Those of you who follow me on Facebook or listen to my webcast are aware that I have ranted for weeks about what a sorry excuse for a candidate Mitt Romney is. Despite Obama's unpopularity and having hardly anything to show for his first 3.5 years in office - he is likely to be re-elected due to this sheer lack of competition. But today, it's time to change gears and turn these same tables on Obama. I'm going to begin by reviewing Romney's disadvantages as a candidate to illustrate my point:
- He is Mormon - a religious group viewed with disproportionate mistrust and hostility by American voters on both the right and the left.
- His skeletons could fill the Old Jerusalem Cemetery - between Bain and the tax returns and the 2002 Olympics and "Romneycare" and his grandfather who allegedly had 6 wives. If Obama's birth-certificate is an issue, then so are all these vague but ugly accusations.
- He demonstrates a profound disconnect from reality - a man with an elevator for his cars who makes spontaneous $10,000 bets cannot possibly appear to understand the average American.
- Crucial fiscally and socially conservative voting blocs that have a lukewarm relationship with the GOP consider him a fake and will NOT vote for him.
AND **THIS** IS THE GUY THAT INCUMBENT PRESIDENT OBAMA IS POLLING IN DEAD HEAT AGAINST IN THE POPULAR VOTE!
Why? How did Obama get so unpopular since his landslide election in 2008?
It isn't the hogwash Fox News and conservative talk radio peddle about him being a Muslim/Marxist/Socialist/Kenyan. That crap may aggravate certain elements - particularly older voters; but anyone who takes it seriously was never a supporter to begin with.
Nor are his policies anything special. He inherited an unsustainable economic mess and continued the failed parade of Keynesian and interventionist shortsightedness that created it; and now he acts surprised this hasn't fixed the problem. While this certainly is nothing to be proud of, the same thing can be said about every President before him dating back to at LEAST Herbert Hoover. Why didn't every one of them experience the same drop in popularity?
The culprit, in my theory, is the evolution of voters. Even those of Obama's predecessors elected during shaky times and by landslides were all-in-all given an enthusiastic mandate to re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. Ronald Reagan is perhaps the most prominent example. Obama, however, was put in office largely by young voters who genuinely wanted something different. The color of his skin - casting the shadow of first Catholic President JFK - was certainly a novelty factor, but far more important were the messages of "hope and change" interpreted by the youth as a promise of actual departure from the legacy of the previous 80 years. And in those terms, regardless of any tabulation of "kept promises" you can link me to on the internet, Obama has failed the youth vote completely. Let's have a look at how young voters today differ from the 20th century majorities, and why Obama can't hope to measure up in our books despite his rhetoric:
Foreign Policy
- Voters under 34 today don't remember the Cold War. But we have fresh in our minds 2 pointless and failed occupations; many of us served in the military and participated in these disasters. We have literally SEEN today's enemy sitting in a cave in the middle of the desert with improvised explosives, where aircraft carriers and ICBMs are not able to reach him, and our military presence on foreign soil only makes more accessible targets.
This makes us impossible to sell on the "need" for military bases in 100+ countries and a defense budget that exceeds the rest of the world combined. The young who voted for Obama wanted an END to the defense policy still aimed at the long-dead USSR, NOT a compromise with it. Obama half-assed this by sticking to Bush Jr's withdrawal plans from Iraq and Afghanistan, bombing Libya, meddling in Syria, and expanding the Pentagon's budget despite massive economic shortfalls.
Economics and Regulation
- Voters under 34 today don't remember segregation and the Civil Rights movement. The minorities among us have certainly experienced discrimination, and we are well aware it remains rampant. But we associate it with the cultural views of powerful people in both the private and public sectors, rather than with it being "allowed" and "unregulated".
- Voters under 34 today have a concept of poverty defined by dependence on hand-outs. Those among us who have experienced or witnessed lack of access to the necessities do not deny personal irresponsibility and bureaucratic inefficiency as contributing factors. In our lifetimes, public benefits have ALWAYS been available, but acquiring them still requires marginal responsibility and social aptitude, and the complex bureaucracies charged with doling them out are often a colossal barrier to their receipt.
These experiences make us impossible to sell on preserving the existing regulations and welfare state as "necessary lifelines" for the poor and underprivileged. We simply know better. Rampant discrimination despite "equal
opportunity" posters hanging everywhere like wallpaper and epidemic economic disparity despite the alleged success of safety nets have led us to the accurate conclusion that the existing system cannot resolve these problems, and we will pelt with rotten eggs any politician that blames this failure on the economy being under-regulated or the safety-nets underfunded. Voters under 34 today divide evenly into those who want sweeping reforms to the systems in question to actually make them work, and those who want the systems repealed unconditionally as we are convinced they will always fail. Obama gave many in the reform camp the "hope" that he would do the former, and has failed miserably to deliver. The original, truly socialized version of Obamacare went down in flames at the hands of his OWN party, and all his hand-outs allegedly aimed at economic recovery have gone to the same old stakeholders our generation sees as having brought about the collapse - banks, the auto industry, mega-unions, renewable energy corporations, etc. This is NOT the 1960s and these elements do NOT represent "progress" - they are cogs in the corrupt system that we want taken off the government payroll. Seeing Obama betray the hopes of actual reform, the reformist young have grown more jaded and aligned themselves neatly with the more radical types - like myself - who have no faith in "fixing" government, and want it drastically reduced and downsized.
Culture and Civil Liberties
- Perhaps most importantly, voters under 34 today have an unprecedented individualism and a bitter resentment toward ideological authority. Raised by busy, working parents and largely left to our own devices without supervision, especially in the emerging world of the internet - my generation is used to figuring things out for ourselves rather than taking anyone's word for anything. The Baby Boomers may have "spent 20 years drugged out of their minds and fucking everything that walks" as George Carlin put it; but they still viewed those things as taboo - that's what made them attractive. To the modern young - drugs, sex, virtual reality, gambling, and a variety of other vices are just regular forms of recreation, and owning weapons to many of us is just a fact of life. We understand these things from an empirical perspective and we are fervently hostile to arguments in favor of prohibition or restriction because these fall back entirely on ideology and emotion. To our conservative grandparents who say these are "sinful and wrong" - we say we either do not view religion and tradition as authorities on morality, or present alternate interpretations that are no less valid than theirs. To our liberal parents who say these things will hurt us - we present an understanding of the need for caution and moderation, and can drill down every example of bad outcomes to carelessness and excess rather than the vice itself being the problem.
This makes us specifically intolerant of the expanding, encroaching police state. By the same "empiricism over emotions" model, we are thoroughly unconvinced by propaganda that crazed Islamic Jihadies wired with explosives are waiting around every corner to blow us up, or that we need anything more than a positive relationship with our own children and the firearm we carry to protect them from predators and child molesters. We are well aware, however, that the government overreach allegedly aimed at protecting us and them enables law enforcement to harass us for our drug habits, sex practices, poker games, illegally possessed weapons, and so forth. We don't excuse law enforcement as "just doing their jobs". We perceive them as agents of a system trying to regulate our personal choices that are none of its business regardless of majority disapproval. The young voted for Obama's "change" because they viewed it as an enema of government overreach into personal liberties, and he has failed the most completely in this domain. His embrace of gay rights has been a very small accomplishment when weighed against his perpetuation of the Patriot Act, further infringements through NDAA, and attempts to censor and control OUR internet through SOPA/PIPA/CISPA.
So, while Obama is "just another", he is President of an evolving electorate that loudly demands something significantly different and unapologetically calls anyone a liar that pretends to be different but isn't. If you think this will not destroy the Democratic Party, you are simply in denial. The young conspicuously stayed home in the 2010 midterms and let the Tea Party mop the floor with the Democrats despite many of the former's politicians being WAY too socially conservative for our liking. Many of Obama's older supporters arrogantly dismissed this as the Republicans "only winning because the young didn't turn out". This implies a baseless confidence that we will turn out for the Democrats in 2012, a confidence that is about to bite that party in the ass in ways they haven't experienced in 80 years. The youth fervor from 2008 hasn't died - it has mutated into a grassroots transformation of the Republican Party, which is ripe for this with an internal power and unity vacuum. This is pompously and conveniently misrepresented by the media as political inactivity by the young, but we are merely doing to the Republican Party what our parents did to the Democrats in the 1960-70s. We have discovered through the self-education method I mentioned above the relative irrelevance of voting, and have shifted our resources to grassroots organization. Ron Paul did not win the popular vote in a single Republican Primary, but he has secured the plurality of National Convention delegates in 7 States - tell me again how our strategy isn't working.
I have yet to encounter a reasonable Democratic Party defense against the rising libertarian element in the Republican Party, and after a few minutes of beating up on the Democrats' failed economic policies and their bending over for the neo-cons' imperialism and police state - the subject usually gets changed to the intolerant social conservative extremism of the Tea Party. The problem with this defense is that the young and libertarians are not on board with it, although we coalition with it unapologetically to barricade the Democrats from furthering the status quo. The social conservative element belongs to older voters who everyone should realize will not be around much longer. When they pass, the Republican Party will shed this short-lived neo-theocracy image and be inherited by the unapologetically anti-federalist youth I have been describing. And when the Democratic Party finds itself face-to-face with THAT and can no longer marginalize it for fraternizing with pro-life and anti-gay extremists, it will sink to a minority status it has not experienced since the late 19th century. Obama himself is likely to be helped by this re-alignment as the division within the Republican Party propels him to a second term; but he had the opportunity to attract this emerging youth vote to his party and keep it at the helm as the re-alignment from conservative Democrats to liberal Democrats did in the 1960s. Instead, he has alienated us and motivated us to go take over the other party - and that is how history will remember him, as the President who betrayed the youth vote, and whose party paid for it for decades to come.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Friday, June 29, 2012
The Obamacare Ruling: A Brilliant and Brutal Victory for Limited Government Advocates
Reading the title of this post, both proponents of Obamacare who are thrilled with the decision and critics who are disgusted and terrified by it will probably think I'm insane, and that's exactly the point. In legislative terms, Obamacare endured the Constitutional challenge so it may be reasonable for proponents to celebrate and opponents to be unhappy. But legislative victories are short-term and irrelevant compared to the long-term implications of many Supreme Court rulings, and what I plan to do today is to embark on an historic and political journey to explain why, despite being vehemently opposed to this clusterfuck of a legislation, the ruling makes me ecstatic. Fasten your seatbelts....
A BRIEF LESSON ON US FEDERALISM
As I've discussed in many past posts, both praise and criticism of the US Federal economic system for its capitalist or socialist nature are largely misplaced, because the system fits neither of those terms. A service is "socialized" when it is tax-funded and government managed and operated, and the Federal government truly only has one service that fits that definition - Social Security. A free market, which is how I define "capitalism", refers to economic domains with no financial intervention from the government and very few, if any, regulations. Hence, most economic domains in the US don't fit that paradigm either. I contend that what we have is not an "in between" but a "something different altogether"; but for objective purposes, most Federal public services in the US operate in the form of a tax-funded voucher issued to recipients to purchase services from a private provider, and in fewer cases a voucher issued to States to operate their own services or contract them out to private providers. Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Housing Subsidies, State-run Public Education, Student Loans.... you get the point. In most cases, the voucher is a subsidy; it is means-tested and recipients have to demonstrate a financial need for it, and the subsidies cover some but not the entire cost of the service in most cases.
To put it simply, this system is structurally flawed and invariably erodes over time. The government does not have the capacity to develop means-tests that would adequately reflect economic need, much less to implement these in a way that minimize gaming the system. The "need" is replaced by a very reasonable want to receive subsidies - who wouldn't want to be able to afford more on the same income? - and the private providers of the subsidized services are just as eager to offer them in exchange for the real money that voucher amounts to. However, subsidies don't promote the production of anything, only the distribution of existing resources to more people. Every tax dollar that is used to fund these subsidies was taken from someone else who earned it producing something, and the government did not produce anything to acquire it but invariably used resources to extract it. That means the government, not free-market forces, is now deciding where to direct that dollar minus the cost of its extraction, and any economist (even the most fervent proponents of this system) will tell you that there is no way in Hell the government does this more efficiently than the free market. All ideological arguments about taking others' money and gaming the system by either producers or consumers being completely irrelevant to our scientific discussion, the natural laws of economics and human behavior hence indicate that, over time, this system produces shortages by stifling resource mobilization and simultaneously increasing demand via availability.
The government has many ways of addressing these shortages, but every one of them only amounts to compounding the shortages over time. These include printing money, raising taxes, expanding the subsidies to other related domains, subsidizing loans to stimulate consumption, price controls, an infinite "chase the horizon" act of updating the means-tests, and also frequently regulations on what products and services are eligible for the subsidies - although this has more to do with protecting specific producers from competition. At the end of the day, or more accurately the decade, the result is always the same - a broader and more intense shortage produced by the expansion of inefficiency that stifles supply but increases demand.
CONFLICTS OVER THIS SYSTEM, PAST AND PRESENT
The majority of subsidies at the Federal level originate between the days of the New Deal and the 1970s, and make no mistake about it - this approach was as fundamentally flawed then as it is now. However, the government's primary strategies of addressing the system's continued erosion in those days were tax hikes and hard monetary policy (literally "printing" money). Since the 1970s, however, Americans' appetite for these strategies soured - leading to the election of politicians adamantly opposed to them such as Ronald Reagan. Our appetite did not sour because we got "greedy" or "inhumane", but because the structurally flawed system was failing despite these strategies being employed to their fullest. However, these supposed economic conservatives were NOT opposed to the system's structure, only to the strategies in use to preserve it - and they mobilized the popular discontent to eradicate those strategies and switch to more covert ones (many of them simultaneously friendlier to the provider class than the consumer class, known as "corporatism"). These strategies include various types of regulation - including law enforcement attempts aimed at consumer exclusion such as the War on Drugs and border closures; and soft monetary policy such as lowering interest rates (loan subsidies) and bond buying (quantitative easing). It is important to note that these strategies are insufficient for funding expansions of the subsidy-based welfare state, they can only achieve the preservation of existing programs from their natural inflationary erosion - a major reason the US has not introduced significant new amounts of welfare state programs since the 1970s.
Interestingly, most of the judicial battles fought by FDR in the New Deal Era were specifically over the latter type of strategy; because said strategies rely on a broader interpretation of the Federal government's powers in regulation and law enforcement as defined in the Constitution, whereas taxation power is relatively cut and dry. In the last 40 years though, that judicial battle has seen a moratorium, with the Federal government expanding its regulatory and enforcement powers becoming almost a given and rarely being challenged judicially. The last several years, however, have seen a rise in vehement opposition to Federal power expansion - largely fueled by the excesses of the Patriot Act and the economic catastrophy brought on by runaway bubble-blowing subsidization, the latter also revealing how much more producer-friendly than consumer-friendly Federal power is. Ron Paulian anti-Federalism that advocates shuttering the Federal Reserve and 2/3 of the Federal bureaucracy and repealing most Federal vice and morality laws may not seem like a mainstream movement quite yet - but it was limited to a few libertarian kooks running 3rd party candidates 10 years ago, and now everyone has heard of us and either tries to placate or villanize us, a testament to our growing influence. This sentiment is ardently in favor of reviving that New Deal Era debate over Federal power, and would have loved to see Obamacare struck down fully and unconditionally not just because it was awfully flawed legislation, but because a firm ruling against it would have opened the door to a flurry of judicial challenges to failing subsidy programs that have been accepted as givens for 60+ years.
OK, SO? THE RULING DIDN'T GO THAT WAY. YOUR POINT?
As I have pointed out in previous posts, there is no health care "crisis" - only a disastrous shortage created by nearly a century of compounded divorced-from-reality subsidies and regulations that were doomed to fail by virtue of the same structural flaws I've been discussing here. Recall from earlier that the system naturally erodes over time and needs periodic expansion to preserve its structure. Also recall that Obama's own proposal in 2009 was for his reform to include a large socialized component administered by the government and funded through tax hikes; but despite Democratic Party supermajorities in both Houses of Congress - THAT never got off the ground. Americans' lack of appetite for tax hikes is as solid as ever and they do not provide an avenue for preserving the system; so when Obama's attempt to raise taxes went nowhere - he reluctantly switched to his own party's preferred method of preservation through further expansion of Federal power. Specifically, the legislation asserted the power to coerce (NOT tax) Americans into investing resources into the system, and to coerce States in terms of what their socialized services must offer without providing them a dime in compensation. The Supreme Court (with Roberts in the lead) adamantly denied Obama those power expansions by ruling the mandate could not be justified under the Commerce or Necessary and Proper Clauses and that it could not coerce the States; just as in the SB 1070 ruling they denied the State of AZ several power expansions aimed at chasing the same structural problems by means of law enfrocement excess. The legislation is now forced to rely on the already exhausted existing strategies- price controls, regulations on denial of coverage, tax-funding with insufficient revenue, inadequate means-tests, soft monetary policy gimmicks. This is all the same shit that has caused the health care shortage, and a slight re-shuffle of it without those power expansions that access new resources, it is far more likely to make it worse very quickly than to reverse it.
But this ruling goes far beyond ensuring the slow death of Obamacare. What Roberts wrote in his opinion is that the Federal government is welcome to try to preserve the existing economic structure, but it has to do so either by use of its existing powers under the clauses mentioned, or by use of taxation which is not questioned as a Federal power. To put it simply, Roberts said "the days of trying to preserve this system through NEW regulatory gimmicks are over, call extraction what it is - a tax". Remembering that Americans have no appetite for new taxes and that existing regulatory gimmicks have been exhausted in their effectiveness; this ruling marks the containment of further expansion of Federal power. Further, seeing as we are approaching the so-called "fiscal cliff" which isn't much more than a representation of the same structural failure and shortage in every other subsidized domain - the New Deal legacy of Federal power is headed off that cliff at light speed. Roberts just eliminated any possibility for Congress to use power expansion gimmicks to preserve any of those failing and bankrupt programs, and they are failing and bankrupt because its current power is insufficient. Congress can raise taxes to preserve them (good luck!), or it can embark on some long-overdue structural reform and try making a system that works.
Watching a parade of judicial challenges to the government's existing powers shut down these programs one by one as a result of an across-the-board striking down of Obamacare would have been very satisfying to me; but I much appreciate Justice Roberts' caution about that scenario. The country may or may not be ready for those sweeping structural changes politically, and if they originate in the judicial branch they may bring an electoral backlash that ultimately culminates in the continued march of Federal expansion. Roberts has given Congress no choice but to acknowledge the structural flaws of legislation that they - NOT the Supreme Court - enacted, and to be pressured by voters to start fixing it. Roberts has not only poisoned this disastrous legislation, but quite likely undermined the structural integrity of the entire corrupt temple of Federalism along with it - all to the deafening cheers of said temple's patrons. Now THAT is brilliant politics.
A BRIEF LESSON ON US FEDERALISM
As I've discussed in many past posts, both praise and criticism of the US Federal economic system for its capitalist or socialist nature are largely misplaced, because the system fits neither of those terms. A service is "socialized" when it is tax-funded and government managed and operated, and the Federal government truly only has one service that fits that definition - Social Security. A free market, which is how I define "capitalism", refers to economic domains with no financial intervention from the government and very few, if any, regulations. Hence, most economic domains in the US don't fit that paradigm either. I contend that what we have is not an "in between" but a "something different altogether"; but for objective purposes, most Federal public services in the US operate in the form of a tax-funded voucher issued to recipients to purchase services from a private provider, and in fewer cases a voucher issued to States to operate their own services or contract them out to private providers. Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Housing Subsidies, State-run Public Education, Student Loans.... you get the point. In most cases, the voucher is a subsidy; it is means-tested and recipients have to demonstrate a financial need for it, and the subsidies cover some but not the entire cost of the service in most cases.
To put it simply, this system is structurally flawed and invariably erodes over time. The government does not have the capacity to develop means-tests that would adequately reflect economic need, much less to implement these in a way that minimize gaming the system. The "need" is replaced by a very reasonable want to receive subsidies - who wouldn't want to be able to afford more on the same income? - and the private providers of the subsidized services are just as eager to offer them in exchange for the real money that voucher amounts to. However, subsidies don't promote the production of anything, only the distribution of existing resources to more people. Every tax dollar that is used to fund these subsidies was taken from someone else who earned it producing something, and the government did not produce anything to acquire it but invariably used resources to extract it. That means the government, not free-market forces, is now deciding where to direct that dollar minus the cost of its extraction, and any economist (even the most fervent proponents of this system) will tell you that there is no way in Hell the government does this more efficiently than the free market. All ideological arguments about taking others' money and gaming the system by either producers or consumers being completely irrelevant to our scientific discussion, the natural laws of economics and human behavior hence indicate that, over time, this system produces shortages by stifling resource mobilization and simultaneously increasing demand via availability.
The government has many ways of addressing these shortages, but every one of them only amounts to compounding the shortages over time. These include printing money, raising taxes, expanding the subsidies to other related domains, subsidizing loans to stimulate consumption, price controls, an infinite "chase the horizon" act of updating the means-tests, and also frequently regulations on what products and services are eligible for the subsidies - although this has more to do with protecting specific producers from competition. At the end of the day, or more accurately the decade, the result is always the same - a broader and more intense shortage produced by the expansion of inefficiency that stifles supply but increases demand.
CONFLICTS OVER THIS SYSTEM, PAST AND PRESENT
The majority of subsidies at the Federal level originate between the days of the New Deal and the 1970s, and make no mistake about it - this approach was as fundamentally flawed then as it is now. However, the government's primary strategies of addressing the system's continued erosion in those days were tax hikes and hard monetary policy (literally "printing" money). Since the 1970s, however, Americans' appetite for these strategies soured - leading to the election of politicians adamantly opposed to them such as Ronald Reagan. Our appetite did not sour because we got "greedy" or "inhumane", but because the structurally flawed system was failing despite these strategies being employed to their fullest. However, these supposed economic conservatives were NOT opposed to the system's structure, only to the strategies in use to preserve it - and they mobilized the popular discontent to eradicate those strategies and switch to more covert ones (many of them simultaneously friendlier to the provider class than the consumer class, known as "corporatism"). These strategies include various types of regulation - including law enforcement attempts aimed at consumer exclusion such as the War on Drugs and border closures; and soft monetary policy such as lowering interest rates (loan subsidies) and bond buying (quantitative easing). It is important to note that these strategies are insufficient for funding expansions of the subsidy-based welfare state, they can only achieve the preservation of existing programs from their natural inflationary erosion - a major reason the US has not introduced significant new amounts of welfare state programs since the 1970s.
Interestingly, most of the judicial battles fought by FDR in the New Deal Era were specifically over the latter type of strategy; because said strategies rely on a broader interpretation of the Federal government's powers in regulation and law enforcement as defined in the Constitution, whereas taxation power is relatively cut and dry. In the last 40 years though, that judicial battle has seen a moratorium, with the Federal government expanding its regulatory and enforcement powers becoming almost a given and rarely being challenged judicially. The last several years, however, have seen a rise in vehement opposition to Federal power expansion - largely fueled by the excesses of the Patriot Act and the economic catastrophy brought on by runaway bubble-blowing subsidization, the latter also revealing how much more producer-friendly than consumer-friendly Federal power is. Ron Paulian anti-Federalism that advocates shuttering the Federal Reserve and 2/3 of the Federal bureaucracy and repealing most Federal vice and morality laws may not seem like a mainstream movement quite yet - but it was limited to a few libertarian kooks running 3rd party candidates 10 years ago, and now everyone has heard of us and either tries to placate or villanize us, a testament to our growing influence. This sentiment is ardently in favor of reviving that New Deal Era debate over Federal power, and would have loved to see Obamacare struck down fully and unconditionally not just because it was awfully flawed legislation, but because a firm ruling against it would have opened the door to a flurry of judicial challenges to failing subsidy programs that have been accepted as givens for 60+ years.
OK, SO? THE RULING DIDN'T GO THAT WAY. YOUR POINT?
As I have pointed out in previous posts, there is no health care "crisis" - only a disastrous shortage created by nearly a century of compounded divorced-from-reality subsidies and regulations that were doomed to fail by virtue of the same structural flaws I've been discussing here. Recall from earlier that the system naturally erodes over time and needs periodic expansion to preserve its structure. Also recall that Obama's own proposal in 2009 was for his reform to include a large socialized component administered by the government and funded through tax hikes; but despite Democratic Party supermajorities in both Houses of Congress - THAT never got off the ground. Americans' lack of appetite for tax hikes is as solid as ever and they do not provide an avenue for preserving the system; so when Obama's attempt to raise taxes went nowhere - he reluctantly switched to his own party's preferred method of preservation through further expansion of Federal power. Specifically, the legislation asserted the power to coerce (NOT tax) Americans into investing resources into the system, and to coerce States in terms of what their socialized services must offer without providing them a dime in compensation. The Supreme Court (with Roberts in the lead) adamantly denied Obama those power expansions by ruling the mandate could not be justified under the Commerce or Necessary and Proper Clauses and that it could not coerce the States; just as in the SB 1070 ruling they denied the State of AZ several power expansions aimed at chasing the same structural problems by means of law enfrocement excess. The legislation is now forced to rely on the already exhausted existing strategies- price controls, regulations on denial of coverage, tax-funding with insufficient revenue, inadequate means-tests, soft monetary policy gimmicks. This is all the same shit that has caused the health care shortage, and a slight re-shuffle of it without those power expansions that access new resources, it is far more likely to make it worse very quickly than to reverse it.
But this ruling goes far beyond ensuring the slow death of Obamacare. What Roberts wrote in his opinion is that the Federal government is welcome to try to preserve the existing economic structure, but it has to do so either by use of its existing powers under the clauses mentioned, or by use of taxation which is not questioned as a Federal power. To put it simply, Roberts said "the days of trying to preserve this system through NEW regulatory gimmicks are over, call extraction what it is - a tax". Remembering that Americans have no appetite for new taxes and that existing regulatory gimmicks have been exhausted in their effectiveness; this ruling marks the containment of further expansion of Federal power. Further, seeing as we are approaching the so-called "fiscal cliff" which isn't much more than a representation of the same structural failure and shortage in every other subsidized domain - the New Deal legacy of Federal power is headed off that cliff at light speed. Roberts just eliminated any possibility for Congress to use power expansion gimmicks to preserve any of those failing and bankrupt programs, and they are failing and bankrupt because its current power is insufficient. Congress can raise taxes to preserve them (good luck!), or it can embark on some long-overdue structural reform and try making a system that works.
Watching a parade of judicial challenges to the government's existing powers shut down these programs one by one as a result of an across-the-board striking down of Obamacare would have been very satisfying to me; but I much appreciate Justice Roberts' caution about that scenario. The country may or may not be ready for those sweeping structural changes politically, and if they originate in the judicial branch they may bring an electoral backlash that ultimately culminates in the continued march of Federal expansion. Roberts has given Congress no choice but to acknowledge the structural flaws of legislation that they - NOT the Supreme Court - enacted, and to be pressured by voters to start fixing it. Roberts has not only poisoned this disastrous legislation, but quite likely undermined the structural integrity of the entire corrupt temple of Federalism along with it - all to the deafening cheers of said temple's patrons. Now THAT is brilliant politics.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
The Primaries are NOT Over
This is not my typical blogpost. All I'm going to do here is explain how the sciene of Civics that is disastrously undertaught in our schools disagrees with the braindead consensus among most Americans that the Republican Primaries are over and Romney is the inevitable nominee. Romney COULD very well win the nomination, I'm not in fact making a prediction that he won't. I'm simply sick to death of being treated like Galileo when he said the Earth was not the center of the universe when I point out - accurately - that this outcome is NOT set in stone. It is true that no candidate other than Romney, statistically, can secure the 1,144 national convention delegates to win the nomination. However, the still very possible alternative is a split convention in which no candidate has secured that number of delegates, seeing as that number is 50%+1 and there are 4 candidates who have delegates (not counting Jon Huntsman, who has 2).
WHERE DO CONVENTION DELEGATES REALLY COME FROM?
The media delegate estimates that have many people convinced the split convention can't happen are simply not worth the energy put into publicizing them. Why? Because they are just that - estimates; and estimates based on very approximate arithmetic performed on very close popular vote tallies. Every State has a slightly different delegate allocation system, but in most States the popular vote in the primary of any party isn't much more than a guideline that the party's conventions are supposed to follow. Further, most State parties have multi-level conventions, starting with either Congressional district or county conventions, and leading up to the State convention. Each higher level convention is made up of delegates from lower level conventions, and these delegates elect the delegates to the next level convention. For example, the delegates from each District convention vote in the State convention, and elect delegates to the National Convention. The ground level conventions in most States operate similarly to Caucuses with varying rules for participation, but registrants with that party can participate just about everywhere. As this election has demonstrated, Caucuses are far more about turnout and participation than any candidate's actual popularity in a location. It is common for the conventions at each level to give certain officials (Party Chairs, for example) automatic delegate status to the next level, sometimes called "superdelegates". It is also common for conventions at each level to vote for delegate SLATES as opposed to individual delegates, making most conventions in a sense winner-take-all for a slate. Theoretically, the slates are supposed to either be winner-take-all for whoever got the most popular votes or proportional to the popular vote in that district county, State, etc. - but as we are about to see, this is not really happening in very many places.
If you're gasping at this point about how confusing and complicated this system is, I would like to point out that your frustration does NOT make this system irrelevant. On the contrary, YOU are choosing political irrelevance by not taking the time to understand it, much like the confusing and complicated nature of physics did not make the idiotic Biblical theories that Galileo debunked any more reflective of reality.
OK, SO?
Well, the conventions at various levels in most States have not actually happened yet, and where they have been held - the results have turned out drastically different from the media's predictions. The most important factor in this has been my personal candidate of choice - Ron Paul. Even Ron Paul's most bitter critics have commended the efficiency of his campaign machine and the resolve and dedication of his supporters. While Romney pretends to have already won the nomination with his pet media in tow, the Ron Paul campaign has been documented using a variety of strategies to gobble up delegates using the above system in a variety of States. In the last 2 days we've learned that Ron Paul has actually secured delegate majorities in Minnesota and Iowa, despite not having won either State by popular vote. How?
1. Participation: It is completely irrelevant who won the popular vote in a county or district if that locale's convention is open to participation by non-officials. These conventions are used to being formalities where a small number of people meet and vote in a pre-determined delegate slate, but very few have rules REQUIRING them to do this - in fact in most places the rules require allowing the participation of others who show up. Ron Paul's campaign has been documented in State after State to be flooding these conventions and electing full slates of Ron Paul's delegates to higher level conventions - literally shutting out the delegates of other candidates. This is because Ron Paul has organizers working for him (organizers who share a profession with our current President) that raid college campuses, Occupy camps, and other locations where angry voters are likely to be present and teach these people how to take over the local convention as well as register as delegates; all while the zombie supporters of other candidates are happily ignorant this system even exists.
2. Collaboration: Ron Paul has not won 1st place in the popular vote in any State according to official numbers, but he has quite a collection of impressive 2nds. Many States have had a single candidate dominate, Ron Paul get on the map by placing second, and everyone else hardly having a showing. Remembering that delegates are typically elected by slate, Ron Paul's campaign has been documented in State after State approaching the local campaigns and dismayed delegates of underdog candidates to form joint slates. In Santorum's States - they approach Romney supporters, in Romney's States - Santorum supporters. Combined with the participation element above, this is enough in many locations to shut out the winning delegate's slate, sending to the next level convention, for example, a slate of 20 Paul delegates and 5 Santorum delegates as opposed to the expected slate of 25 Romney delegates. It is important to note that although Santorum has suspended his campaign, his delegate slates remain eligible in the overwhelming majority of locations; so his status does NOT negate this strategy.
3. Scandal and Influence: To date, the Ron Paul campaign is documented as having retired 2 State Party Chairmen in this Primary season - Iowa's and Nevada's, both by exposing blatant and undeniable fraud on their part to rig the primaries in those States in Romney's favor. In both States, high-ranking officials for Ron Paul's campaign replaced the resigning chairmen. Similar scandals have occurred in at least 3 other States - New Hampshire, Maine, and Missouri - but to the best of my knowledge the State Chairmen in those places have endured them. Using similar tactics, dozens of party officials at lower levels - most of them volunteers and not professionals - have been forced out of their positions, meaning that Ron Paul has effectively taken over many locales' Republican Parties. More importantly in the short term, remember that officials are superdelegates to the next level, meaning their influence helps Ron Paul directly.
One Final Bit of Evidence for Those Still in Denial: Google "anti-Paul delegate slates". Multiple States, including Arizona where State Convention rules require that all delegates go to the same candidate, have been documented as putting together specific anti-Paul delegate slates at lower levels, so as to balance out the Paul or Paul+whoever slates at the next level up. Assembling these "Protect the Platform" slates takes a lot of work and is expensive - so it is very difficult to dismiss this development; it is evidence the Republican establishment views Ron Paul as a very real threat. Even if they manage to keep him out of any specific convention using this method, he is forcing them into defensive mode and stretching their resources - this is relevant.
WHAT AM I TRYING TO SAY?
Paul's objective has never been to win the nomination by delegate majority - that is unattainable. Paul's objective has always been to hang the national convention by denying anyone a majority, and the early conventions that have been held so far indicate he has a very real chance of accomplishing this, as even by the media's garbage estimates Romney's majority is very thin. If Paul manages to hang the convention, he will have effectively destroyed the Republican Party. A hung convention can still nominate someone - delegates just have to be convinced to change their votes until someone attains a majority; but in the existing climate a hung convention uniting behind any candidate (even someone other than the 4 present) is as unrealistic as Ron Paul attaining that majority nomination. Should the party deteriorate in this fashion, the various factions will form new parties and yield multiple nominees to challenge the Democrats' Barack Obama, both Romney and Ron Paul are almost inevitable nominees in that scenario. I could write an entire separate post on why this in no way guarantees Obama's re-election, but that is a different topic.
Finally, I will be brutally condescending toward anyone that decides to make an argument that Ron Paul's strategy is a bad thing because it threatens the Republican Party. While I respect all individuals and their political stances, the Republican Party as a power structure can go jump off a cliff. The Republican Party gave us 8 years of Bush Jr. and Cheney, 4 years of fascist Senate scumbag Bill Frist, 2 pointless and unwinnable wars that cost 1000s of lives and mounds of debt, and the sickening tyranny of the Department of Homeland Security - ALL WITHIN JUST THE LAST 12 YEARS! That Party deserves to die, and I am not responsible for anyone having mistaken me for a member because of my bitter opposition to Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. That party deserves to die as well, and the deterioration of the Republican Party will speed that process. Fearmongering that things will be worse if the existing system is destroyed will not convince me, it will make me think you're stupid. Ditto for fearmongering that the split ensures Obama's re-election - this is A. Not the case, B. Not the end of the world, and C. More or less guaranteed by a 1v1 with Romney in any case.
WHERE DO CONVENTION DELEGATES REALLY COME FROM?
The media delegate estimates that have many people convinced the split convention can't happen are simply not worth the energy put into publicizing them. Why? Because they are just that - estimates; and estimates based on very approximate arithmetic performed on very close popular vote tallies. Every State has a slightly different delegate allocation system, but in most States the popular vote in the primary of any party isn't much more than a guideline that the party's conventions are supposed to follow. Further, most State parties have multi-level conventions, starting with either Congressional district or county conventions, and leading up to the State convention. Each higher level convention is made up of delegates from lower level conventions, and these delegates elect the delegates to the next level convention. For example, the delegates from each District convention vote in the State convention, and elect delegates to the National Convention. The ground level conventions in most States operate similarly to Caucuses with varying rules for participation, but registrants with that party can participate just about everywhere. As this election has demonstrated, Caucuses are far more about turnout and participation than any candidate's actual popularity in a location. It is common for the conventions at each level to give certain officials (Party Chairs, for example) automatic delegate status to the next level, sometimes called "superdelegates". It is also common for conventions at each level to vote for delegate SLATES as opposed to individual delegates, making most conventions in a sense winner-take-all for a slate. Theoretically, the slates are supposed to either be winner-take-all for whoever got the most popular votes or proportional to the popular vote in that district county, State, etc. - but as we are about to see, this is not really happening in very many places.
If you're gasping at this point about how confusing and complicated this system is, I would like to point out that your frustration does NOT make this system irrelevant. On the contrary, YOU are choosing political irrelevance by not taking the time to understand it, much like the confusing and complicated nature of physics did not make the idiotic Biblical theories that Galileo debunked any more reflective of reality.
OK, SO?
Well, the conventions at various levels in most States have not actually happened yet, and where they have been held - the results have turned out drastically different from the media's predictions. The most important factor in this has been my personal candidate of choice - Ron Paul. Even Ron Paul's most bitter critics have commended the efficiency of his campaign machine and the resolve and dedication of his supporters. While Romney pretends to have already won the nomination with his pet media in tow, the Ron Paul campaign has been documented using a variety of strategies to gobble up delegates using the above system in a variety of States. In the last 2 days we've learned that Ron Paul has actually secured delegate majorities in Minnesota and Iowa, despite not having won either State by popular vote. How?
1. Participation: It is completely irrelevant who won the popular vote in a county or district if that locale's convention is open to participation by non-officials. These conventions are used to being formalities where a small number of people meet and vote in a pre-determined delegate slate, but very few have rules REQUIRING them to do this - in fact in most places the rules require allowing the participation of others who show up. Ron Paul's campaign has been documented in State after State to be flooding these conventions and electing full slates of Ron Paul's delegates to higher level conventions - literally shutting out the delegates of other candidates. This is because Ron Paul has organizers working for him (organizers who share a profession with our current President) that raid college campuses, Occupy camps, and other locations where angry voters are likely to be present and teach these people how to take over the local convention as well as register as delegates; all while the zombie supporters of other candidates are happily ignorant this system even exists.
2. Collaboration: Ron Paul has not won 1st place in the popular vote in any State according to official numbers, but he has quite a collection of impressive 2nds. Many States have had a single candidate dominate, Ron Paul get on the map by placing second, and everyone else hardly having a showing. Remembering that delegates are typically elected by slate, Ron Paul's campaign has been documented in State after State approaching the local campaigns and dismayed delegates of underdog candidates to form joint slates. In Santorum's States - they approach Romney supporters, in Romney's States - Santorum supporters. Combined with the participation element above, this is enough in many locations to shut out the winning delegate's slate, sending to the next level convention, for example, a slate of 20 Paul delegates and 5 Santorum delegates as opposed to the expected slate of 25 Romney delegates. It is important to note that although Santorum has suspended his campaign, his delegate slates remain eligible in the overwhelming majority of locations; so his status does NOT negate this strategy.
3. Scandal and Influence: To date, the Ron Paul campaign is documented as having retired 2 State Party Chairmen in this Primary season - Iowa's and Nevada's, both by exposing blatant and undeniable fraud on their part to rig the primaries in those States in Romney's favor. In both States, high-ranking officials for Ron Paul's campaign replaced the resigning chairmen. Similar scandals have occurred in at least 3 other States - New Hampshire, Maine, and Missouri - but to the best of my knowledge the State Chairmen in those places have endured them. Using similar tactics, dozens of party officials at lower levels - most of them volunteers and not professionals - have been forced out of their positions, meaning that Ron Paul has effectively taken over many locales' Republican Parties. More importantly in the short term, remember that officials are superdelegates to the next level, meaning their influence helps Ron Paul directly.
One Final Bit of Evidence for Those Still in Denial: Google "anti-Paul delegate slates". Multiple States, including Arizona where State Convention rules require that all delegates go to the same candidate, have been documented as putting together specific anti-Paul delegate slates at lower levels, so as to balance out the Paul or Paul+whoever slates at the next level up. Assembling these "Protect the Platform" slates takes a lot of work and is expensive - so it is very difficult to dismiss this development; it is evidence the Republican establishment views Ron Paul as a very real threat. Even if they manage to keep him out of any specific convention using this method, he is forcing them into defensive mode and stretching their resources - this is relevant.
WHAT AM I TRYING TO SAY?
Paul's objective has never been to win the nomination by delegate majority - that is unattainable. Paul's objective has always been to hang the national convention by denying anyone a majority, and the early conventions that have been held so far indicate he has a very real chance of accomplishing this, as even by the media's garbage estimates Romney's majority is very thin. If Paul manages to hang the convention, he will have effectively destroyed the Republican Party. A hung convention can still nominate someone - delegates just have to be convinced to change their votes until someone attains a majority; but in the existing climate a hung convention uniting behind any candidate (even someone other than the 4 present) is as unrealistic as Ron Paul attaining that majority nomination. Should the party deteriorate in this fashion, the various factions will form new parties and yield multiple nominees to challenge the Democrats' Barack Obama, both Romney and Ron Paul are almost inevitable nominees in that scenario. I could write an entire separate post on why this in no way guarantees Obama's re-election, but that is a different topic.
Finally, I will be brutally condescending toward anyone that decides to make an argument that Ron Paul's strategy is a bad thing because it threatens the Republican Party. While I respect all individuals and their political stances, the Republican Party as a power structure can go jump off a cliff. The Republican Party gave us 8 years of Bush Jr. and Cheney, 4 years of fascist Senate scumbag Bill Frist, 2 pointless and unwinnable wars that cost 1000s of lives and mounds of debt, and the sickening tyranny of the Department of Homeland Security - ALL WITHIN JUST THE LAST 12 YEARS! That Party deserves to die, and I am not responsible for anyone having mistaken me for a member because of my bitter opposition to Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. That party deserves to die as well, and the deterioration of the Republican Party will speed that process. Fearmongering that things will be worse if the existing system is destroyed will not convince me, it will make me think you're stupid. Ditto for fearmongering that the split ensures Obama's re-election - this is A. Not the case, B. Not the end of the world, and C. More or less guaranteed by a 1v1 with Romney in any case.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Obama is a Democratic Reagan
I get asked periodically what I think of President Barack Obama, and my short answer is "I agree with some of his stated intetions, but I wouldn't approve of his stated methods for achieving them even if he were serious about those intentions, which he isn't." A longer answer is a simple comparison to President Ronald Reagan, who many MISTAKENLY assume I'm a fan of.
Ronald Reagan:
- Slashed taxes without implementing corresponding spending cuts - ushering in massive debt.
- Rather than eliminating the disastrous Welfare State introduced by the Great Society like he PROMISED to do, opted to expand the War on Drugs and other regulatory policies to make it function, which proved both ineffective and expensive.
- Used "free market" rhetoric while handing out corporate welfare like it was candy.
- When his policies consistently fell short of his stated objectives, blamed all his woes on the "barricading" by the other party in Congress; his apologists continue this trend to this day.
Barack Obama:
- Expanded government spending by leaps and bounds without implementing corresponding tax hikes - ushering in massive debt.
- Rather than reigning in the Wall St. and Health Care cartels like he PROMISED to do, opted for legislation that guarantees them unprecedented insulation and subsidies in exchange for some new, toothless bureuacracies that are supposed to regulate them. These policies will fail in ways that make the War on Drugs look successful.
- Uses "equality" rhetoric while handing out corporate welfare like it's candy.
- As his policies consistently fall short of his objectives, he and his supporters blame their woes on the "barricading" by the other party in Congress.
Even the one thing both these guys got right is similar - foreign policy.
- No expensive and fruitless military occupations.
- No laughable attempts to negotiate with unaccountable dictators.
- No selling our sovereignty to corrupt supernational organizations.
- Yes unilaterally beheading insurgents using low-cost/low-impact covert operations; denying
them converts and martyrdom.
- Yes starving out dictators using sanctions and denial of aid; forcing them to starve their people
in order to afford weapons, which gets them lynched.
Reagan's foreign policy finished the last of the Communist insurgencies in South America and bankrupted the USSR. Obama's has taken out Bin Laden and Al-Awlaki, and is likely to force long-overdue famine-driven revolutions in Iran and North Korea.
Despite that one point of credit, the similarity is that each of these Presidents talk(ed) the talk of a popular extreme of their party (libertarianism for Reagan, socialism for Obama), while walking the walk of centrist, corporatist whore. Had they actually been true to their stated proposals, OF COURSE I would prefer Reagan's over Obama's; but that is irrelevant here. The only REAL difference between them is which Federalism-milking special interests they serve(d). The popularity of each with their respective supporters and desposition by respective detractors also boils down to the same thing. Conservatives and liberals share the naive fallacy of judging politicians by what they SAY they INTEND to do, rather than the OUTCOMES of what they ACTUALLY do. Whichever you consider yourself, quoting the stated intentions of one of your patron politicians as a means of defending that politician's policies is the epitome of ignorant. The first step to attaining accountable government is learning how to discern its stated intentions from its actual intentions - even before learning to discern intentions from outcomes.
Ronald Reagan:
- Slashed taxes without implementing corresponding spending cuts - ushering in massive debt.
- Rather than eliminating the disastrous Welfare State introduced by the Great Society like he PROMISED to do, opted to expand the War on Drugs and other regulatory policies to make it function, which proved both ineffective and expensive.
- Used "free market" rhetoric while handing out corporate welfare like it was candy.
- When his policies consistently fell short of his stated objectives, blamed all his woes on the "barricading" by the other party in Congress; his apologists continue this trend to this day.
Barack Obama:
- Expanded government spending by leaps and bounds without implementing corresponding tax hikes - ushering in massive debt.
- Rather than reigning in the Wall St. and Health Care cartels like he PROMISED to do, opted for legislation that guarantees them unprecedented insulation and subsidies in exchange for some new, toothless bureuacracies that are supposed to regulate them. These policies will fail in ways that make the War on Drugs look successful.
- Uses "equality" rhetoric while handing out corporate welfare like it's candy.
- As his policies consistently fall short of his objectives, he and his supporters blame their woes on the "barricading" by the other party in Congress.
Even the one thing both these guys got right is similar - foreign policy.
- No expensive and fruitless military occupations.
- No laughable attempts to negotiate with unaccountable dictators.
- No selling our sovereignty to corrupt supernational organizations.
- Yes unilaterally beheading insurgents using low-cost/low-impact covert operations; denying
them converts and martyrdom.
- Yes starving out dictators using sanctions and denial of aid; forcing them to starve their people
in order to afford weapons, which gets them lynched.
Reagan's foreign policy finished the last of the Communist insurgencies in South America and bankrupted the USSR. Obama's has taken out Bin Laden and Al-Awlaki, and is likely to force long-overdue famine-driven revolutions in Iran and North Korea.
Despite that one point of credit, the similarity is that each of these Presidents talk(ed) the talk of a popular extreme of their party (libertarianism for Reagan, socialism for Obama), while walking the walk of centrist, corporatist whore. Had they actually been true to their stated proposals, OF COURSE I would prefer Reagan's over Obama's; but that is irrelevant here. The only REAL difference between them is which Federalism-milking special interests they serve(d). The popularity of each with their respective supporters and desposition by respective detractors also boils down to the same thing. Conservatives and liberals share the naive fallacy of judging politicians by what they SAY they INTEND to do, rather than the OUTCOMES of what they ACTUALLY do. Whichever you consider yourself, quoting the stated intentions of one of your patron politicians as a means of defending that politician's policies is the epitome of ignorant. The first step to attaining accountable government is learning how to discern its stated intentions from its actual intentions - even before learning to discern intentions from outcomes.
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