I Married a Guy a Few Weeks Ago

I married a guy a few weeks ago. Of course, I didn't get married to him. And I didn't marry him to another guy, because that's illegal. I married him to a lovely young woman and I'm sure they'll live happily ever after. But maybe not quite as happily as they would if they lived in a country where they could be free to make their own choices and guide their own lives.

And that is exactly what's important in the debate about same-sex marriage, and it's also the point that is always missed. I'm tired of hearing about what your brand of God thinks about gay marriage, or whether it's biological or a choice, or whether you're comfortable explaining the birds and the bees to your kids, or if it makes you feel icky inside. That's all well and good, but it's got nothing to do with whether or not it should be legal. That's the point, and that's what's at stake in this debate. The line between opinion and law. That's what's important about gay marriage for the vast majority of us who are not gay.

I happen to think that there is no rational reason why anyone should eat a Big Mac, but I'm not going to tell you that you can't do it and impose a fat tax on you when you get flabby. I wear a helmet every time I ride my motorcycle, but I don't need any cops to go after my wallet "for my own good" if I don't. And to be completely honest, yes, I think gay marriage is a little icky myself. When I think about it, I get the same feeling I get when I think about my parents getting it on. But that's not a valid reason for it to be against the law. I understand why some people don't like it. What I don't understand is why they think it's any of their damn business.

There is a reason why the phrases, "land of the free" and "home of the brave" go together. If you really feel like you need to be kept safe from the gays, then maybe this isn't the country for you. I lived in a Communist country for a while. There were officially no gays there. It might be more your speed. Me? I'll take my chances here with the big macs, and the gays.

Why NPR is sheltered, stupid, and contra common sense.

When did we become a nation of pussies?

When did "freedom of speech" give way to "obligation not to say mean things that might hurt someone's feelings?"

When did we decide that a "wrong" opinion is every bit as bad as a "wrong" action, and in some instances worse?

Juan Williams was fired from his job at NPR, ostensibly because of a decidedly nuanced comment about concern at sharing a plane with self-identified Muslims wearing burkhas and robes. He followed that by noting that those we need to fear are specific groups of Muslims who advocate terror, and he further noted that we have to be careful about putting all Muslims in the same categories. This, apparently, was a firing offense.

Williams is a fair-minded, respected liberal journalist who tries to understand the world from all sides before he writes or comments about it. I have found myself in diametrical opposition to his viewpoints on numerous occasions, but I respect his opinions because he knows why he came to the conclusions he reached; he reasoned through his opinions. He does not merely accept prevailing received wisdom. In short, he is an honest journalist. But that, apparently, was not enough to save his job. One nuanced comment about Muslims while appearing on Fox News with Bill O'Reilly later, and he is shown the door...

Um. Yeah. Just a sec. About Fox News...

NPR hates them. NPR believes that Fox News is opinion disguised as news, and, as such, is a Bad Thing. They insist that Fox is Republican territory, whereas NPR is an unbiased presentation of news and opinion.

But here is the thing: even if we entirely accept that point of view, which I decidedly do not, if NPR was really concerned about having unbiased news reach people that are not their natural constituency, why would they NOT want to have their commentators appear on Fox to provide some balance? Why would they NOT want to "infect" Fox with the truth, daily, if possible?

Because that ain't what this is about. NPR is "elite" opinion received. If you want to know what people who graduated from the Ivy League think, go to NPR. If you want to hear the same received wisdom that runs through the editorial pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, et al, listen to NPR.

And elite opinion doesn't want a thing to do with anyone who watches Fox News, except to look down on them.

But here is the thing: even on the "opinion" shows, Fox brings on commentators who contrast the opinions of the hosts. There is some effort expended to provide some balance of opinion.

Unlike NPR.

There, you get liberal doctrine untainted by conservatism. Elite opinion unmixed with...that icky other stuff. It is sheltered opinion disguised as comprehensive. ANd while there is much good work on NPR, too often it fails to come to grips with what is actually happening in America...as opposed to what is happening in Eastern Seaboard, Blue State America.

There is a difference.

What NPR finally admitted, in a back door sense, was that Williams was consorting with the enemy. The true firing offense was that he appeared on Fox at all.

NPR's loss. Fox News' gain. And it will probably work out better for Williams, too, in the long run.

The only losers are the 26.5 million listeners of NPR who won't hear a thing that makes them uncomfortable. It's all good. Go back to sleep, untroubled by thoughts of THOSE people. You know: the OTHER 280,000,000 living here in the US.

Which Constitution is Judge Phillips reading?

Lots of people find ourselves diametrically opposed to the military policy referred to as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and many of us would like very much to see that policy changed. I have stated on a number of occasions, in blogs, in essays, and in innumerable conversations with uncounted numbers of other participants that DADT needs to be replaced with a policy that is entirely neutral as to sexual orientation except where the mission of the military can be affected. What that exception means is simple: in the military, everyone is required to act, dress, and comport themselves in particular, mandated ways. They must accept discipline, and they must think "mission first."

All of that said, the federal judge in San Diego who struck down DADT as unconstitutional has clearly never read the Constitution. I quote Article 1, Section 8: Powers of Congress: It shall have the power:

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

That simple. It is a completely exclusive grant of power with no "except as it pertains to" equivocations. Congress, bluntly, has the power to make rules for the military. Not the Executive. Not the Judiciary. Congress.

The judge is completely out of line, and I do not doubt that if the case arrives at the Supreme Court, she will be reversed. There is this, also: because Article 1, Section 8 gives Congress the exclusive right to determine the rules and regulations of the armed forces, it also has the derived right to determine who may serve and who may not.

There is NO Constitutional right to serve in the military. Absent that right, everyone who serves in the military serves at the discretion of Congress or the particular branch as it applies. People who are significantly overweight cannot serve. People who are over a particular age cannot enlist. And many others are excluded for a variety of reasons, including health, criminal records, or country of origin issues. This, in law, is simply one more disqualification.

Now. Congress may change that law, and I believe that it can and will for many good and valuable reasons. Gays and lesbians already serve honorably and well, and it is an injustice not to allow them to serve openly, and an idiocy to exclude people of good character, high integrity, and manifest ability, whatever their sexual orientation.

In the meantime, I believe that Congress should vote out a resolution to the effect that it, and it alone, will decide on qualifications for service, and that it is not subject to judicial review. I also believe that when the military is finished with its review, Congress should act and definitively change the policy.

And I think that California U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips ought to take the time to read the Constitution before she trots out another specious decision on what it does, or does not, allow.

The end of the Reagan Revolution?

For the past three election cycles, a lot of people with varying points of view have been talking about the end of the Reagan Revolution. The Gipper cast a 25 year shadow on American politics, and it wasn't until after the 2006 election when Democrats decided it might be safe, finally, to take a left turn.

What Reagan had accomplished through two terms was the equivalent of FDR's New Deal in terms of talismanic longevity. Where FDR had brought about a decades long realignment in favor of the Democratic party and a more expansive view of government, Reagan accomplished the opposite almost entirely, moving the electoral goalposts dramatically to the right of center and contracting the role of government. Post Reagan, Democrats seeking to compete at the national level were forced to move to the political center...in some instances, moving a great deal farther to the right than was entirely comfortable. This is not to say that hard left Democrats suddenly vanished at the national level; not at all. They burrowed into Congress and acquired seniority, accomplishing much in their own way. But in marginal or competitive districts, particularly those with certain amount of turnover, candidates from either party were definitively centrist or somewhat to the right of center. More importantly, the language of government and the perimeters of what it was intended to accomplish were delineated and circumscribed by Reagan and his fellow revolutionaries.

President Clinton, for instance, was elected as a "new" Democrat, i.e., a centrist. That was reinforced for him in 1994, when voters, perceiving that the Democratic party was trying to govern farther to the left than they were comfortable with, readjusted course in mid term, and the Republicans took the Congress. Clinton learned this lesson well, and was careful to appear centrist, triangulating his policies between a Democratic party that wanted, but feared, more liberal policies, an ascendant GOP, a watchful public, and the looming Reagan shadow.

With the election of George W. Bush, a man who explicitly claimed the Reagan mantle, the course was set for continued, uneventful center-right governance...until 9/11; from that point, everything changed.

His prosecution of the Cold War to one side, if one examines the Reagan record, one notes particular care to keep US commitments but not add to them. There were no hot wars; indeed, virtually no military actions at all that extended past 30 days except for exercises. Marine presence in Lebanon was one exception, but when their barracks at the Beirut airport were bombed, Reagan's response was to pull the troops and have the USS New Jersey bang away at Druze and Syrian positions. The Grenada police action in 1983 also qualifies here, and it was carefully planned and lasted just a bit over two months.

In contrast, President Bush almost immediately began planning a military response post 9/11, which, by March of 2003, developed into a two pronged war effort in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The president won re-election specifically on a "stay the course" campaign, but by the 2006 midterms, steady reports of reversals, bad news, poor operational control and worse planning in the war effort, along with GOP overreach and arrogance of power within the administration and Congress, worked to create a toxic combination for Republicans at the polls. Both the House and the Senate turned over. The hard left in the Democratic party, heavy in seniority and sure that the Republican brand was tainted, took control on Capitol Hill. By the time the 2008 elections rolled up and in the midst of an economic blitzkrieg of mammoth proportions, the left was looking at realignment. It had Congress; it had elected the most liberal president in the nation's history; and it had majorities capable of beating back GOP objections to anything.

To a certain extent, everyone missed what had actually happened. President Bush's unpopularity made Republicans unpopular by proxy, but many of the new Democrats gained office as centrist candidates, winning heretofore solid GOP seats. So with a president who was elected in large part because he was not President Bush, a Democratic Congress elected by voters tired of GOP rule because of misadventure, corruption, or arrogance (but still perceiving Democratic replacements as no more liberal than the GOP legislators they defeated), and large majorities, Democrats saw the end of the revolution and a chance to remake the government in a more progressive image.

The Progressive ascendancy lasted eight months, ending with the death of Edward Kennedy. By the end of that first year, Scott Brown was elected in Massachusetts to Kennedy's old Senate seat on an explicit promise to stop Democrats from shoving health care "reform" through the Senate. Obamacare limped over the finish line, but was so desperately unpopular that few Democrats dare to run for reelection while openly supporting the bill as it passed.

And a huge course correction, an electoral tsunami, awaits Democrats in this 2010 midterm election. Current estimates reflect Republican turnover of the House, with a chance to retake the Senate. This is an astonishing repudiation taking place within two years, and one caused by a simple misunderstanding: the Reagan Revolution, the realignment he brought to Washington and national politics, remains intact. And both parties missed it.

The US remains a center-right nation, predominantly. This was the meaning of the Tea Parties and is the source of their continuing power. They are a reflection of center-right principles. They have, essentially, reversed the leftward drift of the Republican party; in three weeks, the country itself will resume a more conservative course.

Ronald Reagan is gone, but the changes he wrought in our politics remain. Both parties forget that at their electoral peril.

Why the Democrats deserve to lose

Hubris.

Ok, so that makes a very short post. But that is what it is. When you run for office and the leader of your party has said things like this:

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

Or this:

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

...you have to expect that there is going to be a certain amount of disappointment and disillusionment when these things manifestly DO NOT HAPPEN.

We already know that functional unemployment is actually somewhere between 16 and 20%, if you count the people whose benefits have run out and who have stopped looking. This is not an inconsequential number, and it did not happen by accident. Marketplace uncertainty is adding to the problem; businesses are waiting to see how the financial regulations will affect them, what Obamacare is going to cost them, and if Congress or the EPA enacts some variety of carbon tax that they will have to pass along to consumers.

Most people have insurance, and the indigent can use Medicaid. Many other people are on Medicare. True, Obamacare passed, but, at best, it will provide a means for 15% of citizens to get insurance who do not presently have it. The potential costs are enormous, so large that several years of revenue will be raised before benefits begin. Even worse, the baldfaced statements, by the president and others, that people will be able to keep the insurance they have if they want is a horselaugh. Every incentive goes the other way for business, who will almost certainly withdraw from the market as primary suppliers of insurance. The net result will be a de facto public option as private insurers exit the market as well. And this is not a surprise. Advocates for Obamacare, at various times, pronounced it to be a precursor to single payer.

As far as the eco-malarkey, last time I looked the oceans are fine (if a little oily in places), and the earth isn't going anywhere. WE might be, but the earth is here for the long haul and will be thundering around its orbit in space long after we follow the Dodo, the Passenger Pigeon and the dinosaurs to dust.

And change, however we like the word, simply means that things are different than they were. Change is not necessarily something that goes from good to bad or bad to better. It can also go from something that is quite bad enough to something else that is far worse.

Kind of like now, for instance.

Hubris is, simply, overweening pride and ambition that the gods used to slam whenever they saw it.

This slam begins November 2. Stay tuned.

Why I won't take a pre-employment drug test

I’ve been looking for work since graduating from the University of Oregon this past March.  I’m willing to do pretty much anything I’m physically capable of doing.  I’m 51 now, so roofing isn’t really an option.  My degree is in Digital Art (graphic art and multimedia design).  There are so many graphic designers and artists with years of experience currently looking for work that my search as been difficult, to say the least.  I’ve had only two actual, person-to-person interviews and neither of them were for jobs requiring a degree in design (or any degree at all, for that matter).  It’s frustrating.  But I’m willing to accept the reality of the economic situation.  What I am not willing to accept, is the attitude on the part of employers that I owe them something other than a verifiable employment and education history which, I have in spades.  I refuse to submit to any “pre-employment" drug test.

An employer has every right to investigate my character and background.  For them, I represent a potential investment in time and training.  I will represent them and their interests to their customers and the public.  I may have access to their cash, bank accounts, proprietary recipes and methods, processes and alliances.  They have a right to make a reasonable determination concerning my depth of character, the quality of my skill sets and education, my ability to perform well under pressure and as a member of a team; my leadership and followership skills, my honesty, stability, mental acuity and more.  But they do not have the moral authority to perform a body cavity search by any means, including urinalysis, solely to determine my “fitness” for an available position for which I have yet to be selected.

An employer can determine my fitness for a position by investigating my documented background and prior behavior.  My prior behavior is already in the public domain, so-to-speak, since I have already lived 51 years and left behind a long paper trail recording my actions.

My financial records are available to any employer who can properly justify access to  them.  My current debtors such as my landlord, utility and phone companies are available to provide up-to-date information.  I have university transcripts available to any employer who asks for them.  I am willing to provide samples of prior work, references of character, contact information for prior employers and even take an aptitude test.  But I will not provide a urine, blood, stool, or DNA sample without probable cause.  An offer of employment is not probable cause.

I served in the United States Air Force for 21 years, during which time, I held a Top Secret/Special Compartmentalized Information clearance which, required that I submit to random, no-notice polygraph examinations as well as the standard no-notice urinalysis testing all military personnel are subject to.  I never failed.  My record stands on its own.  I’m not going to prove my innocence or justify my existence to anyone anymore.

If my military record and documented prior behavior is not good enough to gain an employer’s trust, why should I trust them?  If there is that much mistrust before our relationship even begins, what assurances do I have that it will dissipate?  What guarantees do I get that my paycheck will come on time and clear the bank; that my supervisor will treat me with respect; that I will receive proper on-the-job training and adequate support; that my private life will remain private?

I understand that the Supreme Court granted this “right” to private employers.  But that doesn’t mean I have to allow them to exercise it on me.  Legal right notwithstanding, I reject an employer’s moral authority to conduct such an invasive search of my person.  I have nothing to hide and yet, I have everything to hide.  My privacy has value, but only so much as I am willing to grant to it and then defend.

I want a job.  I need a job.  But I am not willing to allow a potential employer to violate the sanctity of my privacy in exchange for one.  The price is too high.

The pre-employment drug test has become almost ubiquitous in this country and it worries me.  What’s next, a pre-employment review of one’s internet search history?  And what purpose would that serve?  Indeed, what purpose does a pre-employment drug test serve?  Are they really that effective?  Or, maybe more importantly, are they really that accurate?

In the Air Force, the urinalysis test was conducted this way: the test subject was accompanied into the latrine with another person who acted as a monitor.  The monitor (appointed by the Staff Judge Advocate, the military equivalent of a District Attorney) held the cup above (higher than) their head so as to ensure it remained visible to all parties at all times.  The subject would step up to the urinal or toilet.  The monitor would remove the lid from the cup and hand the cup to the subject who, would then urinate into the cup while the monitor watched.  The rule was very clear: the monitor must see the urine exit the body and enter the cup.  The monitor would then be handed the cup with the subject’s urine.  Then, once the cap was placed back on, the monitor would again, hold the cup above their head while both individuals exited the latrine.  Then the cup would be sealed, signed and verified by the monitor, the test subject and the collector.  Chain of custody was strictly controlled at all times just as it would be if it were evidence in a drug trial for indeed, it might very well be.

Only two test facilities in the United States were authorized to conduct urinalysis testing on samples provided by military and federal law enforcement personnel.  These facilities were controlled and monitored as tightly as those coding the encryption keys used to secure classified communications lines.

To my knowledge, this methodology is not employed in the private sector.  I do not believe that a court appointed monitor is provided to observe the urine physically exiting the test subject’s body.  I also do not know, exactly, what the chain of custody is but I suspect that it could very well be tampered with.

Suppose I, a 51 year-old, drug free adult were to submit to a pre-employment drug test for a job I was fully qualified for and really wanted.  What assurances do I get that my sample will not be mishandled or that the results would not be miscommunicated to my prospective employer?

The pre-employment drug test is here to stay, I’m afraid.  At this point, I don’t see it going away any time soon although I hope that its use will eventually fade with time.  We’ll see.  But the line between what is considered private and public has moved greatly in recent years and continues to move, unfortunately, at the speed of technology.  Recent laws prohibiting insurance companies from examining your DNA have been placed on the books but there is no guarantee that those laws will stay there or be adequately enforced.  If insurance companies are allowed access based on the argument that they are making an investment in you, what is to stop an employer from making the same argument?

Man has only those rights he is willing to defend.  Privacy is one of them.  Our fears drive us to give up our privacy in exchange for a sense of security that doesn’t really exist and in the end, we end up with neither privacy nor security.

Electing the Party of No

This will be short.

I find the whole "Party of No" meme to be insulting beyond belief. Let's take a small look at the facts as they sit.

Politics is normally predicated on compromise. It still is today. There has been a significant difference, though, between the sort of compromise we have seen in the first two years of this administration, as opposed to what one might normally observe.

With huge majorities in the House and, for an entire year, a filibuster-proof Senate, there was no real incentive for compromise with Republicans. Instead, compromises took place within the Democratic Party between the far left, the left and the Blue Dogs, among others. If Republicans happened to be needed for particular votes, the usual people Democrats checked with were Maine Senators Snowe and Collins, Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, or John McCain (on certain issues). Otherwise, compromise was kept in party.

Given the majorities, all bills started significantly to the left of center, and with no real power to influence bills back to the center, Republicans found the choice singular. If the more liberal Republicans went along on anything, legislation could stay farther left. The only hope to pull legislation right toward the center was a united front. What this meant in practice was twofold. One, it was refusing to compromise with what the party absolutely believed would be bad ideas put into law. If the Democrats wanted to go there, fine, but the GOP would not provide cover. And two, having to deal with the centrist members of their party meant that Democrats could not get a public option, or cap and trade, or a good many other things that their members couldn't sell at home, which was also fine, because GOP fingerprints weren't on that, either.

In other words, saying no was both a moral imperative (you should not go along to any degree with what you believe to be wrong or stupid), and a sound, tactical movement.

The reason President Obama rails against Republican "obstructionism" is because he wants to do more of what he had been doing, but can't, and because he is presiding over a country where Democrats are being held primarily responsible for the bad news over the past two years, and he doesn't want the blame. Tough. As he famously said, when confronted with a Republican seeking compromise, "I won." And he did. And now, he gets to be the poster boy for everything that has gone wrong, economically and otherwise. Democrats broke it (or it was broken on their watch), and they own it.

As it sits, Democrats own health care (for all the good it does them), the stimulus (ditto), and the failure to re-enact the Bush tax cuts.

Good luck with that this fall.

Random Maundering

This post is a bit of a recycle job. I had a conversation with my Evil Twin, and this is some of what came of it.

The government should not be in the business of playing favorites, and business should survive on its own hook. In this country, we often refuse to allow businesses to fail, and when people start a business and make a little money, they immediately go and talk Uncle Sugar into screwing their competitors.

If an individual fails completely, Uncle Sugar will take care of him, but God help the person who is struggling, trying to make it on his own.

Capitalism is simply a description of market mechanisms, and it details how supply and demand for goods and services actually works. People want this, trade for that and make this or that because they are good at it. They buy cheaply and sell high whenever they can. If you are looking to capitalism for morality, you might as well look at a German Shepherd for help with your math homework; capitalism is what economies do when they are not, specifically, command- based.

Command-based economies are strictly top down allocations of good and services that may or may not be directed with some efficiency or care. Either way, the real markets, as such, exist behind and beneath command economies in the form of black markets, and the extent of their activity gives a clear perspective to how distortive the command model is in a particular country.

With markets, the basic question is always whether they are going to be more or less free. Ours aren’t, and really haven’t been close to free for a very long time.

Government usually plays winners and losers, depending on the players in the game.

Businesses should not get breaks from the government. No subsidies. No tax breaks. No tariffs. No special deals. In return, government should promise that it won't try and shaft businesses.

It is one thing to regulate for safety or basic cleanliness, but regulators of all stripes face a very difficult problem. By and large, they tend to become captives of the industries they are regulating. After all, who knows best what is going on in a particular industry? The people and companies in the industry, obviously. So where do the regulators tend to get their information? From industry. Where do the regulators of a particular industry tend to come from before they hit government? From that particular industry. And where do they go when they LEAVE government in search of a bigger paycheck? You guessed it. And, usually, that means working for an industry lobbying group.

The net result of legislation, pretty much across the board, is that people use each new law as a means to game the system. The smart ones make money because they generally had input on how the law was going to be written in the first place.

Everyone outside of government and the industry lobbys assume that legislation fixes problems, when, in fact, legislation mostly just changes where the problem arises.

It is no coincidence that the only place where people are making huge fortunes these days are in absolutely new markets or with brand new products. I would like to see government take a market, pretty much any market, maybe a brand new one, and actively leave it alone. Do not "help" it. Do not hinder it. See what happens. The one thing I am certain of, however, is that someone, somewhere, will cry that it is "unfair" or that profit is evil or some other such horsepucky. And then we will start again, regulating and lobbying.

I believe that if you could somehow brainwash the world into not knowing about lobbyists, within two weeks there would be lobbyists simply because the government is passing around HUGE sums of money and people want it.

Some people, like myself, want the government the hell out of the market to the greatest extent feasible, while others think that giving the economy more of the same medicine that made it sick will cure it. More controls will somehow make the controls presently in place work better.

And therein lies the flaw, because people love to have power over other people. I think we need fewer rules, but we need to pay attention to them. Call the rules we need “basic politeness.” Deal with each other fairly. Don’t rip each other off. Do unto others...or get shot.

We add more and more "rules" and, whenever we do, people stop policing themselves. At that point, they start acting like jerks and doing whatever they want because they know that there really is no consequence. I prefer that people watch out for themselves and be polite because it is the right thing to do, not because some civic rule says we have to.

One of the most annoying facts about the economy today and looking for work is that people are trying to get jobs from people who don't understand the jobs they have. I believe that this is why everyone is all hyper about credentials. With credentials, the pressure is off. If someone makes an atrocious hire, he can say "Fred had X credential! How was I supposed to know he was an idiot?"

This is why I don't trust credentials.

Consider how much of the random fark we hear about day to day is simply about distracting the proles. Big News and Big Government keeps the proles watching idiotic stuff like “reality TV” while robbing them blind of their fortunes, of their livelihoods, and their freedoms.

That's why change in Washington or at the state level is basically a simple choice of which poison you want to kill you. You wanna die faster? Try OUR politics. Want to die a bit slower? Those guys over there can help you with that one. But both sides, all sides, are vending poison.

The problem from my perspective is that politics, maybe all of it at this point, is based on bull. But there is non bull all around, and there are far more places to find it. But the kicker is that you have to be willing to do more than turn on a TV set. You have to pay attention to what is said, and pay attention even more to the things no one says but nevertheless acts upon.

Basically, what I want to do on this blog is turn on a few, small lights. If any kind of lights flicker on here, they may very well flicker on elsewhere. A brushfire, after all, begins with a single spark.

I have no pretensions of being that spark. But if the lights go on, even a bit, for anyone, then it will be a bit brighter in this stupid world for everyone.

Re: Re: A Relatively Modest Proposal

I'll take them in order: the one thing we know that politicians are competent at, if they have been elected, is being elected. That is it. In that sense, I would submit that the average politician is no more qualified to run a government of even moderate size than my next door neighbor. Worse, politicians are self-selected and often deluded about their basic intelligence and competency. Given that, I would be against the idea of any kind of selection on the basis of competence (or probable competence). A jury has none; I am fine with whomever we get. William F. Buckley once famously stated that he would rather “entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”

I agree entirely, and for the same reason.

Frankly, with a lottery, we are far more likely to stumble across the sort of people you would like to see in public office than we do now. We will also get an assortment of regular people, some smarter or dumber than others. Which, from my perspective is fine. I am terribly happy with government that doesn't do much unless it has to, and when it has to, the solutions are pretty clear.

The Founders were not necessarily slave owners. Most people weren't. The problem was that unless they made some provision to allow for the existence of slavery, the South would not join the Union; the South also wanted the slave population to count in apportionment, even though they would never vote. Non-slave owners extracted two compromises, neither perfect. One forbade Congress from banning importation of slaves until after 1800; the other was that slaves counted as 3/5ths of a person, somewhat reducing the size of Southern apportionment.

As for the system of government, it was definitely a republic, and voting was based on whether or not you owned property. The idea was that you needed to have skin in the game to vote. And in some places, even early on, there were no property requirements.

I find restrictions on campaign finance tantamount to restrictions on speech. Given that, I don’t fundamentally care if Bill Gates gives a million to elect Fred to the Senate, so long as we know that he did it. (And anyone of any sense at all would immediately run against such a person as being the Senator from Microsoft.) What we have now is nowhere as direct, a great deal more secretive, and every bit as corrupting. And it takes politicians a great deal of time to fundraise that would be better spent actually reading the damn bills and sitting in committee meetings. Unless. Unless the politician is rich, in which case, they fund their own campaign, and rule by the people, for the people, slips farther away. It is no coincidence that people like Michael Bloomberg, Eliot Spitzer, Herbert Kohl, Edward Kennedy and John Kerry got and stayed elected. What I find baffling is that people generally disposed towards campaign finance restrictions don’t scream louder about self financing by millionaires (or billionaires).

But under my system, it wouldn’t matter how rich you are; if you are selected in the lottery, you serve. Otherwise, no amount of money or connections will get you an office, even assuming you want one.

A note about education commissions and the like. Again, members are self selected, as the system sits today. They are nominated and confirmed by politicians, and serve until they leave, are thrown out, or their term is up. But they would be neither in place nor seeking a commission job under my system. If it happened, they would serve a term and then it would be over.

I do not expect that this sort of arrangement would result in governmental utopia. I don’t trust such things anyway. But I do believe that things would be relatively cleaner, if only because gaming a system takes time and understanding, and citizen legislators would have little of either.

Re: A Relatively Modest Proposal

My first question is, do we really want leaders who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty?  Aside from the myriad logistical problems – which I won’t explore here – I can think of one significant issue that would give me pause: competency.  The concept of the citizen-statesman might work well in theory and, to some demonstrable effect, on a small scale, but I’m not sure if it would be in our best interests  nationally.  This is not to say that our current paradigm of career politicians is necessarily better.  But I don’t think Joe the Plumber is the person I want stewarding the commons.  We’ve had (and still do e.g., Sarah Palin) people who want the public to believe that a welder or soccer mom should be running the nation.  I couldn’t disagree more.  Leaders should be exceptional.  The basic problem with our electoral system (well, there are many problems, actually) is that the best thinkers we have are also the last people who want the job.  I understand the concept of tapping into those people via a lottery system such as you have described, but, being the most educated and intelligent among us, they would also be the most likely to avoid it.  Your analogy of jury duty is spot on.  Those positions currently attract lawyers and business people and I don’t imagine that would change much.  We would still lack educators, scientists, writers, philosophers and artists.

I can remember being taught in school that the framers of the government desired to create a system manned by citizen-statesmen.  But I’m not sure that’s really accurate.  First, they didn’t create a true democracy.  They created a Republic.  Second, the original process of selection was left largely in the hands of the elite.  Senators have not always been elected by popular vote (they used to be selected by State legislators).  The positions of President and Vice President are filled by a rather shadowy quorum of individuals called the Electoral College.  And voting rights, in general, were given only to white, male property owners.  Honestly, this country was founded by rich, white, slave-owing men who didn’t want to pay their taxes.  The only true democracy we have in this country (if it exists at all) exists at the local level.  And it is there where we can look for some practical demonstration of this idea.

Any form of lottery system employed to fill positions of authority in government would have to come with strict requirements of competency, no different than any other job.  No business owner in their right mind would hire someone who was not qualified for the position.  Yet, we do this all the time in politics, particularly at the local level and increasingly, at the national level as well.  Consequently, we get wholly unqualified and incompetent commissions and regulatory boards like the Texas Board of Education who want children to think creationism is a science.

Personally, I would be much more inclined to consider restrictions on campaign spending (including time expenditures like they do in Great Britain) and possibly some basic qualifiers such as a degree from an accredited institution and/or military experience.

I think much of the anxiety and frustration with politics in America comes from the fact that it has become a self-sustaining institution bent on its own survival.  People across all economic and social spectrums feel they’re not being adequately represented because, in truth, they’re not.  The institution represents itself.  Clearly, political parties are self-absorbed organisms focused almost exclusively on their own care and feeding, entrenched bureaucrats (necessary to the ongoing maintenance and function of government processes, I’ll admit) are concerned with their own survival, and corporations (both non and for-profit) who exist only by the good graces of favorable legislation are focused entirely on their own bottom lines and thus, make bedfellows of politicians and government contract managers.

Any lottery system made in the image of a jury selection process would not eliminate graft or hubris nor would it sever or moderate the connection between those who broker power in the halls of congress and those who wield it in the board room or chapel.  Those who seek power, influence and riches would continue to seek it through whatever means was available to them.

A Word About the Line Up

When we are fully up and running, I hope the first thing that you - or anyone else - notices is that the opinions here will vector in from any direction at all. This is absolutely on purpose.

Personally, I learn by engaging with ideas that are at strong variance with my own, and largely discover what I really think by writing it out. I think that many of us seek out information we basically agree with, but I believe that many people stop there. I tend to read a lot of stuff I violently disagree with because - and this is important - the other viewpoint is sometimes demonstrably right. Or they make an important point. Or they have a point of view with which I am unfamiliar, and which I need to take into account somehow.

Which brings us full circle to this blog.

What this is going to require of everyone here, authors and visitors (yes, I hope we get them), is tolerance and a willing to engage on an intellectual, and not a personal level. Disagreement without being disagreeable.

And there is this. Arguments that lean heavily or primarily on "everyone thinks," "everyone knows," "I think we can all agree," or "most Americans believe" (or some version of any of these) will be Tasered. If an argument cannot stand on its own without an appeal to authority, it cannot stand. Likewise, arguments that consist of "your side is doing it, too!" (tu quoque argumentation) will probably be greeted with cheerful raspberries.

In short, this is an examination of what we think and how we arrived at these viewpoints.

This could be fun.

A Relatively Modest Proposal

For a very long time, I took a great deal of enjoyment from an idea that, while entertaining to me, basically caught the imagination of no one else. It has to do with the fundamental principle of democratic government, which is, to wit: Those who are in wish to stay in; those who are not in desire to be in.

And those of us who really have neither desire mostly wish that both groups would go off somewhere else and cease bothering the rest of us. But they don't. And for whatever reason -  love of power, desire to "do good," or the simple wish to be somebody - politicians are forever on the make, and the rest of us have to put up with it.

Or do we?

My idea is based on jury duty, but goes a step farther. Suppose, just suppose, that most electoral offices could be done away with? Not the position; just the election.

It goes like this. Every individual over the age of eighteen (with certain provisos; i.e., not in prison, not in a mental ward, not functionally incapable of doing the job, etc) has their name placed in a computer database. Every two years, randomly, names are drawn to fill positions from county clerk to sheriff, from mayor to county commissioner, from state senator to US Representative (the Senate, having six year terms, would roll up just that often). Unless the selected individual can furnish a valid and compelling reason why they shouldn't serve, they are sworn in, and for the next two years, that is their job.

We give them a salary, and, if necessary, a place to stay. In return, they figure it out as they go along. At the end of two years, they are done in that position. They may never serve in that capacity again, and their name goes back into the pool. Theoretically, it is possible, with a small enough group, for someone to serve in several jobs in the course of their life, and that is just fine. My point is that they should not stay in the same one.

Would things get done? Sure. The permanent bureaucracy of departments would remain, but with the absence of campaigns or fundraising or the ability to profit over the length of time in a position where favors could be dispensed, citizen government of the Jeffersonian ideal becomes possible.

It would be messy. It would be amateur hour in a lot of ways, and I can only imagine the fun a really blunt old coot could bring to the floor of the US Senate, but it would also be a very real way to bring power back to the people, directly, instead of continuing to distance them from it.

Any takers?