Showing posts with label Governance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Governance. Show all posts

Saturday, October 6, 2018

The Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation

I write tonight not to condemn Brett Kavanaugh.  That has been done to death, as have supportive statements.  That part is over; Brett Kananaugh is now a Supreme Court Justice and will probably be one the rest of my life.

My comment today is about the failure of the process of deciding who gets confirmed to the Supreme Court and how.  And it is about fairness.  And partisanship. 

Partly, it is about how politics have become more partisan over the past decades.  It has happened before, of course.  Early in US history, political arguments were intensely personal and slanderous (worse than today) where political parties owned newspapers and the editorials and editorial cartoons were uncontrolled and facts were not even thought relevant. 

A political cartoon today might exaggerate a person's appearance (Obama's long face, Trump's hair), but older ones had them actually portrayed as animals.  And in 1852 Representative Preston Brooks (D-SC) used a walking cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA), nearly killing him while others looked on.  Things got calmer later.

But we are returning to irrational anger.  It is a different kind of anger.  Today the political parties attack the reputation, honesty, and factual memory of others at any opportunity.  They attack when they don't even seem to believe what they say themselves.  When presented with facts disproving their arguments, they say "Oh well, that is just politics".

No, it isn't!  Politics is "the art of the possible".  It is the skill of reaching an agreement with someone you don't completely agree with to get something you both think more important than what you each give.  It is the idea that people you disagree with have honorable things that matter to them, just as you have things you consider honorable yourself.

It can be theoretical trades.  One Senator wants higher taxes on imported goods to support a national manufacturing base and another Senator wants higher minimum wages so that struggling workers can afford their rent and decent food.

Or it can be more practical.  One House Member sees a need in his/her District for a bridge to connect manufacturing to highways and another sees a need for road improvements between 2 large cities.

Or both sides want to change some social laws and agree to meet in the middle for things to be changed in the future as society changes.

But that isn't what is happening today.  Today, what happens is that both sides say they want 100%  and the other side gets 0% and they fight to the death about it as if the slightest degree of negotiation is fatal.

Because it is.  The US has not been so polarized since just before the Civil War.  When I was young, there were Liberal Republicans and Conservative Repulicans.  There were Liberal Democrats and Conservative Democrats.  Each Party had to first find some degree of agreement within themselves before they could nominate some Presidential candidate.

The result was that the candidates were either close to "centrist" or had to be close.  US politics, as a Social Democracy worked well that way. 

Nixon ruined that by enticing all the conservative democrats his way, Goldwater exemplified that, and the Democrats responded by slowing absorbing the Progressive Republicans (like me). 

And here we are now.  Civil Wars occur when a people are geographically split, ideologically split, religiously split, or politically split.  We are reaching all 4 of those.

What to do?  Get our elected leaders back toward the center.  Choose centrists in every election. Or at least the least extreme candidate.  Politicians don't elect themselves, it takes we voters to put them in office.

In Maryland, Governor Larry Hogan is a Republican.  I normally vote Democrat by default because the Republican candidates seem too extreme usually.  I disagree with some things he has done.  But he is closer to the center than his Democratic opponent. 

I will put my vote toward the more centrist candidate.  I have to start somewhere.  I'm not choosing a Party, I'm choosing a candidate.

Look at your own State's candidates.  Choose center.  Put people in office who can actually work together.  Because those are the leaders of our future.  That House Member you elect next month may be the President in 30 years,

Sunday, June 26, 2016

A Little History

A century ago, the US economy and government was in the grip of what were called Robber Barons.  People so wealthy and powerful that they formed business monopolies, chose political leaders by themselves, decided what laws would be passed and considered everyone else but themselves "losers".  Working people were poverty-stricken, there was no "Middle Class".  You were either rich or broke.

People had few legal rights to complain.  Courts were packed by judges appointed by the rich to defend their overbearing methods.  Does that term "losers" ring a bell when you listen to a Trump speech?  It should.  Trump wants to return to those years.

The Republican party is to blame for this.  They have denigrated the value of government for years.  They refused to admit that government for the People is a good thing.  They desired that political success go only to the rich and powerful, so that they could get more than any human could possibly need to thrive in the world.

The Republican party has yelled for several decades that all we need to succeed is to have no government regulation.  That outsiders "know best".  That inexperience in world affairs is somehow "purer" than experience.  Basically, that ignorance is better than knowledge.  Now they have their purfect candidte for an upcoming humiliation of that view.  Trump will be crushed, and they might lose both the Senate and the House.  And later, the Supreme Court, as vacancies will be filled in the next 8 years.

The Republicans hate government so bad that they slashed the budget of the IRS, whose only function is to collect taxes and make sure we all pay what we owe.  They call it "starving the beast".

But the IRS is merely the agency that collects taxes declared by Congress.  The audit function doesn't bother most of us.  What they look for is very rich people who aren't paying their fair share.  They aren't after those of us earning $30,000-100,000.  They are after those multi-millionaires and billionaires who are paying nothing in taxes by gaming the system with secret accounts overseas or claiming massive business losses through indirect multiple company tricks.

We WANT more IRS agents to find those cheaters and get the Government revenue for schools, military support, VA hospitals, and roads and bridges!  What we don't want is the Donald Trumps of the world to get richer by cheating on their taxes.

More IRS agents don't threaten me or you.  They threaten the most wealthy who have been cheating us all.  We should SUPPORT more IRS funding for auditors.

The government does a lot of good things.  Defense, education, infrastructure, personal rights, helping poor States, assuring honest elections, managing the general economy, protecting the right to religious freedom, the whole Bill Of Rights...

That takes some money.  Not much in exchange for the common good.  In some countries, it is more; in some it is less.  I think we are doing pretty well where we are.

The Republicans want to lessen Government to enfeeblement; Democrats want to expand it in some few directions.  That's general human progress.

Let's consider insurance.  The theory of insurance is that the larger the group, the less risk there is to any member of the insurance group.  Doesn't it therefore make sense to increase the insurance pool?  YOUR medical costs go up everytime an uninsured person needs medical care.  So shouldn't we increase the number of insured people?  Fewer uninsured people mean lower costs for the rest of us.

Now let's say that the roads are failing in your area.  And in other areas.  And will fail in the future in other areas.  Isn't it a better idea to all get together and share the expenses gradually overall instead of all at once locally?

Isn't that what helping your neighbors now so that they can help you tomorrow is all about?  Government is merely the organized method of sharing todays costs with your neighbor tomorrow.  What you need to accept is that your neighbor might be several States away.

We understand that when some community many States away suffers a natural disaster.  A hurricane, an earthquake, a tornado.  We help them then.  That's what government is.  Society agreeing to hel each other in bad times...

And the Republicans fight against THAT!


Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Political Views

I don't consider myself "liberal".  To me that means you consider that one can do anything they want (similar to Libertarian).  I think of myself more as "progressive".  I hesitate to use the word "believe" because that suggests things accepted without facts.  Let's just says I "think" some things based on evidence.

There are many issues in politics today.  When you get down to the basics, the disagreements are mostly about the role of government.  I think that government is a positive thing. 

Federalist Paper #1 said "It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force".

Therefore, representative government itself is a positive good.  We have good roads, and government efforts have created those.  We have an educated population and government-created public schools have done that.  We have government regulations to keep unscrupulous and greedy people in check. 

So Government is a generally positive benefit to society.  Some people disagree.  I disagree with them.  I positively WANT an active government to coordinate the improvement of life for all the populace.  That's what governance IS!  Governance is NOT trying to kill all actions, stopping all improvements to life, or just saying "NO" everday to managing the nations affairs.

The progress of society has been from Kings to Representative Democracy (my apologies to the utopian Karl Marx).  The more representative governance is, the better.

If I "believe" in anything, it is actively beneficial governance for all.

Refrigerator Troubles

You may recall I was planning to have a new refrigerator delivered tomorrow.   The deal was that I would have the new one in the kitchen, th...