Category: Politics

Foreign vote monitors in this year’s election

When the polls open this upcoming Election Day, you may be seeing UN affiliated monitors at your local voting place, particularly in places like cities with large minorities. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), for example, will be sending 44 observers.

This comes at the request of leading liberal groups such as ACLU, NAACP, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Conservatives are outraged, although monitors have been present since 2002 and a number of states directly allow for it. In what augurs to be a close election, every vote matters, and thus a wave of conservative attempts to ensure voting fraud is minimized. Civil rights organizations, on the other hand, worry about the disenfranchisement of minority votes, who are likely to vote for Obama.

Such groups are sending up to 15,000 monitors of their own, concentrating on 80 cities, to counter scores of conservative ones. Meanwhile, the courts have been consistently ruling against conservatives’ implementing specific eligibility requirements.

As I see it, both sides are justified in their concerns. We only have to recall the closely contested 1960 election of John Kennedy to the presidency with its large scale fraud in Illinois that altered the outcome. Fresher in our minds is the Florida debacle of 2000, decided only by Supreme Court intervention.

Elections shouldn’t come down to getting our guy (or gal) in by hook or crook. Voting lies at the heart of what we’re all about and should be free of intimidation and fraud.

How widespread is fraud? I think it substantial, given the worst in human passions that exist when it comes to politics. We live in a nation of an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. You can’t question their citizenship when they register at the local court house. And then there’s the problem of double voting among those who reside in two states over the course of a year, which includes many with winter homes or out-of-state students. Unfortunately, and ironically, we don’t have a national computer tracking system in place. As I pointed out in an earlier post, we can’t even track those who over stay their visas–and this after 9/11!

Personally, I favor a national ID card. While, yes, you’d have to provide proof of citizenship, I don’t grasp how opponents may consider this intimidation. After all, we require documentation for benefits such as Medicare and Social Security. And, yes, we require photos on passports. No honor system here! Drivers licenses aren’t sufficient, as an increasing number of states grant them to undocumented residents. ID cards are successfully employed by countries such as Germany.

Since both liberals and conservatives believe elections should be fair, surely both could find a better way to ensure the ballot is accessible and fair. Unfortunately, mistrust and rancor have so far preempted their bridging the impasse, exacerbating narrow self-interest.

I propose a non-partisan commission to study the problem and make recommendations to the Congress. This commission needs to take a look at the Electoral College with its winner take all approach as well.

Your thoughts?

rj

No knockout blows

I don’t know how you saw it last night, but I found the debate between the President and Romney riveting, with no real knock out punch delivered by either candidate. Romney was just as smiling, confident and nimble as in the first debate, which most observers have conceded to him. On the other hand, Obama couldn’t afford another lack-luster performance, and last night he didn’t disappoint his fans, aggressive, yet never compromising his characteristic graciousness, delivering dextrous rejoinders to his challenger. I thought his great moment occurred when he summarily said, “Governor Romney says he’s got a five-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules.”

For me, the ex-governor was at his best when he repeatedly asked if licenses and permits for energy on federal land had been reduced. When earlier Obama had maintained that energy permits and licenses increased during his tenure, Romney came back that those increases occurred on private, not Fed land, where they suffered a 14% decline.

Two very positive moments occurred in the debate that made me feel good about both contenders. The first was when Romney was addressing the immigration concerns of a Latina in the audience. Unlike many office-seekers, Romney didn’t pull any punches.
Four million would-be immigrants are standing in line, but are hindered by the large number of illegals.

At the close, I liked Obama’s graciousness in remarking that Romney is a “good man,” despite the heated, in the grill aspect of this debate and his campaign’s unrelenting demonizing of Romney as a liar immediately following the first debate.

My most negative impression is of the moderator’s (Candy Crowley) blatant interference in the debate, correcting Romney in his charge that Obama went days before declaring the Benghazi violence a terrorist act, initiating audience applause. It turns out that Crowley didn’t get it right. While Obama did use the word “terrorism” in his White House Rose Garden statement, he spoke only of his resolve to combat terrorism rather than specifically dubbing the violence as terrorist. (Most of the press continues to pass on Crowley’s imprecision.) Romney missed a golden opportunity to set the record straight.

Anyway, I dislike when a moderator deliberately sets out to circumvent the previously established ground game for this town-meeting format by raising her own questions, which in running the clock also ironically stop gaps other audience members from asking more questions. I think of, say, baseball, where an umpire can sometimes make himself bigger than the game by an obviously wrong call.

Will this debate prove decisive? I don’t think so. At this late stage, I would venture most voters have made-up their minds. Each candidate, in any event, did what he had to do. Obama showed-up for this debate and Romney held his ground. Neither candidate committed a serious gaffe. Partisans will find fodder for declaring their candidate the winner.

Of course, there can always be the occurrence of some late moment anomaly such as a global crisis or a glowing or dismal end-of-the-quarter economic report a few days before the election to tip the scales in what appears to be a dead heat

rj

Verbal misdeeds: the Biden-Ryan debate

Politicians are known to bend the truth, so always be careful before you buy into their claims. Consider the recent Biden-Ryan debate. Both men proved themselves Pinnochios repeatedly. Let’s take the issue of abortion, for example.

According to Ryan, Biden went to China and said he sympathized and wouldn’t second-guess their one-child policy of forced abortions and serializations.”

Not true! Yes, Biden did visit Sechuan University in 2011 and in response to a student question as to how the U.S. planned to reduce its deficit, replied by reforming entitlement programs such as Medicare. He then used a cost analogy that China also faces with regard to its social programming, given its one child policy. “As I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.”

Surely there’s no endorsement of, or sympathy for, abortion going on here, and forced abortions happen to be illegal in China anyway, though it occasionally occurs. Of course, you can argue Biden missed an opportunity of criticizing China’s one child policy, but his purpose was to indicate that on the matter of debt China faces similar problems in sustaining entitlement programs.

But let me play fair and point out how Biden also sometimes blurred the truth in the debate. At the outset, moderator Martha Raddatz asked Biden if what happened at the American consulate in Benghazi constituted a breakdown in intelligence sources. Biden largely skirted the question, saying that the administration simply relied on what it was first told. When pressed by Raddatz’s assumption that the consulate “wanted more security there,” Biden responded, “Well, we weren’t told they wanted more security there.”

This is false, as the subsequent House hearing indicated when Eric Norstrom, a state department employee, testified he had informed his superiors on two occasions that the Libyan mission needed more security. More specifically, as the regional security office for Libya, he had made a cable request for twelve guards, along with military trainers. His testimony was confirmed by Charlene Lamb, a deputy assistant secretary at the State Department.

Nordstrom went on to say, “It’s not the hardships. It’s not the gunfire. It’s not the threats. It’s dealing and fighting against the people, programs, and personnel who are supposed to be supporting me.”

You can argue, of course, that Biden meant that the White House itself wasn’t aware of any such requests, but then again, isn’t the State Department an integral component of White House policy?

I could point out other flagrant abuses of the truth on both sides, but you get my point, I hope, that when it comes to politicians, check and double check

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick.
Jack jump over the fibber’s stick.

Aside from the recent debate, I get annoyed with the myriad campaign ads that attempt to manipulate through fear: Re-elect Obama and Iran will get the bomb. Or Romney will destroy Medicare. Et cetera ad infinitum.

Politicians are astute in appealing to fear seeded with falsehood to obtain or keep themselves in power. By being vigilant, you and I can avoid becoming their victims.

By the way, I’d be interested in hearing what annoys you most about politicians.

Be well,

rj

Promises to keep

In 2008, an intelligent, compassionate, and eloquent Barack Obama was swept into the Presidency, becoming the nation’s first Black president, auguring a new day and “promises to keep” (Frost) for a better America.

Unfortunately, our president made some 500 promises he hasn’t kept . Here’s a composite of the better known ones:

Create a tax credit of $500 for workers

Repeal the Bush tax cuts for higher incomes

Train and equip the Afghan armed forces

End the use of torture

Close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center

Restrict warrantless wiretaps

Seek verifiable reductions in nuclear stockpiles

Centralize ethics and lobbying information for voters

Require more disclosure and a waiting period for earmarks

Tougher rules against revolving door for lobbyists and former officials

Secure the borders

Provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants

Reform mandatory minimum sentences

Secure nuclear weapons materials in four years

Strengthen antitrust enforcement

Create new financial regulations

Sign a “universal” health care bill

Create 5 million “green” jobs

Reduce oil consumption by 35 percent by 2030

Create cap and trade system with interim goals to reduce global warming

Cut the cost of a typical family’s health insurance premium by up to $2,500 a year

Now our President wants a second term. He’ll probably get it, considering the power of incumbency, with more broken promises to follow.

I want to follow-up….

I want to follow-up on my last post dealing with our economic prospects in the coming year, exacerbated by Sequestration, or mandatory across-the-board budget cuts, beginning in January, 2013.

Things to ponder:

Whatever one’s politics, the Obama administration, in its doubtless sincere efforts to stimulate the economy, may have actually done it harm by adding $4 trillion to our national debt, now over a staggering $15 trillion. Nearly a trillion was spent on bailing out the banks, largely responsible for our economic meltdown.

These increases average a trillion dollars per year since this administration has been in office, with little to show for it. In fact, our stagnant economy may well plunge again. Last month’s economic figures, while showing a 180,000 job increase, did not alter the grim unemployment fallout, which remains at 8.2 percent. With more than 5 million unemployed, we have to do much better to make this sorry mess go away.

Certainly, this present recession, perhaps a euphemism, invites comparison with the Great Depression of the 1930s. While the latter was the mother of all depressions, with unemployment reaching a 26% level, making our present crisis seem puny, it does resemble our situation in its stubbornness, despite the Roosevelt’s fervent efforts, to yield results. What most people don’t know is that unemployment had actually increased under Roosevelt when he ran for reelection in 1936. It would take a world war to purge our economic woes.

I must confess I don’t think anyone has a definitive solution to what ails us, despite the heated rhetoric in an election year. Simple answers won’t do more than sugar coat a complex problem.

What’s more, our fate in a global economy isn’t entirely within our hands.

What if Israel attacks Iran?

Or if the economic malaise in Europe has no bottom and nations like Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal default? Like the tsunami debris from Japan now washing-up on our West coast shores, we can’t escape the tidal impact of a European collapse resulting in reduced imports of American goods.

Back to our own shores again, if automatic cuts affecting defense go into effect next year it’s estimated that a million jobs will be lost. That’s more than all the projected jobs created in the American economy this year!

It seems a given that without confidence in the private sector, which is our primary catalyst for job creation, we’re doomed to a tortoise pace in achieving remedy.

And there are yet other mitigating factors that may compromise economic recovery. Although the health care reform measure has several desirable features, it may be the wrong time for it in a down economy. A recent survey indicates many employers anticipate costs increases with its implementation, so add this to the mix. If I were an employer, I’d certainly opt for caution when it comes to hiring or expanding inventory.

To be sure, economics has rightly been called “the dismal science,” except I’d underscore “dismal,” and eliminate “science,” since that implies probability corroborated by empirical data. Again, no one has the definitive answer, so be wary of snake oil formulas in this election year.

It’s all like some devastating disease that, despite our best efforts, defies our remedies. Much as we’d like, there’s no quick fix.

rj

I hadn’t realized until recently….

I hadn’t realized until recently just how much politics has intruded into medical  funding. And I’m not writing about the controversial “Obamacare,” recently validated by the Supreme Court and set to go into full implementation in 2014.  This intrusion has its genesis through several administrations, going all the way back to the early 80s. Consider that current government bio-medical allocations by the National Institutes of Health include the following 2012 funding:

Heart disease: 2.2 billion (Deaths annually: 771,100; expenditure per patient: $27).
Diabetes: 1 billion (Deaths annually: 70,611; expenditure per person: $42).
Breast cancer: 778 million (Deaths annually: 41,049; expenditure per patient: $3,721).
Prostate cancer:  337 million  (Deaths annually: 28,517;  expenditure per patient: $177).
Obviously, men are being short-changed. But that’s not the worst of it. Both sexes suffer dismal funding when you take HIV/AIDS funding into account:
.
HIV/AIDS: 3.2 billion (Deaths annually: 10,295; expenditure per patient: $3,047).
I find this shocking. But there is more to this egregious funding for a disease that pales when it comes to the mortality rates for our primary illnesses.
In addition to research allocations for HIV/AIDS, 15.6 billion has been designated for housing and cash assistance to HIV/AIDS patients. All of this pales when you consider our government, beginning with the recent Bush administration, has pledged itself to spending 50 billion on global AIDS.
Since1981, we’ve spent 170 billion on AIDS and continue to spend 20 billion annually on it, not including 24 billion in last year’s budget.
Currently, there are about 81 million Americans with heart disease, according to the AHA.
The CDC’s National Vital Statistics Report says that there are 24 million of us with diabetes, not including a larger number who are pre-diabetic.
Presently, some 1,200,000 of us have cancer.
It should be obvious that our health budget is out-of-wack when it comes to AIDs and blatantly unfair to the vast majority of us threatened with diseases vastly more dangerous.  
How did it get this way? When AIDS first became prominent in the early 80s it was, indeed, a hideous disease growing exponentially. Since then, mortality rates have declined nearly 18% and new medications have made HIV manageable.
 
At present, government health allocations are skewered and blatantly unfair, as well as injurious to the vast majority of us.  
Can anything be done? Unlikely, for it would be deemed PC, or anti-gay.  
One way out might be doubling the allocations for the 16 diseases with higher incident rates of occurrence and mortality than AIDS such as hepatitis and Alzheimer’s. Not likely in a nation still reeling from a stagnant economy and its future enormously compromised with an ever increasing national debt.
 

Hats off to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker….

Hats off to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker on his victory in Tuesday’s recall election.  I say this not because I am a Republican.  I am not.  In fact, I find much of their current agenda extreme in its callousness to the growing divide between the prosperous few and the beleaguered middle class.  I dislike their injection of evangelical overtones that would impose on the private interest. I could go on.  
I just happen to admire the governor for standing tall.  He never flinched or played the expedience game as most politicians do.  Apparently, many Wisconsin voters agreed, the governor winning by a hefty seven percent margin in what was supposed to be a close election.  
At the heart of my relief are two factors:  the first, the threat recall elections pose to the democratic process; the second, the heavy toll on federal and state budget deficits inflated by rising pension and health care costs for those in the public sector.  In parody of Shakespeare, I would suggest that public workers protest too much.
In the first instance, I have posted previously (see Aug.11, 2011) on the threat recall elections pose to political stability.  I abhor recall petitions for a recall and hence overturning of an election.  Truth is,  Wisconsin has already suffered several recall elections that included a judge, who also survived.  It amounts to government by the mob.  Don’t like a decision? Then throw the bum out.  It hasn’t anything to do with criminality.  Nor are we in a town meeting at the local courthouse.
 
In the second instance, I have always been ambivalent about unions.  My dad always  feared a union takeover where he worked.  For him, unions brought strife.
As a teen, I refused my first job in a supermarket, since they required union membership.  I didn’t like a policy abrogating choice. I found it un-American and still do.
Here in Kentucky, Toyota workers have consistently shunned union representation.  They are remunerated well, whether in pay or other benefits.  They know the score.
Unions decry the loss of manufacturing jobs to other countries when the truth is their incessant greed has increasingly infringed upon profitability margins for the entrepreneur.   Consumers themselves will choose lower prices over nationalism when pushing comes to shove.  Have unions not learned from the likes of box stores such as Walmart?
Unions cost local economies.  Consider Boeing in Seattle, where my son-in-law works.  Because of inveterate union demands, particularly on the part of the Machinist Union, Boeing recently opted for a new assembly plant in South Carolina.  Let me tell you,  Boeing workers are hardly underpaid.
When it comes to pensions for public workers, why should they be endowed with 30-year pensions in the first place?  The vast majority of us have to work into our sixties, if we’re able to retire even then.  In Kentucky, nearly a third of teachers retiring in their early fifties return to the job they supposedly retired from.
I can see thirty year pensions for those in risk occupations: military, police and fire workers, though disability benefits need greater monitoring in the latter occupations.  
And why shouldn’t workers such as teachers and those in federal, state, and local government contribute more to their health and retirement costs?  The rest of us do.  Note that I say this, even though my wife is a teacher.
Why should we have to pay for them, resulting in increasing cutbacks in other areas, ironically, including education and government?
No longer can the public support these lavish payouts.  At present, only two states are solvent when it comes to pension funding. The other states are in the hock for billions. Some of them face insolvency, complicated by the downturn in the economy and decreased tax revenue.
This is why Scott Walker won.  
I am glad he won.
rj

The Obama administration prides itself…

The Obama administration prides itself on having saved Detroit’s auto industry with its proviso of bailout money.  Of course, this wasn’t the case for prosperous Ford Motor company, which enjoyed substantial profits despite the downturn in the economy with the onset of the 2008 recession.  Clearly, the demise of Chrysler and GM had its source elsewhere, or in mismanagement.  While GM and Chrysler have largely repaid the government, the fact remains that such bailouts have resulted in a trillion dollars of new debt.  Sooner or later, we will have to pay the piper as we approach the Eurozone’s  present dilemma.  
Both Republicans and Democrats have made matters worse by approving the Obama sponsored payroll tax cut, resulting in a diversion of 2% from Social Security funding, a vital program already in serious trouble.  Republicans have further contributed to our economic malaise by holding out for no new income tax revenues.  What is needed is a balance of stimulus money in programs that can work along with cuts in pork barrel spending and a provision for adequate tax revenue to pay for programs that do matter.  Germany is today’s model in this regard, to the envy of its neighbors.  
Ironically, Obama’s economic policies with their lavish spending, exacerbated by Republican intransigence on new tax revenue, threaten all of us.  Unfortunately, this administration seems bent on rewarding incompetence, and frequently, even with regard to malfeasance on the part of banks, the auto industry, and even home owners.
I strongly believe that government does better when it encourages the private sector, reducing deficit spending, limiting tax subsidies, reforming tax laws to broaden the tax base, etc.
To our peril, in our rush to ever increasing Federal encroachment on the private sector, we have retreated from those principles set in motion by the founding fathers, rewarding diligence and industry, that has distinguished the American experiment from Europe’s welfare state and propelled its prosperity.  
I would offer one final caution:  implementing new tax revenue without corresponding spending discipline only encourages government to spend even more.
What I have written is encapsulated in Benjamin Franklin’s observation on the new American republic:  “The expense of our civil government we have always borne, and can easily bear, because it is small.  A virtuous and laborious people may be cheaply governed” (Letter to William Strahan, February 16, 1784).

Bombing Iran: Big mistake!

This year, 2012, is fraught with danger. I write of Iran, which clearly has become our leading nemesis. Perhaps not since pre-Pearl Harbor has talk of a pending war, like the menacing sword of Democles, weighed so heavily upon our nation. It’s a conflict that need not happen and that we should do everything to avoid.

The problem is that both the U. S. and Europeans have already pursued negotiations several times with little result, with a new round to take place soon. Just two months ago, the U. N. issued the findings of its International Atomic Energy Agency, with troves of evidence substantiating Iran’s steady march towards a nuclear capacity far beyond its purported purpose of generating electricity and empowering medical reactors.

Several experts forecast Iran will have its bomb within the next three years, and that over the next several months, will have reached the irreversible point in its technological advances. In short, the window for a successful attack, knocking out Iran’s capacity to produce a nuclear bomb, is rapidly closing. Even if such an attack were initiated, we would at best probably set back their program by maybe three years. It’s simply not a viable option.

The consequences would be incalculable. Hamas and Hezbollah would attack Israel. It would unite much of the Muslim world, wreak havoc on our troops still in Afghanistan, and within hours, spike oil prices 50% higher, plunging the world into economic chaos.

Quite frankly, Iran holds all the aces in this dangerous political poker. We just may have to live with a nuclear Iran. We did so with the Soviet Union, then China and, presently, North Korea.

We have tried assassination of Iranian scientists, planted explosives inside facilities, conducted electronic sabotage, but to no avail. Thus far, sanctions have proven our best option and are clearly biting into the Iranian economy. Yet even here, we are countered by Russian and Chinese recalcitrance.

Meanwhile, there looms the possibility of Israel’s launching a preemptive strike. We know Netanyahu and his cabinet have been engaged in secret discussion on a contingency plan. Ideally, they’d like the U. S. to initiate a strike, highly unlikely while Obama is president. As Romney put it, “Reelect Obama and Iran will have the bomb.” Currently, Israel’s relationship with the Obama administration is at an unprecedented low point.

If Israel were to attack, it would optimally be just before the November election, resulting in substantial pressure on the Obama administration to support its staunch ally, which understandably sees its very survival at stake. In a replay of August, 1914, when Germany was forced into supporting its treaty ally, Austro-Hungary, resulting in World War I, the U. S. could find itself drawn into a military imbroglio that would make Iraq and Afghanistan seem mere excursions by comparison

Again, the stakes are too high to play brinkmanship. Ratching up the rhetoric in a political year only increases the danger of igniting a spark kindling global catastrophe. The wisest approach should be one grounded in calm, reasoned diplomacy, with Iran treated as an equal at the conference table. Sanctions are one thing, but surely we can try some carrots, too.

And if Iran does get the bomb, don’t assume it means lights out. We have lived with nuclear adversaries a very long time. We can do so yet again.

A view from the precipice: the American economy

In the last several weeks we’ve seen signs, small, yet significant because of their consistency, of an upturn in the American economy, with unemployment dropping to 8.6% after spiking to 9.9% in April, 2010. Nonetheless, we’re still facing a bumpy ride and it may take another three years to right ourselves in even the best scenario. Just yesterday, Boeing announced it will close its plant in Wichita in 2013, resulting in the loss of 2160 jobs. Boeing faults upcoming defense cuts.

This is a case in point. On the one hand, there is a need to stimulate the economy; on the other, a need to cut spending. As I see it, the priority should be on getting people back to work and preserving the jobs that remain. Yet I see the President will announce today a $500 billion reduction in defense spending. The fallout in job losses is incalculable, and I’m puzzled as to how this squares with his near daily appearances in several states, giving pep talks on what he’s done and wants to do to create jobs. The one hand gives, and the other hand takes away.

Here are some sobering facts you’re not getting from the Washington power-brokers:

As of July, 2011, only 63% of men were working.

Unemployment stood at 7.6% when Obama took office. Three years later, it hovers just below 9%. If you’re Black or Spanish, the numbers are staggering.

In the 1950s, manufacturing was 28% of our GEP. By 2010, it had dropped to 11.7%. In contrast, it stands at 25% in China. So much for free trade!

Forty percent of our jobs are low-paying, compared with 30% in the 1980s.

Median household income has fallen three years in a row.

Student loan indebtedness has soared to an average $25000 on graduation.

Consumer debt is rising again, as Americans turn to their credit cards to make ends meet.

The federal government now has ownership of more than 250,000 foreclosed homes.

Millions of Americans currently pay mortgages on homes no longer worth their purchase price.

The total debt of Fannie May, Freddie Mack, and Sallie Mae now stands at 6.4 trillion. It was 3.1 trillion in 2008.

Fifty million Americans lack health insurance. Meanwhile, companies are continuing to drop health care coverage for their employees or asking them to pay more.

Poverty is growing in the U. S., with one in five Americans now dirt poor, the highest figure since 1959 when the government began calculating poverty.

I haven’t ventured into state indebtedness, a whole subject in itself. Most of the states are in hock for millions, if not billions, especially in funding pensions for their public employees. In virtually all the states, costs are being passed on to cities and counties. Meanwhile, infrastructure, education, safety, health and environment are being compromised with spending reductions. Some states are selling off assets like tollways to foreign investors.

While all this is going on, Sears is closing, yet again, a number of its stores, Barnes and Noble just announced a steep drop in profits, and Bank of America will eliminate 600 branch banks.

Add to this the danger of a Europe meltdown: Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy going into default. Our economies are interlocked in today’s global village. Should it happen, it means an even deeper recession.

Meanwhile our politicians seem more interested in power than solutions. Worse, they have been lying to us. Maybe they need to join the unemployed.