Tag Archives: Politics

Politics

Only in America, land of opportunity

Yes- only in America do you have the opportunity to be branded a terrorist for committing acts of non-violence. And with that opportunity comes the lifetime of harassment and restrictions imposed by said label.  Oh well, at least they won’t disappear you the way they do in other countries, mostly.

Protesting nuns branded terrorists

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_10694060

This does open the an interesting option. Can we get the Wall Streeters and mortgage brokers labeled terrorists? No trial necessary and they are going to be hosed for the rest of their lives.

Economics, Liberating Thoughts, Politics, Preparing for the worst

Whose Economic Policies Work Best?!?

Personally, I consider the National Debt to be the greatest threat to the future well-being of the United States. Followed closely by deficit spending. Given the economic news of the past week, with the Federal Government doing its best to socialize losses, I expect the debt will continue to grow. (Did you know the National Debt is about to hit $10 Trillion? That’s Trillion, with a Tr.)

Avedon compiled a review of past administration economic results that Dwight Meredith studied “Just For the Record” – covering 1962-2001.

The link has some specific numbers and links to other interesting pages.

A bit of Summary:
Continue reading Whose Economic Policies Work Best?!? →

Liberating Thoughts, Politics

Reflections on the Fourth:

I have sort of half been paying attention to the buzz going around this year on the pending elections. The Nominees have been determined and now each side is looking for a VP that will make a difference.

I saw a reposting of a Washington Post piece on the allegiance of a patriot an American. It does well to capture what I think of as the base ideals of America, ideals that are run over roughshod in the current political climate.

I see that Clark made a statement that being a war hero, to have made a large personal sacrifice for your country, does not mean that you are qualified to be commander-in-chief. I also heard the follow-up – that reaching the strategic command level begins to reach the level of qualification Clark was referring to. Clark was lambasted for dissing McCain, which he wasn’t doing. And McCain’s people can’t say that just because McCain has made great personal sacrifices for his country that he is qualified to be President. Neither approach is correct; neither being a war hero nor being a strategic genius qualifies you to be the President – or Commander-in-Chief. And it is foolish to pretend it does. But, I suppose the pundits need to prattle on about something. The very thought of MacArthur as President sends shivers down my spine.

The President is a civilian authority. He, or she, has the resources of the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs to call upon to review military options. That’s their job. I am afraid that too many in the current administration see the military as a foreign policy tool and since we paid so much for it, it seems kind of silly not to use it. So they invade sovereign nations that are not an eminent threat to the US or to its allies and squander billions of dollars of the US treasury and thousands of soldier’s lives. And Congress, our representatives, lets them get away with it. Why are WE letting THEM get away with it?

The President is not the King of the United States of America. Yet many seem to think of him as a king and to treat him as a king. His deciding decisions are the final authority on all matters great and small. If the President makes a decree that the pundits agree with, then it is treason to disagree with the President. (Of course, if the pundits disagree with him then he is a buffoon or a criminal.) Presidents shouldn’t make decrees; they should make suggestions, and maybe even suggest how a suggestion can be implemented, but they shouldn’t make decrees. Leave that for the idiots in Congress.

As we have observed this past Fourth, the United States of America was founded on the principle that we do not owe allegiance to one man, to one sovereign. The people are sovereign; the citizens are sovereign.

And there are natural rights that apply to all humans. These are inherent human rights that we hold to be self-evident. We started to define them in our Declaration of Independence and further refined them in our Constitution. These are natural human rights, unalienable; not just American rights. We just happened to be the first to codify these rights for all and our prosperity. It does well to ponder these rights on the Fourth, to remember where we came from and why, and to look upon our current path, and to see if we are still moving, progressing in the desired direction.

Liberating Thoughts, Politics

“The Four Freedoms”

The essential human freedoms don’t change over time, driven by partisan politics. They are a constant basic foundation of our social fabric.

Please don’t forget them.

American Rhetoric: Franklin D. Roosevelt — “The Four Freedoms”


In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called “new order” of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

To that new order we oppose the greater conception — the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

Economics, Politics

Entering the economic quagmire…

I read an article over on Making Light and it got me to pondering.

What libertarians (and the softheaded quasi-libertarian burghers of science fiction fandom, most of whom think the Economist is a voice of reason) need to learn is that capitalism is never about free markets, or in fact “freedom” of any sort; it’s about using the power of the state in order to make it easy for large amounts of capital to get together and rearrange the rules for its own convenience. “Privatize the profits, socialize the losses” is the logical consequence of capitalism’s prime directive. What we wind up with is socialism for the powerful, and tough shit for everybody else.

“Privatize the profits, socialize losses” seems to be a very apt description of Wall Street Capitalism.  Every decade or two we seem to need to learn the lesson all over again. If rules and regulations get set up, the players learn to game the system while continually trying to undermine the regulators – Oh! they’re not needed anymore since we learned that lesson!

But I did start to ponder about the full matrix that the statement creates.

  1. Privatize profits ——socialize losses
  2. Socialize profits——socialize  losses
  3. Socialize profits——privatize losses
  4. Privatize profits——privatize losses
  1. is straight Wall Street Capitalism
  2. is probably straight Socialism
  3. is never going to happen, or is it philanthropy?
  4. is complete anarchy/ true capitalism

I must continue my pondering.

Economics, General, Politics

The New Colonialism

China | The new colonialists | Economist.com

Not all observers, however, think that China’s unstinting appetite for commodities is super. The most common complaint centres on foreign policy. In its drive to secure reliable supplies of raw materials, it is said, China is coddling dictators, despoiling poor countries and undermining Western efforts to spread democracy and prosperity. America and Europe, the shrillest voices say, are “losing” Africa and Latin America.

I read this paragraph and immediately thought “How is this different from what the US has been doing for the past 100+ years? ” I might include the Europeans as well, after they had to relinquish their empires – coddling dictators indeed, setting them up in the first place, that’s what they were doing.

General, Politics

Economist’s View: “Choosing the Optimal Number of Representatives in Modern Democracies”

Economist’s View: “Choosing the Optimal Number of Representatives in Modern Democracies”

Elaine pointed this article out to me.

The authors have plotted out the various democracies population/representative ratios  and have come up with an optimal number. Theirs is POP raised to 0. 4 power. Almost a square-root of the population. Based on the current US population of  300,000,000 that comes to 2460 representatives, about one representative per 122,000 citizens.  Very close to  the number in my previous discussion on this subject.

What I don’t quite agree with in their analysis is the inclusion of Senators or Peers or Upper House members as representatives. Using the US as an example, the Upper House, the Senate, represent the States and not the individual citizens. That is the role of the House of Representatives.

I thought that in most countries the Upper House represents regional groups in a similar manner as the Senate.  The Senate provides two representatives per State, independent of the size or population of the State. They are elected by the citizens of the State today, rather than being appointed by the State as they were initially. Should they still be considered State Representatives? or just some sort of super citizen representative? Presumably, the Senate can put the brakes on run-away populism and the ‘tyranny of the majority’ if the House gets a bee in its bonnet, but if both houses get a bee in the bonnet, then watch out.

I see from the article that determining an optimal number of representatives has been around for a while. It looks like the numbers are getting pretty solid. I’m not sure why their number for US representatives is so much lower than mine.  They say their model shows 807 combined Representatives and Senators, while my calculator shows raising the Population to the .4 power gives 2460. I think 807 is still way to low for a representative democracy of 300,000,000 citizens.

If I have used my calculator properly, 18,500,516 raised to the .4 power is 807.   The more I look at their numbers for other countries, I question the equation they are using.  They say France’s optimal number of Reps is 545, with a population of over 60 million, ( 1 rep/110,000) while Italy’s optimal number is 570 with  population of 58 million (1 rep/101,000). By my calculator that should be 1292 and 1275 respectively (1 rep/46,500 and 1 rep/45,500) Maybe I need to go back and take some remedial math courses and see if I can figure this out.  They mention a banana curve in the article (evidently a base-running technique) need to find out more on that.

Liberating Thoughts, Politics

Why?

I was down at the local Drinking Liberally meeting the other night and asked a general question of the group:

“Why should we have a government supported health care plan?”

Hillary’s health plan had just been recently announced.

I asked the question in all seriousness. I have been hearing of most of the presidential candidates proposing various versions of national heath care plans but I don’t remember hearing a discussion of the prerequisite  question: Why have national health care?

Continue reading Why? →

General

Partisanship?

Jonathan Chait laments the Broderization of American politics.

Bloomberg has … become the most prominent example of what you could call partisanship scolds. These are people who believe that disagreement is the central problem in U.S. politics, that both parties are to blame in equal measure, and that rejecting party ties or ideology is synonymous with the demonstration of virtue. While partisanship scolds believe that they stand in bold contrast to Washington, they are probably more heavily represented among the Beltway elite than any other demographic.

The official lobby of the partisanship scolds is a group called “Unity ‘08″ — a collection of graying eminences from both parties who are calling for a bipartisan presidential ticket, perhaps led by Bloomberg. Their rhetoric appears to be targeted at people who enjoy kittens, rainbows, and David Broder columns. Specifically, Unity ‘08 says its ticket will run on “ideas and traditions which unite and empower us as individuals and as a people.”

And if people didn’t have sincere disagreements over policy, this approach might even have value.

From the Carpetbagger Report via

What I see in American Politics today is the outright refusal of one side to even talk with the other.As long as one side has the majority, there doesn’t appear to be any reason to discuss policy with the minority. Even though merging ideas may produce a better policy. But then you would have to admit that your original policy wasn’t perfect to start with. And that’s a b-a-a-a-a-d thing.

One of our local state representatives remarks that when he first went to Denver, one of his majority neighbors across the aisle asked why he even bothered to show up. Of course, now, his neighbor isn’t in the majority.

I think the problem isn’t politics, but the total lack of it that is causing the legislative problems people perceive.