to $5.7 trillion that same year, this before the big ‘deal’ of the past weekend. Now, the White House proudly tells us that they have reduced the debt by $2.1 trillion, reducing NOT the $14.3 trillion, but reducing the total deficit expected to accumulate by 2021 to $24.3 trillion from the previous estimate of $26.4 trillion – a “reduction” of $2.1 trillion. We are going to continue to add debt at a rate of roughly $1 trillion per year, down from $1.2 trillion per year and we are supposed to thank the folks in Washington and celebrate their hard work. This is as sound fiscally as rewarding a child who promises not to overspend as much next year as this year.

Will Rogers once observed that: “When a dog gets a bone, he doesn’t go out and make a down-payment on a bigger bone, he buries the one he’s got.” Our elected representatives in Washington, led by the President, clearly have considerably less sense then the average dog. Anyone who can define a $10 trillion debt increase over the next ten years, as opposed to a $12 trillion increase, as a ‘reduction,’ is either a snake-oil salesman of the highest order - or stupid. Either way, they shouldn’t be in office and neither should their aides and henchmen.

For those of you who want to read on, here is the problem in relative terms: Let’s pretend you have $143,000 in debt. The bank is a bit concerned because last year you only managed to bring home $23,000 and yet you spent $36,000. (If these numbers look vaguely familiar, they should; multiply each 100 million and they are the relevant numbers for the US Government – our government.) The Bank sends around an accountant and financial planner and they ask to see your financial plans for the next ten years. You pull out your books and show them that by 2021 you intend to be bringing in about $50,000 a year and spending $57,000 a year, by which time your debt will have risen to ‘only’ $264,000. The accountant and the financial planner beat their breasts and say that doom is upon you. You struggle for weeks.

In the end, you develop a plan that trims your spending from $57,000 per year to roughly $53,000 per year by 2021, and your total debt to $243,000. In other words, your spending, currently at $36,000 per year, will only increase $1700 per year rather than $2100 dollars per year, while your income will increase $2700 per year. You all celebrate.

Huh?

“If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?” Will Rogers

Throw the Bums Out

2011-08-02T17:14:00.003-04:00

Well, we now have a new debt ceiling. I am told by the pundits that I am supposed to feel good about this, that we have avoided a possible catastrophe and that we are now on our way to some sort of economic/fiscal/monetary salvation. Or some such thing.

That is, of course, nonsense.

Because no one seems to be raising the real issue, let’s review.

1) The US debt is not, strictly speaking $14.5 trillion (or, more poignantly $14,500,000,000,000). Debt is defined as an obligation to pay. What is the total obligation the US government now has to pay, under the law? The answer, for those who are interested (which should be all of us), is roughly $120 trillion (I’ll skip writing it out). That is the total amount of money that the US Government has agreed to pay out via various retirement plans, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment Compensation, Aid to Financially Dependent Children and dozens of other such entitlement programs. The current population of the US – 309 million – will receive $120 trillion in payouts over the course of their lives. (More, of course, will be paid out as the population rises and as inflation moves Congress to adjust entitlement payouts. About that in a minute.)

2) Despite all the noise from Washington, very little of what just took place changes that huge number. All of that money must come, eventually, from the private sector. (Government employees may pay into Social Security, but they do so with money that they received via taxes on the real economy.) And the private sector has only 140 million workers. That translates into a great deal of money per worker that must be paid into the coffers of each of these programs over the course of the next 40 years or in some other way set aside to make those payments. (The average workers ‘earning period.’ The fact that many of our fellow 309 million citizens have either already retired or have yet to begin working all balances out in the averages. Suffice it to say that among those 309 million, they will generate roughly 5.6 billion man-years of labor.) How much? Roughly $23,000 per worker per year. For the nation, that means $3.2 trillion. And that does not pay one dime in interest on borrowed money, nothing to national security, nothing to pay any government employees (military or otherwise), nothing to pay for any of the other discretionary spending.

In 2010 the US collected $2.2 trillion and spent $3.5 trillion.

Discretionary spending (i.e., the non-entitlement programs such as those discussed above) includes roughly $800 billion for defense and other national security programs, nearly $500 billion for other discretionary spending (from Department of Commerce and Department of Agriculture, to the Departments of Justice, Labor, etc.) We will also spend a bit more than $200 billion on servicing the debt this year.

3) What has just happened in Washington is that the government has just been given approval to raise another $2 trillion in debt. Why is that? Because they can’t figure out how to live within their means – our means. Now, it says in the paper that they managed all sorts of cuts. Maybe. But the numbers we are talking about above – the trillions of dollars flowing out - are taking place every year. And the agreement just signed manages to find $2 trillion dollars in savings over ten years. We are told that $900 billion in cuts will take place ‘immediately.’ Does that mean that the 2012 budget will be $3.6 trillion? No, not at all. In fact, next year’s discretionary budget will be cut only $22 billion, while our total debt will climb roughly another trillion dollars. In fact, over the next ten years US debt will climb – under this new plan – to $22 trillion. The savings come about because the projected numbers would have had the US debt reach 24.6 trillion in the same time frame. So much for savings.

Nor does this account for the simple truth that the next Congress need not be bound by this bill. Nor does it account for provisions in the law that already provide for automatic increases in various entitlement programs as inflation increases. And most economists are fairly certain that inflation is going to climb significantly over the next few years as a result of the current deficit spending and monetary policy.

4) What Congress and the President did over the last few days is not exactly equivalent to rearranging the deck chairs on the TITANIC, as this debate, if continued vigorously, might indeed yield real results. But, whether it does is doubtful. And the reason for that is simply put: the wrong people are in office. Make no mistake, the system is NOT broken. The Constitution works just fine. What is happening is that Congress and the White House and the huge, sprawling bureaucracy that is the Federal Government simply is not working for the citizens, they are not doing their jobs.

The President says ‘Washington has the ability to focus when there is a deadline.’ That is nonsense. Washington has been unable to pass a real budget since the President took office. The budget is what Congress and the White House are supposed to do. It is the day to day mechanism for actually making the government operate. No final budget was passed in 2010 or 2011. It is looking increasingly like one will not pass in 2012. The President will no doubt rant and rave at Congress and the Republican House that they blocked it. The fact is that the President had an overwhelming majority in both Houses of Congress for two years and could not pass a budget.

The White House, the Congress, and the vast bureaucracy that surrounds the daily processes of government are no longer working. It is time for them to go. The nation is not benefiting from the idiotic rantings of the White House and various Congressmen as well as senior bureaucrats. And while there are many who often say that ‘there are many who are working hard and they are doing important work,’ the answer is that, in fact, the performance of the Federal Government, to include large elements of the Department of Defense (and despite the great job of the troops in the field), is so abysmal that the only answer is to start anew. In short, it is time to vote the bums out.

To those who respond that these acts would be irresponsible, that it would leave us without anyone who knows how to run the government or to carry out the nation’s laws, my answer is simple:

You – the incumbents – have already demonstrated that you do not know how to run the country or how to carry out the nation’s founding laws – the Constitution.

You have spent us into ruin.

You have constructed a tangle of laws and regulations that are so confusing and restricting that only those who operate within the confines of certain key, well connected ‘communities’ can benefit, while everyone else pays.

You allowed false and twisted economic policies to be enacted that ruined many an average American while a small number of insiders, all of whom have deep ties to various government bodies and key political figures, massively benefited, often with funds derived from taxpayers.

You have failed to act on your primary responsibilities – passing a budget – while engaging in seemingly endless inanities for your own self-aggrandizement.

You hold ‘high theater’ with the nation’s economy yet in the end devise no plan to reduce our debt, curtail government spending or address our economic problems.

In short, you the ruling “elite” have shown yourself unworthy of our support or our trust. It is time for you to go.

Herewith a recommendation to all my fellow citizens:

Vote against every incumbent.

Vote only for those who will publicly swear on a bible and sign an oath that they will be fiscally responsible.

Demand the resignation of every appointee, and every SES in the government. In order to be fair, the same must be demanded of the Defense Department: every flag officer should resign.

Demand the resignation of every Federal Judge. Those that will not resign should be impeached by Congress.

Demand that the permanent staffs on Capital Hill be wiped clean.

War Powers and Libya

2011-06-17T16:31:00.000-04:00

How many cars have two steering wheels? The answer, of course is none, at least of those billion or so driving around on public roads between here and Timbuktu. The reason for that is simple: when one person drives a car it is dangerous enough. But give two people the controls simultaneously and you are certain to have a wreck. The same is true for any organization, in particular a military.

Despite what some (too many) may say of ‘dual-hatting’ and similar ‘modern’ forms of management (and they aren’t modern, just recently rediscovered), the fact is that when things become very serious the chain of command must become focused. If you don’t think so, try to have two surgeons in charge of your open-heart operation. There may be many people, all very professional, working simultaneously and with what appears to be little minute-to-minute oversight, but there is only one person in charge in the operating room at any time.

The same is just as necessary – and just as critical – in a war zone. That is why having Congress debate foreign military involvement is of such value: it allows the government as a whole, and all the agencies, to come together and receive clear guidance. When a President signs a declaration of war (something that hasn’t been done since December of 1941, though President Bush came fairly close with the resolutions Congress passed in both 2001 and in 2003), several things happen:

1) The entire nation is provided with clarity as to what the government is doing - a goal is set

2) The government provides a statement as to our level of commitment - what assets are available

3) The President is now given clear and specific authority to execute – we all know who is in charge.

This is all of interest now for two different reasons. The first is the obscure US involvement in Libya, and the second is that the Department of Defense, in one of the weirdest pieces of irony in recent memory, just officially (for the first time) released the Pentagon Papers on Monday June 13th, the 40th anniversary of their first – and unofficial – release.

What these two have in common is simply this: the shock of the Pentagon Papers was that is displayed for all to see the confused thinking and lack of clear direction that was prevalent throughout the Pentagon and the White House with regard to US goals in Vietnam and South East Asia. Whether it was the White House, the Pentagon and Joint Staff, the theater commander in Hawaii, the commander in Saigon or the CIA, everyone seemed to think that they were ‘really’ running the war, that they knew the real goals, that they had insight into what really needed to be done.

All of which would seem to lead back to the issue of waging war within the construct of the Constitution.

A review of the declarations of war for World War I and World War II make interesting reading, particularly in that they are so short. The language is deliberately sparse in order to prevent any ambiguity or dissimulation.

World War I

WHEREAS, The Imperial German Government has committed repeated acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America; therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government, which has thus been thrust upon the United States, is hereby formally declared; and

That the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial German Government; and to bring the conflict to a successful termination all the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.

World War II

JOINT RESOLUTION Declaring that a state of war exists between the Imperial Government of Japan and the Government and the people of the United States and making provisions to prosecute the same.

Whereas the Imperial Government of Japan has committed unprovoked acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial Government of Japan which has thus been thrust upon the United States is hereby formally declared; and the President is hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial Government of Japan; and, to bring the conflict to a successful termination, all the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.

Spanish-American War

The Declaration of War for the Spanish American War – a limited war, in as much as we were not trying to bring down the entire Spanish government – is of interest:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, First. That war be, and the same is hereby, declared to exist, and that war has existed since the 21st day of April, A.D. 1898, including said day, between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain.

Second. That the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, directed and empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States and to call into actual service of the United States the militia of the several States to such extent as may be necessary to carry this act into effect.

Approved, April 25, 1898.

Presidents then have followed these declarations with specific guidance. Over the years that guidance has grown in size and complexity, but at the very top of the hierarchy – what the President signs out of his office – the guidance still is usually contained in just a few short pages. In those pages – which would be drafted by his staff and the Department of Defense and State with the Attorney General providing legal input as well – the President would define the geography of the war – the Area Of Responsibility, as well as define who is responsible for what specific actions within the AOR. Good leaders provide clear direction, and the better the leader, the better the direction. On the other hand, poor leaders avoid providing direction, and usually avoid discussions which would focus on the presence or absence of clear directions.

All of which is of interest now in light of the ongoing US and NATO combined operations against the Libyan government.

There is a small chorus that says that President Obama violated the Constitution by ordering US forces to conduct attacks against Libya. The President’s authority to direct US military forces come from Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, which simply says that he is the Commander In Chief of the Army, Navy and Militia. The powers of the President, and in particular his war-fighting powers, were left deliberately vague by the Founders for two reasons: first because they knew Washington was going to be the first President and they wanted him to define, and limit, those powers; and second because they understood that some events would require action long before any President could gather Congress together, present them with the pertinent facts, hold a debate and then vote. This was particularly true in an era when Congress did not sit for the whole year, but rather spent the bulk of the year in their home districts and states.

At the same time, the Founders clarified the role of Congress in war-fighting in Article I, Section 8 which states that Congress will provide for the common defense, and later that Congress shall declare war. Sitting at one’s desk that may look fairly neat and clear: Congress declares war, the President is the Commander in Chief. It has rarely been that neat, however, and in particular, in the post-World War II era there has been quite a bit of concern expressed by many that Presidents have overstepped their bounds by putting Marines ashore or deploying ships to this or that trouble spot and acting in US interests (or interfering as others might define it.)

Presidents have, in fact, used US capabilities quite extensively for most of our history and the legacy of Congressional involvement has often been minimal to non-existent. The ability – or inability – to communicate in anything approaching real time certainly changes the nature of the problem, meaning that US actions overseas prior to the laying of the first trans-oceanic telegraphs was of necessity actions taken based on general orders given military commanders weeks to months prior to the actual action. Thus, US involvement in actions such as the Korea Raid in 1871 necessarily took place without Congressional consultation – they took place without Presidential consultation.

It is worth noting that the telegraph – the real dawn of the information age – dramatically changed everything, from the course of events in the War in Crimea in 1855-1856 which was reported essentially in real time in capitals in Europe, to the US Civil War in which Lincoln followed events through daily (and often detailed) telegraphed reports from his commanders, through to President McKinley ordering Admiral Dewey to attack the Spanish fleet in Manila, just hours after the resolution was approved in Congress.

But the point of the Constitution was not to give the President unlimited powers. A reasonable reading of the provisions concerning war and a Navy and an Army strongly suggests that the Founding Fathers believed that the President needed to have the ability to respond to situations as they developed – as Washington did during the Whiskey Rebellion – but that such authority was not open ended. Congress needed to approve in the end because Congress held the purse strings. Congress was, and is, after all, the Legislature, that is, those who create the laws and ‘acts’ which control the actions of the government. The President led the Executive Branch, those who were tasked to execute the laws of the land. Execute the directions provide, not determine those directions. Hence, no President would or should be allowed to conduct an operation without eventually obtaining Congressional approval. But, this control would be applied either directly – a declaration of war, or indirectly – through the approval of a budget that provided funding for the war.

In both cases it was assumed that Congress would insist on being fully informed and would engage in a full and honest debate about whatever military action was taking place.

As for the War Powers Act of 1973, drafted as a direct response to Vietnam and the revelations of leaks such as the Pentagon Papers, President Obama has put the final nail in the coffin on that. While no president since Nixon has agreed with the act, then Senator Obama railed against President Bush for his actions that, in the Senator’s opinion, violated that law. But, with his operations in Libya President Obama has demonstrated by his actions that he sides with his predecessors in viewing the law as un-Constitutional and will not comply with it.

So be it. But whether you believe in the Constitutional validity of the War Powers Act or not, one fact remains: Congress alone has the power to declare war. Congress has usually executed that power passively, allowing Presidents to engage in a wide range of activities, and the Congress has simply ‘gone along’ and funded it. By so doing they have de facto declared their support for the Presidents’ actions just a certainly as if there had been a formal declaration. What is missing is the informed debate and the ostensible product of such a debate: clarity of action.

Irrespective of whether there is a debate or not, a formal declaration or not, when Congress appropriates money to continue various actions, it has declared its support for those actions. Congress can whine and complain about the War Powers Act and about the President exceeding his authorities. But what is crystal clear is that Congress has the power and the responsibility to act to control the behavior of the executive. If it agrees with the behavior, so be it. But Congress still retains the responsibility of funding the executive. If Congress wants to stop US actions in Libya it is fully capable of doing so. If it does not, then it is de facto endorsing those actions. Either way, Congress must choose.

Memorial Day 2011

2011-05-30T11:36:00.002-04:00

Memorial Day should be a day when we all stop and think. It is not enough to simply set aside a day, attach a label to it, and then return to the grill. A memorial is nothing more then an object that serves as a focus for our memory. But, whether it is a picture, a folded flag, or simply some obscure artifact with a relationship to someone known only to the holder; a memorial requires that we engage our intellect. Every memorial requires that we both know something about the individuals and events that are the focus of the memorial, and that we spend the time to remember, that we dwell on the memory.

So, on Memorial Day, what we should be remembering?

The most obvious – and partially correct – answer is that we should remember those who died in the service of our country. But, this is only a partial answer. To truly appreciate the sacrifice of all that have died for our country, we need to understand two things: first, we need to understand why these soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen, coast guardsmen, and a fair number of civilians (who are often forgotten) gave up their lives?

There is an old – and true – adage that soldiers in foxholes fight for their buddies. But, while true, that is a bit too simplistic. From time immemorial soldiers have fought and died to protect their buddies, whatever side they were on. The riders of the Mongol hordes that ravaged central Asia fought and died for their comrades. But no one remembers them.

There is a thread that runs through every war the US has fought. And whether or not that war was in fact the product of the convoluted logic of cynical politicians who either willfully or inadvertently misled the nation – and those uniform - the thread remains. That thread is this: America fights for right. Their will be the cynical who will deny this, and cite a long list of examples, probably starting in the 1800s, in an attempt to show that this or that war was nothing more than a power grab, a bit of ‘imperialism,’ an act of pure conquest.

But for the soldiers and sailors, for the men who actually fought the nation’s wars, that has never been the case. Since the birth of this nation, the youth of this nation have left home, picked up their weapons and packs and headed to war out of a conviction that what they were doing was the right, the true, the moral thing to do. Yes, certainly, they joined for adventure, for comradeship, even for the pay. But beneath the youthful bravado there remains this thread, this belief that America did not fight for empire but for freedom and justice. The politicians, and many of the generals, may have been bitter, cynical practitioners of ‘realpolitik,’ but that does not and cannot change the fact that the soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines fought for what they believed was right. We honor and remember them for that belief.

Second, it is important to remember what they gave up. No one ever went off to war without a choice. Even when drafted there is almost always some means to avoid the front lines. The fact is that while everyone talks ‘a good game’ of avoiding the dangerous and difficult side of warfare, in the final analysis few act on those words. Rather, they ‘shoulder their pack’ and move ‘towards the sounds of cannons.’ We, as a nation and a people, must be ever grateful that they do. But we need to be mindful of what those that died gave up, so that we might live our lives. They gave up their freedom and all the enjoyment of everyday life – for life in the service is devoid of a wide range of liberties that we all enjoy; they gave up their careers and dreams; they gave up their families and their loves; and in the end they gave up their lives. Everything that they had or were, everything that they might do or become, offered up so that others may enjoy the blessings of freedom.

This great nation of ours is a land filled with nearly infinite possibilities. We can do anything we set our minds to do. But it requires some sacrifice. No achievement comes without sacrifice. We are all charged with using our lives here on earth to improve the world around us, to make use of the gifts we have been given to make things better. That will require some sacrifice. Those that we remember today have given, as Lincoln said, ‘the last full measure of devotion’ to the idea of America. Let us remember them, remember their sacrifice, and awake tomorrow determined that their sacrifice was worth it, that we too will sacrifice a bit, that we will build a new and greater nation, one that will continue to be that ‘city on a hill.’

May they all Rest In Peace.

Whither Israel (and Palestine)?

2011-05-26T10:02:00.001-04:00

Winston Churchill once noted that if he had his druthers, every country on earth would be an island. His point, and history continues to prove him right in places as far apart as Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Afghanistan, is that a country must have secure borders if it is to avoid war and survive in the long term.

Geography may not dictate the absolute fate of a nation or a people, but it can’t be ignored. There is no place where that is more obvious then in the ongoing struggle surrounding the state of Israel and its ongoing conflict with the Palestinians. The issue of Israel’s borders has come to the front and center of the news lately with President Obama’s call for Israel to return to its pre-1967 war borders as a starting point for negotiations. But the real center of this struggle is precisely the issue Churchill was addressing: security and secure borders. Yet, despite all the discussions and proposals for peace in the Mid-East, discussions about exchanging land for security, the need to establish proper borders, allow access to this or that city or town, and provide for adequate land for farming and housing, it seems that no one recognizes this issue at its most fundamental level, and therefore they have yet to reach the obvious (and painful) conclusion.

In 1947 the UN Special Committee on Palestine recommended the partition of Palestine into two states: a Jewish state and an Arab state. (The Committee also recommended forming an international state around Jerusalem.)

I must assume that in doing so they wished for those two states to be viable. That they actually established states that were not viable as formed must be attributed to the belief that in the wake of the largest and bloodiest war in history there was hope that simply getting the states started would be such a positive event that the further difficulties might be worked out without resort to bloodshed. The other option is that it was a cynical act by many involved who fully expected a war to follow. In either case, a war did follow, and the existing states of the region (Israel and it’s neighbors and their respective borders) look little like the original UN recommendation. There are many reasons for that, but one underlying issue is that the original states were not, from a geopolitical perspective, viable.

Traditionally, states have been said to be real, viable states when they meet the following criteria:

Raison d’etre: a clear reason why, the ‘thing’ that provides a people an identity as French or Italian or Indonesian. When a people who view themselves as first and foremost this or that religion, then a clan, then a family and only later as inhabitants of this or that nation there is a strong reason to be fearful as to the viability of that nation. In the case of both the Israelis and the Palestinians there is a strong national identity.

Economic viability: there is a real capability to provide a life for its citizens. A putative agricultural state could not exist in the middle of the Sahara irrespective of whatever else might be going on.

Political control and organization: there is real control over the territory and an organization to enforce and regulate that control. Governments that claim control while borders have evaporated and competing armed forces roam the countryside are labeled as failed states. States that are not viable geopolitically, that is, have borders that cannot be guaranteed with reasonable levels of effort, will not – and do not – survive.

Recognized and legitimate government: a functioning government that can carry out the day-to-day operations of a government, and is recognized as the legal representative of the people and area. This is not legitimacy in the absolute sense: dictatorships may not have the support of the people, but they do have control and are dealt with by other nations, whether the other nations like it or not.

Where does this leave the Middle East, specifically, Israel and Palestine?

I recently had the opportunity to spend some time talking with several senior military staff planners about the path ahead for Israel. The contention, shared by many, is that Israel’s security can never be assured until there is a state of Palestine, per the original UN recommendation.

That may be true. But a Palestinian state by itself won’t represent a ‘full and final’ answer. Simply put, it isn’t enough to establish a Palestinian state; the state (nation) of Palestine must be viable – as must Israel. A review of the history from a geopolitical perspective shows that making a viable state is more easily said then done. Unless the intention is to simply construct an international welfare state whose security is guaranteed by others, the borders of any Palestinian state need to be defined with an eye to establishing states – Palestine and Israel – that are viable in the long run, without continued international assistance. But, as with the discussion above about viable states, the usual discussion about Palestine fails to address the critical issue of geography.

Standing in direct opposition to the essence of Churchill’s statement is the idea that a state, any state, can be viable when it (as with the various proposals for Palestine) consists of a patchwork of small plots of land surrounded by another state (Israel), a state with whom relations are likely to remain strained far into the future. That the land itself is also poor agricultural land, with limited water, limited natural resources and few ports only serves to highlight how difficult this solution really will be.

The record for non-contiguous states – states imbedded within another state - throughout history is dismal. The situation currently exists in Azerbaijan, with the autonomous region Naxcivan located between Armenia and Turkey, separated from the bulk of Azerbaijan by roughly 20 mountainous miles. Whether the current boundaries in the Caucus Region will long survive is doubtful. Elsewhere the record has been poor. In the 20th century there were two clear cases: East and West Pakistan (now Bangladesh and Pakistan respectively, and Germany post Versailles, with East Prussia separated from Germany proper by the Danzig Corridor; both were settled by wars. In South Africa one could argue that Bophuthatswana was never really independent, and it too no longer exists, after 22 years of nominal independence. The Enclave of Cabinda, a province of Angola, separated from Angola by the 21-mile coastline of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has suffered several attempts at secession, but Angola has held on to it – at substantial cost, in large part because Cabinda produces 700,000 barrels of oil per day. That the Angolans can reach Cabinda easily by sea also helps to sustain the political relationship, but it is a strained situation that is sustained because of the oil – that is, Cabinda’s oil pays for its existence.

In short, an independent, but geographically scattered Palestine is not likely to develop into a viable state. This is true irrespective of whatever else happens in the never-ending peace talks. Let me restate that: unless you provide borders that leave both Palestine and Israel as viable geopolitical entities nothing else that is agreed upon in any of these peace talks will provide any enduring peace. Geopolitical viability and stability are the foundation, the sine qua non, upon which any sustained peace talks must be built. This is not to say that viable borders will assure peace; they will not. But it does mean that without viable borders there can be no sustained security and hence no lasting peace. In as much as the peace talks avoid this fundamental fact, they avoid a meaningful solution and these talks amount to nothing more than political theater.

At the same time, ‘simply’ providing the Palestinians a contiguous block of land doesn’t address all the issues. The simple but essential point is that Israel is already a legitimate state; any solution provided to the Palestinians can’t be at the expense of the Israeli people or the viability of their state. Further, from the perspective of the US, Israel has been a consistent ally for six decades. Any course the US chooses must respect the fact that based both on our long-standing relationship and on the simple premise that we shouldn’t solve one problem by making another one worse; Israel’s viability must come first.

So, what then are the givens to any solution set for Israel and Palestine? First, consider the fundamentals:

1) Israel must be secure: physically and militarily, economically, politically; both in the short term and in a sustained and sustainable manner in the long term

2) Palestinians must be allowed to live in a viable state where they can achieve political recognition and establish a viable standard of living

3) Any solution must ensure that all states remain contiguous, that they are economically and politically viable for populations in excess of 4 million, particularly with adequate power, water, and an opportunity for economic development

4) Once a Palestinian state is defined and independent, the Palestinians must give up the right of return

5) Jerusalem must be addressed

Where does that leave us?

We start by recognizing that in the end Palestine must be one whole, contiguous state with the means for a viable economy, and that Israel must be one, whole contiguous state with a means for a viable economy, and since Israel perceives itself surrounded by enemies, Israel must have borders which it considers secure and able to be defended. This means simply that the current options, all of which include both the Gaze strip and the West Bank as parts of Palestine are not viable.

For any Palestinian state to be economically viable as well as geographically contiguous, it must not consist of the seemingly endless number of small pieces of land scattered around the West Bank. There are any number of possible solutions to this, but only two real options: a Palestinian state could be established centered on Gaza, or a Palestinian state could be established centered on the West Bank. In either case the other area would be ceded either back to Israel in order to insure secure borders, or back to Egypt or Jordan. Of course, either approach would require that the Palestinians in the other location be moved.

Unfortunately, a state that consisted of the West Bank would almost to a certainty not be viable. While other land-locked countries exist, none exist in areas with so few natural resources, or surrounded by, at best unfriendly neutral powers. A nation that consisted of the West Bank alone, and inhabited by 4 million plus people, with little fresh water, few other resources, and access to the rest of the world only through or over either Israel or Jordan hardly looks promising. In fact, it would likely become an international security problem overnight. Changing the shape of the West Bank to include access to the sea would require either Jordan ceding its sole port – Aqaba, an unlikely event, or Israel ceding either a corridor across it’s northern half (and creating a bifurcated nation) or ceding its northern end – an equally unlikely event. Nor would either option solve the question of how to make such a nation – one built on the West Bank - economically viable.

A nation of Palestine jammed into the current Gaza Strip would yield a small, resource poor, extremely crowded strip of land – again a recipe for disaster. However, Gaza does represent some options, as it provides access to the sea, hence access to trade as well as some basic industries – fishing and elements of the maritime industry. If the international community really wished to settle the Palestinian question, additional land might be purchased from Egypt (a portion of the Sinai Peninsula) and Gaza expanded into a new Palestine. At the same time, investments in Gaza might provide the opportunity for various industries to take root – one that can exploit access to trade routes, etc.

As for Jerusalem, the truth is that one country or the other must recognize that in the end two countries can’t have the same capital. Perhaps East Jerusalem can be partitioned to the Palestinian state, and an airfield built in the West Bank contiguous to East Jerusalem in such a manner that Palestinians could fly into East Jerusalem without having to enter Israel. Additionally, the formal seat of the Palestinian government – for ceremonial purposes only - might be maintained in East Jerusalem. But the real Palestinian government, to return to the problem of geography, must be located inside the real nation-state. To do otherwise is to place the seat of government in strategic jeopardy.

It is said that geography is destiny. While this may not be true in every case, the fact remains that the Israelis and Palestinians must deal with an extremely difficult piece of terrain, and to do so successfully will require minimizing all the negatives that that land possesses. The above options will please very few people. But they do address the very real issue of the geography of the area. The options that are currently ‘on the table’ fail to do so; and failure to do so simply complicates the issue. ‘Solutions’ that further complicate this already difficult situation with a nation of a dozen or more isolated pieces will not, and cannot lead to peace.

So, to return to the essence of Churchill’s statement above, Palestine will never be viable until it is a single, contiguous state. The never-ending talks on ‘Peace in the Middle East’ can choose to ignore that fact. But doing so means that any solution they do produce will be temporary, and probably short-lived. Creating a single, contiguous Palestine will not by itself produce lasting peace, but it is a necessary first step.

The White House, Usama bin Laden and Bear Bryant

2011-05-13T15:28:00.000-04:00

The legendary Alabama Football Coach Bear Bryant used to advise his young players: “When you get in the end-zone, act like you’ve been there before.”

This is pretty good advice for virtually everyone. It is a lesson that has apparently been lost on the currant White House staff. It is common sense that in a war there are many times when it is best to say very little, that anything said may negatively affect ongoing and future operations, that, to use the phrase from an earlier generation, ‘Lose Lips Sink Ships.’

But during the past 12 days we have been ‘treated’ to a seemingly never-ending stream of press conferences, ‘off the record’ briefs and anonymous releases from high sources that have resulted in a significant amount of details about the raid that resulted in Usama bin Laden’s death, about the men and units that executed the raid, about those that supported the raid, about how the intelligence was acquired that led to the raid and about what was discovered as a result of the raid.

And, in true disingenuous Washington DC fashion some of the same people who have taken part in the verbal orgy have lambasted others for saying too much and ‘placing our soldiers and sailors at risk.’

Meanwhile the level of smug hubris at the White House continues to rise. One would suppose that this is normal, that this is the first time that they have had a real victory and it was a significant one – the death of an evil man who was the enemy of our nation. But, in fact, that is no excuse. This isn’t a high school football game. We are still a nation at war and we still have any number of enemies who would like to see our nation destroyed. ‘Celebrating in the end zone’ is not the correct response. In fact, the entire evolution over the past 12 days has been a travesty. Here’s what should have happened:

1) There should have been no announcement until at least the completion of the initial assessment of the material seized in the raid. That would have taken several days, but would have allowed our forces to perhaps act against certain other al Qaeda cells before they were alerted to UBLs death and the possible compromise of their information.

The entire force that conducted the raid is familiar with operating in secret; this would not have been a problem for them. As for the fact that the Pakistanis would find the remains of a helicopter, so what? We could stall for several days, then simply admit that US forces had been there. There would be no need to reveal why – specifically – they had been there until the material seized had been exploited.

When the information had been exploited or we had other information that showed that al Qaeda knew that UBL was dead and that certain information had been compromised, the President could have made his announcement. For the nation at large the result would have been the same, just delayed a few days.

2) The brief statement should have said simply that US forces had raided the compound and that UBL was dead. There should have been no further details and the President should have said: ‘To protect our forces and our capabilities, there will be no further details released as to the forces involved or the tactics and technology involved.’ Unfortunately, like the freshman who has finally scored for the first, the White House wanted to let everyone know about all the ‘cool’ stuff they knew. So they did. And they continue to do so.

3) No details should have been released as to what was found in the compound. Even apparently harmful details such as lewd photos being found with UBL’s data should have been withheld. Unless there was a carefully orchestrated strategic communications plan in place to exploit this fact, such a release will probably backfire in some as yet unanticipated way.

The people who executed the raid, the people who supported the raiders, the intelligence personnel around the world who worked for more than 5 years to grind through a mountain of data to connect one obscure fact after another, all did a magnificent job. And all acted like they had been there before, celebrating quietly and then going back to work to try and get the next guy. That the White House and the President’s national security team benefited from years of effort, effort that really started just a few months after UBL hoofed it out of Tora Bora in December of 2001, is one of the realities of the American political system, and the President did a good job in giving the okay. And we are all glad that UBL is gone.

But since then the President, the VP, SecDef, SecState, and all the other strap hangars, many of them who have spent a career in classified circles inside the Beltway, have all acted like they never heard of Bear Bryant or his words of wisdom, nor have they apparently ever been ‘in the end zone.’ They continue to dance around in the end zone and in doing so they have not only possibly endangered some of the people who executed the mission, they have also revealed things that shouldn’t have been revealed and told our enemies things they should know.

It is an interesting thing that, with very few exceptions, the better someone is at something, the less they talk about it, the less they ‘dance around in the end zone.’ (It is an interesting footnote that Jim Brown, perhaps the greatest football player to date, never spiked the football when he scored at touchdown. Instead, he would simply hand it to the referee. No dance, no weird gyrations, etc.) It is time the President and the rest of the national security team take a cue from such behavior. If your deeds really are significant, they will speak for themselves. If not, all the prattle will in the end only make you look asinine and will hurt our nation.

As Coach Bryant said, try to act like you’ve been there before.

Was That So Hard? The President's Birth Certificate

2011-04-28T08:19:00.000-04:00

When I was a child I sometimes resisted doing things that my mom and dad told me to do, even when I knew not only that it was the right thing to do, but that I also needed to do it. In the end I would do it and I would usually receive from my mom, in a stern but instructive voice, the comment: “Now, was that so hard?”

The President informs us that we – the nation presumably – don’t have time for this ‘silliness,’ that is, the two year long struggle by a number of people to see his birth certificate. Frankly, I was never terribly worked up about the fact that the nation had not seen his birth certificate, but a healthy percentage of the electorate was. What I am confused about is why the President didn’t release the ‘silly’ thing two years ago?

It is worth noting that the issue is hardly ‘silly.’ If perhaps 20% of the electorate question the fundamental legitimacy of the man in the Oval Office, if an officer in the Army has been brought up on charges for failure to obey an order based on his belief that the President was not a legitimate candidate for office, if thousands and thousands of broadcast hours have been consumed by the question, it is no longer silly.

Here’s a hint: if a substantial element of the electorate think something is important – it is. At least, it is important to the extent that the relevant elected official takes the time to explain why it isn’t important. This is something that the President simply refused to do. Instead of simply releasing his birth certificate several years ago, he and his staff dodged the issue, issued substitute documents and generally obfuscated the situation as much as they could. Was it any wonder that some people began to believe that there was more to the story then simple, ‘silly’ stupidity?

But there is another point, and it is far from ‘silly.’ Elected officials are servants of the people, they are not lords over the people. The electorate have every right in the world to ask questions about those who would serve in elected office. Anyone who would run for office but also insist that elements of his or her past are somehow off limits, that the people don’t have the right to see everything, is at the very least engaging in an extreme act of arrogance and disregard for the people. Do we really want to elect to office those who feel that we should vote for them, while they refuse to reveal their complete selves to us? Shouldn’t that preclude you from consideration for office; that is, candidates who won’t release their complete background should simply be rejected by the electorate of both, of all parties?

Beyond that, there is the question of practicality; does any candidate really believe that he can permanently hide some disturbing or embarrassing facet of his early life from those who might want to dig for it? Does anyone think, in this day of the wired nation, that they are going to be able to dodge every possible inquiry? If they do, then there are only two possible answers: they are hardened criminals who have been practicing covering their tracks for years, or they are truly silly. Take your pick.

Instead, they can simply open their files. As John McCain did when he told the press they could look at his medical records, politicians will find it much easier to let everyone see the ‘silly’ files. The truth is, if you don’t try to hide anything the press is going to find little to write about. And, it might even help your image if everyone learns that you drove too fast and crashed your car when you were 24. It would mean that you had had a few learning experiences, and that you had grown. That might make you a better leader. Besides, in the end, as with the President, you will release the information. Why not do it early and get it out of the way?

As my mother would say: Was that so hard?

The Enemy of My Enemy is My ... ?

2011-03-28T15:37:00.000-04:00

In a recent news story from Libya (by the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Or) one of the leaders of the rebel movement – Abdel Hakim al Hasidi – has stated that he fought against the US led Coalition in Iraq and that other extremists and terrorists (my words, not his) that fought against the Coalition in Iraq are now fighting with him (and presumably the US?) in Libya.

This interesting bit of news is further buttressed by a statement from Chad’s President - Idriss Deby Itno - that members of Al Qaeda broke into an armory in Chad and stole man-portable surface to air missiles and headed to Libya to fight against Colonel Qaddafi.

Welcome to war, where nothing turns out quite the way you planned – or hoped.

The President has said that we have established a ‘No Fly’ zone (which is over the entire northern half of the country – more than I thought would be done, but actually not much more difficult, given our capabilities, but it will be harder to justify for any extended period of time) and are attacking Libyan forces in order to help the Libyan civilians. Or something like that. I heard someone quote a decidedly Pentagonese phrase that the goal was to ‘set the conditions to be able to provide aid...’ (If that is the case, we already succeeded; in fact, we succeeded before we started. In short, if that is the stated objective, we can stop whenever we are tired and the story has been sapped for all possible positive spin, declare success, and leave.)

Meanwhile, we are now ‘in bed’ with the rebels who, it turns out, may not be exactly savory characters. They may in fact not wish us terribly well. But we are now officially on their side. When you start dropping bombs and launching missiles and firing cannons at someone’s enemy, you are as officially as it can get on that someone’s side. The President and his staff are all lawyers: aiding and abetting is one thing, but if you are pulling the trigger of the biggest weapon in the room, you aren’t an ‘accomplice,’ you are part of the gang.

Where does that leave us? Do we want Mr. Abdel Hakim to succeed? If he does, are we going to recognize his government? If his government then launches attacks on the west, are we going to attack him? That, by the way, is well beyond any ‘adventurism’ thought of by President Reagan or President Bush (41) or President Bush (43). That kind of activity would put the US into the role of playing the Mid-East as a board game, sort of like Johnson and Nixon tried in Vietnam: put in a leader, take him out when you don’t like him, continue…

It has been noted – repeatedly – that President Obama did not engage in any discussion with Congress before beginning these operations over Libya. Some have said his actions are in violation of the Constitution (they aren’t) or the War Powers Act (they aren’t – he has 90 days to act before Congress can enter the picture – assuming the War Powers Act is Constitutional). But the reason discussion with Congress would be of value – would have been of value – is that facts like this might have come to light.

If the US really saw a national interest in Libya that outweighed the possibility that the US would be setting the groundwork for a pro-Al Qaeda government to possibly come to power in an oil-exporting nation, then a discussion with Congress would ostensibly have highlighted that interest. That did not happen.

We now face the following possible results: The operation fails to dislodge Colonel Qaddafi – he emerges as having ‘beaten’ the US and the West - and he is stronger then ever, and the US reputation in the Mid-East is seriously weakened; the operation dislodges Colonel Qaddafi and the rebel movement, led by Abdel Hakim, takes power and we have an anti-west, radical, terror supporting government replaced by an anti-west, more radical, terror supporting, pro Al Qaeda government; the third option is that the operation serendipitously results in a stalemate, followed by both Colonel Qaddafi’s government collapsing as well as the rebel forces, and both are replaced by a popular, secular, pro-west government.

There is a fourth option, if the above doesn’t sound like a good ‘investment,’ and that is we go in, knock down Colonel Qaddafi’s regime, and set up a stable, secular, pro-West regime right now. That will involve real leadership, hard choices, and, oh yeah, putting 25-30,000 combat troops (4 - 5 BCTs or RCTs) plus support forces ashore to take care of Libya’s military, restore order and re-establish civil processes. As there hasn’t been massive damage to infrastructure yet, it should only take 2 - 3 years. If we’re lucky.

But, there is little likelihood that this path will be chosen – for good or ill. In short, long-term success is now in the realm of the third option above, which falls into the realm of hope.

Churchill noted that once a war started no matter how well planned you are to some extent along for the ride. As Churchill knew all too well, only by a great deal of action and ‘investment’ is it possible in any war to reach a result that looks even a little bit like what you wanted when you started.

Or we can hope.

And, as a brilliant, and grizzled, old Marine told me many years ago, ‘Hope is not a plan.’

Libya and Limited War

2011-03-21T09:36:00.000-04:00

In 1870 the Chancellor of Germany convinced the Kaiser (William I) to invade France, (after using a number of political maneuvers to bring the French to declare war first) the aim being to seize a slice of terrain (Alsace Lorraine) that had been in dispute with the French for decades. The plan was to move fast, before the French could mobilize, seize the terrain and then present the French with a real problem: do they launch a major assault to push the German army out of the seized terrain at the risk of destroying their own army and brining down the government, or do they negotiate a settlement that would almost certainly leave the Germans in possession of Alsace, but would leave the government intact? Bismark was confident that once war was begun the German army would be able to move quickly into the targeted area and that the French would find retaking the terrain more cost then it was worth and would opt for a peace treaty.

Unfortunately, as the Chancellor knew, limited wars are vary difficult to fight, if only because it is so hard to 1) define the limits and 2) it is always difficult to control what the enemy will do. In this particular case the French King – Emperor Napoleon III – rushed to the head of his army in the region and was captured in the battle around the city of Sedan. What had started as a limited assault designed to catch the French unawares and force Napoleon III to negotiate a peace very nearly turned into a catastrophe as the French declared a new republic and immediately began a full-scale mobilization to recover what they perceived – in the capture of Alsace Lorraine (and Napoleon III) – as a fundamental assault on the honor of France. (It is worth noting that the war resulted in the German army finally assaulting Paris (Bismark in essence lost control of the army) and a treaty that ceded the desired land to Germany – and so it stood until 1914.)

The point in all this is that countries enter into what they believe are limited wars without first checking with their enemies to make sure everyone is ‘in agreement as to the rules of the knife fight.’

The President insists that this war in Libya is not intended to remove Colonel Qaddafi. Colonel Qaddafi doesn’t see it that way. Nor does it appear that our allies – the French and British – see it quite the same way. In any case, Colonel Qaddafi is unlikely to play this game the way we want him to. He wants to survive and remain in power (that is why, seven years ago, he surrendered his chemical weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) to the US, it wasn’t about being nice, it was about staying in power.) If we insist that he stops shooting at his own people, maybe he will. How long are we prepared to wait? If he stops shooting his own people, how long must he stop before we ‘go home?’ If he stops, will we then insist on something else? Will the UN Security Council ‘ratchet up’ the requirements? How far do they want to go? How long are we prepared to supply forces?

Just a bit of calculus: to keep a ship off the coast of Libya for a year will require 3 ships (actually 3.4 – but why quibble?) Keeping an amphibious task - with 3 Aegis guided missile ships means committing 3 amphibious groups and 9 Aegis ships to this mission. This calculus is the same whether you are French, British or Klingon. How long is this mission likely to last? If history is to be a guide, it could be a while: we have had a carrier group in the Persian Gulf with only one or two short breaks for 21 straight years, we have had a battle group in either the North Arabian Sea or Persian Gulf – with no gaps - since the summer of 1979 – 32 years. Simply put, once we have identified a national security interest, it will be difficult to ignore it.

Of course, as has been implied in the last 24 hours, we might just walk away next week; take a ‘back seat’ to French or British leadership. If the Colonel then resumes killing his people and we do nothing more, then the question should be asked why did we commit the acts of violence that we just completed over the past few days?

The United Kingdom and France have interests in Libya that are perhaps more immediate then the US. Perhaps they are clear on their interests and there is in fact a real plan in place to replace the Colonel and there is also already an understanding with this or that rebel group to form an interim government and the steps that will follow after that to form a new government. That remains to be seen. For the record, I will be quite pleased to see the Colonel removed from the world stage, but that hardly constitutes a viable national goal.

One other thing: if it was justifiable to act against Colonel Qaddafi for the violence he perpetrated against his people, then it was justifiable to act against Saddam Hussein, and the issue of whether he had Weapons of Mass Destruction is completely irrelevant. Of course, the invasion of Iraq had a clear goal: eliminate Saddam and end the violence. That WAS stated upfront. The question now is whether this new war of the century will have a real goal.

Nuclear Power and the Japanese Reactors

2011-03-17T18:47:00.000-04:00

The tragedy in Japan is seemingly beyond description. If you are not directly involved with providing aid there seems to be little to do but watch – and pray. And with each passing day it seems that the nuclear power plants are degrading and the danger of a major radiation leak increases.

What to do?

First, it is important not to panic – nothing of value comes with panic. And, the specifics of the mishap in Japan can teach us a great deal about how to prevent a similar event in another reactor, just as what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl helped to improve the safety of other reactors.

We have learned how to build safer reactors. That the reactors that are at risk are older designs – 40 plus year old designs in some cases – is worthy of note. And this probably warrants some real debate in those areas where older reactors lie near earthquake faults or other possible natural disasters. But we need to conduct an orderly debate.

Second, let’s note some obvious risk factors. As with New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, building on low-lying lands has inherent risks. Building near earthquake faults has similar risks. Electric power can be moved huge distances. Placing power stations – nuclear and non-nuclear - in low-lying areas, or near fault lines or in similar settings means accepting higher risks. Future construction of power stations, chemical plants, etc., needs to take better note of these issues. Government licensing boards need to meet, engage in strong public debate, and arrive at standards that are both achievable and safer.

Old designs need to be updated where possible, or shut down where it is not possible to bring the system into acceptable safety margins. Reactor designs of the last 15 – 20 years, particularly the ones used on US Navy submarines and aircraft carriers, are substantially safer and more reliable then any of the reactors currently at risk in Japan, or arguably anywhere in the world. These designs need to be brought into commercial use.

Third, there is a tag line for anyone that has ever handled a crisis that ‘the first report is always wrong.’ It will take months or even years to sort out what happened with the four reactors that have been damaged. It took years to sort out what happened at Three Mile Island, and despite the initial reports, the reactor never was in a real danger of a ‘meltdown,’ no people got sick, and the amount of real damage to the surrounding area or the environment was negligible. Not that that is what people remember. Horror stories about Three Mile Island still abound, founded almost completely on myth. We need to try and contain the myth.

Fourth, and finally, radiation can cause terrible damage. But this is not a 1950s movie; exposure to radiation at any level does not mean instant death or zombie-like mutations. Medical science in fact knows a good deal about radiation exposure, radiation sickness and the like. More to the point, the risk from radiation is vastly overplayed in the press. How do I know this? Easy. Let’s review some numbers.

Between 1945 and 1961 the US conducted 321 above ground nuclear tests – weapon detonations - inside the continental United States, and another 10 outside the continental US. In all, the US conducted 1054 nuclear tests, 833 underground. The Soviet Union conducted 721 tests – above and below ground (including one in 1960 of more than 50 megatons.) The French, British and Chinese combined conducted another 300 tests, at least 73 of which were above ground. All the above ground tests released radiation into the atmosphere.

To hear people speak of what is going on in Japan right now one would think that the release of radiation into the atmosphere is catastrophic at nearly any level. But, the fact is that the above ground tests over a period of 16 years, with the exception of some personnel exposed at close range, did not cause any substantial health issues. In short, the concentrated radiation released into the atmosphere by more than 500 above ground nuclear tests over a period of 16 years was safely dissipated.

Do we want radiation venting into the atmosphere? No, of course not. But we also want people to understand the simple truth that – apart from those people in the immediate area – the risk is very low. In short, we need to calm down.

To close, we must remember that life is risk. We stand on the precipice every day. In the US alone some 35,000 people die each year on our roads. That means that since the war in Afghanistan began 10 years ago, more than 350,000 people have died on our roads. More to the point, since the reactor issued developed in Japan – 6 days ago, more than 500 people have died on US highways. Further, nearly half of all fatal car accidents take place while someone is making a left hand turn. You might seriously reduce the odds of your having a car accident by eliminating left had turns from your life. Is it worth it? What is the cost (the risk) of a left hand turn worth? Does the simple convenience of being able to make left hand turns outweigh the fact that 15,000 people in the US alone died making left hand turns last year?

This nation needs electric power. There are several paths to get that power: oil powered stations, coal powered, solar powered, wind powered, nuclear powered, natural gas, etc. Each has issues. It is worth noting that coal powered stations, which generate a substantial percentage of our electric power is from coal. Each of these sources has champions, and each has its vigorous opponents. Oil, coal and natural gas will each contribute carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide to the atmosphere; wind and solar can be huge eyesores on the landscape, and are subject to the foibles of weather; nuclear carries the fears of radiation.

But the truth is we need all of them, and we need nuclear perhaps most of all, as there is no other means that can realistically meet our requirements for growth in power generation over the next 30 to 40 years. The President should lead this discussion, we need to ensure our reactors are safe, that we have the best designs and best possible construction, that our maintenance and inspections are first rate. But we do not and we must not let fear grip us and let it stop all progress.

And Now Libya?

2011-03-12T10:17:00.000-05:00

What to do about Libya…

There is an old vaudeville line to the effect that if you don’t know where you’re going, any road is ok. Strategy is like that. If you do not have a clear and specific goal, any plan is fine. And while the US military is superb at developing operational level plans and tactical level plans, we have not been very successful at strategic level plans. And there is a reason for that: strategic level plans require strategic level goals: clear, specific, national level goals, which are by their very nature long-term goals, and that means clarity of thought and a finality of decision.

Clarity is needed because strategic goals must be simply stated so that everyone involved knows what the important one, two or three points are, and in what order, so they know, when choices need to be made – and they will need to be made – what to do and what not to do.

And a finality of decision is required, a definitive statement from the top that the debate is over, we have chosen the end-state and we are now all working in that direction. In fact, one might argue that the single most important element of any strategy is to finally and definitively state ‘Our goal is X.’ Successful strategies throughout history – political, military, commercial - depend much more than anything else on working to a specific goal’ the plan may change, mid-points may change, and you still be successful. But certain doom rests in vague and constantly changing goals.

And so there are those who want us to do something about Libya. Certainly we all want Colonel Qaddafi to go away. Certainly, the US could establish a ‘No Fly’ zone over the eastern half of Libya (to be fair, it would not be over the entire eastern half of the nation, as the vast bulk of Libya is empty desert; rather, it would be over the a strip of land and coastal areas perhaps 300 x 300 miles in size.) But then what? What is the real goal? If the goal is to simply eliminate the Colonel and his regime, are we justified in launching 50 or 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles, seeing if they were successful, and if they were, simply walking away, and letting whatever happens next, well, happen?

Ignoring for a second the tenets of international law, and classic morals, both of which adhere to the principle ‘if you break it, you own it,’ is it a good idea for the US storm a nation in the Mid-East, smash the government, and then wash our hands and say ‘We are out of here?’ There may be a good deal of short-term visceral satisfaction to such a plan, but, as with most such plans, they look good in movies, but in real-life they will land you in trouble.

Of greatest concern is that any action to remove a head of state, anywhere, needs to consider what happens next. If we do not intend to take part in the formation of the next government, then we are de facto accepting whatever government comes to power. Do the rebels in eastern Libya constitute a viable regime? Do they believe in any of the tenets of democracy that we hold or are the real leaders of the movement members of some sort of extreme movement – political, religious, or social? While it is difficult to imagine at this point, what if the regime that replaced the Colonel rapidly evolves into an Arabic version of the Terror that gripped Paris after the revolution in 1789? Are we prepared to go back into Libya next year to put down a hyper-violent oligarchy?

As with most strategic planning, the questions quickly become unpleasant and force you to make hard decisions. The best place to start is with this simple question: what are my long-term interests? It would seem to me that before we decide what we ‘should’ do in Libya, the US needs to have a serious debate as to what are its long-term interests and long-term goals.

Unfortunately, there is insufficient time to do so. If we are to act vis-à-vis Libya, and not simply stand on the sidelines and watch, we needed to have this discussion last year. We are left with this option: the President must lead. He can begin this discussion by stating what he believes are the nation’s long-term interests and goals; as a general rule, we elect Presidents to do just that, to give voice to our goals. Then, he can identify clear goals relative to Libya and give to the Department of Defense and the State Department the task of developing a plan to achieve those goals. It is almost a certainty that we have the wherewithal to develop and execute a plan to achieve any goal assigned, assuming adequate assets are available. But, here is the final issue:

If the President chooses to defend the rebels, he has chosen sides. Once he has done that he is – in fact – stating that he, and the US, support the overthrow of the current government of Libya. This is what is known in strategic planning as ‘unlimited war goals.’ At that point the US is ‘all in’ and needs to act accordingly. Furthermore, at that point the US is to some degree both morally and legally culpable for any acts of violence perpetrated by our new allies, and the US is equally responsible for helping recover the country once the Colonel’s government is gone. We would be in a position analogous to where we were in Iraq in 2003, with just as many unknown problems facing us. (For comparison, Libya has a population of roughly 6.5 million and produces 1.8 million barrels of oil per day; Iraq has a population of 31 million and currently produces about 2.1 million barrel of oil per day.)

The situation in Libya is terrible. But let’s make sure we have our eyes open before we make any decisions.

President Washington

2011-02-20T22:31:00.000-05:00

George Washington, Father of Our Country, is often recognized as being central to our winning our independence, and his role as the first president – and first precedence setter – is also recognized – at least by historians. But, in large part he has fallen into a limbo of ancient symbol, but not a man who is respected as essential figure of our nation's finding, and arguably, as the single irreplaceable man of the last three centuries. And there is no place where this forgotten role is more pronounced then in his role as the President of the Constitutional Convention.

The fact is that leadership – that is, those positions where an individual has real authority over others – is often written about. But in most cases those who right about it have had little or no first-hand experience with actual leadership, that is they have rarely had authority over other, they have rarely held power. This lack of a frame of reference has led to there being little in the way of leadership discussions in which the debilitating nature of power is discussed, or to any discussion which reflects the real difficulties faced by those who have held power and managed to – somehow – behave in a truly superior, exemplary manner, one which can be used as a precedent for future generations, nor finally the very real difficulty of leading exceptional people, particularly when the direction chosen is truly uncharted territory.

It is in this final situation that our young nation found itself following our victory in Revolutionary War. We had our independence, but the Articles of Confederation left us with little in the way of an effective government and the need to form a new government was recognized by the leaders of the day. Central to the very idea that a new government could be formed was the notion that George Washington would be available in some way to lend his support to that new government. And Washington wrote and spoke of the need for a strong executive, one that had been avoided in the Articles of Confederation. In fact, it is fair to say that the Constitutional Convention that met in Philadelphia would probably not have met at all if the participants did not include Washington. And while one might have eventually met, it would have been far different in fact.

What exactly transpired at the convention on a day-to-day basis has never been known, as the members kept private most specific word-for-word, day-to-day discussions – intentionally. Madison provided daily notes on the proceedings, and many of the members provided summations after the fact, and these provide a great deal of insight into the vigorous debates by the members. What is of particular note is that Washington's words were only noted once, in reference to representation in Congress and how to assign Congressman by census – an important point but not earth shattering.

But what is missed by most historians is what is not there: the convention did not come apart at the seams. This seems, at this date more than 220 years later, as a foregone conclusion. These were some of the greatest men who ever lived, and the names are a list of some of the truly most exceptional political thinkers – and leaders – of any era: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton – the list goes on.

But I look at the list of figures from a different perspective. Having been in the position of leading groups of very bright and very talented people (not to imply that anyone has ever had any other group as bright and as talented as those at the Constitutional Convention), particularly when we had to institute real change – where success would be difficult to define but failure would be easily identified, I submit that that can be as difficult a leadership task as one can imagine.

All of the men at the Constitutional Convention were brilliant, opinionated, strong-willed, and dynamic figures. All had in one way or another demonstrated that they could lead. All had very real concerns about where the young nation was headed and very real concerns about the laws, the foundation, on which it was to be built. All were aware that they were charting a course into 'seas' that had, in the previous 2500 years failed to produce any nation that had lasted more than a few generations. We have heard that leading is sometimes like 'herding cats.' But Washington was not herding cats. He was, if anything herding a room full of tigers.

And from this came the single most remarkable political document ever drafted, the

model for virtually every constitution drafted since, and the foundation of the greatest nation in history.

I cannot but wonder what would have happened if George Washington had not been

sitting with them, listening, providing the firm hand and fatherly guidance, the stern face and, rarely, the sharp word in private, that would have been absolutely essential to bring these brilliant men together. Yet there is in that behavior the very thing that would have prevented any of these men from writing about it. There own dignity, and Washington's, and their respect for Washington, would have forbidden any recognition of it. It was enough for them all to simply remember that Washington had been there, that in the end they had performed well and received his approval.

Washington performed in three truly remarkable leadership rolls: as the General who

brought victory over the British, as the President of the Constitutional Convention, and as the first – and most important – President of this nation. The first and third are, at least, remembered in passing, though we forget just how 'close run a thing' both the war and the first few decades really were. But we have all but forgotten his role as the man who presided over the Constitutional Convention, an act of leadership that I submit rivals the other two.

In our minds' eye we might see them, brilliant, pointed debate moving around the room, sometimes rancorous, sometimes threatening to stall on this or that point, whether from legal interpretation or regional predilection, but always moving forward, producing a document that would not only be approved by the separate states, but would also produce a nation that has survived longer then any other true democracy in history, and

has proven that government of, by and for the people is possible. And at the head table sits Washington, the silent conductor of the convention.

February 22nd is the 279th anniversary of George Washington. Happy Birthday Mr. President.

Wisconsin: Democracy or Tyranny?

2011-02-18T12:45:00.000-05:00

Thomas B. Reed was the Speaker of the House from 1889 to 1891 and again from 1895 to 1899. In 1890 Reed was responsible for ending a practice that had become common on the House floor, the practice of the disappearing quorum. Whenever the minority party (the Democrats for most of the era) wanted to block a vote, they would refuse to answer the roll call and thus, a quorum not having been met, no vote could take place.

Reed recognized that this was not at all what the Founding Fathers had intended, nor was it what the Constitution said. The rights of the minority are not protected by a refusal of elected officials to act as they have been elected to do; the rights of the minority are protected by the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and other Amendments, and by the Courts. While there are rules in the Senate that allow debate to proceed virtually indefinitely, thus producing the filibuster, the intent was to generate sound and comprehensive deliberation, not prevent any action at all.

Reed noted that legislatures are not simply seated to discuss problems and then do nothing, that the people have elected them to act. And they must act according to democratic process, not by simply avoiding votes.

Reed fixed his particular problem by simply having the Master-at-Arms record who was present in the chamber at the time of a roll call, thus generating a quorum and moving forward with a vote. (It is worth noting that when Reed later had to preside over a vote in support of President McKinley’s move toward war against Spain, a war Reed had come to oppose, Reed was offered the suggestion that if he opposed it he could bend the rules and block the vote, because he knew that if it came to a vote the bill would pass. Reed refused to do, and later resigned from the position of Speaker and from Congress.

Yesterday we heard that the Democratic members of the Wisconsin legislature had walked off the floor and fled the state in order to prevent a vote by the majority of the Wisconsin legislature. That vote would reduce the overall benefits of the state employees and mandate that they would need to pay more for their healthcare.

The lesson of Speaker Reed – 120 years ago – speaks to us today. Legislatures are put in place to do the will of the people, locally, in state capitals and in Washington. They are not elected to avoid their duties or avoid the unpleasant tasks of a republic when there are dangers or difficulties. Wisconsin has fiscal problems. The citizens of Wisconsin have noted the same and elected the majority of its legislators, as well as its new governor and given them the mandate to fix these problems. That is what the majority has said. Now, in an effort to thwart that majority, a majority which is in no way threatening the fundamental rights of the individual, nor in any way threatening good order, the community as a whole, or the survival of the state, or in fact in any way threatening any of the rights and freedoms in either the US Constitution or the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin, the Democratic legislators have chosen to ignore the citizens of the state, thumb their collective noses at the democratic process, and violate their oaths of office that calls for them to uphold the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin (Article IV, Section 28), and instead are pandering to a small segment of their constituency.

It is worth noting that the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin (Article IV, Section 7 – quoted below in its entirety) suggests that except for standing rules of the Assembly, the present members could simply vote and be done with it. Additional rules exist to ensure that there is representation from all parties whenever an important vote takes place.

“Organization of legislature; quorum; compulsory attendance. SECTION 7. Each house shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members; and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business, but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may compel the attendance of absent members in such manner and under such penalties as each house may provide. “

But these particular legislators have chosen to disregard their Constitution. Why? Berhaps because they believe that the compensation package that state employees receive should not be amended so that they pay more for healthcare and retirement plans then they currently do. Perhaps they are pandering to a particular voting block. There is certainly much to debate about healthcare costs and retirement plan costs. But the fact remains that the state is going broke. At some point the benefits of a minority segment of any society have to be weighed against the cost of those benefits. That is what the voters did last November. This is not going to be pleasant. But the fact remains that the state needs to put its fiscal plans in order, the citizens have recognized that fact, and the legislature must act on the will of the voters. What the Democratic legislators of Wisconsin are now doing is simply an attempt to usurp the authority of the voters of that state.

The Human Race

2011-02-17T14:16:00.000-05:00

A well-known actress recently made a statement which is truly disturbing in its implications. It seems she felt a need to explain why – by way of what appears to be an apology (to use the words ascribed to her in the article I read) - she is ‘dating outside her race.’ The main-stream media doesn’t appear too bothered by it.

We have a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal, we fought an incredibly destructive civil war to ensure that that principal was applied fairly to all, we as a nation have suffered through 150 years of civil strife since that war began, we have suffered through the civil rights movement for nearly 60 years. It seemed we had finally moved beyond such issues as who was dating whom – particularly in Hollywood.

The Declaration of Independence says that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;’ the Constitution provided equal rights to all – and we fought a bloody war to preserve that Constitution and end slavery. We ended slavery (the 13th Amendment) and guaranteed equal access to the law (the 14th Amendment) more than 140 years ago, and we have continued to push the notion of equality ever since.

But somehow men and women should date each other based on, well, in fact, I’m not even sure what. What the heck does race mean anyway? The closest science can get in trying to classify humans by ‘race’ is to classify people by phenotypes, that is, by observable characteristics and traits. If you think that makes sense, try to accurately define the term ‘European’ or for that matter ‘Arab’ when used to define someone ethnically. Irish, Greek, Finish, Romanian, Portuguese – all are ‘European.’ Moroccans, Egyptians, Lebanese, Iraqis, and Omanis are all ‘Arabs.’ Are the Berber tribesmen of the Sudan ‘Arabs?’ I’ve heard folks from the Saudi Arabia argue that to be Arab your family has to be from the Arabian Peninsula. Which means Iraqis and Kuwaitis aren’t Arabs. Go figure.

And how accurate is this? And further, who cares? Should we only date people with the same nose? Jaw? Skin color? (That’s a good one: how many skin tones do you see walking down the street? Hundreds, a function of how much melanin you have – genetics – plus how much sun exposure you have had, and your diet and certain possible health issues.) It is worth noting that if you could trace everyone’s lineage back about 40 generations the family tree would reveal that we are all related (maybe there is some remote village in the upper Amazon that has been isolated for 40 generations, but I doubt it.)

Maybe we should date and marry based on shoe size or bowling scores.

‘Some guy’ once said that we should judge people not on the color of their skin but the content of their character. If someone is a wonderful man or woman shouldn’t we want to more closely associate with him or her? And if he or she is a jerk, or believes in things that we believe are wrong, can’t we just call him a jerk and ignore him? Best I can figure, the only ‘race’ that any of us are in is the human race. Let’s start looking at character and forget some of this nonsense.

Who was the guy who said that thing about character anyway? Just some dreamer I suppose.

Christina Aguilera and the National Anthem

2011-02-07T16:34:00.000-05:00

Christina Aguilera flubbed the national anthem at the Super Bowl. She’s not the first and she won’t be the last. The list of folks who have had difficulty singing the anthem is long and filled with quiet a few notable performers: Robert Goulet at the Ali – Norton fight 4+ decades ago seems to stand out in my mind (I’m a fight fan), but take a short sojourn into the world of YouTube and you will find scores of botched anthems saved forever on film.

I also seem to recall a noted Broadway song and dance man standing up and singing the anthem once at a major championship of some sort and getting halfway through and completely losing the words, humming through to the finish then walking off the stage looking like he was trying to find a place to slash his wrists.

And you’ll also find one of the best stories that ever came off the sports page, when Maurice Cheeks saved the day when he helped a young woman – Natalie Gilbert - who was singing the anthem. She forgot the lines and started to freeze up and Mr. Cheeks stepped forward and helped her finish – and showed his true self. (If you have never seen it, search for ‘maurice cheeks national anthem,’ it will pop right up.)

The point is this: no performer wants to put on a poor performance. At the same time there is no song that receives more scrutiny then the anthem. Literally, everyone is staring at you. The Super Bowl means an audience of 100 million or more. And that means more pressure still. Everyone is trying but sometimes even the best fumble under pressure. Ask Ben Roethlisberger about producing a perfect performance under the scrutiny of 100 million viewers and the pressure of a Super Bowl. So let’s give her a break.

Truths?

2011-02-05T13:09:00.000-05:00

There were several articles in the paper the other day that discussed some of the thing we need to learn from what is happening in Egypt. One made the point that truth will always win out and that dictators can’t keep people suppressed. Oh, that it were true.

The fact is that history is overcrowded with countries that have suffered under one autocrat after another, for generations on end; despots who, in the name of this or that dynasty and this or that ideology have suppressed freedom and truth. Even in the case of most of the nations in history that have claimed to be democracies, the governments in question have used and abused their powers, limited the freedom of their people, manipulated the truth and denied basic rights. Even in the last 100 years the examples of elected governments running amok is long and sullied.

Hitler was elected and rose to power through manipulation of parliamentary procedure and Mussolini was elected to the Chamber of Deputies before leading a coup that installed him as Prime Minister, nominally the legal and selected leader of the country. For decades the various communist regimes held elections in which their leadership was elected by the people, and the list of ‘guaranteed’ rights under the Constitution of the USSR made the US Bill of Rights look cheap by comparison.

Many of the oppressive regimes currently oppressing their own people are in power based on manipulated elections. Whether Iran or Zimbabwe or Venezuela or a host of other nations, duly elected officials – in truly twisted elections – continue to abuse power and grind the people under their boots. But still they stand up and say that they are democracies. Even North Korea has an elected parliament.

So what are the real truths to be drawn from Egypt? And Tunisia?

1) The world is a dangerous place. After the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union there were many in the west who began to voice opinions that ‘everything had changed,’ that mankind had entered into a new era, that peace and prosperity would reign forever, and that mankind could now start enjoying an age of brotherhood and comity.

Those who felt otherwise and dared to voice their perspective that the Cold War had simply allowed us the perverse luxury of focusing on a single major problem and ignoring most of the others were labeled as cynics and worse yet, purveyors of ‘old think.’ However, the wishful thinking of those who believed that we were entering a utopian humanist age has yet to materialize into anything real. The world remains a very dangerous place, and perhaps less stable now then it was 30 years ago.

2) Democracy can be dangerous, particularly in either of the following cases: a democracy in a country with an enduring tradition of strong central rule – as in Russia (think of Putin) or Iran (the Shah, then Ayatollah Khomeini, then Ayatollah Khameni) – it lead to de facto dictators claiming to rule in the name of the people; or two, democracies in countries with constitutions that do not both provide for the rights of the individual and at the same time limit the scope of the government itself – this leads to denial of individual rights in the name of the people and the tyranny of the majority; where Algeria was headed in 1992 before the Army threw out the elected leaders, where Venezuela is right now, and Cuba.

3) Supporting democracies around the world is, all other things being equal, the right thing to do. And I fully support the effort to make Iraq a true, liberal democracy. But such efforts are both long and difficult. Nor should we be adamant that we would never reject the government of such democracies. US interests must come first. And if a duly elected government of some nascent democracy turns against the US and its interests the US must be prepared to seek US interests first and eschew support for democracies for democracy’s sake, to the detriment of our own interests.

4) The Internet and Facebook and Twitter and all the other social media do not and will never equal truth. Nor does 24-hour news coverage. Whatever is happening on the streets of Cairo, it is a certainty that there is more going on then meets the eye. It is also true that what people send around on e-mails and tweets and photos from cell-phone are, at best narrow, and often hasty, poorly thought out, views of very wide problems; more often they are biased and self-serving. They can be of great value in sharing news of a given event. But they should never be confused with truth.

5) All of which leads to one painful conclusion: despite hopes for being able to spend less on our security, the fact remains that the US safeguards democracy – liberal democracy – around the world. If we don’t do it, no one will. We also provide security for the global market place, for the international trade routes that make possible the improved standards of living world-wide. If we fail to protect those trade routes, others with less magnanimous and less gracious foreign policies will eventually take our place. And the world will be even less stable – and less pleasant. Investing in national security – the military, the intelligence community, and tailored support to key allies – is the primary – that is first and before all else - responsibility of our government because it is the primary guarantor of both our safety and our way of live. Other expenses must take a second seat to national security needs.

Four centuries ago Oliver Cromwell – himself a fairly brutal dictator – advised his army to ‘place your trust in God, but keep your powder dry.’ The advice remains as sound now as it did then. If there is one truth to be learned from what is going on in Egypt, that is it.

Egypt: Iran Redux?

2011-02-03T08:06:00.000-05:00

As we watch Hosni Mubarak’s regime unravel, the image of the riots in Tehran and the collapse of the Shah’s government more than 30 years ago once again comes to mind. While the recent events in Tunisia were dramatic, they were both more spontaneous and of less importance to the US. What is worrisome about Egypt is the seeming presence of a plan, the orderly, un-armed rioters, the police and army who seemed to be playing a role in a well written play, appearing and disappearing, for the most part showing remarkable restraint.

It leads us to ask the question: if there were a plan, who were the planners? If Mubarak is being forced from office, who is behind the forcing?

While the obvious villains are the Muslim Brotherhood, it is probably not quite that simple. Are they involved? Certainly. But there must also have been orchestration from within, from the Egyptian Army, from the national police, and from key senior politicians who have yet to surface. Is Muhammed El Baradei involved in the scheme? Probably, though he may also be a pawn. Will a new government bring the Muslim Brotherhood into a power-sharing arrangement? Possible.

What is also possible is that this entire crisis was orchestrated by elements in the army that were concerned that Mubarak’s planned transition of power placed their power base at risk. The option therefore was to force him out through a ‘people power’ revolution. The plan probably entailed using the Muslim Brotherhood, wittingly or unwittingly. If they – the planners - are clever, the Brotherhood will be given some apparent elements of power in the new regime but no real authority. Mubarak and his erstwhile heir Gamal will be out of the way, a transition to a new regime will have been affected, and the Muslim Brotherhood will be neutralized, at least for a few years. There is of course a risk that someone misplays it and the plotters lose control. But the Egyptian army has been the de facto power base of the government for 68 years and they are not likely to give up that position.

What will all this mean to US interests? That, of course, is the ‘$64,000 question.’ Two key issues are central to those interests: the Camp David Accord, and the Suez Canal. The first, the Camp David Accord, has provided more than 30 years of peace between Egypt and Israel and has been the foundation for the belief that a negotiated settlement is possible. Anything that threatened that agreement would have dire consequences, stretching well beyond Egypt and across the entire Mid-East.

The second issue is the Suez Canal, a spot recognized as one of the few key strategic spots on the planet (convincingly argued as such by Mahan in 1900). The Suez Canal is a waterway of importance not simply to the West, but to the entire world. While more than 2 million barrels of oil move through the canal every day headed for Europe and the US, tens of thousands of tons of grains and foods move south through the canal, feeding the people of Arabia and East Africa. Interruption of food transport or even a brief price hike in food caused by concerns over access to the canal could cause more political damage to countries in that region then the hike in oil prices will cause either political or economic damage in the West. (Spikes in food prices were key to the unrest that brought about the regime change in Tunisia last month.) That kind of instability could threaten other governments and lead to even more regional unrest.

What is certain is that, despite the use of the word ‘democracy,’ we are not going to see anything like a Western democracy spring up along the Nile. We are likely to see another Army backed dictator, wrapped in the guise of someone bringing power to the people; less likely, we may see the rise of a radical Islamic democracy, similar in many ways (though different as well) to the one in Iran – though Sunni not Shia; least likely we may see an interim bureaucracy/kleptocracy rise to power during a ‘behind-the scenes’ power struggle.

Nevertheless, two points need to be kept in mind:

1) We could not have changed this outcome. Could we have applied pressure to Mubarak over the last 30 years to change the nature of regime? Certainly. And we did – both positive and negative pressure. But that pressure always had to take a back seat to other needs, in particular overall regional stability and the security of US interests. It is no good to say ‘yes, but in the long run that policy works against US interests in the long run’ simply because we would never get to the long run if we had been forced out of Egypt 5, 10, 15 or 20 years ago. Presidents must play with ‘the cards they are dealt’ and Egypt has been one of those cards since World War II.

2) We cannot dictate who comes to power next. There are various ways that the US can try to apply pressure – openly or quietly, diplomatically, using both carrots and sticks. But in the end the internal machinations of the various factions – to include the Army and the Muslim Brotherhood – will decide who rules in Egypt.

So, what can we do? We can and must send a clear signal that we support the people of Egypt in their desire to move toward a real democracy. We need to continue to send the signal that we support true democracy and the rise of real freedoms, not pseudo democracy providing a cloak in which to wrap an oppressive regime, as is currently the case in Iran. And we need to take every opportunity to support pro-Western, pro-liberal democracy movements in the Mid-East and around the world. At the same time we need to remember that US interests come first. If that means we need to support governments that behave in ways we don’t necessarily like, then that is what we need to do. Egypt may soon find itself under another de facto dictator straight out of the Egyptian army. If he guarantees the Camp David Accord and the security of the Suez Canal, and isn’t engaged in over-the-top suppression of his people’s rights, then we need to grit our teeth, quietly apply pressure where we can, and move on.

In Memoriam

2011-01-13T14:49:00.000-05:00

Following the ceremony in Tucson last night, I am left with the sense that something that should have been said was left unsaid. The President did a good job in recounting the lives of those lost in that Southwest city on Saturday, and was right in calling for us to make the nation better. And the powerful words of Isaiah and Paul stand on their own. But, nevertheless, something is missing. The following is offered to fill that gap.

xxx

Simply put, what lesson can we draw from the deaths of these people, people who, by their whole lives and by their actions on Saturday, showed themselves to be good in the truest sense, serving others and even shielding others with their bodies and being killed as a result?

Whenever people die in such a seemingly senseless manner we all ask ourselves why such things happen? Why would any God allow such things to happen to such good people? How could a God of mercy and love let such terrible things happen to an innocent child?

The answer is simple but profound, simple but difficult, simple but painful. For God’s ways are not our ways, God’s time line is not our time line, God’s plans are not our plans. And from that we must draw hard lessons, the ones that have been pointed out before whenever good people die: one lesson is that we never know the time or place, and therefore we must live our lives recognizing that today may well be our last; that there is no time to put off those things that we must do; that if we are to change the world, today must be the day. We must wake every morning and, recognizing that today may be our last, act to make that last day an important one.

But let us not forget that even out of the most horrid of evils God can and does bring good; that from wars and oppression have sprung deeper understanding of our relationship with God and with one another, and that in the wake of great evils people have been freed from their chains – both physical and spiritual, knowledge has grown, nations have risen. Yet in all these things we must remember that we are God’s instruments. These things don’t just happen. Rather, the actions of men and women, and yes, children, have brought God’s plans to fruition.

We must make certain our family knows we love them, our friends know we care, and our nation knows we are committed. The immediate lesson that these tragic and untimely deaths teaches is that we must not wait for a better time to do what we must, we must not wait for ‘one more day’ before we act, we must not wait for some better opportunity to do the things we know we need to do to make our lives better, to help our families, to improve our nation, and to bring ourselves closer to our God. We do not know the future; we do not what happens next or what will happen to us tomorrow. We only know that we must act now or potentially lose our opportunity.

Those who died are now in God’s hands and nothing we can offer can change this reality. But, let us all say a prayer of thanksgiving to God that we knew such good people, and another for those who were wounded, both those wounded by bullets and those families and friends who suffer from loss and the fear of loss. And then let us get up off our knees and decide that today we really are going to make a difference, that we are going to be the people and the nation that we were meant to be.

God Bless America.

Creating Jobs - Is it Possible?

2010-12-23T08:30:00.000-05:00

Several weeks ago I provided a short discussion on the real issues facing the nation and the economy. The key numbers to remember are these: the US economy needs to create at a minimum 2 million new jobs every year into the far distant future (for all intents and purposes, from now until 2050, when that number – 2 million per year - needs to start to climb), and the economy needs to provide 3% real growth every year – that is growth above any inflation rate or increase in size due to a larger population. Which leads to a simple question:

Is this growth rate possible?

In light of the fact that we was a nation have been hovering at 9.5% unemployment and 16.5% underemployment for a year and a half, and that job growth rates have been essentially flat or negative for much of the past two years, it is hard to believe that this kind of growth is possible.

History shows, however, that the nation did in fact sustain these types of numbers – on average – for its first 185 years. In short, this kind of growth is possible. That being said, has anything changed that might prevent that? The short answer is yes. Through most of the first 185 years of this nation the federal government was rarely more than 10% of GDP (with the exception of periods of war and shortly after the wars). In the early 1930s Federal spending rose above 20% and has climbed steadily since then, and since 1970 has been above 30% of GDP. (Totals of state and local government spending have averaged between 5 and 10%.)

What is the reason for this huge increase in government spending during the last 70 years? Predominantly it has been the rise of the so-called entitlement programs, which now comprise more than 2/3rds of the federal budget. Any successful program to grow the economy will require reducing the percentage of the GDP that is consumed by government (Federal, state and local), and that will mean paring back the entitlement programs.

There is also a ‘slight of hand’ here that is being played by the bureaucracies: those in favor of the entitlement programs insist that they are necessary because the economy is unable to provide for the individuals who are covered. Any reduction in the entitlement program would therefore mean people would be left ‘outside’ of society, as was the case of the poor of the depression of the 1930s.

But this misses two key points: first, it was a host of government decisions to increase Federal spending and Federal meddling in the economy that were the causes of the depression, and second, and most importantly, Federal entitlement programs of today, if transferred back in time with 1930’s technology, would have provided scarcely more aid then did those soup lines. Entitlement programs benefit today from a wide range of technological advancements that have materially improved everyone’s standard of living, mainly despite rather than because of government activities.

At the same time these government programs have a real negative effect – slowing job creation and leaving people – 3% of the working population – almost 5 million people – permanently unemployed.

Reducing the size and scope of entitlement programs necessarily entails some risk, and will inevitably cause pain to those who transition from the entitlement program to a newly created job. The immediate transition becomes the heart-wrenching, bad news story that makes the evening news. But just as lawyers will tell you that difficult cases result in bad law, heart-breaking situations result in bad economic policies. The fact is that sustaining the entitlement programs at their current size (10% + of the Gross Domestic Product) is to not only place a millstone around the necks of today’s workers, it is to drag down the future growth of the economy.

This nation will increase in population by nearly 140 million people in the next 40 years; 80 to 90 million new jobs are needed. (This does not include the tens of millions of new jobs that must be created as industries change and old jobs fade, requiring new jobs to replace the old). The Federal government, as well as state and local governments, must recognize that creating the stage for that job creation is their primary function, and all other functions must be subordinated to that function. Security, economic and monetary stability, and infrastructure are the key roles of government in stimulating the economy. It is to these tasks the government must devote its efforts.

Whither North Korea?

2010-11-26T07:53:00.002-05:00

North Korea is once again in the news. And that is exactly where Kim Jong Il wants it. There are many who say he is crazy. He is, in fact, many things: horribly evil, manipulative, maliciously calculating and cold-blooded. But crazy he most certainly is not. In fact, in the sense that every move he makes is thought out well in advance and designed to fit into a well-knit master strategy, I would suggest that he is the single most rational actor on the international scene today, and for most of the last two decades.

Kim Jong Il was elevated to the number two position in North Korea by his father more than two decades ago. At the time North Korea had already entered into a period of economic decline – from which they have yet to emerge (more later). The country, a nation of more than 20 million people, had a GDP of roughly $20 billion and a per capita income of less than $1000 (though it must be recognized that the economy is completely controlled by the central government and thus equating their economic statistics to the outside world is difficult at best and certainly overstated.)

At the same time the nation spends nearly half of that GDP on the military. That military includes an army of well over 1 million, but one that uses equipment that is from 10 to 50 years old, most of their tanks having been obsolete for three decades or more, and their airmen are flying aircraft that, for the most part were obsolete by the time of the Vietnam War. Can they still do damage? Certainly. Could they fight and win a conventional war against the modern, well trained, and well equipped Republic of Korea (ROK) army and air force? Not likely. Could they fight and win a war against a ROK military supported by the US? Certainly not. Is there reason to be concerned? Certainly. Even though the outcome of a conventional war would be certain, the cost in lives and material would be immense.

North Korea suffers from a severely depressed economy. There are few meaningful industries, agriculture is antiquated, harvests have fallen short nearly every year for the past 25 years, health conditions for the average North Korean are deplorable, and the average citizen lives with year-round brown-outs and black-outs and a per capita intake of less than 1400 calories per day.

In fact, when Kim took over day-to-day operations of the government in the early 90s (before his father died), the routine assessment from various Asian analysts was that his father – Kim Il Song – was still pulling the string and that the nation would collapse as soon as the father died. It must be remembered that this is a country with no margin for error. Simple mistakes that can be corrected in nearly any other country on the planet cannot be corrected in North Korea. Simply put, every facet of the economy is on verge of complete collapse and has been for two decades.

And so, when Kim Il Song died in July of 1994 the almost universal assessment was that Kim Jong Il would not be able to hold it together. A wide range of scenarios sprung up, each with multiple variations: there would be a military coup, there would be a collapse into anarchy, there would a war of conquest south in order to distract the people and capture the wealth of the ROK. None of these things happened.

Instead, Kim Jong Il has proven to be every bit as capable of leading the country as his father. Without going into any detail about the seemingly endless series of crises and diplomatic overtures of the last 16 years, consider this: one small country (North Korea), led by a man everyone keeps calling crazy and insinuating that he isn’t too swift, has managed to lead five other nations around in a whirl, keeping them off balance even while managing to balance his own heavily handicapped nation. And which nations has he led around seemingly by the nose? The USA, Russia, China, Japan and the Republic of Korea; the smallest of these countries – the ROK – has a population of 50 million and a GDP that is rapidly approaching $1 trillion - 50 times the size of North Korea’s, while the USA has a population 15 times as large and an economy 750 times as large. This seemingly insignificant country, led by this seemingly insignificant figure, has kept off-balance five countries, each of which is massively more capable then North Korea.

Kim Jong Il is not the charismatic figure that was his father (who was equally dictatorial and heavy handed, but nevertheless charismatic). The senior figures in the government follow him out of a combination of fear and reward, with the very senior figures living very well indeed, but subject to constant close observation and the fear of being accused of some act that somehow threatened Kim.

All that being said: what does he want?

Simply put: he wants to survive. Everything that he does centers on one clear goal: survival of his ‘regime,’ which was, until a little while ago just one man deep (himself). Now he has included his son, and the central issue is to insure that he and now his son retain their position of power, at whatever cost to the nation. Everything else is subordinate to that goal.

Why does he engage in all these actions that seem to bring his nation closer to war and thus to the inevitable defeat?

First, he wants to scare the international community in general and the five powers specifically into thinking that war is imminent. To engage in acts that scare the five major powers that he faces is to shock them and the international community into actions that lead to de facto strengthening of his regime: grants of fuel, food and hard currencies that allow him to buy the goods he needs to stay afloat. By raising the specter of a madman sitting atop a huge army, he has repeatedly and successfully coerced various elements in the international community to give him support – fuel, food and money - that he needs to keep afloat.

Second, he is reasonably certain that he has the veto on war. The US and the ROK are not likely to start a war; even thought they would win such a war, the cost would be too high. He knows for a certainty that any war would result in the destruction of his country and with equal certainty his death. There is no upside to starting a war.

Third, in the last analysis he wants international recognition; he wants a settlement to the war and embassies in Pyongyang from the major powers, in particular the US. Simply put, it would represent two great victories: he would present it to his people that the US had finally given in to him – he beat the US; and it would mean that he would be able to appeal for aid from a wide range of foreign capital sources, both public (the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, etc.) and private – corporations in the US, Japan and the ROK who would be interested in developing various resources in North Korea, where labor would be cheap and some resources remain underdeveloped – and where such funds and development would mean he could keep his regime intact for years to come.

What does the ownership of nuclear weapons give him? In Kim’s eyes he sees nuclear weapons as providing further standing in the international community and a greater certainty that there will be no pre-emptive decapitation attack from the US or the ROK.

Is there a chance for war? Certainly. There can always be miscalculations and mistakes, even though he has yet to make a major mistake in 16 years of rule. The rise of his son as the third member of the Kim dynasty raises concerns, as it remains to be seen whether the son will have the skills and evil intellect to control both his country and the international community. But it would seem likely that as long as Kim Jong Il lives and is competent that there is little chance of his actions going too far.

What then should we do? The answer of course depends on what end result is desired. And for various countries that answer varies. For the ROK and the US, the desired end game is a united Korean Peninsula, under the governance of the ROK, with the people in the north joining the people of the south in a single, free, economically strong republic. Such a step will not be easy and the cost of rebuilding the north so that it can economically, politically and socially reintegrate with the south will likely run into trillions of dollars, a more expensive and lengthy problem then the reintegration of East and West Germany during the last 21 years.

For the Chinese such an outcome is probably not desired: a united, democratic ally of the US sharing a common border with China? Nor is it likely that Russia would welcome such an outcome. Japan probably finds themselves torn between these two options, with a strong pro-democracy bent and a desire for expanded economic activities in the region countered by a centuries old animosity between the Koreans and the Japanese.

For the rest of the international community there is mainly a desire to see the 60 year old war ended, the peninsula stepping back from its current level of military preparedness, and the north opened to international economic development.

My own belief is that the only answer for the US is to work with the ROK and the North Koreans to develop a solution that steers around the problem. As horribly unpleasant as it might sound, perhaps one solution would be to place the Kim family in the role of a constitutional monarch, with ceremonial but no real power, a healthy yearly stipend and a string of official residences. Make Pyongyang the twin capital of the country and begin a gradual reintegration process of the two halves of the peninsula. This would require modification of the ROK Constitution, but that is difficult, not impossible. What is certain however is that something new must be done. We have a very smart, completely amoral figure, armed with nuclear weapons, sitting on the top of a badly decayed state. No matter how clever he his, that situation cannot last forever. And continuing to do the same thing that we have done for the last 57 years and hoping for a different outcome IS crazy.

Creating Jobs - What About Now?

2010-11-20T15:13:00.018-05:00

A friend of mine, an excellent doctor, often says that long-term planning is good, but never forget that patients die in the short-term. What he is saying, in the medical sense, it does no good to develop a plan to help a patient live another 10 years if your long-term plan doesn’t also include immediate resuscitation. In the same sense, creating jobs in two years or five or ten doesn’t help the worker who needs a job now or he will lose his house. So, what can be done now to create jobs this year?

First, we need to take a look at what we mean by jobs.

With nominal unemployment stuck at over 9% and real unemployment somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 - 15% (depending on which set of data used), there has been quite a bit of talk about what needs to be done to create jobs. The answers usually involve some sort of ‘Jobs Program,’ the spending of tax revenues or borrowed money, to stimulate economic activity and spur the creation of new jobs. Unfortunately, little that is being said will have any real positive impact on the problem. Here’s why.

First, there are, in fact, five kinds of jobs. And only three of them are worth anything.

Job type one: some businessman (big or small really isn’t important at this point) makes an investment in his business and hires another worker. This worker then produces revenue, the business grows, pays salaries, taxes, etc.

Job type two: a government (Federal, state or local, again it doesn’t matter) with a real task (police, fire, military, ambassador – tasks that the citizenry recognize as tasks that the government does that benefit society) hires someone to perform that task. This worker does so and we all derive benefits from their efforts and society is better for it, which also directly or indirectly stimulates the economy and the business environment.

Job type three: the government (again, at any level) hires someone to perform a task for which there is no need, and from which society derives no benefit. This is equivalent to a handout, but it is called a job anyway. A good deal of public infrastructure falls into this category, as when the government funds a road or a bridge for which there is no need.

Job type four is when the government spends money in the private sector, hiring a contractor to perform a task which is in support of Job type two – DOD contractors and most infrastructure jobs (building roads) are examples of this type of job. Finally,

Job type five is when the government spends money in the public sector to hire a contractor to perform a task which is in support of Job type three – some DOD contractor and infrastructure jobs are also found in this category.

Job one produces real wealth, job types two and four provide and support the environment and infrastructure that allows the free market to create real wealth. Job types three and five do not produce or support the creation of real wealth and are net drains on the economy and society. So, what we really want in any ‘jobs program’ (no matter what it entails) is to create jobs that either create real wealth or support the creation of real wealth, and avoid those jobs which don’t really support the economy and instead act as a net drain on the economy. But the government has shown itself to be, on the whole, incapable of making that differentiation on the one hand, and at too high a cost on the other. In short, any job creation answer is going to be found not in government but in the free market. (This will be discussed more in a future article.)

Second, there is the issue of costs. The current gross national product (the value of all goods and services) is a bit over $14 trillion per year, and the US currently has roughly 165 million people in or wishing to be in the economy. There are 155 million currently employed in the US, and of those, 2.5 million are employees of the federal government and 12 million work for state and local government, so that not quite 140 million actually produce real wealth. This works out to $100,000 in goods and services per worker in the market place. So, how much does it cost to create an average job in the private sector? A recent article in the Wall Street Journal by a small businessman from New Jersey – Michael Fleischer – gives a brief glimpse at the numbers.

The numbers – for his median employee (and remarkably consistent with the national averages) – look like this:

Nominal pay (per year): $59,000

(Nominal pay and benefits: +/- $72,000)

Employee contribution to medical and dental coverage: 2,376

State unemployment insurance (tax) 126

State disability insurance (tax) 149

Medicare 856

State income tax 1,893

Federal Income Tax (Withholding) 6,250

Social Security 3,661

Total: 15,311

Take-home pay: 43,689

Company expenses associated with this employee:

Medical and Dental insurance 9,561

Company paid Life insurance 153

Federal unemployment 56

State disability insurance 149

Workman’s comp 300

State Unemployment insurance 505

Medicare 856

Social Security 3,661

Total 15,241

Total Company Outlays for this employee: 74,241

In fact, the problem is a bit worse than this. What is left unsaid is that there is an administrative overhead for each employee, a cost to manage them in time and people, from managing their careers, ensuring that they have the proper work climate, etc., to the straightforward cost of keeping their paperwork straight. That cost varies in every single organization but is, at a minimum 5% and more commonly equal to as much as 10% of employee pay. In other words, just to manage his people, their paperwork and the accounting associated with each of his employees (he has 83 people in his company), Mr. Fleischer is going to spend at least another $4-5,000 per year.

That means each new job costs roughly $80,000 per year. But no one is going to create a new job that can only pay for itself. For any businessman to hire another worker there has to be a reasonable expectation of additional revenue; that is, the productivity of the new employee will exceed not only the cost of hiring that person – the costs above – but provide some additional margin to support the additional cost of that new position and provide some return to the owner. And there has to be some margin of profit for the company. If the above job generates a total of $100,000 per year, that would leave $20,000 to pay for additional operational costs: electricity, water, office supplies, etc., as well as the costs of actually doing business: additional capital equipment, additional raw materials, etc. And then there is the ‘simple’ question of profit: the investors/owners need some return on their investment. All in all, $20,000 isn’t a huge margin, but let’s assume it is an acceptable one.

Now we come to the other side of the equation: what does it take to convince the leader to not hire another worker? Remember that to hire a new worker at $59,000 per year (nominal salary), the business must not only have an expectation of that worker generating the $80,000 necessary to meet all pay and other compensation, the business must have an expectation a meaningful profit, nominally at least 25% gross return (pre-tax), or $20,000, for a total of $100,000 in new business activity. But, if there is going to be an additional expense, say from new taxes on the business itself, or additional costs for hiring, then the new worker’s margin is reduced until that new worker represents at best a zero gain, and if there is any dip in either demand or productivity the new worker becomes a net loss. So, in the end, for an average business to add one medium income employee there must be an expectation of $100,000 in new business, but to “kill” a new hire there must only be a marginal increase in associated costs – or taxes or other government driven expenses – to the small businessman, that will vary from company to company. It will be from as little as a few thousand dollars to as high as $20,000, but it means simply that the gross (pre-tax) profit can’t reach the amount required to invest in the new worker. We will use the most conservative number - $20,000 – four this discussion, but it is probably closer to half of that.

There is one further facet to this problem: the real expenditures government makes to create the average government job. Currently, the Federal government average expenditure for all non-uniformed personnel – pay and benefits - is $106,000 per person per year (as of 2008.) (For uniformed (military) personnel the average in 2008 was $94,000 per person.) There are additional government expenditures for personnel, for example payment to retired personnel, that are not included within that figure as the government pays retirements out of current accounts, there being in fact no ‘lock boxes’ into which the government places money for payment of future retirement accounts, so this number should be indexed up. Nevertheless, we will use the simple number - $106,000 per year – as our reference number. Note that this is an average and, as recent news has shown, government creation of new jobs often comes at a much higher cost.

The market creates new jobs that are controlled by clearly discernible margins and the creation of real wealth, that is, the creation of real goods or services. The business owner hires based on analysis that doing so will result in real income. The government agency hires because it must spend the money; one is creating wealth, one is consuming it.

There are now two separate numbers: $106,000 for each job the federal government creates, of which a certain percentage, perhaps as high as 20% (if the Grace Commission was correct), produce no benefit to the nation; and $80,000 for an average private sector job, each of which will produce approximately $100,000 of goods or services.

Where does all this leave us with regard to Job creation? Business has always claimed, and both economic theory and simple common sense confirm, that taxes on business represent a cost to business by forcing higher prices and thereby reducing demand. While it can be asserted that businesses do not pay taxes, that they simply pass the additional cost on to their customers, the fact is that there will always be both an impact on their demand and a time lag as the market adjusts to the higher prices. Thus, while the business needs to pay taxes (and they must pay withholding taxes this year for next year) the impact of the additional tax is felt as soon as it goes into effect. But the market adjustment and eventual rebound in demand can take place immediately, next week, next month, next year or not at all. Thus the business is left with a reduced demand and increased cash outflows. It is not surprising then that the normal response by any sane businessman is to be fairly certain that there will be adequate cash flow before they hire a new employee.

And so what about Job Creation? Last year the Federal Government collected $295,000,000,000 in corporate taxes. What would this equate to if, instead of being taxed, it were left in the free market and businesses were allowed to use this money to increase their own purchases of goods and services, hire new workers and increase productivity? Would the retention of this money within the free market equate to nearly 3 million jobs (one for every $100,000 retained), or would the number be larger or smaller than that?

Assuming that most businesses are already operating with unused capacity – and that is born out by US government figures – new workers can be hired without buying new office space or new factory space, etc. More importantly, for each dollar that each business retained, that money has a multiplier effect: it is spent by one business for certain goods or services and the receiving business will likewise use that dollar. A common estimate is that each dollar will be exchanged at least five times, meaning that $295 billion left in the free market would multiply into $1,475,000,000 in market activity, a 10% increase in the GDP.

Of course, this would actually require a year to 18 months to take place as businesses changed their processes and expanded their production. But the implications are huge: 10% real GDP growth would mean approximately 10% employment growth, or the creation of more than 14 million real jobs. And 14 million new jobs would mean, within another year as the market expanded with this larger work force, a significant increase in both overall personal income in the US and an increase in personal income taxes collected, more than offsetting the reduced revenue from the elimination of corporate income taxes.

But let’s go back to our small business. What happens when this or that government program levies an additional set of costs on the business? Assume a business has 20 employees and the owner is considering hiring one more worker, at a total cost of $80,000 (as above) in the expectation of generating another $100,000 in revenue. But now a new expense of $1,000 per employee is levied against the business, a total of $20,000. All profit from the new worker has just been consumed. While one might argue that by hiring the new worker he creates the additional revenue to pay for this new worker, that is the logic of a government accountant. The owner must look at it as a bill he must first pay. It is more likely that he will not only defer hiring another employee, he will also look at whether he must let someone else go to maybe free up some additional cash.

Politicians may talk of ‘creating jobs,’ but any significant real job creation can only take place within the market place. And that requires available liquid assets – cash. There is a ready pool of that cash, one that would repay the nation and the economy within a year or two with both massive job growth and substantial tax revenue growth. It’s time to end the taxation of business and leave that money in the hands of the businesses where it will create real jobs and real wealth.

Next: Is this growth rate even possible?

Job - Steps We Need to Take

2010-09-25T08:55:00.000-04:00

Last week we began a discussion about jobs; to recap the two most important numbers: we need to create 2,000,000 new jobs per year, and sustain a real economic growth rate of 3% per year, into the far future – at least through 2050. This leads to a simple question with the most complex and far-reaching implications: What must our government do to enable the marketplace to create this many jobs? It goes without saying that the only means to create 2 million jobs per year is found in the market place. It is the task of the Federal government and state and local governments to do all that is necessary for the market place to create those jobs and that growth.

The following represents a short list of the most important steps that the Federal government should take to strengthen the market place and initiate sustained real growth in the economy. The steps are divided into two main thrusts: provide stimulus to the market place to create the necessary economic growth and job growth the nation needs; and placing a rein on government growth – steps which would in turn stimulate the market place. It is not a comprehensive list and each of these steps would in fact be major undertakings of policy and bureaucracy at the federal and later the state level. Further, a great deal of work would need to take place to streamline regulation and provide the level of public safety and oversight required of responsible government, while leaving the market place free to create and develop new technologies and new markets.

Some Steps to Stimulate the Market Place:

1) Eliminate the tax on business and corporate income for all US corporations, leaving that money in the market place where is can create new jobs. As will be discussed below, this is the first and essential step to get the economy moving again, and moving in a vigorous manner. As to the argument that eliminating the corporate income tax would mean runaway deficits, history shows otherwise. Simply put, the economic growth and resulting personal income and personal income tax growth that would follow within two to three years would at more then compensate for this initial revenue loss.

There would a widespread hue and cry about favoritism if this were suggested. But the situation in which the US finds itself no longer is conducive to politically comfortable answers. The economy – the market place – must grow and grow substantially and in a sustained manner. The market place must become the primary focus of the government and the nation as a whole. It is the task of our political leaders to educate those citizens who question this fact.

2) Cut corporate taxes on foreign corporations to a rate that is below that in Europe or Japan. This would provide an incentive for foreign companies to move to the US and establish themselves in the US. Leaving tax rates for US companies at zero would then provide an incentive for these companies to relocate their headquarters to the US.

3) Stabilize personal tax rates. Constant gyration of tax rates makes investment more difficult. If we are to provide small investors more incentive to invest in businesses, there has to be a reasonable ability to forecast real return on investments, that is, returns after tax. That means taxes have to be stable. At the same time, tax rates should not continually penalize people for making smart decisions and thereby making profits. Simple tax laws, with fewer brackets, eventually a single rate for all taxpayers, provides for easier and thus more investment.

4) Eliminate inflation. Inflation’s impact on both savings and capital investments is wholly negative, impacting literally every facet of both private and corporate financial decisions. Even an inflation rate of 2% per year will erode a retirement account in short order. An individual who wishes to retire at age 65, but has a life expectancy that reaches into the 90s will find his effective income halved between his retirement and his death. As life expectancy continues to grow even low inflation rates will increasingly become curses to all of us no matter how much we have managed to save.

Inflation is not a mystery, something that simply ‘happens’ to which we are all simply victims. Inflation is a result of distinct government monetary and fiscal policies. And, the government has demonstrated, for short periods, the ability to manage real growth in the money supply so as to match and enable real growth in the economy, without cycling into periods of inflation. Driving down inflation so that it hovers between 0 and 1% will require real discipline from both the executive and the Congress, but it can be done; it must be done. The citizens must insist on it. The federal government should set as a goal to reach zero inflation within two years and then sustain a zero inflation rate.

5) Eliminate the capital gains tax for all US corporations, leaving that money in the market place as well where it can create new jobs. This would also provide additional incentives for foreign corporations reestablishing themselves as US corporations.

6) Eliminate individual income tax on any income derived from patents or copyrights for US citizens, or for any foreigner who is living in the US and has filed to become a US citizen. This would act as a draw to bring more creative and productive people into the US from abroad.

7) Establish a commission of business executives to review such legislation as Sarbanes-Oxley and other legislation that has generated excessive and costly paper work or otherwise scared business from our shores, to provide recommendations to amend or repeal such legislation.

Controlling Government:

1) Immediately cap all non-DOD spending at the inflation rate, to include Medicare-Medicaid and all other healthcare programs, Social Security and all other entitlement programs.

2) Freeze all non-DOD and non-DHS hiring for three years and then limit any and all hiring to a rate 1% less than real economic growth. (If real economic growth is flat, government should be forced to contract.) Set a definitive goal to reduce the federal workforce (to include all personnel except uniformed military and Federal law enforcement personnel) by 15 percent over the next 20 years.

3) Institute the necessary monetary policies for zero inflation.

4) Balance the budget within 5 years. A balanced budget - spending limits amendment is the surest path to this.

5) Reinstitute the draft.

Other steps.

1) Provide cheap energy. To grow an economy that can provide for a high standard of living for 450 million people means energy supplies must increase and increase substantially. Arguments to the effect that sustained economic growth can be achieved while using less energy work only on blackboards and in policy presentations on Capital Hill. They do not work in the real world. We need more power, lots more power. And that means cheap and abundant electricity. The only path to more power, on the order of 100% more power then we now generate is nuclear power.

Set a goal of doubling the electric power generated by nuclear plants over the next 20 years and doubling it again over the following 20 years. License more plants, begin reprocessing of radioactive waste, put research dollars into nuclear fusion and solve the energy problem once and for all. The Department of Energy (DOE) was established by President Carter with a charter to reduce and eventually eliminate our dependence in imported oil; since then US dependence on imported oil has doubled. A real energy plan is needed, and the money spent on the DOE - to little effect - is a good place to start to fund these new programs.

As a subset of this issue, begin reprocessing of nuclear waste. This would eliminate the contentious issue of storage of nuclear waste, provide a number of high-technology jobs, and provide ready fuel for more reactors. Other countries that have nuclear power generation plants do not have waste storage concerns, only the US. This is not a technology issue, it is a policy mistake. End the mistake, reprocess the fuel and waste, and build more reactors.

2) Space Exploration and Exploitation. In the end, we must expand off this planet if we wish to tap into larger, more economical sources of raw materials and energy. Government must develop an aggressive US space program – not one dependent on foreign participation - in concert with the private sector to move aggressively into the economic and industrial development of the solar system.

Tomorrow: What about Now?

More MDs, More RNs

2010-09-23T17:05:00.014-04:00

Several days ago I made the point that no matter what the government is now doing in trying to contain healthcare costs, the effort is fundamentally flawed because there is nothing in the current legislation that will increase the number of MDs, Nurses, Technicians and treatment facilities, and therefore as the number of people who are using the healthcare system increases, there must be a reduction in the amount of healthcare available to any individual.

This leads to a simple question: what might government do to increase the number of doctors, nurses, technicians and facilities across the nation? Before I answer that, let’s look at some simple numbers.

US Population: 305 million

US Population in 2025 (est.): 350 million

Number of people who receive regular healthcare: 250 million

Number of Doctors: *818,000

Ratio of Doctors per patient

(for a population of 250 million): *1/306

Ratio (for the entire population): 1/372

Ratio in 2025: 1/427

Number of Nurses: *2,468,000

Ratio: *1/101

Ratio (for the entire population): 1/123

Ratio in 2025: 1/141

* Numbers based on the Statistical Abstract of the US as of Dec 31, 2007

Of course, this doesn’t tell the whole story; for example, many doctors are specialists, so the availability of general practitioners to provide initial care is perhaps a more important figure and that number - a subset of the 818,000 – has been dropping slowly but steadily for quite some time. Higher costs for malpractice insurance and the cost of maintaining an office for a private practice, as well as strong positive public perceptions concerning various specialties has lead more MDs to move away from general practice resulting in a sustained negative trend in general practice. Any solution must address both increases in total numbers and increases in primary care or general practice medicine.

It should be noted that for several decades the American Medical Association argued that there was a glut of MDs in the US and lobbied Congress (it went into effect in 1997) to only fund 80,000 medical Residents per year (through Medicare), with the Veterans Administration funding another 20,000 per year, for a total cost to the taxpayer of roughly $11 billion per year. Several thousand more are funded by states or private organizations.

As of 2007 the 120 US medical schools were conferring 15,730 MDs per year. That number has stayed remarkably consistent for nearly 30 years, with 14,900 MDs conferred in 1980 by 112 medical schools. (As a point of comparison, US law schools produced 43,500 lawyers in 2007.) Roughly 25,000 MDs were entering practice in the US each year, the difference made up of doctors entering the US with degrees from overseas.

Further, the answer must have two parts: what to do in the short term, and what to do in the long term.

In the short term, there are only way two ways to increase the number of doctors and nurses and technicians, and both must be used. The first is to provide encouragement for those doctors and nurses who are thinking of retiring to remain active and in medicine. The most reasonable path to do so is to offer a break on income taxes for those who choose to remain in practice rather than retire.

The second means to increase the number of doctors in the near term is to actively recruit overseas. Hospitals should be encouraged to do so and might be given tax credits to provide for recruiting bonuses. Medicare and the VA might also be provided funds for recruiting in the form of bonuses for qualified MDs and nurses.

Both these programs would need to be sustained for at least 15 years as the second half of the program was developed. That second half is simply put: we need to produce more MDs and Nurses. To be clear, by 2025 we as a nation will need well more than 1 million doctors and 3.5 million nurses. If we are going to be able to provide our own doctors and nurses (assuming an average professional life of 35 years), US medical and nursing schools will need to produce 30,000 MDs and 100,000 Nurses each year. This will require doubling the output of both medical and nursing schools in the next 15 years.

Current medical and nursing schools need to be expanded to their maximum capacity, new schools need to be opened. Doing so without suffering a drop in quality will require a great deal of discipline, but it is possible and there is no other option. Attracting intelligent students into medicine instead of other fields will be a challenge. It will require a change in social dynamics that returns medicine to the top of the cultural ladder for preferred jobs, a matter both of income and, more importantly, social status. It will also require curtailing the negative impact of litigation both on the material cost of medicine (particularly malpractice insurance) and the social cost, the reticence of some to go into medicine, and for those in medicine, a hesitancy to enter into certain types of medicine. This problem and can be successfully addressed, but there is nothing that the federal government is now doing that will do so.

Too Few MDs

2010-09-17T08:23:00.000-04:00

The paper this morning announced that the state I live in (Virginia) has too few doctors, then adds that ‘it is a nation-wide problem.’

Amid all the healthcare falderal over the last year and half this point seems to have been lost by the folks in Washington who seek to “lead” us (though, for the record, this blog has pointed this out several times over that same timer period). But it is worth repeating:

If the nation’s healthcare is too expensive, then the one sure way to reduce costs is to increase supply. Any other effort to reduce costs, that is, any efforts that do not include increasing ‘supply’ (the number of doctors, nurses and places to provide healthcare, which I will simply label as ‘beds’ for shorthand, though it includes more than strictly hospital beds) must include rationing, and will also fail.

The current plan, the one passed by Congress and signed by the President just a half year ago, includes no plan to increase the ‘production’ of doctors, nurses and beds.

Ergo, it will fail.

To produce doctors, nurses and beds, what is needed? Enlarged and expanded hospitals and clinics, expanded medical and nursing schools, and more students who want to enter medicine.

So, there needs to be some sort of incentive, some motivation to induce students to switch out of other career fields and into medicine. There are lots of ways to do that, but the most important would be to make it clear that when they become doctors and nurses they are going to be able to practice medicine the way they want, rather than the way a government bureaucrat tells them.

Unfortunately, making a doctor or a nurse takes a good deal of time. Doctors in particular must not only complete medical school, they must also complete an internship and a residency before they enter private practice. For certain specialists this can mean many years of effort. So, how do we fill the gap between today and when a new plan might start producing greater numbers of doctors and nurses? We recruit doctors and nurses from overseas. This already happens without a great deal of government support simply because doctors and nurses want to come to the US to work in our healthcare system which is both leading in technology and techniques and also is more free than most of the healthcare systems in the world. We simply need to be more aggressive in our recruiting.

These two things are needed to address the high costs and shortages of our current healthcare system: a short-term plan to recruit more doctors and nurses from overseas, and a long-term plan to expand the ‘production’ of doctors and nurses by our universities and teaching hospitals. Everything is going to produce other results, but not the desired ones.

(I will continue the discussion on jobs and the economy tomorrow.)

Jobs and the Economy - Sizing the Problem

2010-09-16T16:49:00.000-04:00

The debate about jobs is, unfortunately, not addressing the real scope of the issue. There are two major factors, and they are intimately related: the number of jobs and the total national income. Bear with me, but this requires looking at a few numbers.

Problem 1: Jobs

The current population of the US is about 305,000,000. There are approximately 170,000,000 who are employed or want to be employed, or about 55% of the total population.

Currently, government employment – federal, state and local, to include military, teachers, firefighters, police, etc., totals about 13% of the work force, or about 22,000,000.

By 2050, the total US populations will be approximately 450,000,000 (a 1% per year growth rate). Assuming that the same percentages apply, the number of people who are employed or wish to be employed will number about 247,000,000, of which total government employment would be roughly 32,000,000. This means that the private sector must (if we were to have zero unemployment, which should ostensibly be our goal, despite what the economists might say) provide 215,000,000 jobs.

Currently, the private sector consists of roughly 140,000,000 jobs. The simple difference is 75,000,000 jobs. What that means is that over the next 40 years the free market must create 75,000,000 new jobs.

I say ‘simple difference’ because the number is actually a bit larger than that; every year certain jobs go away because of technology and changes in the economy, and those lost job need to be replaced. Technology of the future being still unknown, as are tastes, that number is an unknown, but will certainly run in excess of 100,000 per year. This means that, in rough numbers, at least 80,000,000 new jobs need to be created over the next 40 years, or 2,000,000 per year, every year.

The number is also probably higher than that as life expectancy increases retirement ages slowly work upwards and technological changes continue to accelerate, so 2 million jobs per year, every year for the next 40 years, should be looked on as a lower limit.

Problem 2: Income

The current US per capita income is roughly $40,000. All well and good. Of course, per capita national debt is also approximately $40,000. Unfortunately, that number is insignificant when considered next to the real issue: unfunded government annuities – the Social Security, HealthCare, Welfare, and all the other entitlements that now exist within federal and state governments. Simply put, the amount of money that is going to be paid out to the current US population – by the US and state governments – by YOU the TAXPAYER – over the course of your lives is $130,000,000,000,000. That works out to roughly 425,000 per capita. Add the two together and you get $465,000 per capita. Of course, that number is misleading simply because only 140,000,000 Americans actually are employed right now creating real wealth. So, the real figure is just a hair short of $1 million for each worker-taxpayer in the marketplace. What that means is that each and every worker needs to contribute – over the course of 40 years of work - $25,000 per year to paying off those annuities. If you manage to just do that you will retire with just your Social Security income, an income that everyone acknowledges is supposed to be a supplement, not a primary retirement plan.

Note too that as the population grows the size of the unfunded annuities grows as well. This has major implications when we start to deal with the size of the economy we need to generate over the next 40 years and beyond.

All of this is without any inflation – zero inflation. To put that in perspective, just 2% inflation for 40 years means that the $25,000 paid out in year 1 would grow to $67,000 by year 40, and total payout over 40 years would amount to $1,840,000. (Of course, the argument can be made that as long as everyone’s income keeps growing the inflation doesn’t matter. But that doesn’t account for reality, in which incomes do not grow evenly, people living on retirement accounts are quickly left behind, and expenses for short periods of time can rise faster than incomes, forcing personal crises in the short term that cannot be assuaged by knowledge that ‘in the long run it will all work out.’ People lose their houses in the short term; people can’t pay for school in the short term, etc.)

To compensate for this, real income, that is average real salaries, needs to grow by more than $25,000 per year – assuming that 100% of the increase went directly into addressing these annuities, which is simply not possible. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a situation in which even 50% of any increase would be directed towards national debt and these annuities. But, that at least is possible, if we increase the average employed American’s income by $50,000 by 2050. Further, if we are going to engage in any real planning, we should include as a goal that very taxpayer establish a personal retirement account of there own. How big should that be? Assuming that the average worker-taxpayer lives for 15 years after retirement and wishes to draw $30,000 per year from his annuity, the annuity will need to be funded in the range of $400,000. That means another $10,000 per year per worker.

Where do all these numbers leave us as we look forward to how large the economy needs to be in 2050? To recap, we will need to have 247,000,000 private sector jobs (and 32,000,000 public sector jobs), and we will need to have overall output per worker grow to at least $175,000. In short, by 2050 the GDP must exceed $43,000,000,000,000 in 2010 dollars.

This sounds astronomical. It should be noted that growing from 14 trillion to 43 trillion in 40 years is 3% real growth per year for 40 years. While difficult, this is not impossible. Nevertheless, the implications here are significant. This amount of growth – in a sustained fashion over an extended period of time – is huge. Reasonably speaking, that will be at least six and probably eight presidential administrations. To succeed it would require that we – as a nation – consider it to be all consuming, it must be our prime driver. And so, first and foremost, government needs to develop a long-term perspective on economic growth and job growth. If the government is doing something that does not directly or indirectly support growing the economy, we truly can’t afford it. More to the point, this is a scale of job and wealth creation that is well beyond the scope of any government program. Government cannot ‘create’ this many jobs. What it can, and must, do is to provide the environment that creates these jobs.

The first issue in doing so is a fundamental shift in the perspective of many in government. The free market is the only path to the creation of this many new jobs. The government, and the people in government, must recognize that their real job must be to support and enable the free market in the creation of those jobs. Put another way, it doesn’t matter whether you love the free market or hate it, whether you believe in an agrarian revolution or are a confirmed techno-geek; whether you are a Marxist or a libertarian: the only ‘place’ that can create this many jobs is the market place. This scale of problem was faced by the Chinese Communists 20 years ago. They recognized that they could not create the tens of millions of jobs they needed, that the market place alone could do. And so, irrespective of their Communist leanings, they began to shift to the market. (That the government in Beijing still has a huge role to play in their market, and that it hardly constitutes what we would call a free market is one of the reasons the Chinese have such a large unemployment – underemployment problem. Our committed lovers of big government and government job creation need to take note of those problems.)

Tomorrow: Some Steps We Should Take

Mosques, Churches and the Proper Role of Government

2010-08-27T12:01:00.000-04:00

The question of the construction of a mosque within a few blocks of the site of Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, those destroyed by terrorists on September 11th 2001, has raised a good deal of noise and generated a good deal of debate. The issue has been presented as one of Freedom of Religion and tolerance on the one hand versus sensitivity to perceptions and feelings of the majority on the other. President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg have both weighed in on the side of those who wish to build the mosque, suggesting that it is un-American to inveigh against them or any group because of their religion.

No one is arguing that Muslim’s don’t have the right to build a mosque. And in fact there are already quite a few mosques in New York City and on Manhattan itself. The argument is simply one of propriety. And who gets to define propriety when it comes to city zoning? The answer, of course is - depending on the city involved - the zoning board or the city council or some such group.

Herein lies the only issue that really needs to be addressed. Members of zoning boards are not supposed to be visionaries, instituting dramatic and sweeping changes in their city or town. Rather, they are supposed to represent the stated interests of the people, balancing the concerns of the citizens as a whole with those of the individual property owner and the developer. Thus, without any issue of free speech or any other freedom, a city is perfectly within its authority to say no to a church or a business going into one block of the city but allowing it to go into the next block over. Can this be contested in court? Of course. (In fact, in this day and age everything and anything seemingly can be contested in court, but that is the subject of another discussion.) Nevertheless, zoning of a town or a city is something that is a function of the sense of what is proper and where it is proper, based on the opinions of the people of the town or city.

All well and good. But, in as much as elections are not held every year, but more likely every two years (or more), how does the zoning board reflect the concerns of the citizens? Well, if they are being responsible, they should note the when there is public displays of concerns and when an issue energizes a large number of people they should either delay the decision until there can be some sort of referendum, or they should, assuming money is available, conduct some polling and hold hearings.

The point is that we live in a country that is based on participatory government. The people of New York are, according to a wide range of polling, quite upset about a decision of the planning commission (and whoever else is involved – I don’t know the official name of the committee and don’t really care). Others may be upset, for whatever reason, but it is New Yorkers who are the only ones who get to actually play in this particular game. The city counsel and the planning commission and whoever else is involved should be listening to their bosses – their real bosses – the citizens of New York City at least long enough to have some public debate. What we don’t need is this or that commission acting with no regard to public opinion in the face of some very real and pent up emotions. If the members of the councils and commissions feel that their argument is sound, then stand up in open debate and present it. But to ignore, or worse, attack as un-American, the concerns of 70% of the population and then to dismiss it out of hand, is nothing more than a local brand of tyranny. We are a democracy not an oligarchy.

Our National Crisis

2010-08-18T10:51:00.003-04:00

Our nation faces a crisis. In the simplest terms, we are becoming like everyone else. The United States has always been different from the rest of the nations of the world because we were a nation founded on, and centered on, a series of ideals. What set us apart were a set of ideas and beliefs about the individual and society that made us quite unique and made us treasure our shedding of the past and the adoption of a new mantle, a new title, that of American. We reveled in not what we were, but what we were to become, not in what made us the same as our ancestors, but what made us different from the rest of the world, and similar to our new neighbors. We believed in government of the people, by the people, for the people. We believed in unalienable rights, we believed in One out of Many.

But today, increasingly, we find that this sense of the exceptional, the unique nature of America is being marginalized. It is to be expected that others would do so – when one is jealous of another they tend to belittle that which they cannot have. But today we find many of our “leading” citizens finding nothing exceptional about our nation. Instead of celebrating that which makes us unique and one, they celebrate our differences. Instead of looking forward to a future as Americans, they ask us to celebrate our pasts and to revel in our diversity, and look forward to a future in ‘a global community.’

Is it their fault? In a sense. But it is also everyone’s fault. Over the past 40 years our education system has spent less and less time teaching about the greatness and the uniqueness of our nation and more about the nation as simply another nation, stressing our errors not our successes. We risk losing a grasp of what makes us unique and with that loss we risk the very essence of this nation. America stands on the brink of becoming simply another old and tired nation, one in which the people - our citizens - are simply those who were born here. This is truly a national crisis.

Is there a means at hand to reunite the nation, to give a rebirth to the notions that powered us through the last 234 years? I believe there it. It is encapsulated in the simple notion of service, of putting nation before self, of understanding that for this nation to succeed, with its demanding vision of participatory government and participatory society, that each of us is required to give. Sacrifice is necessary from each, but sacrifice for a greater good. This is the difference between simple self interest, which produces greed and short-term success, and enlightened self-interest, which in the long run produces both greater freedom and greater abundance. The nation faces a true emergency. And emergencies call for drastic action.

The Draft

Taken in isolation, a draft (or conscription), compulsory service in the military, is not a good idea. The concept that the government can – on a whim, that is, without cause – force you to serve in the military is contrary to the premise of individual liberty that is central to the very nature of this country.

That position having been established, is there a circumstance, a cause, under which it would be acceptable for the government to establish a draft? Governments by their nature have as the prime goal the survival of the state. This has been recognized and accepted since the earliest writings on political philosophy, the understanding being that within the concept of the social contract the notion of providing security, the prime driver for the creation of that contract, the survival of the state created by that contract is essentially equal to the notion of providing security to the individuals who create the social contract. Ergo, survival of the state (the nation) does constitute an emergency that warrants consideration of actions that we might otherwise consider beyond the pale.

Certainly, this was the very point made by President Lincoln. From his perspective virtually any action was justified if it kept the Union together. Everything else had to be subordinated to that one position. Emergencies demanded strong action, and national survival justified exceptional action.

The Crisis We Face

Today the United States faces a wide range of issues: on the economic front a large and growing debt; unfunded annuities that dwarf the nominal debt; financial crises and job migration; and rising energy costs. On the social front we face an immigration crisis and an increasingly compartmented and stratified culture; and from abroad (and in some cases from within our own society) we face Islamic terrorism; the proliferation of nuclear weapons; and the rise of a host of potential adversaries.

Further, there is the crisis of identity that we identified at the top of this article. Arguably, it is our greatest threat. And it comes on top of all the other threats that we face.

Separately, each of these problems might be met and successfully addressed. Each would require a sustained effort. But collectively, they will require not simply concerted effort, they require a multi-generational commitment to an effort centered on the very idea of our nation as a whole, to a concept of this nation that expands well beyond the specifics of this or that issue. No one will try to reduce and then eliminate national debt simply because it is debt, nor will they seek a solution to the problem facing Social Security in the latter half of the 21st century simply because the numbers say it is necessary.

There must be a unifying force, a concept and vision which ties one idea to the other, and more importantly, ties one person to another.

An Exceptional Nation

This nation was born from a number of ideals, and in that sense – and it is a vitally important sense – it is truly exceptional. Most countries in history were (and are) the result of geography and conquest. Allegiance to the nation was based on the fact that you were born there and nothing more. The United States chose a different path, one encapsulated in several key documents, such as the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness…” and the Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The notion of equality and unity is even more explicitly captured in the nation’s motto: “E Pluribus Unum” – One Out of Many. This speaks directly to an idea, a vision that has not simply been pooh-poohed of late, but actually pushed aside, the idea of the United States as the Melting Pot, a place where all could come, irrespective of their nation of birth, or their ancestry, and they would no longer be Irish or English, German or Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Indian, Persian, Arab, Berber, Kenyan, Congolese, Rwandan, Samoan or Philippine; they would be Americans. And they would all be equal, equal under the law and equal with respect to their opportunity to live free and to seek their success and to provide for their families. They would, in the words of a great American, be “judged not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character.”

But we are now on the verge of losing that sense of unity, of losing the United in the United States. We are told to celebrate not what makes us alike, but what makes us different, and we now seem to have forgotten that it is not what makes us different, but what makes us alike that brings us together, that provides our unity, that provides the strength we need to face the challenges ahead.

This crisis, this national emergency will require a girding of our loins for at least one and probably several generations. To fail to address that emergency is to risk the nation itself. If we are to meet this emergency it will require all of us working together, as one team. But we are told we are not one team. Nor is there any mechanism in our current social order that promises to act as the driving force to build that team. We as a nation need some mechanism that will give to each of us a common foundation, a common touchstone that we can draw from to rebuild that unity, to rebuild that sense that we are part of a great undertaking, that our participation, our sense of ‘ownership,’ as part of a great team, is essential to our sustained growth. Without that common sense of belonging to something greater, without that sense that we are on the same team, working not for the greater good – not waiting for a handout – our national crisis will only deepen.

The Professional Lament

It is with this national emergency looming in front of us that the notion of restarting the draft is recommended. There are both philosophic and practical reasons for opposing a draft. Among them, the one mentioned at the top of this paper: that this is granting the government authority over the entire populace. Further, many in the military will laud the value of an all-volunteer force, citing in particular the greater professionalism and higher retention. But, both of these traits are purchased at great real cost in pay and particularly in greater dependent, retirement and medical benefits. Such arguments also eschew any discussion of the political reality that a volunteer-professional military force increases the separation between the citizenry and their military and encourages the political elite to use that force without substantial regard as to the concerns and desires of we the people.

Of course, no one could support a return to a draft if it would directly and immediately threaten the security of our nation. But such is not the case. The idea that the draft will give you less qualified personnel is, obviously, false. If the services were able to draw from high-school graduates and college students across the nation, particularly in a case where there are more than 1.5 million male high-school graduates and 600,000 male college graduates every year, there are certainly ample numbers to meet the yearly requirements for several hundred thousand needed each year. (This number would grow somewhat because the manning models for the services would change, but the numbers are well within the available manpower.)

Service lore (almost a military urban myth) suggests that it is nearly impossible to achieve and then maintain the level of training necessary to support today’s high-tech military, that the level of training needed to develop both today’s combat personnel and today’s combat support personnel far exceeds what can be obtained when faced with draft personnel who will only be in the service for two years, hence would spend nearly their entire enlistment in training.

In fact, a return to the draft would require a change in training models. But concerns about this or that personnel manning and training model are insignificant if the draft were able to provide a unifying force to our citizenry as a whole.

If there were a draft the services would be free to use a different set of standards: personnel in their first two years of service would be paid substantially less, the services could bar anyone from joining the services with dependents in tow, personnel in the first two years of service would not need money to live off base, there would be more personnel available for basic services such as cleaning up around bases. In short, the transition could be made to a different and less expensive model. Additionally, as we have a smaller military then when we last had a draft, the services could be much more selective and still meet yearly quotas. That it would offer its own leadership challenges is accepted. But again, that has been dealt with before, quite successfully.

The Essential Point

But the reason for a draft now outweighs any objections to the cost of transitioning from one personnel and training system to another. Our nation is faced with a true national emergency. In many respects our public schools have failed to educate our citizens as to what makes us unique among the nations of the world, and therefore what unites us, makes us one and apart from the rest. We hear politicians speak too glibly of ‘the world’ and less easily about the exceptional nature of America. Such was not always the case. And since the days of the Civil War we have lived in a society where every family had a member who had sacrificed for the nation, and in doing so had learned something about what made us a nation, and came away understanding at the visceral level that we were ‘one out of many.’

Most will accept that only in the event of national emergency is a draft justifiable. But, we are now in a national emergency, politically, economically and spiritually. And while the draft is not and cannot be considered a panacea to address this emergency, it is a vital and necessary element of the solution.

The draft would be this: the simple requirement that all males, between the ages of 18 and 26, be subject to a draft, and that perhaps 500,000 to one million per year (depending on the personnel manning model) be inducted into the military for a two year tour of active duty, followed by 4 years on inactive reserve status.

The implications to our society would be massive. Not only would the American people directly reconnect with their military, within a few years it would mean more members of Congress and members of Congressional staff with military experience, and hence improved judgment in all questions concerning our national security, from budgets and personnel to procurement and support to overseas operations.

What it would provide, apart from the specific military capabilities, is this: a leavening of our society. Every year one million men would – in common – take an oath to defend the Constitution and the nation; one million men would experience – in common – working for a cause greater than themselves; they would understand the real nature of heroism – sacrifice to that higher cause; every year one million men would be released from the service having lived together, served together, sacrificed together – under our flag, in support of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; each year another million men would, despite whether they were rich or poor, of Armenian, Dutch, English, German, Indian, Irish, Japanese, Somali, Vietnamese, or Zimbabwean descent, would look at each other and know that they had these things in common, that despite external appearances that made them look different that they had supported the same things, believed in the same things, sacrificed for the same things, slept in the same barracks, used the same latrines, ate (and hated) the same foods; and defended the same nation, defended the same people, defended the same beliefs.

Marriage and Tyrants

2010-08-17T08:42:00.000-04:00

One individual has recently ruled that 58% of Californians don’t have the authority to change their state Constitution. Three issues are at stake here.

The first, and arguably the greatest, is the question of what is a right? Rights are fundamental principles that reside with the people. They exist outside of and above government. That is, no government ‘gives’ me a right, or even, in the strictest sense, guarantees a right, the right exists no matter what the government wishes. The people can, however, direct the government expand time and effort in protecting and defending rights.

As a general rule, the history of all governments is one of the organs of government, the bureaucracies and those in power, trying to continually limit the rights of the citizenry. Constitutions exist in order to limit government and hence control those efforts. But the important point here is that rights are not ‘provided’ by government, they exist apart from the government itself.

The second issue is whether the people of a state – Californians in this case – have the right to amend their Constitution so as to define an issue that is not otherwise defined. Note that Californians were not trying to usurp a specifically federally defined or protected right (though other states have). Nowhere in the US Constitution is there any effort to define marriage.

There is, however, an amendment that would seem to apply to such a case – the 10th, which states quite simply that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Since declaring a couple as married is a power of the state (we’ve all heard the words from a priest, minister, rabbi or justice of the peace that includes, somewhere, words to the effect ‘in accordance with the powers granted by the state of XXX’), defining a marriage is a power residing at the state level. At least according to the several billion marriages that have taken place in the US since 1776.

This is not, of course, what the judge said. Rather, he referenced the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment. It is worth looking at the original wording of that clause: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

But for that to apply he would have to be referring to a right. But marriage is not a right. Marriage is a contract. With all contracts there come limitations, limitations that have as their basis understandings from common law, which is from society. And so, an adult cannot make a contract with a minor, except through a legal guardian. No contract is valid if it entails breaking the law, and so forth. I don’t know if anyone still pays attention, but the purpose of blood tests before marriage was to test for certain diseases. States would fail to grant a marriage license if one of the two people applying were carrying certain diseases. Marriage therefore is not a right in the strict sense. Rather, it was something that had been defined by society through the course of time.

As to equal protection under the law, the 14th Amendment refers to any person. In as much as marriage is about two persons in a contractual relationship this also doesn’t seem to apply. The judge may claim great legal experience, but the Constitution was drafted to be read and understood by We the People. The words are clear. From where exactly the judge derives his understanding isn’t clear.

This leads to a third and final point: marriage is not a right; marriage is a relationship established and defined by societies from the beginning of time. There is no issue of rights that can exist within such a situation; it – marriage – is simply what the society has defined it to be. If enough people wanted it, marriage could be defined to include owning a dog; no dog, no marriage. Of course, marriage has traditionally been defined by society as the foundation upon which is built the basic unit of that society: the family. But it is a definition that was provided by the society over an extended period of time.

Now, we have one man who has decided that society does not have the right to provide its own definitions. Instead, he has chosen to read into this something that simply isn’t there in order to justify his usurping the people’s power. Whatever your belief about gay marriage, the greater issue here is that one man has gone out of his way to thumb his nose at the notion of democracy and the Constitution, to declare a de facto tyranny of the court. Maybe it’s time we have a few referendums on the judges themselves.

Washington, Tel Aviv, Tehran and Machiavelli

2010-08-12T15:31:00.002-04:00

Machiavelli is famous, or perhaps infamous in some circles, for presenting us with the hard and unvarnished truth of the nature of power. While the complete breadth of his writings shows him to be much less cynical than many who have read and commented on him, nevertheless, he was perhaps the first realist in the field of political philosophy, stressing that the actions of the state and the use of its assets, particularly its military, should ultimately be predicated on prudence, not idealism, lest the actions of the government bring ruin on the nation.

Today politicians around the world have become adept at making a show of their concerns about the poor and underprivileged, of the need to take actions to address this or that humanitarian disaster political-economic catastrophe. But when push comes to shove, it seems that politicians quickly shed the mask of philanthropist and return to the world of reality, to Machiavelli and RealPolitik as it has been labeled.

And so we find Washington continuing to sit on its hands as the Iranians continue to work to produce a nuclear weapon. There are many reasons why Washington may have refused to act: ignorance and incompetence are both possible. But there is also the distinct possibility that there are those in Washington who see this as an opportunity to accomplish several things at once. The scenario plays out this way:

We continue to negotiate while never pushing so hard that anyone feels threatened that we will take unilateral action, such as instituting a third party embargo, to wit: the US will absolutely not trade – anything – with anyone who trades with Iran. In as much as the US has the largest economy in the world and is the world’s largest importer and among the top three in exports, this would have monumental impact. While there are those who would ‘run the blockade,’ the fact is that such a move, if enforced, would cripple Iran. There seems little likelihood of this happening.

As should be obvious by now, US discussions with the UN Security Council ‘Perm 5’ will yield no binding resolution and no definitive action on the part of the international community. The UNSC is, in the light of Iranian nuclear weapon development, North Korean nuclear weapon development, and the host of other situations around the world about which it has pontificated and then done little of note, demonstrating it is not substantially more effective than the League of Nations, although it is a good deal more expensive.

In any case, eventually, perhaps within two years, the Iranians will complete their first nuclear weapon. There will be an announcement, and probably a test, which will be followed by a great deal of Iranian propaganda. Then one of three things will happen:

1) The international community will accept Iran as a nuclear power and Iran will act responsibly and everything will return to something resembling normal

2) The international community will accept Iran as a nuclear power and, emboldened by the worlds’ inaction, the Iranians will let a nuclear weapon out, either via a terror organization or deliberately in a military attack, and Israel will suffer a nuclear detonation or

3) Some nation, recognizing that an Iran armed with a nuclear weapon is an insane and unacceptable risk, will act preemptively and destroy Iran’s nuclear weapon program. There is an even chance that this action might take place before the completion of the first test weapon.

Option 1, while possible, seems unlikely to many and, to anyone thinking about it, represents an unacceptable position for the entire world: a rash and unforgiving government sitting astride the world’s largest oil supplies, armed with nuclear weapons. Anyone who thinks this is a good idea needs to explain why. Nevertheless, with the exception of a great deal of hot air being generated in a few capitals around the world, this is the de facto policy choice that most nations have bought into. Further, the possibility of a supposedly beneficent nuclear Iran suddenly ‘changing its mind’ makes this option untenable, because it leaves everyone who is sane waiting for Option 2 to develop.

Which leaves us with Options 3. The obvious question is: what countries are likely to act against Iran in a preemptive fashion? Four countries come to mind, in increasing order of likelihood:

Turkey: with a short common border with Iran, and as the nominal leader of the secular Middle East, it is conceivable that Turkey would either wish to keep Iran contained, or would support anyone who was willing to so act.

India: India already faces a nuclear-armed Islamic state – Pakistan. But with Pakistan there exists a certain balance of power, a certain ‘détente,’ which India can live with, at least for the time being. A nuclear and resurgent Iran would threaten the stability and balance that currently exists between Pakistan and India and might prompt India to act preemptively.

USA: The USA is obviously capable of acting against Iran and has at least made the most noise about the possibility of doing so. Whether anyone in Washington really has the disposition to do so remains to be seen.

Israel: Israel is the one country on the list, and the one country in the world, that is legitimately threatened by Iran. While it cannot be proven that Iran would attack Israel with nuclear weapons if they were to obtain them, rhetoric from Tehran supports that conclusion, and from Israel’s perspective the consequences of such an attack are so dire that Israel has to consider preemption in order to insure survival.

Unfortunately, the fact that Israel is on the list, and everyone knows it, means that others will in all likelihood not act in anticipation of Israel acting. And the longer everyone waits and lets this drag out, the closer Iran moves to having a real nuclear weapon, the closer the world comes to Israel conducting a large scale strike, or series of strikes, against Iran. These strikes will even include, assuming the Israelis are not sloppy planners, a nuclear option, that is a final step in the event the others have failed, the use of Israel’s own nuclear weapons to destroy the Iran. And the Israeli planners are not sloppy. Which gets us to Machiavelli. Or, at least acting in accordance with the common perception of Machiavelli.

The “calculus” above is more or less common knowledge to anyone who has spent the least little time thinking about it. But, if that is the case, if it is that we are moving inexorably toward a large scale Israeli strike on Iran, possibly even a nuclear strike on Iran, why aren’t people more agitated? Certainly, no one wants that. Or do they?

In the end, getting Israel to act solves the most obvious of problems. For all of Israel’s (and Iran’s) neighbors, it eliminates one of the truly worrisome problems of the region: the rise of Iran. The countries of the Mid-East may rant against Israel, but most (Syria being the exception) are not worried about Israel attacking their country or trying to apply leverage over them. That is not true when they view Iran. An attack on Iran that not only eliminates Iran’s nuclear weapons program but also politically and militarily weakens Iran and weakens the regime would be seen as a good thing by nearly everyone in the Mid-East. That these countries engage in diatribes against Israel is irrelevant. They all understand the real power politics of the situation and would welcome Iran being taken down a notch. That they would use the event for some political theater for their own benefit is simply to be expected. But most would secretly welcome such an outcome.

For the far left in Europe such an attack would simply be viewed as an unalloyed horror. But, in as much as most of the European Left seems incapable of recognizing a real threat, just as they are incapable of mobilizing politically and economically to apply pressure against Iran, they are also incapable of recognizing that such an act would be to their long-term benefit. They will view every act by Israel to be unjustified and will recoil even further from Israel if and when she is forced to act.

For the US the situation is quite different. Despite all the hand-ringing about the collapse of the US empire (there isn’t one, but that doesn’t prevent pundits from talking about it), the US retains the capability to act against Iran politically, economically and militarily. Yet, it hasn’t. It would seem, rather, that those in Washington who might make a real effort to pressure Iran are refusing to do so, preferring to engage in Doris Day diplomacy (‘Whatever will be will be’). Which raises the question: Why?

Certainly, they are smart enough to understand that the longer this drags out, the closer Iran moves to having a nuclear weapon. Certainly, they understand that Israel has the capability to act and will be politically forced to act if no one else acts to insure Israel’s survival. But still there is no real move to apply the level of pressure needed to bring real change. There can only be two options: either they are incompetent and are not capable of understanding the gravity of the situation, or they wish this situation to develop along the lines discussed above. Such a wish is consistent with the most cynical political calculus: let the situation continue until Israel believes that no one is going to act to prevent Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon; give no definitive assurances that the US will, in the end act to prevent an attack on Israel; do not use the political and economic tools at your disposal to apply the pressure needed on the rest of the world to force Iran to change course; and in the end let Israel conduct the attack by herself.

Such an attack would be the best possible solution for the far left in the US, providing nearly limitless opportunity to lambaste Israel, while offering equal opportunity to cuddle up with the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Hezballah and Syria, and while continuing to lament Israeli unilateralism, labeling Israel (and US conservatives) as the real threat to peace and stability in the Mid-east, all with the comfort of knowing that the real threat to peace – a nuclear Iran – has been eliminated for the foreseeable future.

There is, of course, only one problem with all this: what happens if the Israelis fail to destroy the Iranian nuclear weapons capability?

Three Amendments to Our Constitution

2010-07-05T10:55:00.000-04:00

The author does not believe himself as talented or blessed with intellect as the authors of the first 85 Federalist Papers. But the time has come to renew the discussion about the powers and extent of our government. And it is our government, not the government of the people who live within 50 miles of the Capital building. (The author would also like to apologize for the length of the following discussion, but some issues don't lend themselves to brevity.)

The bureaucracy, the organs of government, continues to expand, both in reach and in shear size. It would be one thing if this expansion followed from a serious and sustained public discussion as to the positive and negative impacts of an increasingly large, increasingly powerful and increasingly pervasive government, and a general acceptance that the benefits to be accrued from an increase in size clearly outweighed the costs and the risks. But there has been little real debate. In fact, much of this expansion has been without regard and without serious debate as to the effect their actions will have on the people’s liberties or to our posterity. It would seem that it is now time to, at the very minimum, ask whether it is best to definitively restrict the bureaucracy so that the people may remain both safe and secure and also free. It is to this end that the following is offered in an effort to stimulate this discussion and help to promote the changes necessary to keep our nation strong and free and our Constitution vital.

You will find discussions on three separate proposed amendments, one to limit federal spending, one to limit the creation of federal, that is bureaucratic, regulations, and one to limit taxation. These are serious subjects that require serious debate. The answers are not easy or simple and require that we all commit some of our time to studying how best to address these issues and preserve our nation. The following is offered to help fuel this debate.

________

The three proposed Amendments are:

Amendment 28 – Limits to Federal Spending

1. The Government of the United States shall have a budget no greater than 12.5 percent of the previous year’s gross individual income.

2. The Government of the United States shall not spend – inclusive of all federal outlays – more than it collects.

3. In the event of a national emergency, as declared by the President and agreed to by a super majority (2/3rds) of both houses of Congress, this spending limit may be exceeded. The emergency must be reconfirmed every 12 months by the President and by a vote of 2/3rds of both houses of Congress.

4. Following any declared emergency the Government must return spending to no greater than 12.5% within two years and eliminate any incurred debt with five years.

5. This spending limit will be met within 3 years of the approval of this amendment.

Amendment 29 – Limits to Federal Regulation

1. The Government of the United States shall pass no law or departmental regulation without establishing the cost to personal liberty, private property and to commerce of such action, and publishing these findings prior to final enactment of the legislation or regulation.

2. The appropriate House and Senate Committee will conduct a yearly review of each regulation passed by agencies within their purview. Regulations which have been challenged by the citizenry will be suspended until an impact statement has been provided by the appropriate agency and approved by the proper House and Senate committee.

3. Any regulation that is not reviewed by the appropriate committee in both the House and Senate within a year of being placed in force will be suspended and cannot be reissued until considered by the appropriate committee.

4. This amendment will be in force immediately upon approval.

Amendment 30 – Limits to the Income Tax, Amendment 16 is amended as follows:

1) The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

2) The federal income tax shall be a no more than 12.5% of total unadjusted income.

3) No exemptions, allowances or other exclusions are to be provided to any one citizen unless they be provided to all.

_________________

In Detail

28th Amendment

Concerning Federal Spending and whether there should be limits on the ability of the federal government to raise revenue, raise debt, and spend the people’s money; and if there are to be limits how might those limits be defined.

________

A Proposal:

Amendment 28 – Limits to Federal Spending

1. The Government of the United States shall have a budget no greater than 12.5 percent of the previous year’s gross individual income.

2. The Government of the United States shall not spend – inclusive of all federal outlays – more than it collects.

4. Following any declared emergency the Government must return spending to no greater than 12.5% within two years and eliminate any incurred debt with five years.

5. This spending limit will be met within 3 years of the approval of this amendment.

There is little room for debate that there needs to be some limit to the federal government’s ability to tax and to spend. Limits on taxation are necessary in order both ensure a stable business environment in which jobs can be created, the people can find employment and the nation as a whole grow rich, as well as to limit, at least to a certain extent, the ability of the federal government to intrude into every sector of the economy.

Further, economists have long noted that the greatest amounts of revenue will be raised by what would be interpreted as low tax rates, in the vicinity of 10 to 12% of total economic activity. This is because low (and stable) tax rates allow for the maximum amount of economic growth, which will then generate the greatest amounts of both income and tax revenue.

Nevertheless, simple limits to tax rates do not and have not prevented governments, both the Federal and state, from spending more than they have gathered, the difference being made up by raising debt. These debt totals have now reached crisis levels in certain states, and threaten to do so with the Federal government, if it has not already done so, particularly when we consider the size of the unfunded annuities that the nation is now charged with supporting.

Several questions now emerge: Should the Constitution limit the Federal Government’s ability to Tax? Should there be a limit on raising Debt and on Deficit Spending? Should there be a limit on spending? If there is to be a limit on Taxation or Spending, how could the nation deal with a Crisis? What Standards should be used to ensure that these limits are met and not exceeded? Who would certify the Standards? What is the proper definition of budget? We will discuss each in turn.

1) Should the Constitution be amended to limit the Federal Government’s ability to tax?

The Founders established a government with the intent of providing it – the Federal government – only limited powers. Nevertheless, the Constitution specifically states that the Congress has the authority to raise taxes and that authority is not further limited. Further, through the powers granted by 16th Amendment, Congress was granted the authority to directly tax income in order to raise revenue.

The history of the debate to amend the Constitution and create the income tax is revealing: at the time of the debate on the 16th Amendment there was considerable discussion as to whether the amendment should provide for an upper limit of the rate for the income tax. This upper limit was rejected because it was argued at the time that to do so would be to invite future governments to raise the rate to limit, where as leaving the amendment without a specific upper limit would allow sane minds to rule and the tax would be kept lower. The limit which had been proposed was 15%. Within just a few years the tax rate was increased to 15% and just a few years after that to substantially higher then 15%.

In the intervening decades the income tax rate has been changed repeatedly, and many exemptions and exceptions added to the tax code. At times the top tax rates have exceeded 70%, while at the same time there is now a large segment of the population who pay no income tax at all. Further, there have been regular discussions about the federal government instituting a Value Added Tax (VAT), a national sales tax, as a means of raising additional revenue. This is, of course, in addition to the federal government’s authority to raise revenue from various duties and licenses.

In short, the federal government has a wide range of means to raise revenue, the income tax being just one of them. Placing a restriction on the income tax rate would not limit the size and scope of federal spending or the reach of the government, it would simply mean that the government would need to use other means to expand.

Therefore, any limit to taxation, if it is to limit the federal government’s total ability to raise taxes must address all possible taxes, not simply the income tax.

2) Would limiting the federal government’s ability to tax provide a limit to the size of the federal budget, that is would it limit the ability of the federal government to spend?

The federal government has the power to raise debt. That seems a reasonable and prudent authority, when used wisely. In fact, virtually every war that the US has fought, from the Revolution to today, has had to rely on debt to fund the war effort. Certainly, use of debt during a crisis is justifiable, assuming the crisis is severe enough. However, when used without regard to consequence the result can be staggering amounts of debt. The current federal debt has risen to more than $13 trillion dollars, and the unfunded annuities that the federal government, and ultimately the taxpayers, are now responsible for exceed more that $110 trillion. We have seen other countries with proportionately even larger debt. We do not wish to follow their course. But, both our federal debt and our unfunded annuities will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. This unlimited power to raise debt may well represent a destructive power in the hands of the federal government. But, limiting the federal government’s ability to tax would in no sense limit the government’s ability to continue to raise either debt or unfunded annuities.

Further, an ever-expanding debt provides the federal government with an incentive to sustain an inflation rate that can trivialize debt by continually making the currency less valuable. While this process works on the federal balance book, it also trivializes the work and savings of the average citizen – the people who grant power to the government.

It would seem that limiting taxation while not limiting spending therefore actually provides the federal government the incentive to do the wrong thing: to continue to raise debt and maintain inflationary growth at the expense of the very people who pay the taxes that support the government.

3) Should there be a limit on raising Debt and on Deficit Spending?

The normal purpose of borrowing money, whether by private citizens, businesses or state and federal governments, is to make long-term capital investments and defray the cost of that capital investment over the long term. While this is in fact the case with citizens and businesses, whether in the buying of a home or in the expansion of a business, governments have used debt – deficit spending – as a means to fund programs despite an inability to fully fund that program, and then extend that program into the indefinite future, at the expense of future taxpayers. While there are certain government programs that could be clearly labeled as capital investments, such as highways or ports, they represent only a small percentage of federal spending. In fact, little of the federal government’s debt has been raised to fund long-range, capital investments. It seems therefore that, at the very least, the people need to consider at least some restrictions on the government’s ability to raise debt.

What then should be that restriction? The federal government (and multiple state governments and local governments) has shown itself to be willing to live with ever increasing debt and equally willing to push that debt off onto the backs of future generations. (In that it is impossible for the ‘future to vote now,’ there is a reasonable philosophical argument that doing so represents an usurpation of power by the legislature, seizing freedom from future generations.) In fact, the nation has not been free of debt since the administration of President Jackson (1835), and Congress has shown itself, with one brief exception during the mid-1990s, more willing even then the Presidents to continue to spend money it does not have. Certainly there seems to be a need to limit the government’s ability to spend (at the federal state and local levels), but should government still have the power to raise debt?

It would seem that, given both the propensity of government to spend without feeling bound by simple prudence and the added incentive to ‘defray’ debt through continued inflation, while actually using very little of the debt for the purpose of anything that might be termed capital improvement, that the only reasonable course for the people is to limit the use of debt by government to addressing extreme emergencies, and then only when clearly recognized as such by an overwhelming majority of the Congress.

4) Should there be a limit on Spending?

If we cannot achieve the goal of control of government spending through limits to taxation, then the obvious course is to limit spending. The most reasonable course therefore is to set a firm mark that limits federal government spending. Following this course, the government would be limited to spending no more than a certain amount each year, and would therefore be forced to ‘live within its means.’ Only in the event of a true national emergency, such as a war, would the nation – the federal government – be allowed to raised debt. This would, of course, require the clear support of the majority of the people and, therefore, a veto proof vote, a super majority – 2/3rds, of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, should be required for its passage. Despite the veto-proof vote, the concurrence of the Executive should also be required as the Executive must be willing to use the extra resources to aggressively address the emergency.

Such an action would have several real consequences. In as much as the Constitution requires Congress to authorize and appropriate money each year, this would mean that each year Congress would have to revalidate the emergency. Thus Congress would be forced to go on record each year, with a 2/3rds majority, certifying that the emergency remains.

In the event of a war, which would seem to be the only national emergency that would be likely to gain and maintain a 2/3rds majority, this would essentially force Congress to declare war, rather then avoiding it as has happened repeatedly during the last sixty years.

5) How do we define spending?

It is certain that, with Congress making the rules, the definition of spending would be modified to the benefit of Congress, but not necessarily the people. Accordingly, it would seem that the optimum path, if we really wish to limit government, is to make the definition as clear and as inclusive as possible. Therefore, let us define government spending, within the constraints of this amendment, to include all federal government outlays, whether discretionary or non-discretionary, to include debt servicing, social security outlays, health care payments and all other programs known as entitlement programs, any non-budgetary payments, and any and all other federal transfers of moneys.

6) What would be the basis for spending?

Congress must have a limit that is defined and understood by the general populace. Figures such as the ‘Gross Domestic Product’ (GDP) have merit, but the definition of GDP, or any other such figure, could be changed by simple bureaucratic process. Accordingly, a method must be identified to ‘safeguard’ the definitions. It would seem, in fact, that the best course is to use a figure which will be considered of personal interest to the average citizen, one which he or she will be intimately concerned with keeping both visible and, for purposes of this amendment, low. Therefore, the obvious choice is to limit federal spending based on gross, that is unadjusted, personal income. This exclusion of corporate income in defining the baseline from which government spending will be drawn inhibits further bureaucratic chicanery that would seek to redefine corporate incomes so that the federal spending limit might be increased. This would not limit corporate income from taxation, simply exclude it when computing the federal spending limit.

7) If there is a limit on spending, what should that limit be?

While we seek to limit the profligate federal spending that has left us with a massive debt structure, we must not so constrict the government that it has inadequate funds to act. Therefore, the spending limit must be high enough to suit the purposes we have already assigned government, first among them being the requirement to provide for the common defense.

In fact, the nation is now overtaxed and government taxation and spending policies are actually constricting the size of the economy. As has been demonstrated repeatedly in the past, substantive tax cuts have invariably led to both massive growth in the overall economy and real income, as well as to significant growth in government revenues. What has not happened is an increase in government discipline in controlling rampant spending policies. Economic analysis has routinely indicated that the maximum government revenue will actually take place at a spending (and taxation) level of between 11 and 12%. Accordingly, by fixing the upper limit of federal spending at 12.5%, there would actually be an increase in federal revenue over current levels.

_______________

29th Amendment

Concerning Federal Regulations and whether there should be a specific limit on the ability of the Federal government, both the Legislature and the Executive, to create and enforce laws regulations; and if there is to be a limit how might that limit be defined.

________

A Proposal:

Amendment 29 – Limits to Federal Regulation

4. This amendment will be in force immediately upon approval.

Discussion: The federal government has already imposed such limits on the people in the form of environmental impact statements and the like, forcing the citizens to explain to the government the impact of certain actions before they are allowed to proceed. The justification for this is simple: the federal government, in particular the specific agencies, are acting on behalf of all the nation to ensure that the actions of a few do not have consequences damaging to the many. However, there is no similar check to the various offices and agencies of the executive branch save concerted action by the citizenry to keep the federal agencies from actions whose consequences have not been equally studied. This amendment places a similar requirement on both the Congress and, as importantly, on the bureaucracy, thereby preventing the bureaucracies from circumventing the issue of law by passing thousands of regulations that are never debated by the people’s elected representatives.

The rights and liberties of the people are limited whenever government passes a law or the bureaucracy creates a new regulation. Laws are, however, visible and the members of Congress are subject to recall by the electorate. Such is not the case of those who create the overwhelming bulk of the regulations that restrict the every day lives of the citizenry.

Recent health-care legislation is a good case in point: while it is possible, albeit difficult, to fully understand the basic law that establishes the current federal government oversight of the health-care industry, the legislation creates a number of new offices and agencies, each of which will have the authority to create their own regulations without any direct oversight from elected officials. The process to correct or redress any overreaching regulation will be long and tedious and almost certainly beyond the means of the average citizen. Yet there is nothing in the law which provides for a direct check to the bureaucrats who daily create this increasingly complex web of rules and regulations. Prudence would suggest that an amendment to the Constitution might be constructed to force the executive branch to provide for an analysis of the consequence of various rules and regulations before they come into force. How might this be done and how might it be done without creating both an even large bureaucracy and one that is hopelessly encumbered by administrative procedures?

1) While Senators and Congressman are charged with acting on behalf of those who elected them, there is nothing in the process of drafting, passing and funding a law that requires that they consider the consequences of their actions. Yet it is this very issue that led Congress to enact legislation that led to what are now know as Environmental Impact Statements, detailed estimates of the impact of this or that action on the environment. It would seem prudent that Congress be required to do the same, that Congress be required to provide at least the beginning of both a justification for a given law as well as a defense of it, showing how proposed legislation would address one issue without causing unintentional harm in another area.

Certainly, there would always be the opportunity for Congress to short-circuit such a law with poorly constructed and poorly thought out defenses, comporting to the letter but not the spirit of such an amendment. But, such is always the case, and it is the citizenry that must always hold the elected officials to task. Passage of such an amendment would give the citizenry a powerful lever to force compliance by the elected officials.

2) While there is a concern that various federal agencies do not act precipitously, it is recognized that they are charged with carrying out laws that have been passed and funded by Congress. No Amendment should be passed that inhibits the executive from executing the laws of nation. Yet the concern remains that the agencies create regulations without attempting to work through the consequences of specific regulations. If, however, regulations were subject to automatic review by the appropriate oversight committee in both houses of Congress, there would an increased possibility that poor or dangerous regulations would be stopped before they create harm.

To ensure that the various offices do not attempt to circumvent this amendment by continually reissuing regulations and restarting the yearly review timeline, it would be necessary to include that any reissued regulation does not go into force until it is considered by the appropriate committees.

3) One obvious issue of concern is that any effort to force the bureaucracy to develop a consequence assessment or impact statement for any regulation would both dramatically slow the implementation of any law and would increase the administrative costs of every office and agency in the federal government. To address this it will be necessary for the Legislature to develop a reasonable means of both evaluating the impact of various actions and of streamlining the review process. While there might be a concern that placing this requirement in the hands of the Legislature is risky, the fact is that it is in the Legislature’s interest to develop a streamlined procedure and in the people’s interest for it to be slow and difficult, so as to inhibit, per the original intent of the Constitution, the drafting of hasty legislation.

4) By placing a one-year time-line on all Executive branch rules and regulations there is an automatic stop placed on any regulation which has had expensive or extensive unintended consequences. This requirement to review within the appropriate House and Senate committees would force them to discuss these unintended consequences and go on record that they intended to cause such developments and accept responsibility for it, or having recognized the unintended consequences as unacceptable, modify the overarching legislation to redress the problem.

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30th Amendment

Concerning Federal Taxation and whether there should be specific limits on the ability of the federal government to tax the citizenry; and if there are to be limits how might those limits be defined.

________

A Proposal:

Amendment 30 – Limits to the Income Tax, Amendment 16 is amended as follows:

1) The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

2) The federal income tax shall be a no more than 12.5% of total unadjusted income.

3) No exemptions, allowances or other exclusions are to be provided to any one citizen unless they be provided to all.

This amendment amends the current income tax amendment, the 16th. It does not in any other way restrict the federal government’s ability to tax. There are two avenues of thought that attach to such an amendment: one would consider that such an amendment must be able to stand alone, the other that it must be passed in concert with an amendment limiting the authority of the government to spend. If it is passed in concert with a proposal to limit the Federal Government’s authority to spend, then the tax limit of this amendment would work in conjunction with that amendment and prevent Congress from enacting a wide range of other taxes such as a Value Added Tax (VAT) or various tariffs and licenses.

Conversely, if the amendment were passed in isolation, then Congress would retain not only the power to levy other taxes, but also to continue deficit spending. Accordingly, this amendment might be considered to be secondary to an amendment that limits total Federal spending, if the intention is to limit the ability of the bureaucracy to spend the nation into financial difficulties.

1) Under this proposal, Congress would be limited in exacting an income up to 12.5 percent. If this limit were passed on it’s own, Congress would be limited only in levying an income tax to this limit. Doing so would have the benefit of defining for future economic growth the ability of the government to reach into both individual and business income streams and provide to the free enterprise system a clear boundary beyond which they would be free to plan and expand.

However, this amendment, in isolation, does not prevent the Congress from raising other revenues, either through additional taxes, fees and tariffs, or through the sale of bonds or the printing of money and does not in and of itself further restrict the spending habits of Congress.

If this amendment were passed in conjunction with an amendment to limit spending, particularly one that limited spending to 12.5% of total individual (unadjusted) income, it would act as an effective break against other taxes as well as various fees and tariffs. In as much as the bureaucracy would likely wish to retain some fees and tariffs for purposes more of control then to raise revenue, the actual tax rate would in fact be less than 12.5%.

2) On the matter of exemptions, several points must be considered. The argument for exemptions is that they reflect the primacy of care and feeding – that Congress recognizes that before a citizen pays his or her tax he must first eat and care for self and family. However, if this is the case, then there should be an identical series of payments (food, housing, clothing,) that each receives. But, would that be based on household, or per person? Should it include transportation? Should it include power and water? This discussion leads to an ever-expanding series of exceptions, which are also known as ‘loopholes’ to those who cannot utilize this or that exception.

While exemptions began as a series of ‘obvious’ expenses that should be recognized before the payment of taxes – food and housing in particular – the fact is that exemptions have grown to include thousands of special cases. For those who benefit, an exemption has come to be considered a right and a demonstration of the just concerns of government for the general welfare. For those who do not benefit exemptions have come to be seen as loopholes in the tax code and subsidies from one segment of society to another. What one sees as a right and proper exemption that in the end all benefit, is seen as little more than a special interest loophole and ‘insider’ chicanery to others.

We might also consider simply whether it is the role of the federal government to be involved with the granting of exemptions in any way. Under what provision in the Constitution is Congress granted the authority to consider one segment of the citizenry as apart and warranting special behavior? The answer of course is that it does not provide that authority. Every article of the Constitution and every amendment has been written o make it more evident that all are to be treated equally. Yet, the tax code is constructed to create thousands of exceptions to that concept.

While there are rational justifications for every single one of the tens of thousands of exemptions within the massive tax code, the question that needs to be asked is where is the justification within the Constitution for Congress for singling out what subset of society for a benefit, when by definition, to do so means to place the expense on another subset. The Constitution speaks to all citizens equally; nowhere does it speak of subsidizing one group, or in any way benefiting one group at the expense of another. While there may seem to be reasons – rationale – for doing so from time to time, every such effort has, over the entire history of this nation, resulted in unequal treatment of one at the expense, often great expense of many. While the intentions may have been good, the result has been injustice.

Governments must act with equanimity to all the citizenry. When it does not do so the citizenry should act to ensure that it does so. To do otherwise is to establish a de facto special minority, one that has more rights then the others, one that receives special treatment that is not available to all. It places one group in oppositions to another, separating the society into smaller special interest groups that generate conflict and consume the energy of the citizens. Such an idea is anathema to the sustained survival of the republic. It would seem that the only way ahead, as unpleasant as some may suggest it will be in the first few years, to end all such exemptions and move to consistent and equal relationship between all citizens and the government. The establishment of an income tax with no exemptions is a necessary step in that direction.

The United States: A Raison d'Etre

2010-06-27T08:00:00.000-04:00

I heard several people arguing the other day as to whether the United States was truly exceptional or whether it was simply a matter of perception, that everyone thinks their country is exceptional. Unfortunately, the people involved in the argument missed the fundamental question: what is it that makes every country unique and from that, is that which makes the US unique truly exceptional?

Political theorists says that it takes several things to make a country: a geographic entity (a chunk of land), economic viability and political organization (you need to be able in some sense to support yourself and have an organization that can handle the day-to-day list of tasks that governments handle), and you need to have a raison d’etre – that is, a reason for being or reason to be.

It is this last that is the most important, or arguably the only meaningful differentiator of one country from another. The raison d’etre – the reason to be – tells us why country X exists, why country X split from country A and pushed through all the heartache of the birth of a nation to become what it is today. It is the single most important thing within any nation. Yet it seems to have been forgotten.

It is true that for many nations around the world, the raison d’etre is at best poorly defined. Many nations in the world exist for no other reason that that they have existed – in one form or another - for hundreds, even thousands of years. Perhaps originally formed by the self-centered and arrogant for their own purposes and self-aggrandizement, smaller states slowly merged with other small principalities through wars and marriages of convenience to form larger and wealthier states from which more taxes could be squeezed. Many such states exist today, states that exist simply because they did exist, defined more by their geography then by anything else.

That is not the case with the US. In fact, the United States is one of the relatively few nations in history that was founded based on clear concepts and ideas, concepts and ideas that are embodied in four specific documents from our history. The importance of this is simple, but massive, because this raison d’etre, this reason to be, explains not only why our Founders engaged in this truly wondrous experiment called the United States of America, it also helps to explain why we are different and why we must not only celebrate that difference but also defend it.

When politicians say that they believe in American Exceptionalism just as a Greek believes in Greek exceptionalism, they miss the point of our exceptional nature, they miss (perhaps they never understood?) the real ‘reason to be’ that underpins all that makes us Americans.

The first document that I believe holds a facet of our reason to be is the Mayflower Compact. A simple and brief document, the Mayflower Compact establishes that they were forming a government, and state that is to create equal laws. While it still acknowledged the King of England as their sovereign, they are stating that they, the people, will determine the laws that govern them. This ‘simple’ proposition would later be a central issue that led to our independence, that we would not sit idly by while laws affecting us were passed on the other side of the ocean.

The second document is, of course, the Declaration of Independence. And the spirit of that incredible document is to be found in two distinct places, the opening lines of the second sentence, which are so often – and rightly – spoken:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their 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 -

Two incredible concepts: all people with equal and unalienable rights – that exist from God not from government, central to which is liberty; and that governments are subservient to the people, that the only powers they possess are those given to them by the people. This is unique – exceptional – material. And while other nations have attempted to mimic various elements of our system, few will be found that state this idea so clearly or who have attempted to honor the concept in daily practice.

A second concept is also provided in the Declaration of Independence that is, I believe central to how we as a nation see ourselves and see other nations and that is in the following line:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The key here is the belief that a people have a duty, a responsibility, to stand up and act to overthrow despots and to establish responsible government. This is truly revolutionary stuff, and it’s presence in our founding document made the US unique in history at the time of our creation and, even today, there are few countries that capture this sense of the real power being in the hands of the people.

The third document is the Constitution. Two elements of the Constitution must be considered, first the Preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

A glaring statement, leading the legal foundation of all of our laws, clearly stating that the people form the government, that the government – the bureaucracy – works for the people as a whole, not the other way around, and that our prime goal is the ‘blessings of liberty.’

Second, the text as a whole provides a strong and explicit message limiting of the powers of the organs of government. While much argument has been made of what this or that line might mean, I would suggest that much of this legalistic splitting of hairs is the obfuscation of disingenuous lawyers. The Constitution as amended, when read as a whole, with the Federalist Papers nearby, makes an incredibly strong statement about limited government, about a government that has defined borders and must stay within those border, that the purpose of government is to provide equality under the law and equal opportunity within society. In no sense does the Constitution, or the discussions about each article found within the Federalist Papers, suggest equality of outcome. We are, after all, a free people, and our successes or failures are matters of individual initiative. It is the government’s responsibility simply to ensure the ‘playing field’ remains level.

The final document that defines our reason to be is Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and in particular, the final line:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

In no other nation is found the clarion call to liberty and to true equality. Throughout these documents winds a thread that speaks to the birth not only of a new nation but a new people. Our motto - ‘E Pluribus Unum’ – ‘One Out of Many’ - speaks directly to a concept that has been rejected by many pseudo-sophisticated wags of the last 30 years, who have stressed our diversity and who have called for us all to not only recognize what makes us different but to ‘celebrate’ it. That call is anathema to the very nature – the reason to be – of our nation. We are no longer English, Irish, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Mexican, Portuguese, Egyptian, Japanese, Nigerian, Chinese, Samoan, Vietnamese or any other nationality. We have given up those other countries.

These documents both encapsulated and helped us to define our raison d’etre. And they have made a truly exceptional country, one that is unique in the 6000 year of recorded history. While some will be quick to point out our mistakes, the fact is that no country has ever made such an effort to advance mankind as this nation and no country is today poised to take over that role.

We are an exceptional country, a unique country. (And despite our seemingly endlessly ballyhooed faults by many in the media, I have yet to observe a mass emigration to all the other places that are so much better.) What we must do is act to not only preserve our exceptionalism, but we must stress it to the next generation. Our exceptionalism not only must be taught, it must be respected, cherished and nourished. It is not something to be haughty about, but something to be treated with the greatest respect and the recognition that each generation is charged with preserving it and preserving this nation, Governor Bradford’s shining ‘city on a hill,’ as a beacon to all who believe in liberty.

Let's Hang Mrs. O'Leary

2010-06-16T17:12:00.002-04:00

Hang Her! Hang Mrs. O’Leary! It’s her fault. She should be held accountable – for everything. After all, it was her negligence that caused the Great Chicago Fire (October 8th, 1871), a fire which destroyed some 2000 acres of the city, as well as (per Wikipedia) some 17,500 buildings, and $222 million in property and left 90,000 people homeless, in addition to killing some 200 to 300 people.

The idea is, of course, ludicrous. (Particularly since the story of Mrs. Catherine O’Leary’s cow kicking over a lantern and starting the fire was a fabrication by a reporter.) The point is simply this: people, no matter whether they are negligent or not, cannot be held accountable for everything that happens after a mishap occurs – even if some lawyers insist that they should be. The theory applies whether we are speaking about Mrs. O’Leary or British Petroleum. What is the proper extent of their liability is a matter properly left to courts, and to some extent legislatures. But it is meaningless at this point in the problem before us.

But, there is an issue that needs to be addressed in the near term: what is government’s proper role and responsibility in a crisis or emergency?

The answer lies in recalling the essence of government: societies are formed, governments are created, to provide for common security, secondarily to assist in the development of those functions that are difficult for the individual to provide. Thus, governments provide police and armed forces, currency, the rules under which the society will operate and a means for enforcing those rules, and certain infrastructure, when it is too difficult for private citizens to do so. This explains not only armies and police forces, but also laws and courts, licensing and various business and construction codes, and public roads. (Some infrastructure has been privatized from time to time – toll roads, bridges, ports, etc., but they still must be operated so as to ensure public access, even if done at a fee.)

Governments also provide – since the earliest days of the Pharaohs – social stability. It is government’s responsibility to ensure that the society endures, even in the face of the death of leading citizens or in the case of the destruction of a large segment of a city. Or in the case of an oil spill. Stated differently, governments are responsible – broadly speaking - for crisis response. While there are certain narrowly defined, specific crises that can be handled privately (a ‘Life Flight’ helicopter for example), government is the prime respondent in crises for a number of reasons:

1) Authority. The government has the authority to act. Common understanding of public safety and well-being, concepts that date from English common law, and before that ancient Rome, places primary responsibility for public safety in hands of the government. Executive powers granted to most governors and to the President provide them with the ability to, through executive findings, circumvent standing regulations and the limits of certain laws to provide for rapid responses to the crisis. In the case of the United States, there is the obvious question of jurisdiction; is the crisis to be addressed by local government, state government or federal government? In fact, there is a fairly well developed set of rules that provides guidance to answer that question, which, while not perfect, does provide a workable solution in the overwhelming number of cases.

2) Resources. Governments simply have more resources on hand then do private citizens. This is particularly true of the federal government, which can raise literally billions of dollars at very short notice.

3) Assets. The Federal government has access to special assets which simply are not available anywhere else; from heavy lift aircraft and ships, to supplies to and equipment to support displaced people, to mobile command and control platforms to a wide range of surveillance and monitoring assets, the US government has assets that can be used to address a crisis unlike any other government or organization on the planet. The US government also has substantial strategic stockpiles of supplies to provide for extended support to any community.

4) Manpower. Governments have access to a wide range of manpower, both as a work force and as sources of expertise in most fields of study. Thus the Federal government can not only direct personnel from various departments and agencies to provide support, it can tap into virtually the entire nation’s array of corporations and universities both by appealing to them for support and by contracting for that support.

5) Moral Authority. The federal government, in the person of the President, represents the voice of the people. Use of that moral authority is a powerful tool in mobilizing and directing the citizenry to respond to nearly any situation.

Unfortunately, virtually none of this has taken place yet in response to the sinking of Deepwater Horizon. We have had some posturing and some childish behavior about kicking someone’s butt, and most recently the attempt to use the crisis to push a policy agenda. Beyond the work done by the Coast Guard, and the decision to send the Secretary of the Navy to the Gulf, little definitive has been done by the federal government to solve the problem. It is long past the time that this could have been addressed with a small ‘footprint.’ The American people, and particularly the citizens of the Gulf States, have a right to see some major ‘muscle movements.’ So, herewith some thoughts:

A) The President should immediately convene an emergency meeting of the following in New Orleans:

- The President, the Vice President, the Secretaries or Deputy Secretaries of Treasury, Energy, Interior, Homeland Security, Defense, Transportation, Commerce and Labor; the Directors of FEMA, MMS and the NTSB; the Commandant of the Coast Guard and the Commander of the Army Corps of Engineers; the Governors and the Commanders of the National Guard from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida; the Director of the National Science Foundation; the CEOs of BP, Exxon-Mobile, Chevron, Texaco, Haliburton, TransOcean, McDermott, Schlumberger and representatives from other key oil and energy industry leaders as well as industry related institutes. Representatives from universities with leading geologists and petroleum studies should also be included. Use government funds to facilitate travel and housing of these people while in New Orleans.

- The purpose of the meeting would be to spend a day listening to BP and the Coast Guard describe the current situation in detail. If necessary, have a representative from the Attorney General’s office available to grant immunity so that the complete facts can be presented. Then spend two days discussing emergency response options to close the ‘leak’ and contain the spread of oil. At the end of the third day select which options will be pursued and put money against it.

- Designate the Vice President as the lead and leave him in New Orleans to run the operation. If that means he moves to New Orleans for the next six months, OK, it’s a crisis. He can fly back to Washington in four hours if he is needed to break a deadlock in the Senate. Then he needs to immediately return to New Orleans. Each government department Secretary or agency Director should designate their Deputy Secretary or an Assistant Secretary to remain in New Orleans with the VP to help in orchestrating the solution.

B) From each of the ‘team members’ listed in A, identify supporting team members. Using a strategic planning team from the Pentagon’s Joint Staff (the military are the only people formally trained in the full breadth and depth of strategic planning, everyone else just pretends) establish a Consequence Management Planning Cell that would draw on the expertise of the support team provided by the ‘team members’ from paragraph A. Develop a Consequence Management Plan that provides a roadmap to return the Gulf to a ‘pre-crisis’ condition. The team has two weeks for the initial rough plan, and 90 days to develop a long-term plan.

C) Direct the NTSB to conduct an ‘aircraft mishap’ like review of operation on Deepwater Horizon and of the sinking of Deepwater Horizon. Expertise should be drawn from the American Bureau of Shipping, Lloyds of London and others to provide insight into the latest technology, techniques and practices from around the world. Identify what mistakes were made, what material and design failures occurred and provide recommendations to prevent such occurrences.

D) Establish a strategic planning team that is charged with: reviewing the findings of the NTSB, and then working with the Governors of the states that border the Gulf as well as the Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, the oil companies and the Department of the Interior (and others as appropriate) to develop long range plans that both sustains oil production in the Gulf and provides increased protection to fisheries, wildlife habitat and the interests of the citizens of the Gulf States over the long term. The plan should address handling future crisis caused by weather, material failure and mishaps, and hostile – terrorist – actions. The plan should be comprehensive and address improvements to systems to protect both oil production facilities and the coastline in the event of hurricanes of varying force.

- Charge the planning team with providing a comprehensive strategic plan within six months of the completion of the NTSB review.

As with all planning teams, the intention is to develop several options – each of which will satisfy the overall guidance and achieve the desired outcome. As each different planning team finishes its tasking the various options will be presented to the Governors, the President, and to the American people for their review and, eventually consent. In fact, within limits (because some information would be classified), each of the planning teams should provide regular and frequent briefs to the American people as to progress made and the options being developed by the planning teams.

This is a huge tasking. But it is precisely the kind of task that the federal government is capable of handling if properly led. What is certain is that no other organization has the means or the span of authority to handle this size of an effort. What is lacking is leadership. There has been enough talk about assigning blame and about advancing this or that agenda. It is time to find answers and move out. It is time for some leadership.

Baseball, Ethics, and Megan Fox

2010-06-14T18:55:00.000-04:00

Two things happened over the past several weeks that allow me to believe that things in our society aren’t necessarily as bad as everyone says they are. As usual, the events in question are found where we least expect them: one on the sports page and the other in the movie industry.

From the sports page comes a story that reads as a morality tale straight from the ancient Greeks. I suspect you all know the details, but I’ll briefly recount them here: Armando Gallaraga pitching for Detroit had pitched 8 2/3rds perfect innings against Cleveland when Jason Donald hit a grounder and headed for first. Veteran umpire Jim Joyce (one of the best, and most experienced, umps in baseball) called him safe. Perfect game, and no hitter, ended. However, the replay showed Donald was clearly out. But the call had been made and that was that. Gallaraga had missed pitching just the 21st perfect game in the 110-year history of modern baseball. (He did get the next batter out and won the game – you might call it a 30 out perfect game.)

Joyce knew what he had done and apologized - profusely. Gallaraga also realized what was what and not only accepted the apology, acknowledged that simply ‘no one is perfect,’ and then in a display of true sportsmanship, delivered the starting line-up for the next game to the home-plate umpire – Jim Joyce, and shook his hand.

A similar tale appears to have come out of Hollywood, though it is worth noting that the reporting is less clear. The young and rising star Megan Fox was reported to have walked off the set for the movie Transformers 3. Hollywood wags noted that Miss Fox was going to shoot her professional career in the foot, that she was a rising star because of the first two movies in the series and that she was likely to fade as quickly as she rose. The story from the Fox camp, thought muted, was simply that the director was tyrannical and professionally too demanding and controlling. The workers on the movie set then posted a letter on a blog stating that Fox was difficult to work with. The industry wags then raised the issue of how much money Fox was likely to lose, implying that she would never make that kind of money if she walked out on top directors.

Which leads me to ask a simply question: Is it possible that Miss Fox thinks there are more important things in the world then money? I don’t know Megan Fox from the Man in the Moon, nor do I know her real motivations, but it is worth considering that her motivations just happen to be different then some of those who have sold their souls in Tinsel Town, and that staying on a movie set where you are getting yelled at all the time simply wasn’t worth the money they were paying her. Perhaps she has realized that real success isn’t measured in the size of your bank account or in the number of awards you receive, particularly from a self-absorbed crowd like that often found in Hollywood. I hope that that is so, and if so, I salute her.

The fact is that both of these stories provide an opportunity to ask ourselves some questions about what is really important. I don’t know the motivations of either of the two people involved, but their recent actions speak well of them; many of our so-called leading figures would do well to emulate such behavior.

Oil Spills and Management Theory

2010-05-26T07:16:00.000-04:00

There is a saying in the military that you ‘get what you inspect.’ In other words, unless you are constantly inspecting and testing and questioning, people will not carry out the tasks assigned and ‘things will go wrong.’ It is often associated with draconian leadership and ‘Theory X’ management, pooh-poohed by business schools around the world.

But, while the MBAs may not like it, the system has worked fairly well in both the maintenance and readiness of US nuclear weapons, and the safety record of the Navy’s nuclear powered ships and submarines. The two figures most responsible for establishing the control regimes around both US nuclear weapons and the Navy’s nuclear reactors are never mentioned when discussing modern management theory: General Curtis Lemay and Admiral Hyman Rickover. But their success speaks for itself.

That success was and is predicated on a clear understanding on their part that what they were doing was engaging not in risk management but in consequence management, the simple thought that the outcome of an event, not the probability of the event, should drive your planning considerations. Because the failure to be ready to wage war might lead the Soviets to consider attacking the US or its allies, Lemay developed a readiness program for the Strategic Air Command that was without parallel in history. This program was expensive and difficult. It required frequent and painful inspections. It was neither friendly nor polite. It was exacting, demanding and often professionally painful. But it worked. Further, in a setting where the consequences of any mistake were (and are) potential dire, does anyone really want to experiment with any other form of management or leadership? It is worth noting that Rickover’s style was no less extreme – and the record of safety on US submarines and around the Navy’s nuclear reactors spotless.

What this has to do with the Deepwater Horizon incident? Simply this: the inspection regime that was and is in place to monitor operations on these rig failed. Why it failed has yet to be definitively determined, but it is certain that it failed. While there is some discussion about how many inspections did or did not take place over the past five years, what is certain is that the inspections failed to either detect or correct the problems on the rig.

Is offshore oil exploration and production simply too risky? No, certainly not. The fact that these operations take place on hundreds of rigs, with thousands of wells in production, is ample proof that operations can be conducted safely. But, with no pun intended, safe operations are no accident. More to the point, safe operations are no mishap. Incidents such as what happened on the Deepwater Horizon last month are not acts of bad luck or the result of some evil spirit; they are the result of failures in maintenance, in operations (and training), in material – both in design and construction, and they are the result of failures in leadership.

It is likely (almost to a certainty) that the incident is not the result of the failure of a single device or a single person, but of several devices and monitoring procedures, meaning that the sequence of events is going to be a complex inter-relationship of devices, installations, maintenance plans, monitoring plans, training plans, and response plans. Mishaps don’t just happen, mishaps are the result of mistakes, omissions, and poor decisions. And, and this is the important point, mishaps can be prevented.

(Note: the US Air Force (AF 11-202 and DASH-1) and US Navy (NATOPS) have detailed procedures in place to ensure mishap rates are as low as possible. This is done without stifling either leadership or creativity and has produced the finest pilots and finest Air Force and Naval Air arm in the world.)

Mishaps are prevented when there is a confluence of several things:

- Training – people properly trained in the maintenance and operation of the systems involved, as well as in safety procedures in the event of a mishap. Training must be comprehensive and continual.

- Maintenance – equipment regularly inspected, maintained, repaired and replaced at rates well within the failure margins for each piece of gear and for the entire system. Preventative Maintenance, and corrosion control, must become the cornerstone of long-term, sustained operations.

- Parts Support – Parts support is the obverse of maintenance, making the requisite investment to insure that the right parts are used, and replaced, and refusing to cut corners to save pennies in the near term, when doing so may well cost a fortune in the long term.

- Leadership – Leadership provides the ‘thread’ that ties together training, maintenance and parts support. Sound leadership, with a focus on long-term success, will integrate these three components into the daily fabric of the organization, recognizing that the cost of preventing a mishap is never as large as the mishap.

And to ensure that there is adequate training, maintenance, parts support and leadership - particularly in an environment where mistakes and shortfalls can lead to such extreme consequences as we see unfolding in the Gulf right now, there needs to be aggressive and exacting inspections. Inspections should consist of the following (similar procedures may already be ‘on the books’ but, whether they are or aren’t, these steps weren’t in fact taken):

- Regular, comprehensive, frequent inspections: a small team of inspectors spends a full day on a rig and probes every major facet of the rig’s operation. As MMS recommends, these inspections should be carried out monthly. If MMS needs to hire more inspectors, then do so.

- No Notice inspections – every rig should be subject to at least two per year, and they should be truly ‘no notice.’

- A training and readiness certification process for every worker on every rig that requires both practical demonstrations and written knowledge of safety and operating procedures, at least yearly.

- Authority to suspend operations. The inspection team must have an unadulterated authority to suspend operations if they find an unsafe situation or a serious violation of procedures.

Consequence Management, not Risk Management

Central to successful thinking in any type of long-term, mishap free operation is recognizing the difference between Risk Management and Consequence Management. Intellectually, Risk Management focuses on input, on minimizing the probability of given events (parts failure, systems failure, etc.), thereby ostensibly providing safe operations. Consequence Management focuses on the fall-out of such an event and then plans backwards to minimize both the likelihood of such an event occurring as well as constructing plans that will allow minimizing the consequences, the impact, if such an event takes place. Consequence management will also identify those activities that simply are too costly to deal with and should therefore be avoided, replaced with other activities that are more easily managed.

Consequence Management, therefore, if executed properly, allows for addressing a situation so as to maximize long-term benefits while ensuring a plan is in place that will reduce to a manageable level the effects of any mishap.

But Consequence Management, as with the maintenance, training and support programs that constitute the principle elements of any sound mishap prevention effort, requires one overriding element: good leadership. Consequence Management is simply another element of a comprehensive strategic plan, and the right leadership will provide sound Consequence Management because it will develop comprehensive strategic plans.

The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is not a failure of the technology of the offshore industry, nor is it a failure in the processes and training available to the workers in the offshore industry, nor is it an indictment of the people on that rig. In the end, the failure of the BOP and the resulting oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico was caused by a failure of leadership; fixing the problem will require fixing that leadership. The lesson that any company can learn from that failure is that long-term growth requires leadership and planning, and every company, every organization needs to renew its commitment to developing that leadership and those plans today.

Additionally, in an industry where mishaps carry with them consequences as severe as does the offshore oil industry, leadership must be supported by aggressive and demanding inspections. Inspections, if conducted properly, will identify shortfalls in training and material before they become critical, and before several shortcomings are compounded into a catastrophe like the one that killed 11 men and is now spilling oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

Do we need new regulations? No. What we need is new leadership at MMS and a focus on Consequence Management.

Fixing Procurement - Part 3

2010-05-15T12:00:00.002-04:00

What Can Be Done

(Final part of a three-part discussion on government procurement)

None of this is meant to defend cost overruns. Rather, the point is that they have been a fact of life in this country since our founding. Similar examples abound for the various navies of Europe running back for several centuries before our independence. There is even commentary from the Rome of the Caesars about merchants taking advantage of the army with the open endorsement of the Roman Senate.

So, what if anything can be done to, if not eliminate it, to mitigate it?

First, let’s look at some ideas that may sound good (I have taken some ideas I have found in recent articles in the press), but aren’t going to be of any real help:

* Structure contracts so that they motivate contractors to achieve desired outcomes -- withhold fees in response to cost, schedule, or performance shortfalls, and provide extra payments to reward outcomes that exceed contract parameters.

What’s wrong with this? On the face of it, nothing. Each idea in fact has merit and can and should be used in as part of proper, comprehensive oversight. But, as noted already, how contracts are pieced together is not simply the purview of the contractor. And accurately identifying why a program hasn’t met performance specifications isn’t as easy as it looks. The B-1 was cancelled during the Carter administration. The Reagan administration restarted it. By the time the aircraft was delivered the design had changed (as had the mission), it’s performance had changed and the price had increased. Those changes were the result of both changes in technology, changes in the threat and changes in how the mission was perceived, as well as the cost of closing a production line and then reopening it. And the B-1 was a relatively simple aircraft compared to some of the aircraft now being produced. While the expansion in software coding has added immeasurably to the capabilities of aircraft, the vagaries of software coding have turned out to be more difficult to predict.

* Require more rigorous testing of new technologies before decisions are made to go forward with full-scale development and production of weapons systems. More time and money invested in testing early in the process will prevent major problems later.

Again, sounds good. But, how much is enough? The fact is the US has a massive RDT&E process – the best in the world. And it has been as often as not accused of being responsible for cost overruns. The F-22 was in RDT&E for well more than a decade before the first operational aircraft was built, the F-35 a similar amount of time. Is there a way to place a dividing line between pure R&D and follow-on Testing for the purpose of production? There may be. Defense industry magazines often feature this idea in editorials about controlling procurement. But no one has actually presented specific ideas that work.

* Assess whether a major acquisition program is needed based on national security needs.

This is what might be called a ‘BFO’ (Blinding Flash of the Obvious) right? Well, maybe yes and maybe no. In the 1950s it was the considered the learned opinion of a fair chunk of the US defense establishment that the US had no need for a standing Army, no need for a Marine Corps and little if any need for a Navy. The world had moved to intercontinental bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads. Four decades before that a band of airmen worldwide, under the intellectual leadership of an Italian, General Giulio Douhet, a Brit, Marshal Sir Hugh Montague ‘Boom’ Trenchard, and a Yank, Brigadier William ‘Billy’ Mitchell, advocated for a switch of armed forces to strategic bombing forces, arguing that airpower had made all other military arms obsolete.

These men weren’t stupid and their ideas weren’t insane. But they weren’t right. Just a few decades ago the US built an entire generation of aircraft without any internal guns – they weren’t needed and it saved both weight and cost. Vietnam proved them wrong. We currently have a wide range of thinkers suggesting that the days of manned combat aircraft are drawing to a close, and that we need to stop building these obsolete weapons and move rapidly into unmanned, autonomous combat aircraft. It certainly seems plausible. Is it right? Do we bet everything on this belief, this vision of the future?

Every year each of the Combatant Commanders – the senior operational commanders in the US military, submit their own thoughts on what is needed to best fight the possible conflicts in their theaters. The Joint Staff spends literally hundreds of thousands of man-hours trying to balance of the requirements of each commander against the requirements of all the others. It is fair to say that in the end none of them is ever completely satisfied, and programs that have great intellectual appeal are often negatively affected to meet more requirements of more Combatant Commanders. And these debates are echoed in debates with various Congressmen and Senators in various committees and subcommittees. And it is fair to say that, despite appearances, the overwhelming majority of the Senators, Congressmen, staffers, admirals and generals, and yes, contractors, feel deeply about providing the best for the nation, not simply making sure this or that program gets funded. And still decisions are made that leave nearly everyone upset.

*An Attempted Solution - Since the 1980s the services have taken ‘line officers,’ that is, the officers who actually command the various vehicles, such as pilots or submariners, and send them through a certification process and turn them into ‘contract specialists.’ This program was begun by the services in order to ‘fix’ procurement. Since the program began procurement overruns have actually increased.

There have been numerous suggestions made on how to fix procurement, and many of them make excellent points about returning control to DOD personnel, eliminating the atmosphere of continual engineering development irrespective of cost, the lack of competition in the market, bloated staffs and poor decision-making. All of these are excellent points and should all be implemented as soon as possible.

But, by themselves they won’t end the never-ending cycle of cost overruns. At the very root of the problem of cost overruns are two overriding facts: the first is that it is usually in everyone’s interest to continue various programs whether there has been an overrun or not, and second, there is no intellectually defendable alternate position.

A Real Solution

The first point above has already been explained: despite protestations to the contrary, Congress likes this situation. The only answer to that situation is a demand by the real government (the voters) for greater discipline by their representatives. The fact is that Congress authorizes and appropriates the money and unless the citizenry actively participates in oversight of their own representatives, all the actions to amend the process will amount to nothing. The taxpayer needs to insist on both discipline and accountability by Congress, and without that no other reform effort will yield any significant results.

The second issue is as important as the first: no intellectually defendable alternate positions. This would provide the ‘ammunition’ for those trying to ensure Congressional discipline. Currently, whenever he submits his budget requests, the Secretary of Defense provides a broad justification of each weapon system to Congress, defended by a series of ‘threat forecasts’ that seek to predict the various capabilities that the US may face in the future. Underlying this forecast is doctrine and planning that match US capabilities to these threats in such a way that US interests are defended and US goals are met. This is a complex process and one not easily disputed by those ‘outside the process.’ Unfortunately, the only people inside the process are all within the DOD. This isn’t meant to insinuate that the DOD is trying to hide anything; it is simply the fact that the only people who engage in any in-depth planning about US goals, and the requirements to meet those goals, are all within the DOD. The House and Senate do not have any real means to engage in alternate planning, and there has never been any concerted effort to insist that DOD produce substantive, detailed alternate paths to achieve specific goals with varied capabilities. And, suggestions that they do so are likely to be met with consternation and the response that doing so will require larger staffs and will further slow an already slow procurement process.

The objection would be false, however. The primary responsibility of government, above all others, is to provide for the defense, the security of the nation. The suggestion that Congress hasn’t enough time to adequately delve into various means by which we might achieve that security is to say Congress can’t do its number one job. Congress must find the time to address the key issues, even if that means it refrains from holding hearings on steroid use in baseball or other similarly ‘vital’ issues. Similarly, DOD must focus its personnel on the central issues – requirements for the nation’s security – even if that means fewer people are committed to equally ‘critical’ issues – such as bands, and color guards and redundant flag staffs.

Finally, focusing on contractor malfeasance as the cause for procurement problems is almost universally a smoke screen by either Congress or the DOD or both. Certainly, there have been contractors who have been either inept or criminal (or both). But the numbers are low. In nearly every case, there has been willing complicity on the part of Congress and DOD to drag out programs, change contract performance requirements, adjust delivery dates, etc., - ad nauseam, and then when it comes to light the contractor takes the blame. In fact, the contractors are usually the least culpable of the three. A history of defense contracts has shown that contractors are more than willing to operate openly and respond to the guidance of Congress and DOD, but that it has been the government – DOD and Congress – that has routinely steered procurement onto the rocks. And it will only be by maintaining clarity on the course ahead, and a firm hand on the helm, that we can hope to keep from continually going up on the rocks. New laws, new regulations and pontificating from various high officials translate into nothing more than smoke screens that hide the facts.

We the voters need to insist that Congress do two things at once: ensure that the DOD and the Executive Branch as a whole has the tools and funding to provide for our security, while ensuring that our money is wisely spent. Meaningless or poorly drafted legislation isn’t the answer, the answer is diligence and focus on the part of Congress.

Fixing Procurement - Part 2

2010-05-10T14:52:00.000-04:00

Never-Ending Development

Another issue that emerges in any discussion of procurement is just how long it takes to move any program from inception to operation. There are a number of reasons for this, but the major ones are:

No sense of urgency - Whenever there is any discussion of the problem of procurement someone will bring up how rapidly certain weapon systems were developed in the past. The U-2 went from concept to first flight in less than 8 months, the SR-71 from concept to first flight in less than 3 years, the Nautilus (first nuclear powered submarine) from concept to first sailing in 6 years, etc. And there is a great deal of truth in this statement. Of course, what is missed is that whenever we have developed ships, aircraft or systems at high speed we have done so at great cost. Further, we produced many different systems in the 1950s and 1960s that were not successful systems. A quick review of the various fighter aircraft that the Air Force and Navy introduced and then retired between 1950 and 1960 will provide the interested reader with the history of any number of nearly disastrous development programs. Rapid testing and prototyping can be of great value, but it is not a panacea.

The Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) ‘process’ – Not only have systems and platforms become more complex, the negative impact of poor performance once a system is deployed has made both contractors and systems commands in each service terrified of providing a weapon or system that has not been thoroughly tested. Thus US aircraft must endure literally years of testing before they enter initial ‘low rate production’ and additional years of testing after the first production before they become operational. This becomes its own problem; as systems finally reach operational status they are found to be lagging in certain technologies because the hardware and software have advanced so rapidly in the commercial sector while being frozen in the particular weapon system for years.

As anyone who has looked at the history of RDT&E for major procurement programs, the RDT&E can last for years. In the case of the B-2, the aircraft was first funded under an RDT&E program begun by President Carter (1979), it didn’t first fly until President Bush (1989), it reached initial operational capability under President Clinton (1 January 1997) and was first used in combat against Kosovo in 1999. These are very complex programs and require very complex RDT&E that not only lasts years (sometimes decades), but are very expensive. Again, the RDT&E is driven not by finances, but by requirements, and frankly, as someone who has personally benefited from the superlative capabilities of some of the US weapon systems, when people start shooting at you, no one cares about the price, but rather about whether the requirement for this or that weapon system was properly stated and met.

A Word on ‘Cost’

Inflation ‘sticker shock’ – As noted above, the level of national commitment to the Navy shipbuilding in 1798 was similar to the commitment today. But, to say that a ship costs more than ‘Ten Billion Dollars’ has a psychological impact all its own.

But, a warning about ‘cost’ is warranted. A B-29 (the strategic bomber that conducted the bulk of the bombing of Japan during World War II and the aircraft that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) was truly the state-of-the art weapon system of its day, with a massive development program, one that was nearly as large as the atomic bomb. More than $3 billion was spent on the B-29 between 1942 and 1946, with 3970 aircraft being produced, after more than a half billion dollars was spent on development, and with an average production cost of just over $600,000.

During World War II the GNP of the US was on the order of $200 billion (actually less, as more than half of the nominal GNP was actually government spending). Thus, a half billion dollars equates to ¼ of one percent of GNP, or approximately $35 billion in current terms. Total production costs for the B-29 represented 1.2% of GNP or an equivalent of roughly $168 billion in today’s terms; and at $600,000 per airframe a B-29, measured as a percentage of national wealth is equivalent to a $42 million aircraft today.

Compare this to the B-2, another aircraft that was truly a state-of-the-art aircraft. Per various GAO reports, $23 billion was spent on RDT&E (in 1997 dollars). As the GDP was $8.5 trillion in 1997, this equates to .27% of GDP (spread over nearly 20 years), or $37.8 billion in current terms. The aircraft themselves (21 were procured) were procured for an additional $21.75 billion, or $1 billion per aircraft, equivalent to $1.65 billion per aircraft today. The cost of RDT&E are comparable, but unit prices have gone up. Of course, when we consider the expected production run – originally anticipated to be 132 aircraft, unit price would have been on the order of $170 million in 1997 dollars or roughly $260 million per aircraft in 2009. (While it might seem doubtful that the DOD would have received 132 aircraft for the same dollar figure as it paid for 21 aircraft, the history of budget overruns has shown that once a number is set for a production run, the total cost remains remarkably stable despite the number of aircraft purchased. This can be attributed to a great many things, but the most likely reason is Congressional support to the means of production.)

This isn’t meant to pick on the Air Force. Virtually every major weapons program in any service yields like numbers. What this does point out is the real angst. First, while the RDT&E for the B-29 took place over the course of just three years, the RDT&E for the B-2 (or F-35 or LCS or the Seawolf submarine, etc., etc.) took place over the course of nearly 20 years (as for each of the above programs.) Second, while the B-2 is a phenomenally capable aircraft, there are only 20 of them (1 crashed). And it is of little consequence to compare the technologies of the two aircraft and claim that one B-2 is ‘X times more effective’ than a B-29. During 1945 the B-29 was a remarkably survivable aircraft that out-flew most of the fighter aircraft in the Japanese inventory, as well as flying above most of the Japanese anti-aircraft weapons. Although tens of thousands of missions were flown, the Japanese were able to shoot down only 157 B-29’s, despite the fact the Gen. Lemay also used the B-29 in low altitude bombing of Japanese cities, a flight regime they were designed to avoid.

Objections that these bombers dropped hundreds, even thousands of weapons for each weapon that hit the target, versus the B-2 dropping one bomb and getting one hit actually addresses the weapons and weapons systems more than the airplanes. GPS or laser-guided bombs can be dropped off relatively simple aircraft with equal accuracy, assuming the right systems are mounted on the aircraft. Such a solution doesn’t address the aircraft survivability in a combat environment.

The $600 Hammer

Finally, a word needs to be added about those spectacular “little” items that make great headlines: the $600 hammer or the $500 toilet seat. First, a number of these stories were just flat wrong, as is born out later in the press (usually on page 17) where it is revealed that in fact the item in question only cost a few dollars. Second, some reflect efforts to hide money for “black” programs – very classified programs that are funded through money hidden in other programs so that our enemies and potential enemies will not know about the program itself (and which in and of themselves are often worthy of real efforts to hide the program and the money, and which are subject to a good deal of oversight by DOD and in all but very select cases Congress). Finally, some of these weird and seemingly outrageous bills are the result of, well, reality. One example will suffice to show the difficulties.

A number of years ago the DOD was building a series of large surveillance aircraft, but was only going to be purchasing perhaps a dozen per year. Aircrews were expected to spend 10 to 12 hours airborne at any one time and so a coffee machine was designed into the aircraft. A normal, commercial coffee machine was picked, and slightly modified for the power requirements on the aircraft and to ensure it couldn’t spill, etc. There was, however, a need (for safety reasons) to isolate the coffee machine in the remote but real possibility of fire and so it was encased in aluminum. To ensure that the case fit into the narrow space allotted to it, and to ensure that each case was identical and would fit into any of the aircraft, the case had to be made to ‘spec.’ As a result, metal-working machines had to be configured for the case, not an insignificant cost, and a quality control process put in place to ensure the case came out as designed. And then, only a dozen or so were made each year. All in all, perhaps $50,000 had been spent on setting up the machine and on training for the machine operator, with some small additional amount for the metal itself. Perhaps 100 of these cases were made over the period of eight or 10 years. And so, the average price of a ‘simple’ metal case was close to $1000.

These stories however, miss the point. Even with a thousand such stories a year, each totaling perhaps $50,000, the total would still amount to perhaps $50 million. A notable sum for all of us, but still a drop in the bucket compared to the several tens of billions of dollars spent each year on procuring weapons for the DOD. In short, ‘fixing’ these problems while ignoring the real issues is meaningless, and worse, may well introduce rules and oversight that would actually add cost to major programs. We need to focus on the ‘big fish.’

The Legislature

Finally, there is the issue of Congress. Congressmen are accurately called ‘Representatives.’ They are supposed to represent the interests of their state and district within the national debate. This has commonly been interpreted to mean that bringing contracts (jobs) to your district is a good thing and seeing those contracts (jobs) go away is a bad thing. A Congressman with a large defense plant of some sort in his district (aircraft manufacturing plant, shipyard, etc.) rapidly becomes very protective of that plant. This is not the same as earmarks, which have a connotation of unnecessary spending in one district. If the Air Force is buying big airplanes, Boeing is likely to get some money and it is a nation-wide construction program, just as it is with ships, where a hull might be assembled in Maine, but there are electronics and engines and weapon systems that come from around the country.

At a minimum, as demonstrated by the six frigates requested by President Washington, the Navy (or the DOD) will attempt to use to advantage this well known response by various Congressmen. There are some large defense programs that have parts made in nearly every single Congressional district. Several programs received a certain degree of fame (or infamy) for having parts made in nearly 400 separate Congressional districts.

The fact is that it is always going to be difficult for Congressmen to vote against a program that brings money and jobs to their district. Compounding this is the very real concern that certain skills and technologies, if not needed now, may be of great importance if ‘something’ happens. For example, there are only a small number of people in the US who have the skills to weld together the hull sections of submarines. It is a very special and very perishable skill. Congress rightly worries whenever the procurement process threatens those skills. If submarine production were to stop for more than several months these people would seek other work, and the US would loose that critical skill. Congress routinely looks at these kinds of issues and has repeatedly strung out various procurement programs in order to insure that such skills remain employed, despite the (considerable) added costs incurred when a program is stretched out.

As a result, despite what it might seem in public spats between Congressmen and corporate leadership, the fact is that Congress, corporate leaders and DOD leadership – uniformed and civilian – normally find themselves all wanting the same thing: keep a production line open, sustain the development program, and make the platform (ship, aircraft, etc.) as capable (sophisticated) as possible, and buy as many as we can afford.

Fixing Procurement - Part 1

2010-05-08T08:20:00.000-04:00

Every two years or so Washington talks about ‘fixing’ procurement; every administration makes at least one push to “fix” procurement, Congress usually follows with its own plan. Secretary Gates is currently involved in such a discussion. For those not familiar with Washington DC jargon, ‘Procurement’ technically means anything and everything that the US Government purchases under contract – from large lots of office furniture to F-22s and Aircraft Carriers. In fact, what the politicians and pundits are really talking about is the Department of Defense and its half brother, the Intelligence Community.

Let’s begin by admitting that something is not quite right. A recent example will serve to point out the scale of the problem. The President needs a new helicopter. That is undisputed by anyone who has bothered to make the most cursory examination of the facts. While the helicopters he flies in look great, and are maintained by an incredibly diligent and dedicated group of Marines, civilians and contractors, each of those airframes has more 10,000 hours of flight time, or so I am told. If you have ever been in or near a helicopter, think of what happens to all the various pieces of metal in that airframe, and in particular to the main structural members, after 10,000 hours of shuddering operation. While these aircraft are safe, they are well past their design life and need to be replaced. (By way of comparison, a ten year old car will have roughly 4 to 5000 hours of operating time. Consider a 25 year old car, moving at 125 miles per hour, 1000 feet above the ground. Now put the President in it.)

Enter the VH-71. The VH-71 was a design that was accepted by the DOD as the replacement for the helicopters that are now used to transport the President. The contract called for 26 aircraft, with a total cost of the program being about $6 Billion. While that may seem excessive – nearly $230 million per aircraft, it must be remembered that this aircraft was carrying the President. Accordingly, there was a good deal of research and development money needed (it was a new aircraft and you don’t fly the President around in an untested airframe), and a large chunk of the money actually went to a wide range of special equipment for the President. In other words, this was money in the contract, but not really in the airframe itself.

But, the contract started ‘expanding.’ By the time it was terminated in 2009 it had grown to more than $11 Billion, before any of the helicopters had been delivered to the DOD, although seven have been built.

Now, this is not the first such contract to have an overrun. The list of overruns is, in fact, long and storied. Nor is it in any way a Republican or Democrat unique event. In fact, virtually every single program under consideration or review spans several administrations, from initial concept development through R&D (research and development) to initial acquisition. Each is subject to annual Congressional Review, and, of course, DOD and the entire Executive branch have no money except what Congress gives them. In fact, even then they don’t have money: Congress needs to both appropriate money – identify a specific pot of money for a specific program, and then authorize it being spent – giving DOD the ‘green light’ to actually move the money to the contractor. And there are a host of committees and subcommittees in both the House and Senate that have to play a role in these (and other) steps.

So, if there is this oversight, how can it be that no one objects when a program doubles in size in a matter of three or four years? Who is responsible – really? Why does no one object when a program drags on for years, even decades without yielding any results, yet the funding continues?

While this issue will be batted around Washington, and in the end legislation will be passed that purports to ‘fix’ this, the fact is that the situation is more or less just what everyone wants. That’s why it is what it is. Nor is this new.

A History of Overruns

During an earlier administration – the Washington administration (215 years ago) - the US Navy let out contracts for six frigates. (One of them, the USS Constitution, is still afloat in Boston.) The Navy went out of its way to make sure that the frigates were actually assembled in six different states, with the ribs and structural members made from live-oak from Georgia, the masts and spars came from Maine, South Carolina furnished wood for the decks, Rhode Island produced canvas for the sails, New Jersey produced oak for the keel and cannon-balls, Massachusetts produced more sails, gun carriages, cannon, anchors, and copper plating for the hull (Paul Revere), etc. In the end more than half of Congressional districts in the young country were enriched by the contract. (I recently saw an article in an aviation industry trade magazine that reported that the F-22 was made up of parts from more than 1000 different companies located in more than 40 states.) The Constitution was originally funded at $115,000. The actual procurement costs of the six frigates is listed below.

Constitution 44 guns 1576 tons $302,719, built in Boston

President 44 guns 1576 tons $220,910, built in New York

United States 44 guns 1576 tons $229,336, built in Philadelphia

Chesapeake 36 guns (originally 44) 1244 tons $220,678, built in Gosport (Va)

Congress 36 guns 1268 tons $197,246, built in Portsmouth (NH) 

Constellation 36 guns 1265 tons $314,212, built in Baltimore 

Numbers ARE Relative

As another point of reference, the US GNP at the time of the ordering of these six frigates was somewhere in the range of $100 - 200 million. Although it isn’t possible to make an exact comparison of GNPs when a fair percentage of the population were farmers who had little surplus and little cash income, the number nevertheless gives a sense of the level of investment the nation was willing to make. Assuming a $200 million GNP, $300,000 represents an investment of .15% of GNP. To place this in perspective, the current US GNP is on the order of $14 trillion. An investment of .15% amounts to $21 billion. The current estimate for the cost of the yet to be built USS FORD, the next nuclear aircraft carrier, is roughly $14 billion. In short, it will cost less than the USS Constitution.

A Built-in Problem

Another point that complicates any effort to control costs is to recognize that irrespective of any other consideration, the economic reality is that this is a monopsonistic market. A monopsonistic market is one in which there are multiple sellers and only one buyer. This is compounded by several other key points: the amount of money available is generally known; it is in the interest of the payer (the Congress) to reward each seller; and the user (the DOD) manages the program with people who are promoted (or otherwise rewarded) based on successfully delivering the platform based on capability, not cost. Let us look at each in turn.

Monopsony

A monopsony exists whenever you have only one buyer and multiple sellers. Just as with a monopoly, this results in an inefficient market. As a general rule, a monopsony will lead to the buyer buying fewer items than an efficient market would produce, which inevitably should lead to market failure. As the market cannot be allowed to fail (the US government still needs to buy tanks, for example) the tank manufacturer is paid a higher price in order to sustain inefficient production. But, there is no way to avoid a monopsony – no one else is going to buy submarines, and even if US aircraft are marketed overseas to our allies, US purchases are still the foundation of any production line.

At the same time, the inefficient market will eventually force consolidation of the production line into a single seller. You then are faced with a single seller (a monopoly) and a single buyer (a monopsony), the most inefficient possible answer.

This has already happened in a number of weapons systems: there is only one builder of tanks in the US, there is only one maker of aircraft carriers, only one maker of large airframes, etc.

This will also lead to legislative ‘fixes’ to economic problems. Congress may insist on competition and so split an already inefficient contract into two pieces in order to maintain two production companies in a given ‘strategic’ industry. The result is two separate production facilities each with an installed production capacity that exceeds the annual purchase of the government. The space launch capacity for the US was like this for many years, until the two separate corporate elements were merged into a hybrid that is struggling to produce lower cost space launch vehicles.

Starting with the ‘Right Answer’

A second problem that develops in this situation is that of complete (or nearly complete) knowledge. Each of the various companies involved in DOD procurement is aware of how much money is available for procurement, with just a small margin of error. And at the same time, unlike any true commercial enterprise, a more efficient production line will not materially affect the number of units purchased. If the DOD wants 100 fighter aircraft for the Navy, and Congress wants to spend $10 Billion dollars, there is no real incentive to making an airplane for $90 million.

The Fox Guarding the Hen House

At the same time, within DOD, programs are managed by uniformed officers who are from that ‘community.’ That is, tank procurement programs are managed by tank (armored) officers; and aircraft procurement programs are managed by pilots from that specific community (F-18 program officers are F-18 pilots, for example). While this obviously is not the case by the time you get to the three star officers who are the senior managers for each service, the day-to-day management of these programs is conducted by officers who have to return to their community when they leave this specific tour.

There is obvious merit to this process: an officer who has spent the previous dozen years on submarines is going to understand what is and what is not needed in the next submarine. It is a good idea to have that expertise helping to ‘steer’ the program.

But, at the same time, such an officer will also want the very best submarine available. And the same officer knows that the submarine community will watch his efforts and ‘grade’ him accordingly. Which provides pressure to continually improve the submarine, which will drive the cost up. There is also great resistance to ever canceling a program or recommending a cancellation because it might be seen as hurting your own community.

Further, if you, as a fighter pilot, know that the Congress is only going to buy 200 or 300 fighters, are you going to want ‘ok’ fighters or the very best that technology can provide? You (and your friends) are going to be flying those airplanes and you will almost to a certainty be outnumbered if you ever go into combat – you want the very best – and who cares about the price.

The American taxpayer says the same thing when the Army and Marines end up in combat: we want the best for our troops (and we do).

Staff Growth and the Authority to Say ‘No’

There is a related problem of the growth in staff sizes and a concomitant reduction in authority of any one individual. Every applicable staff, and every associated staff officer, wants to have a say on any relevant program. That has a simple (but substantial) cost in the amount of time required to push any program review through the respective staffs. This causes a much greater and more complex problem because every staff wants to adjust relevant programs to meet their perception of the required capabilities of the particular weapon or system.

Because there is no mechanism to continual performance improvement, nor is there organizational resistance (there may be resistance from small groups of operators, but they have a hard time getting heard in Washington), adding capabilities or otherwise ‘improving’ the system, irrespective of cost or time, is something that can be accomplished by any dedicated individual or staff. But, once a program has been improved, there are very few offices that have the authority to remove a capability.

It is also worth noting that there is no ‘real’ value in saving money. By that I mean that if a program cost is cut from $5 billion to $4 billion, the Navy or Air Force or even DOD as a whole doesn’t get that money to spend elsewhere. At best, the service can recommend a reapportionment of spending, but Congress will decide. And it is the primary interest of the Congress to make sure that money flows to the various states and districts, not to specific programs to purchase specific capabilities.

Next: Part 2 - the Rest of Problem

How Do You Spell Success?

2010-05-06T13:03:00.000-04:00

Attorney General Holder said that the arrest of the ‘Time Square Bomber’ was a success in the fight against terrorists. In the strict sense of how the word is used by the police, perhaps it was; a crime was committed, and a perpetrator was arrested.

Of course, there are some other issues. The accused was able to do the following:

- successfully travel into and out of Pakistan at least seven times

- receive training from a Taliban group of some sort at a Taliban training facility

- build an improvised explosive device

- transport that device to the middle of Manhattan

- initiate the device

- leave the area and evaded police for several days

- board an airplane to leave the country

Thankfully, the man’s skills in assembling the device were wanting and the device failed to explode. That fact, and that fact alone, is what separates this incident from being a spectacular and painful terrorist attack in the middle of New York.

But the Attorney General said it was a success.

One reporter on a morning news show on Wednesday said ‘let’s hope that we continue to have such vigilant citizens’ or words to that effect. Two thoughts: hope is not a plan. And US taxpayers aren’t paying for vigilant citizens. I applaud the efforts of the man who noted something wrong with the vehicle and notified police. He is an outstanding citizen and an example to us all. But, I would suggest Mayor Bloomberg, while wandering around denying terrorism exists, consider awarding the keys of the city to this man. (In case you missed it, Mayor Bloomberg said this about the failed attack after a question as to whether this might be a homegrown terrorist: "If I had to guess 25 cents, this would be exactly that. Homegrown, or maybe a mentally deranged person, or somebody with a political agenda that doesn't like the health care bill or something. It could be anything.")

To the point, the system did fail. The bomb was built and placed in position and initiated. Granted, this is an exceptionally difficult thing to stop. And trying to write more restrictive laws to prevent people from buying the gear or chemicals necessary to build a bomb is meaningless; anyone who knows anything about chemistry will tell you how impossible that is. That this man failed is a sign of his lack of intelligence, nothing else.

It is also worth remembering that if the bomb had worked, we would not have had the vehicle available to search for clues and the various security cameras that contained key pieces of information that led police to the bomber would have probably been lost.

But Attorney General Holder’s remarks that ‘this was a success’ marks the real problem: from the perspective of someone who deals with situations from a police or prosecuting attorney’s perspective, it was a success: a crime was committed and a perpetrator was arrested. Such actions prevent the same man from committing a second crime. But they don’t prevent the next terrorist from committing the next attack.

What failed here, and it is a very difficult problem to deal with, is that the intelligence community failed. It failed because it failed to penetrate the Taliban network, it failed to penetrate the training facilities, it failed to identify the people who have been or are now in the facilities. Is this difficult? Yes, very difficult. But it is what the system needs to do to protect the country.

Recently, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis (DDNI/A) from 2005 to 2008 stated that the level of collaboration and information sharing within the intelligence community today is far different and better then it has been for many decades. This may be so. Frankly, I doubt it. Reminiscent of many senior members of the Intelligence Community of the past who would defend their positions by simply claiming that they had intelligence you hadn’t and couldn’t see, he defends his position by claiming a certain level of supremacy, suggesting that if you don’t agree you “are ill-informed or disingenuous.”

The fact is that the intelligence community, despite the hard work of tens of thousands of folks ‘in the trenches,’ is still not organized or led to provide the level of security the people of this nation believe they deserve. In both the case of the ‘Christmas Bomber’ and the ‘Time Square Bomber’ we succeeded despite the Intelligence Community and despite the improvements in collaboration boasted of by the DDNI/A.

To those inside the IC, the real collectors and analysts who are working as hard as they can on these problems every day, who will object, saying something to the effect that this is just ‘too hard,’ ‘we can’t stop every bomber,’ my response is this: imagine if both those terrorists had been successful. After the ‘Christmas Bomber’ succeeded in downing an aircraft we would have found the warnings by his father, the odd behavior, etc. After the ‘Time Square Bomber’ succeeded in setting off a car bomb in mid-town Manhattan we would have eventually found who it was, his multiple trips in and out of Pakistan, his time spent in Taliban training facilities.

We averted two ugly, potentially horrific attacks, but we did so through the failings of the attackers, not through our own competence or diligence. We have benefited from their errors, which have been more consequential then our errors. Sooner or later, if we don’t fix really things, our string of luck is going to run out.

Distrust of the Government

2010-05-04T17:45:00.001-04:00

The President, it seems, is upset at those who don’t like government, and went so far as to say that in a democracy we the people are the government. We will forgive the President his bit of rhetoric, but it is worth reminding one and all that dislike of the organs of government, or at least strong distrust, is central to the very notion of the United States and comes to us from our Founding Fathers.

There have been a few folks who have in the past voiced concern about distrust of those in power, irrespective of how they got there. That fear, the fear that those in power will over-reach, will take unto themselves too much power, is one that was central to the arguments that led first to our seeking independence from England, and later to the specifics found in the Constitution.

John Adams, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and others all commented on the need to limit government, and that the best government was that which ‘governed least.’ George Washington noted that ‘Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

The Bill of Rights was drafted and passed to make just that point: that government must be limited. More than any other amendments, the two most forgotten make the very point being made by many people today. They read:

9th Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Simply put, because a right is not listed in the Constitution doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and hence the government cannot take away what the people perceive to be a right simply by passing a law and then noting that the right is not protected. It is worth pointing out that within the intellectual construct of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution rights exist apart from the organs of government; government can no more create a right then it can create life. The people can, in fact, through the Constitution limit some rights for the common well-being, but only the people as a whole can do that. That, at least is what the Founding Fathers provided for in the Constitution.

10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

This amendment is pointing directly at the issue of the government, the bureaucracy, attempting to usurp power. It is the ‘sister’ to the 9th Amendment and addresses the limits of power of the government. Note that there is clearly a distinction made between the ‘United States,’ which clearly means the organs of government, and the people, from whom the powers are granted.

This restates what was obvious to the Founding Fathers but is often lost today: the government has no rights, it has powers. Those powers are limited to the powers granted it by the people. The means for granting powers is the Constitution. If there is a desire to either give the government more powers or to change the existing powers, there is a means to do so; it is the amendment process. Short of amending the Constitution the government cannot have any more powers, nor can it further restrict the rights of the people.

Finally, to clarify one point: I don’t think either the Founding Fathers or those who are now voicing distrust of the ‘government’ would be at all confused as to who is in charge in a democracy. But that, of course, is just the point: as the Declaration of Independence says: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The Founders were making a clear distinction between the organisms of government, the various branches and agencies that make up the federal bureaucracy, and the people, who are the real source of all the powers – or at least all the just powers – exercised by those various elements of the federal bureaucracy – what the drafters and signers of the declaration of independence termed ‘the government.’ In short, distrust of the government is not the people voicing distrust of themselves, or of the notion of government of the people, by the people and for the people. To the contrary, it is distrust of the organs and agencies of the government - the bureaucracies - and a sense that the powers being exercised were not those granted by the people but have simply been taken by Congress or, worse yet, by these agencies. And that is a cause for distrust.

The Politics of Hope

2010-03-23T09:05:00.002-04:00

On this day, March 23rd, 1775, Patrick Henry rose and gave one of the most powerful speeches in the history of our nation. While the speech is most famous for his last line, there is more to the speech than just that. One short section worthy of review is this:

“Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?

For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth -- to know the worst and to provide for it. I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.”

The Founding Fathers were concerned, beyond all other issues, with the dangers of unchecked government. They constructed a system which not only had multiple checks and balances, it was also a system that called for deliberate – slow and deliberate – process, all built on a framework of a federal government of limited powers.

The history of the last 80 years of our republic is one of expanding government powers, until today we see the federal government taking control over 1/6th of the economy of the nation, in the form of the healthcare industry. It is sadly ignored by many that the dramatic rise in healthcare costs in this country followed the creation of Medicare, that is has been government presence and government actions, more than any other single force, that has made healthcare as expensive as it is today.

The federal government has, over the last 35 years taken a controlling position in the housing market through a complex set of quasi governmental organizations and rules and regulations, steps which were the principle drivers in causing the housing bubble and the current recession. Did the government seek to undo its actions? No, it chose instead to create new and more extensive regulations and oversight.

The federal government has already asserted the right to seize control of the auto industry.

The federal government has already assumed de facto control over the banking industry and new legislation is being introduced monthly to tighten and expand federal oversight and control over the entire financial industry. Where will this effort stop?

Discussions continue on government taxation and regulation over emissions and carbon ‘footprints.’ Is there any reason to believe that this effort is simply another step towards control of the energy industry?

We have a federal bureaucracy that has inserted itself into the education of the youth of the nation. Does anyone believe that the presence of $60 billion per year not sway how history and politics is taught in our public schools? Does anyone believe that this is anything other than subtle pressure to teach what the bureaucrats and their mentors believe?

In every case the justifications have been the same: these actions will both improve the lives of our people and make our economy more stable and solid. FDR stated that Social Security would help restore the economic basis of the country when he signed that legislation. Now it represents a $50 trillion unfunded annuity.

Patrick Henry was right when he said that: “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.”

The federal government will continue to take: to take our wealth, our rights, our freedoms. It will do so with smiles and with subtlety. But it will continue. To hope otherwise is to indulge in an illusion, as Patrick Henry noted. We must push back.

How? Simply put, we must limit the bureaucracy. Remember: we are the real power. Governments “…derive(ing) their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ The Constitution is ours; the Bill of Rights is ours. The bureaucracy has long trampled on selective elements of both, in particular the 9th and 10th Amendments. We need to reclaim them.

We need a national debate on the limits of government. Let us use this moment as a call for a Constitutional amendment to limit federal spending and a second to limit federal regulation of industry. Write your Congressmen and Senators. Write your candidate. Use this election year to begin the debate.

Healthcare Costs, Government Accounting and Accountability

2010-03-19T11:56:00.000-04:00

The Congressional Budget Office has just released an estimate that the Health Care bill before the House of Representatives will actually reduce the deficit over the next 10 years. In fact, the numbers they give are:

a) The bill will cost $940 Billion over the next ten years

b) The bill will reduce the deficit – by raising more money – by $138 billion during that ten-year period.

c) The bill will reduce the budget deficit another $1.2 Trillion over the following ten years.

To which I have one question: Does anyone believe this?

First, take a close look at the numbers above. The first issue is that this bill will mean that the new healthcare plan will distribute $940 billion over ten years, while increasing tax revenue $1,078 billion. Then, according to the CBO the plan, which will ostensibly cost roughly $1 trillion over the following ten years, will result in $2.2 trillion in additional revenue.

Maybe I’m confused, but it seems to me that Americans are being told to spend an additional $3.3 trillion dollars over the next 20 years. As individuals, whether the money goes out as tax or a healthcare bill, it still goes out the front door. That works out to $165 billion more per year going out the front door. Or $550 per person per year more out the front door. Not per household, per person. For the average household of 4, that’s $2200. Per year.

Didn’t they say the point of this was to reduce costs to Americans?

But the point will be made that this will be paid by the wealthiest Americans. The ones who already pay the bulk of the taxes. And it will be paid by taxing their savings and investments, which provide the money for economic growth.

But, even more to the point, ask yourself some simple questions: when was the last time a government program stayed on budget. Medicare, started in 1967, has grown at a 13% compounded rate (on average) every year since then. That was in no one’s forecast.

Medicare was supposed to address a host of issues in the healthcare field, yet it seems that the situation ahs not only gotten worse since 1967, it has done so at an accelerated pace.

Healthcare is not alone in this regard. The Department of Energy, founded some 32 years ago – To Reduce US Dependence on Imported Oil – has done no such thing, has not been able to produce a viable national energy policy, our dependence on foreign oil grows and so does the DOE budget.

The Department of Education was founded in 1980. The Department states that its mission is ‘excellence and access.’ The Department of Education’s budget has grown from $14 billion in 1980 to $64 billion last year (it actually spiked in 2006 to $100 billion). Yet the problems of poor standardized test performances and high dropout rates among the poor continues; the problems the Department of Education was supposed to address. (For those who are curious, the US spends roughly $1.1 trillion per year on education, mostly at state and local levels, considerably more than is spent on national security.

We as a nation have spent a great deal of money on the Department of Education, on the Department of Energy, on Medicare and Medicaid. More to the point, we have spent a great deal more on these departments and programs then anyone ever suggested we ever would. The budgets have grown at truly prodigious rates over the years. But two things are also true: in no case have they successfully addressed the problem for which they were created, and two, having failed in their mission, no one has ever stopped (or even slowed) the funding of these programs.

Now we have the CBO telling us that the healthcare bill will reduce our deficits. I suppose one could argue that one of these days they are going to get it right. But I for one am not willing to bet on it.