Guerrilla Theater

American politics has always been contentious. The Federalists would not speak to the Anti-Federalists, the slavers caned the Abolitionists. And politicians are often the recipients of abuse. But I don't remember the politicians turning on their constituents with such venom as now. Even the America First proponents were taken seriously and in context. And no one vilified the Japanese Americans during the war; they were just interned--with embarrassment. The politician seemed to recognize a relationship between himself and the electorate; while a representative, he was part of them.

But a separation has developed. Nowadays an opinion on the street can draw serious fire from a politician.

The hockey fight has moved into the stands.

Mormons and Other Fighters

So our free society that looks down our emancipated noses at those quaint religions with their quaint restrictions, our culture that sees little difference between liberty and libertine, our brave new world that prides itself on individual decision making without deference to some written or unwritten rule--this society that glorifies the free and unled individual when looking for lawmen, watchmen on the tower and general defenders of our inalienable rights to do what we please write restrictions that favor and select out Mormons to protect us.

It is a situation similar to the armed forces. Those in uniform are usually southern, church going Christian and I'll bet a lot are creationist. These people who would not last five minutes at a New York cocktail party, are the linchpin of the culture's defense.

Perhaps we are like Rome; twenty years in the army and you become a real citizen.

A Political Allegory

When I was a child I had a rather aristocratic and arrogant English teacher who was new to the school and began getting criticized by parents for grading their children's papers low. The teacher one day asked the class if anyone agreed with this assessment and over half the class raised their hands. The teacher picked one student at random, had him stand and began questioning him about the methods of grading and how grades compared from one class to the other. The ambushed student, of course, had no real information, only his subjective feeling, and, ironically, his parents had never complained so the specifics were not really his.

The grilling was not really a cross examination as much as an opportunity for the teacher to offer a verbal white paper in his defense but it was long and harsh and, using the child as a straw man, personal. The class--really young adolescents--took it badly. The inherent dichotomy of adult-child, teacher-student, prepared-unprepared was evident to the dimmest in the room. It was one of those defining moments where young people perceive injustice and pettiness in an individual who had a priori respect.

To my knowledge the event generated no consequences aside from bitterness but those who see themselves as others' betters have an obligation to meet their assumptions.

Sunday Sermon: More Than Orcs

The 20th Century was hard on religion. The philosophy of despair and the inhumanity of the Second World War sent every thinker scrambling. One astonishing development was the religious conversion of C. S. Lewis. A renowned skeptic, he graduated from Oxford with three first--first in his class in three major subjects--in English, philosophy and classics. He was a close friend of Tolkien (when he first met him Lewis wrote in his diary "No harm in him. Only needs a smack or two."). He delivered a famous speech/sermon in Oxford's University Church of St. Mary in 1941, during the raging and desperate war, where he concentrated his religious philosophy, emphasizing personal humility and Christian fellowship over longing for immortality as the driving force in Christianity. He said, "There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is the immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit..."

He died the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. One wonders whose shadow will be longer.

J Edgar's Revenge and Our Puritan Roots

Sometimes the cause and effect lines are unexpected but understandable: China's one child policy creates border raiding in Viet Nam by Chinese farmers searching for marriageable women, subsidized housing creates a tremendous bubble and crash in the mortgage market, wage and price controls create shortages. Often the assumed cause and effect doesn't work: We subsidize lithium ion battery technology, we subsidize ethanol, we invest in education. Nothing. So what happens when we screen FBI candidates for social missteps and immorality like drug and alcohol history?

Mormons. We get Mormons.

Mormons are a subset in the country who have reliable social and personal histories and who can pass a lie detector test to prove it. They also travel in their ministry and are multilingual. As a result, the FBI and CIA are full of them, so much so that there are conspiracy websites popping up with Mormon Domination themes.

Wait until a Mormon runs for president.

Fascinating that a lax culture that wants security recruits its antithesis.

Zombieland

Ours is a time of social upheaval and financial worry. There have been many theories offered as to the causes of these problems but one elephant in the room is never discussed: The Welfare State.

The acceptance by the working population for the support of the nonworking, the young for the old and the healthy for the ill is a remarkable development and may define the modern world more accurately than war or disillusion. It is simply an overwhelmingly modern characteristic strangely devoid of religious mandate. It is a responsibility that crosses race, age, values, gender and offers the recipients much and the givers little. And it is running on fumes.

Two problems loom. First, with the traditional surplus of economic growth less available will such charity be practical and affordable? And second, the Camp of the Saints question, will this charity cross national borders? Debt, declining living standards and deficits raise the first question, globalization the second.

The obvious problems in Europe where the productive north is being asked to support the debt of the retired south, where the have-littles riot in the London streets, where Muslim neighborhoods have become totally isolated except for monthly checks from strangers--these are all burdens which have financial limits. The average worker can support only so many, the average community can tolerate only so much damage, the average culture can absorb only so much disruption.

Yet, despite these obvious problems, somehow they are never discussed. These social welfare problems are simply not being solved and those that are being disguised will not be for much longer.

The bureaucrats are bravely showing up every day, tweaking and transfusing the monster. But the monster is quite dead. We in a are post welfare state; we just don't seem to know it.

The Kardashians

The Kardashian family reported taxable income of 25 million dollars last year. Last week one of the girls was married and it is said that she sold residuals from her marriage (endorsements, pictures) so that the wedding made a profit.

The nation is in terrible shape. We have a decreasing manufacturing base, we are concerned about the environment so much we discourage mining, logging and refining. We say we are a "service society" but anesthesia and tax advice don't travel across borders well. Yet here we have a family of girls who have virtually no discernable assets other than full lips and large mammary glands who are making a fortune.

This makes one wonder what industries the government should "invest" in, what industries are going to "win the future". But if the Kardashian girls are making money for nothing, perhaps they should get their own cabinet post.

The Willing Suspension of Disbelief

So....
Riots in Syria are good, riots in London are bad.
Overthrowing the system in Tripoli is beneficial, overthrowing the system in Afghanistan is not.
Putting money into the economy is good, but taxing it out of the system is good, too.
A president with clearly antiwar sentiments has as his presidency highlights the assassination of a terrorist and the military overthrow of another.
Raising regulations on mortgage lenders is good, but we should not raise regulations on the nation's largest lenders, Fannie May and Freddie Mac.
Ethanol will make us less dependent on foreign energy but it requires more energy to produce than it creates.
Electric vehicles will create much less pollution but their energy will be supplied by coal fire plants.
Government cannot create jobs but Obama is responsible for the jobless rate.

This is a very tolerant citizenry.

The President's Speech

The film "The King's Speech" was about a man who faced a serious problem, knew what it meant to the nation and knew what he wanted to say. The drama centered on whether he could physically say it. The President will soon discuss his new plan to improve the economy. He certainly will say it well, the drama will be in what he believes and how that will be translated into action.

Interest rates were lowered to provide more liquidity to the economy. Money was pumped into the economy by the government through spending programs to increase liquidity in the economy. Interest rates are now almost zero and cannot be lowered further. Liquidity has been increased by trillions--TRILLIONS--of dollars. Economic activity is still low and unemployment is still high.From all indicators the economy is sliding back into recession.

What is the next step? We can't lower rates and another stimulus sounds silly. The only real intense government plan around is the notion of raising taxes, taking liquidity out of the economy.

This economic speech the president plans should be fascinating.

The Borders of Sharing

The homogenization of wealth and resources, the Christian sharing of production, will always be with us. It has countless slogans, faces and accents and, with the exception of the communists, is usually a national phenomenon. The poorer of the nation plan for the wealth of the richer of the nation.

It should not be too difficult a sell. After all, why should someone have more than another--and, if the argument is that the rich worked harder or achieved more--why is that the deciding factor? Where does work sit on the sliding scale of value when compared to the life or comfort of another human being?

It's in its logical conclusion that sharing gets sticky. Most proponents see the struggle within their own culture; the redistribution is a more gentle one. In the West, everyone will have shelter, food--some perhaps a car. But in its international application, redistribution gets more difficult. Merging the incomes of New York and Mississippi is one thing, merging Mississippi with Uganda is quite something else. The struggles within the EU, really between the productive north and the unproductive south, are over this exact question. The German worker does not want to support the Greek retiree.

So does this egalitarianism have boundaries? And if it does, how are those boundaries drawn?

A World Without Crossroads

Socialist usually are kind and benevolent at the start; later, when the inevitable financial problems occur, the socialist becomes harsher because the economy needs more leadership. The failures are proof to them that someone is playing them false or rules are not being followed. It is never assumed that the basic concept is in error. When socialism fails, the socialist just tries harder.

This confidence in leadership and in concepts, the notion that components can be assessed and analyzed to create a sharp point in management, is common to all overreaching philosophies across the political spectrum and sooner or later reaches a moment where honest men would reevaluate their positions. We are watching such a moment now. The government has flooded the economy with money, has dropped interest rates to almost zero, and has promised more of the same. No effect.

Their response is things would be a lot worse without their intervention with money and low rates but, whether that is true or not, what is the next step?

Tax the Rich, Feed the Poor

What is interesting about the "Tax the rich" cry is that there is so much resistance to it. Why would anyone object? They are different, isolated, often obnoxious and the high profile rich themselves want their taxes raised. Why is there a public debate?

My bet is that it is the other side of the equality coin. People want equal opportunity; they do not want to legislate results. This is the obverse of the objection to subsidies for people and groups.

The Rich are Very Much Like You and Me

Warren Buffet has publicly declared in favor of increasing taxes on "the rich."

I must admit I do not understand this. I do not care at all about the rich; what mystifies me is every one's preoccupation with them. What seems to have happened is that "the rich" is being presented as someone other than the rest of us. With apologies to Fitzgerald, aside from their checkbooks, that is untrue.

Increasing money in the government treasury has never resulted in improved government balance sheets; increasing government taxes just means the government spends more. There are two, just two, major problems facing our government money management: First, no one can tell what impact shifting national spending from individuals to government agencies means--if it means anything--and, two, no one can explain the difference--if there is one--between good government spending and bad spending.

If someone wants to start a discussion on a new good tax policy I would be interested, if someone wants to debate the merits of government spending I would be thrilled, if someone wants to discuss how to qualify government spending I'm on board. But if the debate is going to center on a tiny group of generally unpopular people as a proxy for raising taxes and government spending, that is disingenuous and I'm out.

Electric Vehicles and Investing in the Future

One of the interesting stories is the recent announcement of Department of Energy grants to battery manufacturers and developmental labs aimed at improving battery efficiency. At the core is the hope that new improvements in power storage will open new options in the development of alternative and cleaner energy sources. 170 million dollars were awarded to various companies over the last week, all--ALL--were lithium battery producers or researchers. What this implies is that the government and the DOE have thrown their considerable financial support behind the refinement of the Electric Vehicle.

Now this is interesting. The toughest environmental standards in the world start going into effect in Europe in two years so one would think the plans in Europe would be more forward looking. That said, J.D. Powers recently published their estimates of the makeup of the European fleet in 2020. According to them, electric vehicles will make up 7.4% of the European fleet in 2020. 7.4%.

So why the American emphasis on lithium ion batteries?

The Burdens of Freedom

A friend of mine recently showed me a therapy for "men's health" he had acquired over the Internet. He was thrilled with it, was considering becoming a distributor for it and wanted my opinion. I read the description of the active ingredient, "bovine thalamic extract."

"Do you know what this is?" I asked. (The guy was an engineer.)

"No."

"Cow brains."

"Is that good?"

"It's against the law to sell this as feed for barnyard animals.

"Why?"

"Mad cow disease. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy. If people eat it they get a similar illness called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. It's spread by eating the brains and spinal cords of infected animals. But it's not against the law to sell it to you."

He went away disappointed but I was left wondering which was worse, deregulation or the pretense of regulation.

Does the Farmer Retire?

The beach, the cabin in the mountains, a boat. Our national dream has become the escape from work. This wistful Shangri-la culminates in retirement where we do little or nothing. A hammock, perhaps, or afternoon television or all day sports channels but really nothing.

It starts early when children take time off from school. Imagine an assigned holiday from learning, a defined period where you turn your back on education. We must have strange priorities--or very ill schools--where such a notion would be even considered.

It appears to be modern, this search for rest. We see ourselves as men of machines, miners and coke plant workers who are ground down and compromised until we are physiologically impaired. Unions have arisen justly to protect us and ease us coughing and limping into rocking chairs. But thankfully those days have come and gone, a tiny period in our development. We are more the victims of lions than Robber Barons. And the miner's crushed pelvis has been replaced by the athlete's artificial knee and the surgeon's hepatitis.

We are not battered by work, we are defined by it. Our self image should not be a cringing cog in a great machine; we are of farming stock. We are planting, tending and growing the products of creation.

The important thing is to find a landscape you love, a place from which you would never seek to retire.

Needs vs. Wants

The problem with socialism, as Mrs. Thatcher famously said, is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money. The current rhetoric about the "rich' raises another question: Can the socialist ever be content? At what point does paying for an other's needs become paying for an other's wants?

The poor in the United States would be well off in most cultures. Are the needs of a man in Ohio different from those of a man in Bulgaria? Are needs relative, expanding with the expanding wealth of neighbors? Does disparity of wealth expand a man's claim beyond his need?

Or is the need of another man's wealth more simple?

Konrad Lorenz and Nagasaki

Today is the anniversary of the attack on Nagasaki. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed and maimed. Others suffered immediate and long-term effects of radiation.

It is curious that no one remembers the pilot's name. It was Maj. Charles Sweeney. This event changed the world--more than Kant or Patton or Booth did--yet somehow the complexities and the distances create a cloudy barrier as if no individual was really involved.

On the other hand it is doubtful that most under the age of twenty-five have ever heard of the attack on Nagasaki so maybe, like all great and riveting events, it is just metabolized by time.

Getting a Bad Grade From Grownups

Standard and Poors has downgraded U.S. debt to AA+ from AAA. Moody held pat. Some investment houses limit their debt holdings to triple A; they will not sell their treasuries, they will rewrite their charter and requirements. Some retail people will panic and sell but otherwise there will be no financial repercussions. But there will be emotional and political repercussions. America has never , ever, been graded as anything less than AAA; people will feel bad and there will be political posturing.

In some respects the event is fascinating. S&P never downgraded any company's debt leading up to the meltdown of 2008. Not one troubled bank , investment house or insurer was negatively reviewed. Nor did Enron, a company that was composed entirely of press releases and fraud, receive a downgrade right up to bankruptcy. But this was not an economic downgrade, it was a political one. S&P told the government what they were going to do: If the government did not cut the deficit by four trillion dollars, they would downgrade them. It essence they stated, "While you are the largest, most liquid, most vibrant economy in the world and have your own printing press, we are unsure you have the leadership to manage your financial problems." This is a huge political rebuke. This and this alone is the big deal.

And, of course, the fact that they had to delay their announcement for five hours because they had made a two trillion dollar math error.

Worshipping at the Church of the Self Inflicted Wound

The righteous in politics suffer great angst and provide more. The inability to compromise, the insistence on purity of a position and the willingness to suffer for your beliefs have real practical consequences for others. Nor is it confined; all sides are capable of it. Two cases in point: Perot in 1992 and Nader in 2000.

In 1992 the conservatives rose up against George Bush. Bush had had a spectacular several years as president but after his "No new taxes" pledge in the primary, he need to finance the surprise Iraq/Kuwait war and raised them. The conservatives went nuts. Perot emerged as a free market guy with no political background and ran against him (and Clinton) in the general election. Perot got almost 19% of the vote--all from voters who otherwise would have voted for Bush--and Clinton snuck in as a plurality president.

Nader ran as a Green candidate against Bush and Gore in 2000 and got 2.75% of the vote. But his votes would have beaten Bush in Florida had they gone to Gore and then Florida would have given the election to Gore. For the lack of a nail....

The hard-line conservatives elected Clinton, the hard-line left elected Bush.

These purists, left to their own devices, can do themselves a lot of damage. One can only wonder what the zealots will do in 2012.

Three Cups of Tea Party

True to the heritage of the nation, there is a puritan element in the Tea Party. It's more than righteousness, although that is present. It is more than uncompromising, although that is present too. It is the need to purify mistakes, to persecute error. To cleanse. To exorcise.

Their premises are straight forward. They believe government too big, is inefficient, promises more than it can deliver and consequently is eating into the private sector's productivity. Their opponents insist that government has a legitimate role in many areas other than basic defense and order and that government spending contributes to GDP just like private spending does.

There are many programs in the Tea Party sights. The Department of Energy, the Department of Education, the EPA all are areas where conservatives would wield a less than gentle ax. Another area, a source of great publicity by their opponents with elderly ladies in wheelchairs pushed over cliffs, is social security. While the Republicans decry those charges as libel, The Heritage Foundation's "Saving the American Dream" and candidate Tim Paulenty both advocating dismantling Social Security.

Social security is, in some respects, a perfect Tea Party target. Forced savings is offensive to the Tea Party not because they are opposed to savings but because it is forced. It is also funded by subsequent participants, the definition of Ponzi. It is riddled with fraud the government cannot seem to deal with and it is expanding in its scope, an aspect of government that conservatives despise. Fraud, corruption, overreaching, expanding, illogical and a failed promise--perfect for the Tea Party evangelists.

But the entire system, as flawed as it is, has three important additional qualities. First, it was a promise made that many relied and planned upon, two, everyone paid into it and, three, it is fixable. It will take some work to fix; those in it will probably have to defer their time of retirement and may not get perfect cost of living upgrades, those younger contributors will have to accept a different and more limited safety net. But these promises by government, as unreasonable as they might have been, can be kept.

There have been a number of histories and programs created over the last few years that were imperfect. Several were outright frauds that benefited no one but the creators. But their errors give us no reason to attack the victims. Indeed, reclaiming the aims and ideals of those programs might be good humbling penance for the perpetrators.

Black American Wealth

A new article by Thomas Sowell explores the terrible statistics on the development (or deterioration) of black American wealth over the last years. He lays it at the feet of the politicians who tried to jerry-rig the economy to accommodate unqualified home owners, mostly black.

That may be true but it misses the point. The real scandal is the failure of the black community to show any participation in the American social and economic process, its complete separateness from the American mainstream. How could white households have 33 times, 33 times!, the net worth of black households? And when will the black community stop its O.J. Simpson-like search for the perpetrator?

The Ratings Industry--It's Aliiive!

So we are to believe that the ratings industry, which showed such insight and fortitude before the 2008 debt/credit meltdown--an abuse of credit and trust that they both oversaw and mutely officiated over--we are to believe that this collection of abstainers and conscientious objectors will rise on their collective hind legs and with a howl degrade the American debt. And we are to believe that the sanctimonious American congress will not have a witch-hunt if they do--and that the esteemed ratings industry will not be compromised by this threat.

Get Yer Freedom Here!

The dollar remains strong, this in spite of the ceaseless printing of dollars by the government. Why? Because the other currencies are in worse shape and there is no other place to put money. There is a rumor afoot that the Americans will not support the euro this time around and, if that is the case and Italy is a new problem, the euro will fall and the dollar will strengthen. This raises an interesting thought experiment: How much of America's economic strength, her innovation and technology, is a function of "there's no place else to go?"

A few years ago the President of Peru, Mr. Alberto Fujimori, declared that his country was de-emphasizing the poor, the struggling, and the huddled masses in favor of the productive, the rich the achievers in order to build an investor friendly state. With the threat of ritualistic killings, political murders connected to famously failed economic philosophies, narco-state risk and the like this notion did not go far in Peru. But it could elsewhere. Why not a competitor nation for the U.S. which is friendly to wealth, innovation and growth? The welfare state will clearly need to be reassessed and different models will have to emerge. A new capital-friendly nation could still outsource to China but could bring in wealth to the new state without the hassle, debate and disrespect that has afflicted capital in America.

It is an unlikely but worrisome scenario. The economic benefits of freedom are a coincidence; they should not be the focus of political philosophy. But with the clear failure of the welfare state the political talk is going to become more utilitarian, more practical, and certainly there has been no evidence among politicians that depth of political beliefs will be a hindrance to any political innovation.