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STORM WARNING:

CONGRESS IS POISED TO BURDEN THE ECONOMY TOMORROW

 

CAP AND RAID

 

Recent data (recent in geological terms) show a warming trend in the last century.

 

This Friday, tomorrow, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on a complex regulatory regime that will punish all US industries that generate carbon dioxide (CO2), in other words, 99% of all manufacturing and transportation.  The net effect would be a dramatic escalation of prices at the consumer level, a huge increase in the costs of doing business in America (but NOT Chinese or Indian or other Third World businesses) and such a drag on the fragile US economy that the current recession will be deepened and prolonged as a result.

 

"I think we will hold the environmentalists," Waxman said. "This is a good environmental bill because it achieves the reductions in carbon emission that we must accomplish in order to avert the dangers from greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. I think the environmentalists will see this bill overall as a major win."

“Democratic staff are expected to release legislative text today on the agriculture compromises, as well as a number of other items that had still gone unresolved, including tax and trade provisions requested by the House Ways and Means Committee. Waxman said all of the new language would be folded into a manager's amendment before the floor debate.”

6-24-09 New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/06/24/24climatewire-house-dems-improve-climate-bills-chances-for-17335.html

 

House members are being pushed to do this because a putative consensus of scientists holds that industrial CO2 emissions are the primary cause of the recent global warming.  The timing is outrageous. (1) We are in the worst economic decline since 1982 – and this measure, if it is implemented, would drive recession into depression. (2) The world is experiencing a ten year pause in global warming.

 

CO2 is not a toxic poison or pollutant.  Without it, all vegetation would die – and so would we -- CO2 is part of the oxygen production cycle. 

 

My article early 2008 article summarizing the conflicted science on these questions is still pertinent.  Here is the link: http://jaygaskill.com/StGoreAndTheIceAge.pdf .

 

The data that the warming trend has been in remission for several years is corroborated by current climate data.  An excellent source is a brilliant data analyst who posts detailed charts at: http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/ .  To get the flavor of this intellectually honest source (rare in the current milieu) here is one ‘pull quote’:

 

“Another interesting trend line I keep track of asks the question “How far back can we go to see a non-warming trend?” This is, by design, an exercise in cherry-picking. But it serves a purpose. Obviously, the further back we can go, the higher the probability that the flat line actually means something. It’s valid to suggest that such periods can occur during warming trends. But it’s also valid to suggest that a long period could indicate an end to current warming. More likely, since we know that the long-term trend from surface measures – over 150+ years – indicates some warming, we can see this as an example of another part of the natural cycle taking place. It would be foolish to take the current non-warming trend and suggest that there will never be warming again. It seems every bit as foolish to be projecting runaway warming over the next Century in the midst of 12 years where no warming has occurred. My own analysis here, here, and here leads me to believe that cooling is on the way. But in each of those analyses, it recognizes cyclicality, and this cooling will once again be replaced by warming. And it has nothing to do with people, carbon dioxide, or plastic bags.”

 

If you want to keep track of the conventional wisdom on the topic, here are the pertinent links:

 

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/current_ghg.html

 

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/

 

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/recentac_majorghg.html

 

http://www.epa.gov/highgwp/scientific.html

 

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=221

 

But here is the bottom line:  Warming has abated for now.  We are in a deep and DANGEROUS a recession.  The Chinese and Indian economies are producing more CO2 than we are, and they will not stop any time soon.  The “benefits” of US unilateral action are marginal at best.  THERE IS NO EMERGENCY. 

 

Hundreds of job-creating projects have been held up for the preparation an evaluation of an E.I. R. (Environmental Impact Report).  We need an Economic Impact Report on this one.  The House Leaders are pushing now because they know that, on sober reflection, the measures would be delayed then defeated.   

 

JBG 

Posted by U2RGood at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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HISTORY IS TAKING OBAMA’S MEASURE

Will it be a Profile in Courage or a Holocaust by Default?

MONDAY, June 15, 2009

[A note to my readers – If you can, please bring this to the attention of the White House staff.]

 

An open letter From---

Jay B. Gaskill

Attorney at Law

Alameda, CA 94501

 

To ---

White House Chief of Staff

Rahm Emanuel

 

Dear Mr. Emanuel:

 

Since you have access to the intelligence information, I’ll get right to the point.  The Iranian regime plans to use its nuclear weapons capabilities in an ethic cleansing program aimed at the Jewish inhabitants of Israel.  The “liberals” in the regime will be willing to accept ethnic cleansing via forced ex-migration under threat of a nuclear holocaust.  The hardliners are willing to actively incinerate 75% of the Jewish population and accept the collateral damage. 

 

The “liberals” are not in control.

 

As you know, the Israeli government is currently debating the timing issue, i.e., how long dare they wait before attempting to mitigate the threat by bombing the known nuclear weapons infrastructure facilities and missile emplacements in Iran. 

 

You and they know that this effort may not succeed because the technical and logistical demands (well within US capabilities) are at the outer limits of the IDF’s reach.

 

You and they also know that any attack by the IDF on Iran will bring retaliation on Israel.  The estimates of the retaliatory casualties inflicted on the Israeli population are about 100,000, unless and until defenses are hardened, in which case the estimates fall to a “mere” 10,000 or so.  So the timing issue is complicated by intelligence uncertainties and defense preparedness logistics. 

 

All Americans need to understand the scale of the threat to the Israelis, as I’m sure you do.  The US population is about 305 million while Israel has only 7.5 m.  The multiplier is 40.666, which means that 100,000 dead Israelis is the equivalent of 4.666 million dead Americans, a “symbolic” holocaust to be sure and the cause for great rejoicing in Tehran.  What would be the scale of casualties in the event of nuclear missile attacks on Israel?  A true holocaust for sure: Jerusalem has .73 million inhabitants, Tel Aviv .38 m, Haifa .26 m, Rishon LeZion .22 m, and so on, all within missile range.

 

The reason that the Iranian regime will not back down is that the ruling clique see only two scenarios, and either scenario is glorious.  In the one where nuclear weapons are acquired by the Zion-hating mullahs, Iran becomes the world’s ethnic cleanser-in-chief and the untouchable terror-export bully. This would mark the beginning of a nightmare that would make the cold war standoff of the last century seem like a pleasant dream.  The scenario where Israel is provoked into a preventative air strike, followed by a punishing counterattack is equally glorious.  The Israelis are too civilized to inflict unnecessary civilian casualties, but the Iranian regime considers killing Israeli civilians a worthy goal.  The image of America, sitting idly by while its “evil” friend suffers a retaliatory “symbolic” holocaust, is the jihadist wet dream.   

 

As long as there is nothing much to fear from the USA, Iran’s rulers get to choose between win-win scenarios.  A decisive US strike, done without Israeli involvement, would be jeered by all of the chattering classes, but covertly cheered among key Arab leaders. 

 

When a poison snake invades the nursery, you have to kill it on the first try.  Half measures won’t work.  By now you should have been briefed about the scale of the effort required.  This is primarily an air and water mission with limited ground support.  The Iranian navy needs to be disabled in order to protect the Strait of Hormuz; Iranian air defenses must be degraded or destroyed, the Iranian air force decimated, Iran’s missile emplacements, factories and hiding places blown up. And Iran’s stocks of enriched fissile material must be destroyed and its reactors and weapons development facilities rendered unusable for the foreseeable future.  In a well planned, well executed operation US ground forces would consist of Special Forces teams inserted and extracted.  There are no guarantees and the bottom line is stark and simple:  In for a nickel, in for all.

 

Why do we need to do this?  After the dust settles, it will become clear that only the US military action that actually eliminated the Iranian nuclear program could have promoted long term regional peace (you are far too tough minded to get hung up on the seeming contradiction), because it limited the scope of retaliation and staked out a wider, no proliferation message.  It would be helpful if the administration could enlist some multi-national cover.  But whether undertaken alone or in concert with allies, US led effort is inherently less destabilizing than an attack on Iran by the Israeli Defense Forces.  A successful US destruction of the Iranian nuclear weapons program would send a bright-line message to all the other regimes in the world that are contemplating getting their own nuclear arsenal: It is just not worth it. 

 

The stakes are high: the prevention of the next holocaust, the preservation of the national honor, the first serious step in a real non-proliferation policy and the verdict of history. This would be a drastic step, to be sure, but one taken as it proves necessary and not a moment too late.  

 

Mr. Emanuel, your duty to the legacy of this presidency and your special relationship with him converge here and now.  This is one of those hinges of history moments that trumps the messy realm of domestic politics.  Where the fate of Israel is concerned, you are the first line conscience, the reality-check and truth teller.  And if the administration intends to fold...you are the whistle blower. 

 

Suppose America stood idly by hoping that Israel will once again “take care of it” for us: In that dark moment, this president would own the blood and ashes that would follow in the inevitable retaliation.  In that dark moment, we would no longer be the brave and noble country of FDR and JFK.  We would have become the country of Charles Lindbergh and Robert Lafollette.  And this president would be forever remembered as the leader who abandoned the “shining city on the hill” to the wolves. 

 

The next ten months are too critical to waste in denial or procrastination.  Action and preparation for action are called for, not excluding clever, hard-headed diplomacy.  But as a realist you know that diplomacy with fanatics and thugs is a charade unless it is a face-saving cover for intimidation.  I and others have made the case for sabotage, covert disruption and back-channel intimidation of the ruling clique in Iran. There needs to be below-the-radar pressure while diplomacy plays out on the surface.  Nothing less than credible intimidation can possibly change the course of the current Iran regime.

 

But I know negotiations well, as I know you do.  When the stakes are this high, there is no room for bluff, no tolerance for high rhetoric followed by vacillation and hesitation.  And the bottom line is the bottom line.  The USA cannot afford a Middle-East Korea, even if we never again bought a drop of their oil.  Moreover, the moral damage following a USA-enabled holocaust - whatever the fig-leaf pretense, would be irrevocable and devastating. 

 

History has called us to a shoulder a grave responsibility.  It will be up to this country, to this administration at this moment, to bell the cat.  As Hillel, the Elder admonished: If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?

 

I’m writing you as a Truman democrat for whom the “What would Harry do?” question, is dispositive.  Nothing less than the right thing will do this time...whatever it takes.  

 

Respectfully,

Jay B. Gaskill

Attorney at Law

Posted by U2RGood at 01:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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All contents, unless otherwise indicated are
Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 & 2009 by Jay B. Gaskill

 

DISCLAIMER: I am still among those who want our new president to succeed, especially in rescuing the economy from its deepening malaise.
WARNING: If you are among those so enthralled by Mr. Obama’s rhetorical gifts that your critical intelligence remains stuck in the ‘off’ position, READ NO FURTHER. 
The mounting evidence suggests to me that the president has already made a major, possibly catastrophic economic mistake.  The remaining question is whether he can correct course in time to contain the damage....

 

A downloadable version of this article, in pdf format, has been posted on The Policy Think Site: LINK:
http://jaygaskill.com/ObamaLostOrFound.pdf

 

THE GREAT CROSSROADS: WHITHER OBAMA

 

 

 

Today in the New York Times, David Brooks FINALLY addresses the need for conservative fiscal restraint without cloying deference to the cohort that got us in the current mess. In “The Great Unwinding”, he makes this observation:

 

“Consumption as a share of G.D.P. stood at around 62 percent in the mid-1960s, and rose to about 73 percent by 2008. The baby boomers enjoyed an incredible spending binge. Meanwhile the Chinese, Japanese and European economies became reliant on the overextended U.S. consumer. It couldn’t last.

 

“The leverage wave crashed last fall. Facing the possibility of systemic collapse, the government stepped in and replaced private borrowing with public borrowing.”

 

Followed by this nugget:

“The members of the political class face a set of monumental tasks. First, they have to persuade a country to postpone gratification for the sake of rebuilding the country. This country hasn’t accepted sacrifice in 50 years.

“Second, political leaders will have to raise taxes and cut spending to get the federal fiscal house in order, and they will have to do it at a time when voters are already scaling back their lifestyles.

“Third, they will have to refrain from doing anything that might further damage America’s fiscal position, which is extremely fragile. That means not passing a health care reform package unless it is really and truly paid for.”

 

LINK:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/opinion/12brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

 

A note to David Brooks: I wouldn’t hold your breath on that last injunction.  Our president is so far unwilling to endorse a heath care plan that is “pay as you go’ for the simple reason that in the first 120 days of his administration, ALL OF THE MONEY WAS PRE-SPENT.

I’ve repeatedly made the point that previous modern presidents (Reagan and Clinton come immediately to mind) did their best work when forced to deal with a non-compliant Congress, one controlled by the opposite party.  I believe that the current triumvirate - POTUS, House and Senate, all firmly in the control of a single party, will be this administration’s undoing.  Put differently, a strong push back by conservatives in both parties in November 2010, preceded by a growing wave of public support for restraint, may work to save Mr. Obama’s legacy.

LINK: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/taxes/june_2009/53_say_more_government_spending_hurts_the_economy
The wave has already begun.  The highly respected pollster, Scott Rasmussen, reported today that:

 

“Most voters (53%) believe increases in government spending hurt the economy, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
While that result is unchanged from last month, it’s up five points from 48% in January.”
That’s one percentage point higher than Mr. Obama’s electoral win and it is a trend.
“IP-LIBERALISM”

Let me coin a term here: “IP-Liberalism”. 

IPL is the discipline-eroding virus that has infected both parties. It is the reason that GOP leaders endorsed a budget-busting, not-means tested entitlement, the Medicare Drug Benefit, and that the democrats immediately and uncritically endorsed Mr. Bush’s banking system bailout and Mr. Obama’s pork-clotted Stimulus Package. 

We’re dealing now with the consequences of the quintessential a Boomer mindset, something that goes all the way back to the misguided child-rearing practices endorsed in the 1960’s by the now, almost-forgotten, Dr. Spock. 

Indulgent Parent Liberalism produces spoiled children, politicians unable to say NO and stick with it, undisciplined borrowing and HUGE fiscal deficits.  The current mess is the consequence of IP-Liberalism, the virus that weakens parental authority and has deprived both chambers of congress of adult supervision.  The country needs to jettison Dr. Spock in favor of Mr. Spock, the coolly rational science officer on the USS Enterprise.

Over the last several weeks, I’ve been addressing what I am calling a needed conservative renaissance, a coalition of Blue Dog democrats and fiscally sane republicans.  Recently I made this challenge:

 

There are the four rules for any freedom-friendly game-changing alternative that will actually work:
 

1. It must be a new game.
2. It must be better than the old game for the productive people and institutions that generate real goods and services.
3. The larger electorate must understand and agree to try the new game.
4. The sacrifices needed to change games must be realistic, but short term enough that the benefits of the new game become evident within three years or less.

 

I’ll return to that at the very end of this piece, and in more detail in a later posting.
THE LEFT TURN: LOST IN SPACE

 

This president’s lofty rhetoric still ascends to the skies, seeking a wider and wider audience, while the prospect of a robust recovery in the US economy is rapidly falling into the well of impossible dreams.

 

Mr. Obama was brought to power by the perfect storm of politics, the kind that sweeps through a political system like a tornado through fall leaves.  The shockingly abrupt collapse of the financial system was a decisive break in a conservative trending campaign.  Just before the crash, the Obama campaign was losing momentum and the McCain insurgency was gaining, in spite of the drag of the Bush legacy.

Republicans bolted out of the convention ready to win, and it showed in the polls. The week of September 8-14 McCain was ahead for the first time – but by only one point. Obama reclaimed a one-point lead the following week. Basically the race was tied going into the last six weeks of the campaign. Then on September 15, the 158-year-old investment banking firm of Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection, marking the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. The bursting housing bubble had hit Wall Street. Other firms fell like dominoes, and the resulting “financial meltdown” dominated the front pages.

LINK: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/mccain_s_fortunes_fell_with_the_stock_market .

 

The momentum break was made even more dramatic by President Bush’s urgent appeal for a blank check in the amount of 800 billion dollars, John McCain’s mercurial fiscal about face and Mr. Obama’s strategic aplomb. 

 

In the end, a center-right country voted for a seemingly center-left candidate, a man whose earlier ties to the paleo-left of the revolutionary 60’s were conveniently forgotten in the glow of his unquestioned charisma.  His was a campaign founded on the Grand Gesture and driven by the contrast effect:  Just as a disgruntled lover tends to become uncritically infatuated with the opposite type, the American people were drawn to a man whose soaring eloquence and seeming humility contrasted vividly with the cocky mal-eloquence of the former Texas governor.  Forgotten, too, were the hockey-mom jibes of the Alaska governor about Mr. Obama’s over-the-top Hollywood stagecraft.  Governor Sarah Palin actually drew blood in her acceptance speech, which is why the press, egged on by the Obama campaign, drew blood in turn.  But all that became irrelevant when the crash became center stage and John McCain blew the opportunity to become the calm voice of fiscal sanity.

 

I was going to begin the next sentence (about Mr. Obama) with “to be fair,” but that just isn’t the appropriate test for someone who has actively sought the presidency for several years.  It would be like using that phrase to excuse a new pitcher, brought up from the minor leagues, who badly blows several games in a row.  As JFK reminded us, “Life is not fair.”

 

The new administration arrived in the middle of a crisis with a decisive victory, the wind at its back and a compliant congress.  The financial meltdown presented an extraordinary challenge and an opportunity of equal magnitude.   A large scale binge in private borrowing had overleveraged almost every part of the economic system, from families to Fortune 500 companies, from banks to brokerages.  Like all binges, this credit blowout came to an end as abruptly and catastrophically as the Bernie Madoff pyramid investing scam did. Overnight, the glut in too-easy credit became an ice age. 

 

Several factors had converged:

 

(1)   Post-911, low interest lending by the fed headed off a major post-attack recession, but that only postponed the eventual reckoning.

 

(2)   Political pressure continued to encourage risky mortgage loans to economically challenged borrowers, eventually leading to new forms of financial trickery and balance sheet puffing. The foreclosure time bomb had been set and armed.

 

(3)   A Faustian bargain between the high spending, high borrowing developed economies and the high production, high lending Chinese economy traded first world debt and eroded manufacturing capability for a massive influx of second world, under-priced goods. This sopped up the inflationary pressures from the USA’s money factory at the cost of a huge outsourcing of our manufacturing base and an eventual credit crash. 

 

None of this was unsustainable long term. 

 

Our story was replicated in greater or lesser ways throughout the first world economy.  The common thread was hugely overvalued real estate, forming the speculative bubble that undergirded the whole fragile business of trying to make something out of nothing. All bubbles break. The challenge to the incoming Obama administration was to contain the damage to the persons and institutions that had behaved imprudently and irresponsibly and to help those that were still strong to recover quickly and fill in the gaps left by the failures. This would have not only been more effective, it would have been far, far less expensive.  Not all banks were burdened by bad loans and phony assets.  Not all businesses were poorly run.  In general the market mechanisms of capitalism do a brilliant job of picking winners and losers, so long as they are allowed to operate rationally and without undue political interference.  Politicians are prone to prop up losers at the expense of everyone else. 

 

The sheer scale of the meltdown has so far exceeded the annual budgets of all levels of government that any attempt to bail out the failures was doomed from the outset.  At this early juncture, it is sadly apparent that the incoming administration simply doubled down on failure, squandering all of its assets and those of the next generation in a futile effort to stop a runaway train.  This was more than mere “wasted money.” It was a quixotic attempt to repair a private credit binge with a public credit binge.  In the attempt, POTUS has created a boulder-sized recovery roadblock.  As a result, those hoping for a prosperous end to this ‘recession’ might be waiting the arrival of a new administration. [See my footnotes below.]  Unless, external political forces persuade this president to change course, we can expect more oratory and grandiose gestures in an effort to sooth and distract us from the impending disaster. 

Footnotes:

 

As Arthur Laffer, the economist who is credited with the Laffer Curve, writes in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal {LINK: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124458888993599879.html}

 

“Here we stand more than a year into a grave economic crisis with a projected budget deficit of 13% of GDP. That's more than twice the size of the next largest deficit since World War II. And this projected deficit is the culmination of a year when the federal government, at taxpayers' expense, acquired enormous stakes in the banking, auto, mortgage, health-care and insurance industries.

 

“With the crisis, the ill-conceived government reactions, and the ensuing economic downturn, the unfunded liabilities of federal programs -- such as Social Security, civil-service and military pensions, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, Medicare and Medicaid -- are over the $100 trillion mark. With U.S. GDP and federal tax receipts at about $14 trillion and $2.4 trillion respectively, such a debt all but guarantees higher interest rates, massive tax increases, and partial default on government promises.
“But as bad as the fiscal picture is, panic-driven monetary policies portend to have even more dire consequences. We can expect rapidly rising prices and much, much higher interest rates over the next four or five years, and a concomitant deleterious impact on output and employment not unlike the late 1970s.”

 

And Tuesday, The New York Times, hardly a mouthpiece for the Obama opposition, ran a “yes, deficits are serious” piece that contained this:

 

“Obama advisers acknowledge as much. They say that changes to the system would probably have a big effect on health spending starting in five or 10 years. The national debt, however, will grow dangerously large much sooner. ...

 

“Your taxes will probably go up, and some government programs you favor will become less generous.”

 

“That is the legacy of our trillion-dollar deficits. Erasing them will be one of the great political issues of the coming decade.”

 

LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html?scp=1&sq=June%2010%20deficits&st=cse

 

 

 

If Mr. Obama pursues his lofty, orbital course, this is what we can expect.  Mr. Obama has already used his rhetorical gifts in Berlin and on the Al-Arabiya news channel to inspire Europeans and to assuage the Islamic world. 

If his present course continues, he will try to recover popular acclaim by seeking ever larger oratorical platforms.  If the US economy actually tanks, his next major address will be delivered from the Hubble Space Telescope. 

 

 

MR. OBAMA’S OTHER COURSE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let me make four quick points here, notions that will be spelled out in my series about the “ReCon” movement (fostering “renaissance conservatives” in both parties).

 

ONE

 

The economy cannot endure continued bureaucratic strangling via a vast network of municipal, state and federal regulations that impose a crushing political burden on any new commercial venture.  Space limits do not allow elaboration. Ask Joe the plumber’s friends in your neighborhood.  If Mr. Obama is attracted to leadership on a grand scale, then I invite him to consider the story of Alexander of the Gordian Knot.

 

TWO

 

The economy can no longer endure the current legacy of mandated entitlements, let alone new ones.  Don’t even go there.  This includes carbon regulation and subsidized health care.  Sorry, but the cupboard is bare and the kids are hungry.

 

THREE

 

One cannot attempt to restrain private compensation without doing even more to cut the compensation of public officials and workers at all levels. 

 

FOUR

 

Any tax increases must meet four criteria:
(a) FLAT & COMPREHENSIVE: They cannot differentially burden economic success.

 

(b) SPENDING CUT LINKED: They must be absolutely coupled with drastic, large scale spending cuts (absolute cuts, not mere reductions in growth) that exceed the dollar amount of any new taxes in both absolute and relative terms.

 

(c) SUNSET: They must be rigorously time limited in the same way that the Bush tax cuts were.

 

(d) DEBT PAYBACK LINKED:  No games allowed.  100% of the spending cuts and new taxes are used to pay down existing public indebtedness.

 

 

____

 

The fork in the road is obvious.  Take the center-right branch, Mr. President, before it’s too late....

 

JBG

Posted by U2RGood at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As Published On
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→The Policy Think Site: http://www.jaygaskill.com
All contents, unless otherwise indicated are
Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 & 2009 by Jay B. Gaskill
Permission to publish, distribute or print all or part of this article (except for personal use) is needed. [Permission for use in group discussions is almost always routinely given.]
Please contact Jay B. Gaskill, attorney at law, via e mail at law@jaygaskill.com
 

As posted on The Policy Think Site in htm Format,

LINK:
http://jaygaskill.com/PoliticalOxygen.htm

 

RUNNING OUT OF OXYGEN IN THE POLITICAL TERRARIUM


Money is the oxygen in our political terrarium.  And the political classes are running out of it.  To be sure, we’re not talking about private wealth here, but the funds that politicians are able to award to win our votes.

 

Within 10 months, the first symptoms of political anoxia will be apparent.  Politicians will begin gasping for air in public like beached sharks. {Right now, they are like emphysema patients, hiding their private O2 bottles and sneak-smoking in the bathroom.}  Panic will break out in the terrarium.  In due course, new taxes will be proposed.  Shortages of essential goods (gasoline, fuel oil, natural gas, meat, milk, grains, and vegetables) will begin to drive up consumer prices, while new government spending will become a symbolic trickle. 


“New” political strategies will be trotted out, but they will be tissue paper tuxedos made of the old, failed designs.  Instead of courting political favor based on “what we can do for you,” the appeal of the ruling classes will shift to “remember what we did for you” then, in desperation, “fear what the other party will do to you.”  If you think you’ve already heard those appeals, you are not hallucinating. The O2 has been running out of the terrarium for some time.  But now we are entering the acute stage.

 

When the O2 first began to run out, the government elites were forced to curry favors by regulatory favoritism.  This is fundamentally different game - and ultimately more dangerous – because free market economies tend to grow in spite of taxation, at least to a point.  So the Political classes can cut up a growing pie, as it were.  But the basket of freedoms that are curbed by a growing weed-network of rules, petty and otherwise, is a limited resource.  Regulatory favoritism is truly a zero sum game, one in which the number of government-offended voters grows faster than the number of government-favored voters.

 

In a terrarium ruled by regulatory favoritism, almost everyone eventually moves into the group that has been negatively affected by some regulatory scheme that favors another group.  Think, for example of the high achieving Asian families who were moved out of the affirmative-action line by other less qualified minorities; think of the small adults and children who are forced to sit in the back of the car, or face being threatened by mandatory air bags; think of the women, gays, elders and others who face  muggings unarmed every day - those whose ability to defend themselves is impaired by urban firearms laws; think of the millions and millions of people whose basic fuel and transportation needs are priced out of reach because of draconian ‘carbon’ and ‘fossil fuel’ supply restrictions; and don’t forget all the rest of us who suffer in a thousand small ways because of the political load placed on ordinary commerce by “well meaning” politicians who license, deny, delay and redirect us at every turn, just to please somebody else.

 

In a seriously anoxic political environment, the party-in-power can only hold on by consolidating a fierce hold on a working majority, counting on habitual loyalty grounded in apathy and misinformation.  The least educated, most easily manipulated voters are recruited; opposition is intimidated and blamed for the existing mess.  As dispiriting as this sort of game can be, it has a natural end in the anger of those who finally discover they were lied to.  We are in the end game, but it is promising and gravely dangerous in roughly equal proportions.  As the oxygen runs out, will there be a game-changing alternative, or one more barely sufficient readjustment?   

 

What happens next at this critical juncture depends on the presence or absence of a viable, widely supported game-changing alternative.  Even when the airlock blows, and air rushes out of the political terrarium in a mighty torrent, and all of the political fish are flopping about on the sand, the elites will try to manage the situation in a desperate bid to hold power. Their game-changing alternative could be very ugly The Hugo Chavez model comes to mind.

 

We didn’t arrive at this “cabin depressurization” crisis overnight.  Successions of democratic liberal congresses, abetted by a smaller cohort of passively of actively compliant republicans, have presided over a growing weed patch of interlocking dependencies, starting in the late 1930’s, ramped up in a marked acceleration during LBJ’s “Great Society” moment.  

 

The sheer scale of the fiscal/credit collapse of 08-09 is unique.  This is why the oxygen depletion metaphor is no exaggeration.

 

The crisis may resolve to two Great Alternatives and One Tipping Point.  One is a post Argentinean-style collapse reversion into authoritarianism, Hugo Chavez-USA.  The other is a Freedom Renaissance, founded in fiscal sanity and the liberation of the productive economy.

 

Peeling back the tangled layers of political control and production-punitive taxes to restart a politically overloaded free market system is possible, but just barely.  The task is analogous to one of those Sci-fi horror flicks.  Imagine the heroine is trapped in a giant spider-web over a yawning chasm.  Those who say, “It’s too late” just aren’t thinking.  The spider, ever hungry for more, is crawling out on the limb. Lady Liberty, though bound, is still alive.  She is rescued, somehow, or she dies.  It really is that starkly simple.

 

We freedom-friendly types have to think outside the web.  Here are the four rules for any freedom-friendly game-changing alternative that will actually work:

 

1. It must be a new game.
2. It must be better than the old game for the productive people and institutions that generate real goods and services.
3. The larger electorate must understand and agree to try the new game.
4. The sacrifices needed to change games must be realistic, but short term enough that the benefits of the new game become evident within three years or less.

 

Our President’s personal popularity is a lagging indicator of popular opinion, which already running strongly against costly bailouts and staggering deficits.  European voters are turning conservative.  We’ll soon see governments in England, Germany and France all to the right of our own. 

 

The first test of the American popular will take place in November 2010, when the entire House of Representatives and about 1/3 of the Senate are up for reelection.  For thos who want this president to be well remembered by history, take note:  Mr. Obama’s ultimate legacy depends on a conservative resurgence.  Both Reagan and Clinton, among other presidents, did some of their best work when forced to deal with a real opposition.

 

We are swiftly approaching a tipping point.  The left has a temporary, but fragile grip on power.  A freedom-friendly game changing alterative will eventually emerge, but its real-world implementation will require two things:  (1) The prevention of further irrevocable damage from the leftwing trinity (POTUS, Pelosi, Reid) that has made road kill of the opposition; (2) The formation of a new, bipartisan coalition. 

 

Can this be done?  That question hinges on political psychology:  When will an alliance of realistic, tough-minded GOP leaders and Blue Dog Democrats arise from the ashes?  When will the center-right rally to the cry, “Yes we can?”

 

JBG

Posted by U2RGood at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

 

IRAN & KOREA CRISES 

Mr. Obama, the “Nuke Whisperer”? Don’t bet your life on it....

 

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As posted on The Policy Think Site in htm format,
LINK: http://jaygaskill.com/NukeWhisperer.htm

 

See a related piece – Joe Lieberman in the Wall Street Journal, ‘No room for Partisanship on Iran’, LINK: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124364004855967853.html#mod=loomia?loomia_si=t0:a16:g4:r2:c0:b0

 

KOREAN & IRANIAN NUKES:
The Classic Hostage Standoff Redux?
 
In a hostage standoff, the good guys are held at bay during endless, usually pointless negotiations while the bad guys hold a large number of innocent people under threat of execution.  The variations on this basic scheme are many, including every scenario the terrorists, thugs and move makers can come up with.  Apparently, no one so far has noticed that the interconnected Korea and Iran nuclear threats are large scale hostage standoffs.
 
In the Korean and Iranian hostage situations, both of long duration, the bad guys are using their “negotiation” time to build and deploy weapons strong enough to drive off the good guys (or so they think).  That prospect poses a danger that is worse than the loss of all the hostages; the weapons the bad guys are working on are atomic bombs and the missiles to deliver them.  Assuming that the risk posed is not yet immediate, three successive American administrations (Clinton, Bush and Obama) have let (or are letting) the negotiations run on in spite of their apparent futility.   
 
A HOSTAGE INVENTORY

 

What/who are the hostage assets/victims, and what is the real risk to them?
 
South Korea.  The City of Seoul (population 10 million) is a major Asian financial and industrial center in a peaceful, democratically governed country with a thriving trillion dollar economy.  Seoul is within bombardment distance of the North Korean forces just north of the infamous Demilitarized Zone.  The North Korean government maintains a large military force (about 1m soldiers) in spite of its gravely weakened economy. 
 
Here are excerpts from sobering report from the James Martin Center for Non-Proliferation Studies (Website at http://cns.miis.edu/index.htm ):
 

“Seoul, the South Korean capitol, lies within range of... [f]ive hundred 170mm Koksan guns and 200 multiple-launch rocket systems could hit Seoul with artillery shells and chemical weapons... between 500 and 600 Scud missiles that could strike targets throughout South Korea with conventional warheads or chemical weapons. ... Seventy percent of North Korean army ground units are located within 100 miles of the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea, positioned to undertake offensive ground operations. These units could fire up to 500,000 artillery rounds per hour against South Korean defenses for several hours. ...Although the United States would likely win an all-out war, the damage to South Korea would be tremendous and U.S. forces would sustain large casualties. One U.S. military estimate suggested that U.S. and South Korean military forces might suffer 300,000-500,000 casualties within the first 90 days of fighting, in addition to hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.[Citing - R. Jeffrey Smith, ‘North Korea Deal Urged by State Dept.,’ Washington Post, November 15, 1993, p. A15]”

 

Hostage Risk:

 

US Military planners are concerned that an American attack large enough and effective enough to wipe out North Korea’s nuclear threat would provoke retaliation.  That action could include shelling Seoul and marketing any weapons-grade fissile materials to terrorists.  I personally think that the huge casualty figures suggested by the 1993 Washington Post article cited in the quoted article are wrong because they underestimate the tactical effectiveness of American air assets to stop North Korean ground troop movements.  But I’ve seen other, more credible, casualty estimates from a concentrated shell and missile barrage against Seoul.  The low end is about 100,000 city casualties.  So the hostage situation is real enough.  That still leaves the question:  What would the North Korean regime actually do if the US simply took out its missile and nuclear warhead facilities?

 

Iran.

 

Iran (population 72m, second in the world for natural gas and oil reserves, with six metropolitan cities) is now the trouble-maker-in-chief for the whole Middle East region.  The two leading terror-thug organizations (Hamas & Hezbollah) are effectively on the Iran payroll and nearby Syria, also a terror-harboring regime, is an Iran client-state.  In recent years the the ruling Mullahs (whose council vets and controls political candidates in order to suppress Western-style liberalization) have begun to lose popularity with the country’s well educated (by Middle Eastern standards), young population.  Some (but not all) experts hold out the prospect for eventual regime amelioration, even the emergence of something approaching West-friendly democratic governance. 

 

But the regime has relentless pursued atomic bomb technology, having obtained invaluable early assistance from the infamous Dr. Kahn, Pakistan’s home-grown Dr. Strangelove.  Korean nuclear scientists have also been employed, who were using the nuclear reactor facility in Syria to avoid detection until the IDF blew it up in November 2007.  Reportedly it was a duplicate of the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon.

 

Hostage Risk

 

Some strategic planners are concerned that air strikes alone won’t be able to completely eliminate the suspected nuclear weapons facilities, let alone find them all.  Forces on the ground sufficient to operate effectively in-country would probably approach the scale of a small invasion force, severely straining already stretched American military resources.  This would almost certainly trigger several parallel reactions: (1) Immediate military pressure on Iraq, possibly reversing the progress there, (2) A step-up in terror activity by Hamas and Hezbollah, throughout the region, (3) Major disruptions in the regional oil supply, with potentially grave economic repercussions, especially now (4) a surge in anti-American patriotism among the Iranian population, strengthening the hand of the mullahs and indefinitely delaying and hope of regime amelioration. 

 

As in Korea, the question, “What would Iran actually do?” remains open to speculation.

 

CONCLUSIONS AND ANALYSIS

 

Korea and Iran are linked.  The former holds a major city hostage and the prospect of inflicting WWII level casualties on an invader.  The latter holds the stability of the vital Middle East hostage as well as roughly one third of the world’s gas and oil reserves.  Each country is run by hostile regimes that no one in the neighborhood wants to have the nuclear trigger.  This presents the classic, “Who will bell the cat?” scenario, but one in which no European or Asian country is prepared to lift a finger, much less provide a fighter jet wing or some Special Forces units.

 

Korea is properly considered a somewhat higher priority at the moment because of the second A-bomb test and its continuing missile program.  Our European neighbors are contributing stronger rhetoric, but little else.

 

WIRED has covered recent Korean invasion war games in a piece linked here: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05/inside-americas-mock-attack-north-korea/

  

A pull quote from a 2003 analysis quoted in the WIRED piece is sobering:

 

“In 2003, retired Colonel John Collins ran through the possible moves and countermoves in a military standoff on the Korean peninsula — from blockades to full-out nuclear strikes.  His conclusion: ‘Any of the U.S. options described above could trigger uncontrollable escalation that would create appalling casualties on both sides of the DMZ and promise a Pyrrhic victory at best. Unilateral actions by the United States without unqualified ROK [Republic of Korea] agreement and willing participation every step of the way would be immoral as well as ill- advised. Inaction while Kim Jong Il develops a robust nuclear arsenal and perhaps supplies nuclear weapons to U.S. enemies, unfortunately, would worsen any future confrontation.’”

 

As America and the rest of the world try to talk rogue states out of acquiring deliverable A-bombs, Iran continues to improve the sophistication and effectiveness of its weapons. An updated anti-cruise missile weapon, also described in a WIRED is an example.  LINK: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05/irans-new-anti-missile-artillery/ .  Here’s the pull quote:

 

“Iran has started to mass-produce anew 40mm automatic cannon capable of shooting down cruise missiles, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency. The announcement, made on Sunday, said that the cannon, known as Fath (”Victory”), has a range of 12 kilometers and fires 300 rounds a minute. Is this an alarming new development, a piece of junk that won’t make any difference in an actual war – or a sign of something more subtle?”

 

The last WIRED article quoted suggests that the new anti-cruise missile weapon is not a game changer, but it is evidence that Iran is preparing a “layered’ missile defense.  This suggests to me that Iran fully expects to be attacked, which suggests in turn that it has no intention of abandoning its plans to become the region’s new nuclear power.  

 

ARE THERE VIABLE STRATEGIES OTHER THAN HAND WRINGING?

 

So far these two rogue states (two of the three members of Bush’s Axis of Evil – the third member, Hussein’s Iraq having been removed) have only escalated their aggressive weapons programs in response to the new administration’s overtures.  The truth about thugs, learned anew by each incoming administration, is that they tend to behave decently only after some blood has been drawn and they are quick to revert to type the moment they smell weakness.

 

Recall that Libya was hell bent on making A-bombs until the swift fall of the neighboring Iraqi regime changed hearts and minds at the very top.  Muammar al-Gaddfi seemingly capitulated in 2003, after centrifuge shipment was interdicted, but soon resumed a clandestine nuclear weapons program.  That program was “voluntarily” terminated in January 2004.  Not coincidentally, US forces had deposed the Hussein regime in nearby Iraq in May of 2003.  Muammar feared he would be next.

 

Reportedly, when news of the swift fall of Baghdad reached North Korea’s Kim Jong-il, he fled in fear to a secure location. 

 

Both of these are examples of classic thug behavior and this suggests a two pronged, multi staged strategy. 

 

<๻>KOREA

 

Kim Jong-il has an Achilles heal:  He is afraid of being personally harmed.  The solution is obvious.  While keeping a veneer of deniability (so the regional players, all of whom want this odious dude taken out are not constrained to condemn us), we do three things:

(1) Using a back channel that will allow us to pretend non-involvement, we directly threaten Kim and his immediate circle with severe bodily harm and death unless he firmly and irrevocable changes his course.  We also promise personal rewards for cooperation.  There will be a warning shot, just so that he knows our capabilities.

(2) While keeping powerful naval assets within range of the artillery north of the DMV and of Kim, himself, we pull back all American troops and military assets from Seoul to hardened locations out of range.  We will pretend otherwise but the signal is that we are willing to sacrifice the hostages if necessary.

(3) We find a covert way to attack Kim personally, enough to draw blood, kill at least a few of his people and we pull it off opportunistically.  How could this be done?  There are experts.  Consult them – I’m not one.  But as a cinematic example, we  might imagine an ultra high altitude drop of a precision guided “object” that would totally disintegrate and take out, say, about a 50 meter circle of real estate.  To work psychologically, it just needs to be close to the target and deadly.  Kim’s imagination will do the rest.

 

The advantage of this set of steps is that all of the other options are left open. 

 

If, God forbid, we have to go forward, I’m afraid must we re-confront the Truman dilemma.  What do we do when presented by a tradeoff between, say losing 150,000 American lives in a protracted battle or using a few low yield tactical nukes to clear artillery and missile emplacements north of the DMZ, and, inter alia, to wipe out all of the North Koran troops stationed there while, at the same time, we make short work of Kim’s missile emplacements and nuclear production facilities?  I’m a Truman democrat.  For me it’s a no brainer.

 

If we succeed in Korea using a simple strategy of trading North Korean lives for the hostages with ruthless efficiency, or by “secretly” intimidating Kim into a face-saving “diplomatic” solution, you can be sure that the lesson will not be lost on Iran.  Korea needs to be brought to heel.  If we succeed and time allows us for that to happen first, then taming Iran’s overheated nuclear-power ambitions will be far, far easier.

 

<๻>IRAN

 

Iran presents a different tactical situation, in part because there is no single leader who is in full day-to-day control; moreover, the local ideology glorifies suicidal martyrdom. 

 

So we convey a similar back-channel threat to the mullahs and the military leadership, bypassing the “elected” president. But his time, we promise not death but humiliation.  And we don’t precede the planned series of events with a mere demonstration.  The preferred method here is sabotage, followed by more sabotage, followed by more and more. 

 

Again we preserve deniability, but this time it must be more than a mere veneer. 

 

If we are good enough at the game, it might look like this:  One by one, the ships of the Iranian navy begin to malfunction and sink.  [Why the ships?  A significant hostage factor is the temporary closure of the vital oil shipping artery, the Strait of Hormuz.] Of course, I concede that this is tricky.  But we have submarine assets, aquatic robots and other high tech resources.  There are experts.  Again, I’m just a humble out-lawyer with a laptop.  But trust me.  We can do the sabotage. 

 

Then one of Iran’s refineries fails.  Don’t you hate it when that happens?  Maybe an alphabetic progression of failure would send the message, say the refinery at Abadan; then Arak, Bandar Abbas, Isfahan, Tabriz, and finally Tehran.  Of course, we generously offer technical assistance for repairs, provided the country comes clean on the scope and location of its nuclear weapons program, including the reactor that the IDF wants to take out and the secret locations of all stored fissile material  Then electrical shortages take place. And so on...

 

If we are forced to proceed with overt military measures, we should accomplish the final overt destruction of the Iranian Navy and of the obvious missile emplacements and reactor sites within  a few days.  This would be followed by a grace period during which we would invite the Egyptians to do the invasion....

 

SO, WHAT WILL REALLY HAPPEN?

 

I was not thrilled with the President Bush’s approach to the Korean problem (though no one consulted me or shared covert Intel) and I have no particular reason to expect our current president will improve that situation with adroit diplomacy.  Iran remains as intractable as ever to diplomacy and “soft power”.

I recommend a wonderful comic riff on this, by Andy Borowitz (LINK  http://www.borowitzreport.com/article.aspx?ID=7029  ).

It begins with “One day after North Korea launched a successful test of a nuclear weapon, President Obama said that the United States was prepared to respond to the threat with "the strongest possible adjectives."

But someone, fairly soon, we will run out of adjectives and will be forced to use verbs.  POTUS will be forced to bell the cat or forever be condemned by history.   Who wants to be remembered as the leader who blew the last best chance to prevent the nuclear exchange that destroyed Jerusalem and Teheran, Seoul and Pyongyang, and allowed the A-bombs to get in the hands of the terrorists who destroyed New York and Washington, DC? 

 

Three presidents have kicked the can down the road.  Sometime soon, POTUS will stub a toe....

 

JBG

 

 

Posted by U2RGood at 02:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

WHEN GAYNESS WASN’T

 

This article, as posted on the Policy Think Site in htm format is at this LINK:
http://jaygaskill.com/WhenGaynessIsntSoGay.htm

 

Posted by U2RGood at 09:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

THE FUTURE OF LEFT WING REDISTRIBUTIONIST POLITICS

 

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Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 & 2009 by Jay B. Gaskill

 

As posted on The Policy Think Site in htm Format  

LINK: http://jaygaskill.com/TheEightyTwentyScam.htm

 

 

THE FUTURE OF LEFT WING REDISTRIBUTIONIST POLITICS

 

The 80/20 Scam

 

Under normal circumstances, 80% of the American people will not agree to an arrangement in which they are to be significantly burdened in order to benefit the remaining 20%.

 

The political entrepreneurs of the left who are marketing the “80-20 package” tend to hit a stone wall of sales resistance whenever the 80% already feel overburdened.  The sale becomes impossible when the 20% to be benefited are seen to be undeserving or when the benefit to them appears to be greatly exaggerated.  

 

The 80/20 formula is in fact the realistic maximum burden/benefit ratio for any such sale – assuming that the electorate - (a) is actually consulted and (b) not misled.  If you tweak the ratio, say to 70/30, the actual burden on the 70% needs to increase in order for there to be a significant benefit to the remaining 30%.  60/40 is flat out unmarketable (provided people are paying attention) because a critical mass of voters, the productive 60% ACTUALLY KNOW lots and lots to the benefited 40% and begin to think, “They aren’t much worse off that I am”.

 

And so it goes.  Trust me, 80/20 or a number very close to that is the political sweet spot.

 

And there lies the rub:  Over the years, left-driven redistributionist policies have thrived on the “micro-redistribution” market, i.e., those schemes that imposed a tiny burden on the tax-paying 80% in order to benefit a very deserving (recall we’re dealing with perceptions here) 1%.  But over the last five decades, the 80/20 game began to flounder because a few hundred “tiny burdens” add up to a real burden. 

 

This is why the game is almost played out. We are now in its dangerous last stages.  I say dangerous, because if the left ever manages to move the needle a bit farther, the game changes radically.  [And make no mistake, some on the left are willing to use whatever means necessary.]

 

The goal of the astute members of the left is to simultaneously burden and benefit about 80% of the people such that it is not immediately apparent just who the winners and losers are.  This allows the political deal makers to tweak the mix from election to election in order to stay in power. 

 

But there is a classic left-utopian scenario, one even more dangerous. This is the scenario in which an enduring majority of takers, say 55%, are benefited by an enduring minority of bleeders who are forever locked out of political power.  In that grim scenario, the left is gambling on keeping the productive-but-exploited class in-country and on-board.  This works short term because, after all, where do you run? {Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is a variation on the capitalist-escape scenario, but was written before outsourcing and upper class guilt-taming had taken hold.} That “trap the rich” game can’t go on forever but, regrettably, it can run long enough to totally wreck a national economy.  

 

If you’ve been following the news, then I probably have your attention.

 

We are about to enter a life-death struggle, the outcome of which could be the end of the redistributionist left or the demise of the free enterprise system, the “whoops, we killed the golden goose scenario”... at least for the lifetimes of the above-forty generations.

 

Those of us who deeply care about the future of freedom can be useful in stopping this last-gasp juggernaut of the left (instead of being the left’s useful idiots) provided we are sharply aware of the looming crisis and are willing to stand up and be counted...over and over again. 

 

The left is now desperate to move the needle well past the 80-20 sweet spot.  There are three strategies in play: run with a crisis, repeat the lies and exploit survivor guilt:

 

(a) Crisis exploitation

 

“No crisis should be wasted” is the admission of an ideologue who knows that a majority of voters would not normally go along with the game plan, absent a crisis, real or manufactured.

 

(b) Misrepresentation

 

By now voters are appropriately wary of claims that a given plan will really benefit the putative objects of its attention.  Many voters have caught on that the real object of many left wing driven programs is not to benefit the “poor” or ‘oppressed, so much as to make those who are well off to feel better about themselves.  And many other voters understand that a direct tax on a small percentage of highly productive citizens is an indirect tax on all of us who benefit from living in a highly productive economy.  But far too many voters are functionally illiterate when the economics of productive enterprises are concerned.

 

(c) Guilt manipulation of a plurality of the productive 80%

 

As most of us know, the guilt game has been going on for two generations, at least, but most of it has been driven by the so called, “oppressed class” guilt.  Where economic issues are concerned, most women are no longer fooled. The outer limits of the inherited “racist guilt” game have already been reached.  Affirmative action as an engine for reverse (or compensatory) discrimination has run its course; the notion of reparations for the actions of some slaveholders that no living descendant can even name is dismissed out of hand.  And no one seems to care whether high achieving Asians get reparations or a “leg up”. 

 

That leaves disparities of our economic circumstances as the remaining “social justice issue” of the age, which places the American left in the awkward place of complaining about “poverty” in the USA.  But by any reasonable definition poverty describes the circumstances of fewer than 9% of the US population.  The American left wrings its collective hands about this while ignoring the non-voting millions outside our hallowed boundaries for whom merely being “poor” in America would be good fortune indeed. 

 

As of this moment, all three strategies are sort-of working, especially on the minds of that subset of the well-off intelligentsia whose gullible members have been pre-indoctrinated in the “right wing demon” theory of history.  

 

But moderates and non-Marxist inclined liberals are equally worried about a leftwing takeover of the US economy.  The Russians and the sane members of the Chinese post-communist communists abandoned state socialism for a sound practical reason.  Bureaucratic, authoritarian egalitarianism ends up in a somewhat more equal distribution of economic stagnation and dysfunction.  This was the egalitarianism captured in the old joke:  The man with the paralyzed right arm pleads with the Commissar, “Please, please comrade - make my right arm the same as my left!”  And she walks away from the meeting with two equally paralyzed arms. 

 

Bureaucratic authoritarian egalitarianism Lite ends up dragging down the well-being of the productive 80% to a common denominator so low that the bottom 20% no longer aspires to achieve it. 

 

HEALTH CARE -- THE TEST CASE

 

Before the American people will have a chance to vote again in November 2010 (roughly a third of the Senate and all of the House members are on the ballot) there will be a crucial test.  The pending leftwing health reform proposals will, if enacted, lead to an inexorable chain of events that will seriously degrade the level of medical care now enjoyed by the 80%  (polls tell us the about 80% of Americans are satisfied with their medical care situation) while marginally improving the overall level of care for the rest.

 

The dynamic is clear enough from the European and Canadian experiences.  Grandiose and unfunded promises are made, often accompanied by poorly thought out and ineptly implemented cost savings.  Within two budget cycles, costs continue to rise beyond predicted levels and the other government-supported bureaucracies and special interests begin to complain.  Further cost savings are mandated.  Then fiction overtakes reality.  Needed care is delayed, showing phony savings that amount to deferred and even denied care.  Eventually the incompetent bureaucrats who “manage” care achieve only by degrading it. Those with real health problems fly to America...or die.

 

Bear in mind that people are very rarely denied acutely needed care in the US; otherwise the emergency rooms would not be crowded with indigents. 

 

And to achieve the massive changes proposed by the left, roughly a trillion new public dollars need to be spent over the next several years.  So far, the left seems undeterred by the major practical difficulty that the needed money has already been spent – several times over, it appears.

 

The real problems affecting health case divide into those that can be ameliorated by careful, sensible incremental reform and those that might be addressed by a more comprehensive approach at the state level.  Any attempt at a massive federal remake of America’s health care delivery system is comparable to swapping out the engines simultaneously on every commercial jet airliner with untested, environmentally friendly engines costing twice as much, but advertised as saving money on fuel.  “What about accidents?” you may ask.  That’s rightwing alarmist talk.

 

OUTLINE OF THE MEDICAL ‘REFORM’ BATTLE LINES:

A GUIDE FOR REPUBLICAN & BLUE DOG DEMOCRATS

 

A. Three No’s:

 

1. NO NEW ENTITLEMENTS.  Nothing that will eventually generate an entitlement downstream should be approved (much less a multi-billion starter kit for health care “reform”) until all of the existing under-funded entitlements in the pipeline are curbed and fully funded.  Top of the list is the Medicare drug benefit, then Medicare itself.

 

2. NO PHONY SAVINGS. Projected cost savings cannot be used as if they were real money.  If savings are to be implemented, let them work first before spending them.

 

3. NO BURDENS ON PRIVATE PAY-FOR-SERVICE.  The self-pay to a willing provider medical service models will save medicine from bureaucratic inefficiencies.  Recall that “Hillary-Care” attempted to punish physicians who opted out of the grand federal scheme. “No, no, a thousand times no” to this idea.

 

B. Five Yes’s

 

1. TRANSPARENCY & REAL PRICE DISCLOSURE. Require physicians to transparently post basic fees-for-service, disclosing without penalty the lower fees available to patients who are willing to bypass insurance and simply write checks. Require hospitals to transparently display actual costs, both at admission and at billing, by breaking out the surcharges and price inflation elements that cover the non-paying patients.

 

2. FAST TRACK MEDICAL BILL BANKRUPTCY.  A separate, streamlined track for medical bill bankruptcy should be established with more lenient provisions.  It would apply to the medical debts only.

 

3. TAX FREE MEDICAL SAVINGS ACCOUNTS.  Without restriction, any taxpayer would be allowed to move money from savings or fresh income into a restricted account that could be used for direct-pay medical services or catastrophic premiums up to 50% percent of one’s annual taxable income.  Donation, also tax free, form one account to another person’s similar account in time of need is permitted.

 

4. INSURED LARGE RISK POOLS.  For catastrophic insurance only, the kind with large deductibles, the industry needs a government-assisted restructuring.  This would be incremental reform, state by state.  To begin, all restrictions – anti-trust comes to mind – are stripped away to facilitate very large, potentially national medical risk pools to which any medical provider or insurance system could link for a fee.  Once a risk pool reached a critical mass (to be determined by the number of states, patients and insurance and provider who sign opt-in agreements) then new patients must be accepted pre-existing conditions notwithstanding.  Only a portion of the risk would be insured by a joint state-federal arrangement.  For each insurance guarantee, there would be a reasonable liability cap that is related to the deductible.  For example, a $10,000 deductible catastrophic policy might have a $1 m cap for insurance purposes.  Provider networks could commit beyond the federal-state guarantee level as they determine prudent.

 

The market would determine, from year to year, the mandatory entry point for a new insured.  For example, someone who enters as a child could lock in the lowest deductible.  An older adult with a chronic, expensive condition who has never been insured might be allowed in only at the highest deductible.   Again, I stress that this sort of thing needs to be implemented incrementally, and in cooperation with individual states, based on their local costs and resources.  Eventually there would be a growing national risk pool at the highest deductible level.

 

5. INDIGENT CARE CLINICS.  Hospitals, whose emergency rooms are clogged with sick poor, uninsured people, would be given regulatory and tax incentives to off-load this group to ancillary clinics, staffed by a mix of hospital-linked medial staff and volunteers.  A sliding scale of fees would be used based on ability to pay.  Charitable donations, federal tax incentives and state and local government contributions would fill the gap.  To the extent that a hospital sets up and adequately staffs such a clinic, it would be released from the obligation to treat indigent “sniffle cases” in the ER.  NOTE:  Providing direct services in this model is not an entitlement.  Nor is the experiment mandated.

 

CONCLUSION

 

Every few years, conservatives and realistic liberals get played by the left.  It is time to push back.  The 80/20 scam has worn thin, but Americans are frustrated and worried about their future. 

 

The wise admonition of Hillel the Elder comes to mind: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?”

 

If we don’t save the engines of prosperity and economic progress for ourselves, who will?  If we don’t secure them for the others who will follow us, what are we?  If we don’t act now, when do we?

 

JBG

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by U2RGood at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)