Leadership in Action

 Posted by  Debt and Deficit, Fiscal Issues, U.S. Politics  3 Responses »
Mar 282005
 

“Cut taxes” they said. “And again, and again!” they said. “Go to war” they said. “Update and expand the military” they said. “Create a national testing mandate to fix public education” they said. “Create a drug benefit for the elderly that protects pharmaceuticals” they said. And so it all came to pass. And there was much weeping an gnashing of teeth among any interested in fiscal responsibility. But the cautious were labeled nay-sayers, unpatriotic, liberal, or paranoid. “It’ll be ok” they said. After all, the debt is simply the cause of the economic downturn that the tax-cuts will fix! And so we reelected them because they were such good leaders. And now, the piper must be paid.

According to the New York Times, apparently Congress is having second thoughts about the technological overhaul that the Pentagon wants. Lo and behold, it will be expensive, and lo and behold, government has a massive, escalating deficit. A deficit that Republicans would love to blame on Medicaid and Medicare. Because that is the Republican way these days; it must be the fault of the poor people, not those who cut government’s income at the same time they went on a spending spree.

But, gosh darn it, now it looks like the pet Republican issues are coming up the chopping block too. It seems that we can’t be completely fiscally irresponsible. Things actually do have to be paid for, and since we cut taxes so heavily more money is unlikely to be pouring in from the outside. And that means the military, that iconic Republican institution, is in trouble too. Maybe this means that Congress and the President will finally realize that they have been absolutely moronic when it comes to fiscal policy. That taxes must be raised. Because government does a lot of useful things, and taxes are how you pay for those.

But Congress and the President got reelected by repeating the same old lines that everything will be alright if you just trust us. After all, isn’t President Bush a likeable guy? Didn’t he do a good job “leading the nation” after 9/11? You can trust him! So why should he learn anything if we won’t hold him accountable? But its not his fault, he didn’t do anything wrong! Because, as we all learned from watching the Presidential debates, this president doesn’t make mistakes. Well, Mr. Infallible, its time to go to work. Because the fiscal outlook of this country is completely shot, and it is your responsibility. So stop saying we need to borrow even more money to pay for a Social Security privatization plan and figure out how we are going to pay for this.

Go to work. It’s your job, fix it. Oh wait, but you won’t. Because taxes are burdensome and evil and must be destroyed, you’d rather ruin the country than fix it. Congratulations, America, nice job picking a leader.

Next Topic: Farm Subsidies

 Posted by  Fiscal Issues, Issues, Poverty, U.S. Politics  4 Responses »
Mar 252005
 

Get rid of them. Phase them out over the next decade or something to minimize the impact on farmers and combine it with some kinds of job retraining and/or relocation money. But they do more harm than good, so get rid of them. Why?

  • It would dramatically help the third world, more so than even debt relief under many analyses I have seen. Third World countries don’t have the human capital to develop industries. But they do have land upon which to grow things. The problem is that they don’t have many places to sell those products because of farm subsidies in the first world; the largest consumer markets are closed off. Opening those markets would be a huge boon for many third world economies.
  • It would lower food prices at home, helping to alleviate poverty, stimulate the economy, and control inflation (which is threatening to kill our economic recovery, if you haven’t been reading the business pages lately).
  • It would alleviate pressure on water prices in the west. Dive through Imperial County California sometime, it is truly a sight. Lush green farms and orchards in the middle of one of the harshest deserts on the continent. And it exists because tax payers subsidize their water almost fully; the only thing that the farmers pay is transportation costs, meaning that they get their water at about 1/100th of market value. That water should be going to lower water and sewage costs in Southern California, Arizona, and Colorado, which are absolutely out of control because of a general water shortage.
  • It would be a great way for the government to save money in the long run. Yeah, it would cost more over the next decade, during the transition. But ultimately it would save a ton.
  • It would be great diplomatically. Suddenly we would be the international Superman. All that credibility we’ve lost over Kyoto, ABMs, and Iraq? Back with interest. And hey, it would eliminate the major barrier to a general Western Hemisphere Free Trade Agreement, which has been kicked around at high levels for the last decade. Besides it would make Europe and Japan look bad and hopefully encourage them to do the same.

Politically it would be difficult, but it’s the right thing to do, morally, diplomatically, and economically.

Religion and Life

 Posted by  Abortion, Issues, Religion  18 Responses »
Mar 242005
 

When it comes to religion and politics, liberals really don’t get it. I can say this with the utmost respect because, in case you haven’t noticed, I am one. But too many liberals really don’t understand what it means to be Christian or Catholic or evangelical. And so they make one of two fatal flaws. Either they differ to the religious right on matters of religion, in effect allowing religious fundamentalists to define the “Christian perspective”, and try to pick up the religious lingo in order to appeal to a broader audience. Or they play completely to their secular base and go on the attack; but since many do not understand the difference between Christianity and the religious right, they end up attacking the former when they mean to attack the latter. This is especially true when it comes to matters of “life”: the Schiavo case, euthanasia, abortion, capital punishment, etc. So, I think it is past time to try to give a little primer in the differences between what the Bible actually says and what conservative evangelicals say in the Bible’s name, at least when it comes to the issues of life that are so prevalent in the news lately.

The Bible’s views on the sanctities of life are not quite as crystal clear as many would like them to be. First of all, there is not a real clear definition of life in the Bible. Hey, defining what it means to be alive is a lot easier before the days of feeding tubes, respirators, and abortion procedures. The Bible is not really all that interested in keeping people alive, it is more interested in what they do with the life that is given them. And there are more important things than life, specifically doing God’s will. Hence the glorification of martyrs. The New Testament purpose of life is to choose to develop a relationship with God and to assist others in doing the same; there is not a lot in the Bible about clinging to life beyond that point.

So when it comes to a case like the Terri Schiavo one, I’m not really sure where the Biblical justification for the “Christian” stance comes from. Life is a gift that God gives when He chooses, as is Death. If God has taken the soul from someone, that person is dead whether they are still breathing or not. And if God has not, then that person is alive. When it comes to removing feeding tubes or respirators or whatever, it is left to us to decide whether the soul remains, which basically means we are left to guesswork. Beyond that, Death is a blessing for a Christian. Life is a sacred gift, but it also means pain and separation from God. Death brings an end to pain and a closeness to God that Christians long for. For that reason, during the last few days of my father’s life, I prayed that he would either be healed or that he would die quickly. So, when it comes to removing respirators or feeding tubes, it is not clear to me that there is always a Christian thing to do. We should try to hold onto life as long as possible; but at the same time I think it is sinful to simply animate a corpse if it means we are confusing breathing with living.

Things aren’t a lot clearer when it comes to abortion. Abortion is not even mentioned in the Bible. When pro-life groups site Biblical passages, usually they site passages that say something to the affect of “I [God] knew you before you were born”; passages that in my mind refer to the fact that an omniscient God who exists above time and space wants to take the time to know me, and not to a fetus being alive before it is born. That being said, however, let me repeat that life is sacred and that it is wrong to take life. And as my wife puts it, we don’t know when a fetus is alive–when God grants this set of rapidly growing tissue a soul–and therefore we had better err on the safe side.

Now, when it comes to capital punishment, most conservative Christians start pointing to Old Testament passages that proscribe death for a wide variety of offenses. I don’t buy this interpretation of the Bible. God’s dictums to how the Jews wondering in the desert in 3000 BC should establish a society are not directly applicable to how we should develop a society now. Instead, I look to the New Testament teachings of Jesus and Paul. Teachings that tell us that all men can be saved through the grace of God, and that it is our responsibility as Christians to give all men as much opportunity to be saved and to do good on this earth as we can. And that means, in my mind, that we shouldn’t arbitrarily shorten that time frame by killing them, even if the Old Testament law would justify our doing so.

Life is a gift from God, and it is sacred. But so is Death, and ultimately it is God’s decision when to give both. Biblically this is a complicated question, however, and we should not take it for granted what the right answers are. There is room for debate and disagreement, and that’s ok. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, no matter how vehemently they claim to speak for God.

Stuff You Should Read

 Posted by  Foreign Policy, Middle East, Terrorism  1 Response »
Mar 242005
 

First off, check out Jim’s fabulous suggestions about time reformation. He is truly a man of wisdom.

Second, check out this editorial in today’s New York Times by Thomas Friedman. Friedman alternates between being brilliant and being wrong, but this editorial on prisoner treatment, Republican hypocracy, and George Washington is definitely in the former category. (Yeah, sounds wacky, but it all fits together.)

In Praise of Politics

 Posted by  U.S. Politics  4 Responses »
Mar 222005
 

Politics makes a convenient scapegoat. Your opponent uses an example or an anecdote to counter your point? Just accuse him of playing politics with someone’s life. You want to do something unpopular? Accuse your opponents of making political hay out of an important issue. You want to ensure yourself a standing ovation in any crowd anywhere in the country? Just repeat the phrase “We shouldn’t be playing politics with this issue” (meaning national security, terrorism, social security, park safety, or whatever else your audience finds important). But ask yourself, what does playing politics with an issue really mean?

First off, we need a definition of politics. I hold a graduate degree in political science, and therefore I can tell you with some certainty that no generally agreed upon definition exists. My own personal definition is that politics simply refers to the dynamics of a group making a decision. As such, politics is about persuasion, compromise, threats, bribes, promises, and ultimately power. For many group decisions, the politics are so absurdly trivial that it is easy to simply forget that they exist. When my wife and I decide where to go for dinner, neither of us usually care enough about the issue to spend any substantial time or effort into the discussion. If she wants Mexican, we do Mexican, and if I want Chinese, we do Thai.

Of course, many situations are not so easy to decide, and this is perhaps why politics gets such a bad name. When there is substantial disagreement on the issue, especially in large groups, decisions can get complicated, and people generally don’t like complications. You might have to convince your boss that your proposal is better than the competing proposal, and that may have as much to do with who you play bridge with on Saturday afternoon as it does with the content of your ideas. And so, you go home and complain about the office becoming too political.

This dynamic is especially true in such a large group, with such complicated decision making procedures, as Congress. Politicians, those who are elected to make decisions, exist in a world where they are constantly worried about reelection. The decisions they make are intrinsically linked to their electoral success, which is really the mark of a functioning democracy. Ultimately, if their constituencies like the decisions that they make, then they will be returned to office, and otherwise they will be sent home. Every politician has to be hyper-aware of how each and every decision that he makes will affect his reelection prospects. And while we may consider it at times noble or courageous for a politician to do the unpopular, such moves also tend to lead directly to short political careers. (Of course, truly brilliant politicians can play this card before reelection in an attempt to gain popularity by doing the unpopular, a maneuver which only goes to prove my point.)

So whenever you hear someone claim that her opponents are politically motivated, well, of course they are. Just like the person making that statement was politically motivated to accuse her opponents of being politically motivated. But that is not a bad thing. I want leaders who understand the intricacies of strategic situations, who can anticipate moves, and who can predict political outcomes. I want leaders, in other words, who are good political players. Because those are the skills that are going to help them when it comes to making decisions. Lyndon Johnson was a ideal-type political animal, always aware of how his actions would be perceived and usually able to predict his opponent’s reactions. He knew who to bribe and with what, who to threaten and with what. And it was those skills that lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. And it was when those skills failed him, during the Vietnam War, that he made his biggest mistakes. Good politicians are good decision makers (even if they are making the wrong decisions). When I hire people to make decisions for me, I want to hire good decision makers.

So the next time someone accuses your favorite politician of playing politics with an important issue, don’t disagree with them, take it as a compliment because you chose wisely. And don’t forget to say thank you.

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