Thought Police

I've never watched Duck Dynasty. I don't even have cable. But I have to comment on the suspension of Phil Robertson from the show following his comments regarding homosexuality in an interview with GQ Magazine. 

This is not important because of the show. But it is important because it is indicative of the direction our culture has been moving over the past several years. Political correctness (PC) is the common term for it, but the term hardly does justice to how insidious this trend is. What it amounts to is a speech code -- the requirement that ones speech fit within a narrowly defined range of what is acceptable under threat of vilification, harassment, or in this case possible termination of employment. 

This brings to mind as a case in point the 2009 Miss USA pageant when "celebrity" judge Perez Hilton asked contestant Carrie Prejean her opinion of same-sex marriage. When she answered that she supported the traditional view of marriage, Hilton, apparently shocked at her ability for independent thought, spent the next several days flogging her on his video blog, and the media basically made it their purpose to find whatever information was necessary to destroy her (she eventually lost her crown due to alleged breach of contract and largely fell out of favor with cultural conservatives who had seen her as a potential poster child for traditional values, but the point I'm making is that the media made it their mission to seek out this information in order to discredit her as a means of retribution for stating her views). One imagines the purpose was to make an example of her for the benefit of any who would dare to not toe the party line when it comes to homosexuality or same-sex marriage. 

Apparently, Phil Robertson did not learn from the example made of Ms. Prejean, because he dared to speak his own beliefs, which do not align with the officially sanctioned beliefs, in a public venue. Robertson's statement was not "hateful" (the term frequently used by the PC crowd for any view that they disagree with), it was simply his statement of what he believes to be right. And, by the way, what he said was consistent with what the Bible says about homosexuality. So Robertson is being ostracized not only for stating his own opinion, but for his religious beliefs! 

This is no small matter regarding a television program, it represents a seed change in American culture, where the free exchange of ideas is replaced with the Thought Police, waiting for some non-conforming speech or belief to make itself known so that it can be quickly and mercilessly punished. 

One important thing to note: This is not a First Amendment issue. The First Amendment precludes the government from prohibiting the free exercise of religion; the government had no role in the incident with Prejean or with Robertson. This is an important distinction, but it is nonetheless alarming. For those who may disagree with Robertson, that's fine, but when people can be subjected to character assassination and be suspended or fired from work for holding traditional religious views, we are crossing a line in our society that I don't believe we want to cross. And ultimately that would come back to bite all of us, regardless of what side of this particular issue you are on. 

Shameful

The reports of private citizens being inconvenienced or even harassed by federal agents "enforcing" the shutdown have been pouring in over the past few days:  90-something World War II veterans barred entry to the WWII Memorial in DC (or attempted barred entry).  A hotel owner along the Blue Ridge Parkway was forced to shut down during peak tourism season simply because the Pisgah Inn is located along the federally-run parkway, depriving him of his most profitable season and his employees of pay.  Elderly residents of privately-owned homes located on federal land forced out of their homes.  Traffic cones placed along the road outside of Mt. Rushmore to prevent passers-by from even stopping to look at the closed monument.  Park rangers attempt to shut down Mount Vernon, a privately-owned historical site whose parking lot apparently happens to be jointly-owned by the Federal Park Service.  The Grand Canyon shut down, despite offers by Arizona's state government to use private donations to fund the park's operation during the shutdown.  Access to Florida Bay (the ocean!) is cut off to charter fishermen.  

A federal park ranger was actually quoted as saying that they have been ordered to "make things as difficult as possible" for people during the shutdown. The shutdown is naturally going to cause pain for some people -- particularly for government employees, who will have to defer income until a CR is passed, and for contractors, among others.  But the tactics being employed by the Administration appear to be aimed at maximizing the pain from the shutdown in order to gain political points against the Republicans, to whom the president believes he can shift all of the blame for the shutdown, even as he refuses to negotiate to reach a solution and reopen the government.  So confident of this is the White House that an unnamed official was quoted as saying that it did not matter to them how long the shutdown lasts, because "we're winning".  (Naturally, the White House has sense disavowed this statement.)

Perhaps shifting the blame for these bizarre closures onto House and Senate Republicans would be more plausible if these measures were actually mandated by a government shutdown.  The problem is that they are not.  One could understand closing, say, federally-maintained rest areas along the Blue Ridge Parkway (somebody has to clean the toilets), but there is no practical reason why the World War II monument, for example, should be closed to visitors due to a shutdown (in fact, from a fiscal standpoint, erecting barriers and stationing patrols to keep tourists out incurs greater cost than leaving it open), and certainly not in forcing the Pisgah Inn's closure. 

So petty, so despotic, so childish in fact is this behavior by the executive branch, I find it difficult to even characterize it in rational terms. 

In a previous post, I explained how Niskanen predicted that, faced with cuts, a government agency will threaten to cut its most highly-valued service in order to motivate its appropriators to restore funding; in that post, I argued that this characterized the president's behavior in seeking to "maximize the pain" from the cuts associated with sequestration.  The president is doing it again, but this time, due to the much larger scope of services affected, he is able to inflict that much more pain.  We as citizens and voters should not view lightly behavior by the executive branch of our government to willfully increase the pain to private citizens from an already difficult situation.  As Speaker Boehner said, "This is not a... game!"  The president should stop treating it as one. 

The Healthcare Debate, Part Deux

In an earlier (2009) post, I discussed some of the reasons why the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, was the wrong prescription for what ails healthcare in the United States and offered some of my own ideas for a solution. However, it has been awhile, and since things seem to be coming to a head with the current push in Congress to defund Obamacare, it seems appropriate to revisit the issue. 

Because the bill was still in its early stages at the time of my previous post and I was therefore unaware of many of its particulars (and, as then-Speaker Pelosi indicated, many legislators who voted to pass the bill weren't even completely aware of its contents), I didn't foresee many of the effects that impending implementation of the policy has had in the national economy, although I was correct in predicting that Obamacare would result in driving up the cost of healthcare, not in reducing it. 

For example, at the time I was not aware of the employer mandates that are now leading a crush of employers to cut full-time workers and to cut hours to drop workers below full-time levels so as to avoid the added costs.  I also was unaware of the individual mandate that would require individuals not covered under employer plans to purchase health insurance themselves, or the prohibition of insurance carriers exempting existing conditions from coverage. The combination of these factors has meant that thousands upon thousands of workers are seeing cuts in work hours, which means less wage income (don't blame the employers; many of them would potentially be bankrupted by the added cost imposed by the employer mandate which would lead to their workers losing their jobs entirely); this loss of wage income is compounded when the worker, having lost her employer-provided insurance and now covered under the individual mandate, must now pay the full cost of health insurance for her family. To top it off, this hit on the worker's finances is compounded by increases in insurance premiums resulting from increased demand for insurance policies and from insurance companies compensating for the increased risk to them from being forced to cover pre-existing conditions. (Whether you see requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions as good or bad, it does put upward pressure on premiums.)

In short, the result of Obamacare, rather than the promised "affordable" healthcare costs, is higher premiums for nearly everyone, save low-income families whose premiums the program will subsidize (which presents the added problem of the necessity of either raising taxes or increasing national debt), and lower wage income as a result of employer mandates. This is not theoretical; numerous announcements of the cutting of workers and workers' hours have already begun as some are already reporting premium increases. 

Nonetheless, even as Union bosses, who supported the president in the last two elections, have turned on Obamacare due to its expected negative impact on their negotiated health plans, the Democrat-controlled Senate is preparing to vote to push forward on implementation. 

Some have said that this policy should be advanced because it at least represents an attempt to address the problems with healthcare. As I discussed in my earlier post, there are indeed problems with healthcare, particularly in terms of its affordability and thereby accessibility; however, I have never been one to subscribe to the idea that policies should be implemented simply to be seen as "at least doing something" without first, at the very least, carefully considering whether the policy in question will actually address the problem at hand. As we are already seeing, the problem of affordability is not addressed by Obamacare; in fact it is exacerbated by it. 

What Happened to a Colorblind Society?

A man whom I very much admire, a man ahead of his time who sadly met a tragic end several years before I was born, once said that he dreamed of a day when a man was judged by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. The tragedy in our time is that many - too many - of those who claim to be his ideological children have laid aside his vision in favor of advancing their own political agenda. 

Racism is a blight on the history of this nation. The fact that slavery persisted until the latter half of the 19th century is an anathema. The political and social repression of blacks, especially (but not only) in the South, through much of the 20th century was shameful, and the (mis)application of states' rights to defend such behavior created an unfortunate linkage in the minds of many between states' rights and institutionalized discrimination. 

To say that racial discrimination does not still exist in this nation would be delusional. Many of the older generations have passed their prejudices to their children and grandchildren; longstanding disdain toward people with a different skin color or ethnic lineage still persists among some families and individuals. Sadly, I suspect that no one alive today will live to see the total extinction of racism, if it ever happens at all. 

Nonetheless, to say that there has not been great progress would also be erroneous. Where schools and neighborhoods were once segregated, people of all races live as neighbors, work in the same offices, and play on the same playgrounds. Interracial marriage, once looked upon by the ignorant as "unnatural", is now common. Where blacks were once deprived of their right to vote, even in majority-white districts, blacks now serve as mayors, city and county council members, state and national legislators, and, certainly not to be overlooked, president. 

One should never let the progress that has been made blind them to the problems that still exist. But one should never attempt to unravel the progress that has been made in order to make political hay of the problems that still exist. This is what is being done by some on the Left right now; it is hypocritical and it is demeaning to the very individuals whom they feign to be defending. 

The case in point that prompted me to write this is a Bloomberg article entitled "House Republicans Set to Defy Obama Are Mostly White Men", which was subsequently picked up by the group Occupy Democrats (a liberal group meant to counterbalance the Tea Party) in a post entitled "Meet The Thirty-Eight White Men Holding America Hostage". 

First of all, consider the hypocrisy in the titles of these articles. Occupy Democrats is one of the liberal groups that accuses conservatives in general and the Tea Party specifically of being racists. Nonetheless, a group whose rhetoric equates conservatism with racism happily resorts to blatant racism to attempt to discredit lawmakers who dare to oppose their policies. In short, they are using the very same tactic - judging someone by the color of their skin - that they are accusing their opponents of using. Who of us has never heard the old aphorism that "two wrongs don't make a right"? (Incidentally, despite the inflammatory headline, there is nothing in either the Bloomberg or the Occupy Democrats article that even attempts to support their implication of racist motivation for opposing the liberal agenda.) 

Secondly, this tactic is demeaning, in this case, to President Obama. It is demeaning because it operates under the assumption (or at least the implication) that the only possible reason that this group of Republicans could have for opposing the president is the color of his skin. (This tactic has been used before; here is a letter to the editor that I wrote in 2011 in response to one incidence.) 

In effect, the Bloomberg writer and Occupy Democrats are reducing the president to nothing more than his skin color, rather than a thinking human being with ideas and beliefs that can be debated and either supported or opposed. They are de facto judging the man by the color of his skin and nothing else. This is racism carried out under the guise of defending the very person it is demeaning, and it is every bit as shameful as it is for anyone who in fact does oppose (or support) Obama only because of his race. Racism is racism, regardless of the color of the skin - or the political affiliation - of the perpetrator. If it is wrong when a Republican or Tea Party member makes racist comments (as some do... it doesn't make all racist), then it is equally wrong when a liberal does (as some do... it doesn't make all racist). 

America must move past this evil. As I said earlier, racism may never really go away completely, and that is tragic. But so long as some individuals, be they conservative, liberal, libertarian, or independent, see creating division among the American people according to their race as a means of advancing their own agendas - and so long as voters continue to fall for such tactics - we will have a very difficult time moving in the right direction, toward a truly colorblind society. 

Internal Revenue Severance

Recent events surrounding abuse of power and wasteful practices by the IRS simply underscores what I have believed for some time: it is time for the IRS to go.  Targeting of groups with “conservative-sounding” names for special scrutiny by the agency, downright insubordination by certain of its leaders in their appearances before Congress, and the more recent revelation of extravagant spending on employees trips are only the most recent symptoms.  The problem is not incidental but systemic.  It is the type of abuse that becomes not only possible but incentivized when power becomes too concentrated.  

The Framers recognized this when the established the Federalist system of dividing power between national and state governments; however, over the 224 years since our system of government was established, particularly within the past eighty years or so, this separation of powers has been steadily eroded.  With this erosion has come an increase in government involvement and regulation in everyday life of every citizen, more wasteful spending, and less and less effectual services (most notably education, which seems to become worse, not better, with each additional federal program).  Also increasing, however, is the opportunity for corruption.  It is not that corruption did not exist or was not prevalent in previous generations; one justification for the direct election of US senators, established by the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, was that state legislatures, who were originally responsible for appointing each state’s senators, were granting the seats to the highest bidders.  However, while corruption at the state or local level is difficult enough to root out, it is that much more difficult at the national level.  For example, as Tiebout points out, one can ultimately “vote with their feet” and move to another city/county/state (if the abuse is egregious enough, at least in theory, the mass emigration could force reform by the state or local government).  But the options are more limited if the abuse is at the national level.    

With this in mind, is a national agency that monitors, keeps track of, and taxes every single American really necessary?  In fact, every state, without exception, has its own agencies and laws to collect taxes, be it sales tax, income tax, or a combination of the two.  Why should these existing state-level structures not be utilized?  The best option is for states to be allowed to determine for themselves how they collect tax revenue, but since there have been competing plans for reforming the federal tax code for some time, including the Flat Tax and the Fair (national sales) Tax, I will focus on these two options.  Either of these options could be enacted at the federal level, then each state could collect the tax using its existing apparatus; for those states who do not have the necessary structure (for example, if the Flat Tax were enacted, a state that does not currently levy an income tax) could be given a block grant to set up the necessary mechanism.  At the federal level, the only tax collection agency necessary would literally be an office of a handful of people responsible for receiving tax payments from the fifty states.  

Given that we are so accustomed to the burgeoning IRS, it may sound unprecedented to decentralize its function to the states.  However, prior to passage of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, the federal government in fact did tax through the states with very little direct taxation of individual citizens.  Under the original constitutional structure, the national government would tax each state according to its population and the states would raise the tax revenue for the federal government along with its normal tax collections.  This was changed in 1913 because it failed to take into account state income levels (so that a poor state with a large population could wind up paying more taxes than a smaller but much wealthier state).  However, the system suggested here would resolve this issue without the need for individuals’ incomes and very lives being under the scrutiny of an intrusive federal agency.  And while no system is immune to abuse, any that arises can be dealt with relatively more effectively than is possible when all power is centralized in one national agency.  

This change is long overdue; the recent revelations of abuse only highlight the need.  Now is the time to move on this and address the underlying disease, not to merely treat the symptoms.  

The First Congressional Catch-22

I've avoided commenting on the race to fill the seat vacated in South Carolina's First Congressional District when Tim Scott was appointed to the U.S. Senate, but, now that the special election is in the history books, and since there has been a great deal of acrimony about Mark Sanford's election to the seat despite his moral failing that stained his last term as governor, I decided to weigh in with a postmortem.  [As a disclaimer, I do not live in the First District, so I am speaking as an outsider who has not witnessed first-hand the mood "on the ground" during this election.]

The choice of Sanford in a Republican-dominated district does come across as hypocritical in light of the backlash among conservatives against Bill Clinton following his extra-marital affair and the subsequent cover-up during his term as president.  I do not minimize that or try to excuse it.  I simply intend to point out some factors impacting this election that should be kept in mind before unleashing some of the vicious rancor that has been directed toward South Carolina voters (I provide no links here due to the foul language included in many of these attacks). 

Factor #1:  The number of candidates and lack of any other "big names" in the Republican primary.

Sixteen candidates ran for the Republican nomination for the First District congressional seat.  While several of these sixteen may have been excellent candidates, and some were even members of the State House or State Senate, none were as widely known as the former governor.  State house members or state senators are rarely well-known beyond their own districts; county council and school board members even less so.  This obviously can be overcome by a well-run campaign.  However, in this case, and in fairness to the remainder of the field, this, being a special election, had a much tighter time constraint than would be ideal for most congressional campaigns (less than two months between closing of filing and the primary).  A large field and the lack of widely-known competitors, plus lack of sufficient time to overcome lack of name recognition, is naturally going to favor the candidate familiar to the most voters. 

Factor #2:  Unfamiliarity of voters with the Democratic candidate.

I actually know Elizabeth Colbert-Busch from working with her on several projects, so I can personally attest to her intelligence and savvy.  But, again (in fairness) perhaps in part due to the short time between the primaries and the general election, this went largely unknown to voters in the First District.  Aside from being comedian Stephen Colbert's sister, I suspect that by election time, she was still largely an unknown to many voters across the district.  This clearly works in favor of the more familiar candidate.  In fact, it is actually quite impressive that Colbert-Busch was able to poll as well as she did in the days leading up to the election given this disadvantage.  On the other hand, perhaps it was an indication of reticence on the part of voters to support Sanford. 

Factor #3:  Ideology matters.

The criticism made toward First District voters largely centers around the perception that they overlooked all else and simply voted for the one with the "R" beside his name.  There may be something to this criticism, but let us not overlook one important aspect of this: ideology does matter!  Voters were electing the person who would represent their district in Washington on actual policy matters, and, to put it succinctly, somebody had to win.  Ms. Colbert-Busch, despite all of her qualifications, did represent a set of policy positions that largely does not reflect the preferences of the First District.  Sanford, despite his past failings, does support and oppose many of the same policies as a majority of the voters in that district.  For the voter on the fence, it's kind of a Sophie's Choice... vote for the candidate with the past moral failure, or vote for the candidate with whom you disagree on nearly every issue.  

...Or just choose not to vote at all, which brings me to the reason I entitled this post "The First Congressional Catch-22".  Had voters simply not turned out to vote, the low turnout would have them being criticized in the national media right now as apathetic.  Either way, South Carolina voters get looked down upon.


Finally, a note on the theme of redemption that became a kind of theme of the Sanford campaign.  We have indeed all had our share of moral failings; most of us are just fortunate that ours don't get broadcast to the world as did Sanford's.  With that in mind, we need to treat Mr. Sanford with the same level of grace and forgiveness that we hope to receive ourselves.   

But this is not an excuse.  Grace, even in Biblical terms, does not always excuse us from reaping certain consequences from our actions.  By way of example, a person who robs a bank is not beyond God's redemptive reach, but even the penitent bank robber will have to go to prison for his crime.  The Biblical story of David and Bathsheba provides an excellent illustration of this; King David was forgiven by God, but he still bore consequences for his actions for the remainder of his life.  Given the public trust that Sanford violated in some of his activities surrounding his dalliance, there certainly is a valid argument that he should never have held public office again; I certainly expected that to be the case.  However, he has been given a chance to regain the trust of this state.  I hope that he will be successful in doing so. 

Hostages of Sequestration

Sequestration, which requires the federal government to cut 2.4% in across-the-board spending in the absence of an agreement between Congress and the White House, went into effect on March 1.  The rhetoric from the White House has portrayed this cut as gutting national defense, air traffic safety -- this article from the Huffington Post outlines where the cuts are planned.  The trick is that the White House has itself determined where these cuts will take place and it is the president who has enacted the cuts by executive order.

Given the level of irresponsible, out of control spending in which the federal government has been indulging in recent decades, particularly during the current administration, a 2.4% across-the-board cut is only a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed to bring the government back within its means.  At the same time, a 2.4% cut can certainly be spread evenly enough among the many government agencies in Washington so as to minimize the impact on necessary services.  Nonetheless, the cuts have been mainly concentrated in the Department of Defense, and TSA workers at airports are being furloughed purportedly leading to airport delays, schools serving military families and Native Americans are being cut, along with WIC payments.  In other words, the cuts are being allocated in such a way to maximize their visibility and to maximize the impacts they will have on the public.

William Niskanen predicted this type of behavior when bureaucracies are faced with budget cuts.  Niskanen postulated that government agencies would essentially hold "hostage" their highest-valued output in order to create pressure on appropriators to fully fund their requested budgets.  In this case, the Obama Administration is engaging in this behavior at a macro scale -- threatening the government's most highly-valued "outputs" in order to force Congress to raise taxes to avoid making necessary spending reforms.  The president may be overplaying his hand, however.  It remains to be seen whether he will succeed at forcing Congress to reverse the spending cuts and enact tax increases, but thus far, Congress seems to be standing firm.

Addendum:  If this is on the level, as it appears so far to be, an executive branch email seems to support the contention that the White House is attempting to "maximize the pain" from sequestration.  Apparently, when inquiring about spreading the cuts in his agency in such a way as to minimize the negative impact on services, an official was instructed: "however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”