What are tactics and what is strategy?

From dictionary.reference.com:

tac·tics

[tak-tiks]

noun

1.  ( usually used with a singular verb ) the art or science of disposing military or naval forces for battle and maneuvering them in battle.

2.  ( used with a plural verb ) the maneuvers themselves.

3.  ( used with a singular verb ) any mode of procedure for gaining advantage or success.

4.  ( usually used with a singular verb ) Linguistics .

a.  the patterns in which the elements of a given level or stratum in a language may combine to form larger constructions.

b.  the study and description of such patterns.

And from the same source:

strat·e·gy

[strat-i-jee]

noun, plural strat·e·gies.

1.  Also, strategics. the science or art of combining and employing the means of war in planning and directing large military movements and operations.

2.  the use or an instance of using this science or art.

3.  skillful use of a stratagem: The salesperson's strategy was to seem always to agree with the customer.

4.  a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result: a strategy for getting ahead in the world.

Using just the dictionary style reference, I would disagree with strategy item #3 example as a salesman is employing a tactic in pursuit of the strategy of a sale.  I'll use die.net to show how a prior generation examined these two words:

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Tactics \Tac"tics\, n. [Gr. ?, pl., and ? (sc. ?, sing., fr. ? fit for ordering or arranging, fr. ?, ?, to put in order, to arrange: cf. F. tactique.]

1. The science and art of disposing military and naval forces in order for battle, and performing military and naval evolutions. It is divided into grand tactics, or the tactics of battles, and elementary tactics, or the tactics of instruction.

2. Hence, any system or method of procedure.

And strategy:

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Strategy \Strat"e*gy\, n. [Gr. ?: cf. F. strat['e]gie. See Stratagem.]

1. The science of military command, or the science of projecting campaigns and directing great military movements; generalship.

2. The use of stratagem or artifice.

Both of these items involve planning, but their scales are very different given the problem to be addressed.  Tactical decisions are typically battlefield decisions with goals set on the battlefield as guided by overall strategy.  Thus an operation to 'take a hill' to divert the enemy and feign an attack in one place so as to distract from the main thrust is a tactical decision of the best way to carry out the larger theater tactical or theater strategic goals.  A theater of war is one that encompasses a number of areas, so that there was a European Theater of Operations in WWII as well as a Pacific Theater of Operations in that same war.  Each Theater of Operations had its own set of goals set by the Theater of Operations Strategic Objective.  Individual battles were tactical instances of utilizing force to achieve the larger set of objectives set in the Theater of Operations.  In the European Theater of Operations there was an over-arching Grand Strategy above the Theater level that required that Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany be defeated. 

At the Theater Level this required a series of operations starting in Africa, to dislodge the Afrikacorps and Italian forces from there so as to remove pressure on British shipping.  For a time that was the only part of the European Theater of War that was operable for the Allies, beyond a basic defense of the UK.  To achieve the end of the Theater Strategy required Theater Tactics on the deployment of troops, their numbers, types, amounts and logistical support without which the operation would have failed and the Theater and Grand Strategy set back.  All of the subsequent battlefield tactical decisions, the stuff you see so many programs about, are all in pursuit of the larger goals.  There are different skill sets and approaches required for these different areas of operation, and one must discriminate between them so as to ascertain just what the strategy is and which tactics are suitable.

And this quote sums up the applicability of strategy and tactics as concepts to diplomacy:

All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.
- Zhou Enlai

That is why the US State Dept. has different areas of responsibility or Theaters of responsibility to it, and what diplomats seek to gain is the advantage for their Nation by finding agreement with other Nations.  It is much, much better if everyone agrees with each other's requirements and things can be done in a peaceful manner because you lose far fewer lives and have a lower cost (perhaps even a mutual cost reduction or net benefit!) via diplomatic agreements than you get via warfare.  In the early days of warfare, when produced items and agriculture were relatively primitive, one could gain great riches by going to war and plundering one's enemies.  Today that is much less the case and mechanized warfare has a high cost to it that goes higher the more sophisticated the equipment comes.  Diplomats, then, are the first wave of troops and commanders you send overseas to see if you can find some agreement amongst Nations: they are the shock troops that employ a set of tactics that do not, typically, involve killing others.  Diplomats are servants to the Grand Strategy of the Nation State, which is set by whoever is put in charge of that stuff, but it is usually an Executive function of a Nation State (although there are exceptions like the Republic of Venice and its Council of Doges).  It is that Grand Strategy that guides the Nation State and it is executed by diplomats and by the military of a Nation that takes into account when diplomacy fails.

Diplomatic failure does not always lead to war as that is situation dependent, so that a minor faux pas with a friendly power is something to snicker at, while the same faux pas with an antagonist might lose you the diplomat, the Embassy and put the Nation State into a war without any preamble to it.  The back-up plan for the first wave of effecting a Grand Strategy is the military might of a Nation.  Failure of diplomacy is not always something a diplomat can do anything about, particularly if a belligerent Nation cuts off diplomatic ties and accepts no behind-the-scenes talks.  At that point, when diplomatic means are refused at all levels, it is the responsibility of the military to pick up the slack and begin preparing for a hostile Nation to go into an active state of hostilities.

Diplomacy is part of a spectrum of warfare and George Washington underscored that point while as President by making all diplomatic efforts part of the War Dept.  Because any minor failure, with even a modest foreign power no matter how distant, might mean disaster for the trade and survival of the young United States, the diplomats all understood the gravity of their situation by going through a military command structure run by the military.

Can mere tactics create strategy?

Yes, it can.  The best case in point is the set of tactics described between WWI and WWII by B.H. Liddel Hart in his book Strategy in which he described how mechanized warfare would work and the necessary change in Strategic approach it required not just in warfare but in the logistics behind warfare.  A series of papers between the World Wars described just how armored and mechanized mobile troop units would create a new style of warfare and that Nation States would need to adjust not only their tactics but their strategies to accommodate this new warfare.  He was not alone in this review of how mechanized mobile armor platforms would change everything about how war was fought (just as the machine gun did for World War I, though very few pre-WWI strategists recognized the importance of this tactical innovation).  World War II and the post-WWII era saw the bulk of those insights come to pass and we now live in a world where the foundational understanding of warfare is mechanized and mobile warfare in all venues of all theaters of operations.

From World War I also came a modernized reprise of chemical weapons attacks done on a large Grand Tactical scale on the Fronts during the war.  Grand Tactical is a set of arms or methodology for deployment of troops and arms that are employed across all Theaters of War.  Chemical and Biological Weapons pre-date the modern era and were used in the siege of castles and the subduing of cities going back to an era that predates riding horses into battle.  This class of weapons only gain the Weapons of Mass Destruction moniker when they can be produced on a scale large enough to turn the tide of war when an enemy has no defenses against it.  As such these tactical devices in the CW and BW areas can only meet the WMD tag when used against those without defenses, but are little different from other mass forms of arms utilizing conventional forms of attack.  Nuclear devices gain the WMD tag by destroying a mass in an instant, and that effect is a large scale one, hence weapon of mass destruction in both size, scope and effectiveness.  CW and BW arms do not meet those criteria of size, scope and effectiveness, even when all the stars are aligned for use of them.  Against the defenseless these sets of conditions are easier to meet, yes, but nature will have her way with them in the way of wind, humidity and a number of other factors that will limit or negate the use of them in a way that nuclear devices are not prone to.  Fallout is an effect of a nuclear device, not the reason you use one, thus how nature moves a cloud of radioactive fallout is secondary to the use of the device itself, while spreading chemical or bio components in a direction of the wind that is not wanted thwarts the primary intent of the weapon, itself.

This now moves us to the present and what President Obama wants, or doesn't want, in regards to Syria.  I'll take a part of a piece by Miriam Elder in BuzzFeed on 01 SEP 2013 on the topic of Strategy and what President Obama wishes to do in Syria:

“The results of this mystifying lack of preparedness have been abysmal,” he wrote, calling Obama’s decision to seek congressional approval for the strikes “constitutionally sound, but strategically appalling” and suggesting the White House find “an objectives-based strategy.”

Hof struck at what, for those who spend their time thinking about grand strategy and not domestic politics, is the heart of the matter. The administration has consistently separated the goals it hopes to achieve with a military strike — punish Assad, send a warning to similar states, restore U.S. credibility — from the objectives it hopes to achieve politically: to reach a negotiated peace in Syria with Assad no longer at the country’s helm. In terms of strategic planning, the separation of the two is almost a rookie error.

I do understand that Miriam Elder may not be up on the differences between strategy and tactics, as the middle ground of the two realms can be hazy even to those on the inside of the operational spheres in question.  However, with analysis, it is possible to separate what is strategic and what is tactical from her review.

First is the lack of preparedness cited by Frederic Hof, and that is an easy thing to designate as a tactical error.  Being unprepared to enforce a policy decision, which is a part of the overall Strategy of the United States, is a tactical error by a President.  I do agree that seeking the approval of Congress is not just sound, but a necessity so as to gain the necessary funds to supply the military for doing anything with regard to Syria.  And when a President seeks to perform offensive operations that expend logistical supplies, equipment and possibly lives, that means that Congressional approval can show support for the policy decision.

That policy decision is one that drives objectives, and here Mr. Hof states that the strategy is objectives-based.  Objectives are to be driven by strategy from policy, and when those get reversed it demonstrates that you have no policy and no strategy at work.  Thus an 'objectives-based strategy' is no strategy at all as objectives are driven out by strategy.

As seen previously tactics can drive strategy and, perforce, change objectives, but that only comes from the understanding of the change in tactics.  An 'objectives-based strategy' that does not clearly and succinctly say what the larger strategy framework is to drive out those objectives actually is, then gives the appearance of having no larger based strategy at work.

The goals as outlined are multi-fold and deserve some examination to determine if they are just goals or if they are tactical or strategic plans.

First is to 'punish Assad', presumably through military strikes.  Yet this can be achieved through non-military means like has been seen in the case of Iran, Cuba and North Korea, through diplomatic sanctions, seeking to cut off aid in the form of banking to the regime, or through other non-military means.  Indeed, even though Syria is not a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, a President can go to the other CWC signatories and point out that their lack of action with regards to Saddam Hussein has now led the world into a realm where terrorists are now getting their hands on CWs via the means of civil war.  The goals given in the CWC is to prevent such spread and proliferation from happening and the CWC signatory Nations should have it pointed out to them that they have an obligation to act to their stated Foreign Policy goals that they voluntarily signed up for via diplomatic means.  A much wider array of Nations could be asked to either put up and support what they signed up for, or to walk away from the CWC saying that they cannot support it any more.  If punishing Assad and the Syrian regime is a goal, it is questionable if it is best served by any military strikes by the US without gaining the backing of a treaty group that said they wanted to curb if not end such activities. By pointing out this venue there are also other treaty venues outside of the UN to go through to 'punish Assad' through diplomatic means, and they might actually be effective and save lives, and curb the spread of CWs.  All of this can start with a simple policy statement that the US has no interest in the outcome of the civil war in Syria, but that we deplore the use of WMDs and will seek agreement amongst all those Nations with similar foreign policy goals to start achieving those ends.

When translated to a military level, then, 'punish Assad' is a tactical goal in service to a stated Strategy.  Yet, when it is a 'goal-based strategy' that is effectively saying that the goal is the only thing in the strategy and that there is no larger framework to the goal.  It is a goal in service of itself, which is not just irrational but can have long-term consequences when the aftermath of trying to reach the goal, or failing to do so, happens.  And it will happen once the goal is stated and achieved or not achieved because it has been stated as the goal of the Nation of the United States.

Second is 'send a warning to similar States'.  This can be achieved through multiple means, as well which I outlined in the first goal area: cutting off banking, seizure of accounts, cutting off US trade with such regimes, working with the CWC treaty organization of Nations... all of that done without a single shot fired by the US.  In fact that would be a much clearer warning that the US is fed up with such things than a military attack, as it would be done quickly as part of a stated foreign policy with objectives to stop the proliferation of WMDs at the Nation State level.  Of course that would take actually having that as a policy.  That can only be done by the President as he is the one who creates much of the foreign policy execution and how it is done, without having to go to Congress.

When translated into the military realm this concept of 'sending a warning to similar States' is nebulous.  There are many ways to achieve this when given a military set of conditions and not all of them deal with actually trying to destroy or eliminate the weapons themselves.  As a goal it must have a framework of what is to be achieved, and simply curbing the use of such weapons in Syria can be done by such things as destroying infrastructure, attacking shipping, or dropping lots of small arms to the civilian population with a note on each piece asking nicely if they would 'take care of this tyrant for their own safety' in a way similar to dropping Liberator pistols in occupied France during WWII to help the Underground Resistance there.  That is something that would be guided by conditions and by Congress, if there can be an actual foreign policy statement given to this 'goal' that puts it in service to some larger strategic framework.

The third goal to 'restore US credibility' means that the US has already lost credibility in this case.  That is due to the lack of having a foreign policy that can be stated as a Grand Strategy: there is no Grand Strategy at work to drive out policy and, from that, goals and instances of objectives in service to the Grand Strategy.  Without having a Grand Strategy that can be clearly and succinctly stated, this cannot be achieved.  It does not have to be a great foreign policy statement and the US has gotten away with rather short ones in its history:

- Walk softly and carry a big stick.

- Keeping the worlds worst weapons out of the hands of its worst people.

- Confronting an Evil Empire and calling it to reform.

- Carter Doctrine of Blood for Oil.

- Monroe Doctrine to keep foreign powers from the Western Hemisphere.

You don't need something fancy and convoluted to hang a foreign policy on and, in fact, the shorter and easier it is to remember the better off you are.  Each of these drove policy not only for the Administration that stated them but were an influence on future Administrations and the direction of the Nation as a whole.  The simplest way, then, to restore US credibility is to have a foreign policy that can be clearly stated as a Grand Strategy for the Administration.  That doesn't take ANY military maneuvers and can be accomplished by one man and one man only: the President of the United States.

The political objective that all of this is supposed to tie together is to reach a negotiated peace in Syria and end up with Assad out of power.  That should actually be a foreign policy objective tied to a Grand Strategy.  By trying to make it a political objective, to score 'points' by showing you can 'get something done' which has as its goal bolstering the status of the occupant of the Office.  Without having any real planning on the foreign policy or military side, the result of even achieving this objective is put in doubt as, without any pre-planning for success, others can step in to define it for themselves and actually snatch success away and for themselves.  That would be contrary to the stated objective, and is a result of a lack of any foreign policy to drive out goals and objectives which then puts the entire State Dept. and Dept. of Defense into the picture to help understand what the aftermath of such an objective is before you even attempt to achieve it.  That then creates not just a foreign policy failure but a political failure, as well, plus damages the credibility of the US still more.

In fact going through this entire procedure without a stated Grand Strategy for foreign policy damages the credibility of the US.  One way to not damage the credibility of the US is not to go through this procedure in the first place and have the President understand that some failures have a single father and that for the good of the Nation his personal credibility must be sacrificed. 

Yet he could just figure out a foreign policy Grand Strategy and avoid all this, while using the non-military options to show how that Grand Strategy will play out.

For as much as this President talks, he can't appear to say what his foreign policy Grand Strategy is.  Instead he gives us a few objectives that don't even require a military response, but that is the first thing he goes to.  And that loses him credibility far faster than choosing anything else he could choose.

No good shall ever come of that.

Picking Paul Ryan

Unless you have been hiding under your bed or under a rock the past few hours, presumptive Presidential nominee Gov. Mitt Romney has picked Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate.

There are some things that have changed in this race, because of that, and others that remain the same.  I've said this a number of times in a few places, but it bears repeating:

This election is not about candidates, not about parties, not about personalities.  It is about the size, scope and power of the US federal government.

All else is distraction.  Your job is to keep your eye on the target, do not flinch with the exploding shiny objects as they are ephemeral.  To permanently alter the course of this Nation away from its Statist and decrepit ends, you must vote and you must make sure that everyone you know is registered to vote.  To do so go to Wall Builders as they have a site up to allow you to check the registration status of individuals.  Too many 'conservatives' are sit on the side complainers unwilling to even register to vote.  Ask them if they are willing to do the simplest thing necessary to change things so that they can stop complaining and become an active critic that matters to their fellow citizens.

Ask them if they have any honor.

Give them the low-down on what honor means:

HONOR

Do as You say.

Say what You mean.

Mean what You do.

There are no excuses brooked in this.  If they have already registered, make sure they will honor their duty to society, the thing that We the People acting as Caesar ask of you to do: vote your conscience.  This IS a rendering unto Caesar, make no mistake about it, and is a requirement of our civilized society to do with a representative democracy.

From Lincoln we have learned that you can fool all of the people, some of the time; some of the people, all of the time; and all of the people some of the time.  You can't fool all of the people, all of the time.  Sit this election out, and you are just a fool and have been fooled and will continue to be in that 'some of the people, all of the time' group.  

Your vote does matter and there is no brooking this question. 

This is not part of one's duty to God but to the service that you agree to by being part of civilization.  Civilization is not a gift but a life-long occupation you get from the moment you can rationally think.

Anyone who complains, who doesn't register or won't vote is a fool.  You may want to find a better sort of friend that no longer includes fools.  Better to be friendless and committed to the hard work of civilization and upholding your responsibilities to it than to accept authoritarian barbarism delivered with a sweet smile and a set of chains to hook you up to the chattel car.  A civilized person will be dead long, long before that point, defending their life, their liberty and their inalienable right to pursue happiness.

Do I think Mitt Romney is a hot and great candidate?  No.  Yes I have a variety of reasons on that.  I don't have to like a man to vote for him.  He has some character.  The person we have as President is a character, and a composite one, at that.

Is he a lesser evil, like all we have been presented with in the latter part of the 20th and first decade of the 21st century?  To a degree, yes.  That is a distraction.  Your job is to get good people elected locally, from the neighborhood level on up, to start removing the claws and tentacles of the beast of government, and to stop it from sucking the life blood of this Nation out and putting our inalienable rights in danger at every turn.  You can start to limit evil and start removing choices from it.  You can't get to there from here without voting.

Did I mention that YOU have to be registered to vote and have a commitment TO VOTE on the assigned day?  06 NOV 2012.  It is printed on most civic minded calendars.  It is a date.  Keep it.

The job of curbing the extent, the reach of government begins with YOU not the government.  If you self-govern, abide by the laws (at least to the degree that you can as the evil concept of making so many laws that you are in danger of violating any of them by just being alive is now seeing fruit), be a good neighbor and help your neighbor... even that smelly guy at the end of the block who passes out on the sidewalk far too frequently... yeah, that guy... do you live at the end of the block and pass out frequently?... imagine what a horror HIS LIFE must be.  Reach out to help that sot.  Once he is sober he can tell you to keep out of his life!  You will find no good deed goes unpunished.  Let that sot know that if he ever needs help, he can knock on your door and get it.

Notice the part government plays in that?  Zip.

Nada.

You are not depending on government for getting the guy into rehab.  That is HIS decision to make, not ANYONE ELSE'S which includes YOU.  You can look up the number to a rehab clinic if he asks you to do so.  But that poor sot may have other problems of which being drunk and passed out is just a minor side-effect.

Say, is he registered to vote?

Find out. 

He might not get sober enough for this election, but might make the next one... which will be a LOCAL election.  For you to create a better society you must not only be willing to help out that drunken sot at the end of the block who tends to rant too much and not take showers that often, but go and vote.  Of the two, voting is the more difficult one.  He might even be able to give you some insight into that.

Bet you thought this 'civilization' stuff was going to be easy, huh?

These critical fundamentals of being kindly to your fellow man, taking responsibility to make sure that those heading to hell in their own hand-basket know they have a hand ready to get them out of it, and upholding your duty to your fellow man by telling Caesar what to do.... these don't change.

Notice how this isn't about Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney or any other thing beyond you being a good person, saying 'hey, no thanks' to government 'help', and then being willing to help others.  And VOTE THAT WAY?  Geez, wouldn't it be great if more people did this?

The enemies of liberty seek to beguile through theft via government... taxation is legalized theft to do a few small things, but handing that hard earned money over to those  who didn't earn it because THEY DIDN'T EARN IT and are UNWILLING TO EARN IT, that is theft of a greater sort.  Beyond the mere wasteful spending of government on overhead, forms, layers of bureaucracy that yields no better results save to ask for a larger bureaucracy (and this is thievery as well)... is the belittling of our fellow man saying that they are entitled to be kept alive for the sole reason that they are ALIVE.  Sorry, you gotta earn your keep and prepare for a bad life.

Are you prepared to practice the principles necessary to get to the good ends of man helping man instead of saying, 'Hey, Caesar!  You take care of this guy, ok?'  I'm sure Jesus said to deliver the sick and poor unto Caesar... no, wait a sec.... you're supposed to take care of those folks.  So sorry!  If you want to stop having money thefted from you via taxation, that means you have to pick up your end of that deal.  And no matter how much fancy and nice language you put up to this, it is destruction of the moral will of individuals to be individual and to be a vibrant member of society and to uphold the good of society so that government can get on with the few things necessary to protect us from attack.  That in no way relieves YOU of the obligation to protect yourself, your loved ones, your neighbors or your property from attack, either.

I suggest you be well armed.  Others tend to forget that what you earn is yours, not theirs.  Government is just at the top of the list, it is not the list entire.

So what has changed in the Presidential race?

The above is now the new focus.

Remember it.

Keep your eye on the target.

Ignore distractions, and they will be outrageous.

Make sure your friends are registered to vote.

Make sure your friends vote.

Make sure YOU VOTE.

And after that be a beacon and light of liberty to others, holding out a hand in friendship and yet prepared to confront those that only have a fist ready for you.

This is not the end of the procedure.

It isn't even the beginning of the end.

It isn't even the end of the beginning.

Depending on how much of this you already do you are either in Square 1 and saying 'where the hell am I?' or a few squares down the road.  Getting to GO is a long, long, long way away and every decision you make will become a gamble on yourself, your neighbors, your life and your Nation.

Every.

Single.

Decision.

Keep your eye on the target as it is the light of liberty and freedom for all mankind.

Government can't build that.  ONLY YOU CAN.

Isn't life grand?

The Way Forward - Blue State Reforms

The victory by Gov. Scott Walker (R - WI) last night points a way forward for other Blue State Governors to start reforming Public Employee Union problems with pensions and health care.  It is a multi-step process but the key points are now clearly visible.

First - Stop collecting Union dues for the Union at the State and local level.  The power of the PEUs comes from dues garnered from employees who may not want to be in the Union.  As States have sovereign power outside of those powers vested in the federal government, it can decide with input from its people on how best to ensure that public employees are to be treated.  When WI stopped the government role of dues collector and left it up to voluntary contributions, the number of dues paying teachers, as an example, dropped by 2/3 (Source: Fox News/WSJ 31 MAY 2012):

Wisconsin membership in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees-the state's second-largest public-sector union after the National Education Association, which represents teachers-fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011, according to a person who has viewed Afscme's figures. A spokesman for Afscme declined to comment.

This hits the ability of PEUs to flow cash into political campaigns and to seek to get PEU friendly representatives across the table to pass legislation friendly to the PEUs.  That is inherently corrupt as it puts PEUs in a position of running both sides of the table during negotiations, which short-changes the public at large.  For a Blue State Governor, putting the case forward that the public, alone, should be the ones to decide how many employees should be in the government, what they should get paid and what other perks should be paid by the public to give to the employees.

Of course this is the 'Third Rail' of PEU influence in politics at the State and local level.  Yet it is the easiest to sell to the public.  Why should PEUs get a say in the political process which, in essence, allows them to influence votes, influence the legislative process and to bias the legislation in their favor at public expense?  The major upside is that public employees will get an opportunity to get a virtual raise by not funding the PEUs.

Second - Pension and health care reform requiring PEU members to pay a larger percent (or ANY percent) of their pension and health care insurance.  Changing the pension system to get away from the pyramid scheme system where current PEU members pay for the pensions of current retirees, with the State or local government picking up any difference, is bankrupting the governments involved.  Shifting to a defined contribution set of plans under the control of the public employees individually, firstly empowers employees to determine their own course in life means that their independence is increased by having an individual retirement plan.

As most private employees pay a large percentage of their health care insurance (either through an employer or purchased individually) the idea that public employees should pay an equivalent amount, or at least something closer to what the federal employees pay (approx. 40%) attacks the idea of 'fairness'.  Putting public employees in the same position as their private counterparts is self-evident as a 'fairness' measure, and yet another easy sell to the public at large.  Anyone who spouts 'fairness' should support this as it is the basis of having a level employment system amongst public and private employees.

These can both be made more palatable to public employees by letting them decide if they want to pay dues to the PEUs (step 1), thus by doing the first step, the second becomes easier.  This can be made more palatable to public employees by allowing a voucher so that they can choose a private health plan or cash it out as additional income and fully take the risk for their own health care on their own.  Shifting cost need not be a fully negative affair and can be made into a liberating and empowering experience for the individuals involved.

Third - Remove the under-performers.  For the public to see an increase in performance and to see that tax dollars are being spent wisely and that public employees are dedicated to their job and not just to their perks, remove protection from being fired from the public employee workforce and shift pay to meet performance.  To do this set standards of performance and efficiency to be met by public employees and fire the bottom 10% each and every year, regardless of seniority, time in service, or level of service.  Performance can have input from peers within the workforce, input from upper and lower levels of the public employee structure and public input.

This moves a step beyond what has been done in WI, but follows the successful system utilized by the CIA.  There it is possible to shift up and down the pay structure very quickly which means that performance matters.  By linking pay with performance and getting under-performers out of the system means there is incentive to perform better and serve the public in a more open and friendly manner.  After the power of the PEUs is removed and public employees are given more independence, the move to a performance based system then becomes possible.  This utilizes the 'best of breed' systems utilized elsewhere and underscores that the job of a public employee is to serve the public, not just service the public.

By increasing visible efficiency and friendliness government functions are done better and with greater transparency.  Increased efficiency means having a workforce that can be downsized over time, perhaps by removing job billets with the annual 10% reduction, until optimal efficiency is reached by the remaining labor force.  Companies do this and the same methodology can be applied to government functions.  After step one and step two, this then puts the results of those two into play to the benefit of the public.  A way to show this is to remove fees and other payment overhead from State functions for the public as the public is already paying for the function and shouldn't have to pay twice for it: efficiency should have visible rewards beyond just better service.

Result - For a Blue State Governor this achieves reform without having to become a 'Right To Work' State, which means that Unions (not just PEUs) have no basis to lobby against the government on hostility to Unionization grounds.  Public employees are a different category from private employees as they serve the public, on the public's dime and that is garnered through involuntary taxation (not voluntary purchase).  That sovereign function of needing individuals to perform duties for the State is due to there being a public willing to support the system of government for the benefit of the public in an unbiased manner.  Public employees do not have to worry about evil capitalist bosses as the State is not in a position to make a profit as it is not a corporation, thus there is no 'exploitation' of workers: the public sets the rules through the legislative process, everyone knows what they are and what the standards are for employment on the public's dime.

Resolving the problems of insolvency of States and local government can be handled in such a way as to ensure that all services (not just 'vital' ones) are done in an efficient, timely and courteous manner by public employees.  By rewarding efficiency and courtesy, it is reinforced, meaning that public employees understand that they are volunteering to take a public job and that they are beholden to the public for their activities.  This is a benefit not just to the public, but to public employees who are given the ability to chart their own course for longer-term life necessities and make their own decisions about what they should be.  By not rewarding organizations that slack off, by not rewarding inefficiency through larger work force sizes, and by not taking on the future debt of public employees, government size and cost can be reduced.  Showing a balanced budget, a user-friendly government, transparency on cost, and by demonstrating that positive moral values are enforced by the government, a Blue State Governor can demonstrate that they can support public needs while not putting future generations at risk for insolvent decisions made for politically expedient reasons, now.

Because of the future insolvency problems due to the current system of PEU contracts, reforms will take place.  Taking some pain now can mean avoiding default and bankruptcy of governments, which is a much, much larger pain when that happens.  It doesn't matter how Blue the State is: this is coming.

The other results from last night were from the cities of San Diego and San Jose reforming pensions for their public employees.

CA is a very Blue State, yet even there reform is coming due to decades of spendthrift government and bloated government PEU structures.

If a Governor doesn't get ahead of the game, then it will be done for him or her starting from the ground-upwards.

When that happens the color of Blue just might disappear.

Even the most deeply committed ideologue in government does have a survival instinct.  From last night's results, that instinct is now being forced to the forefront.

Reform is coming to America.

You can do it fast and with some pain now, or with much greater pain in a couple of years and putting our children and grandchildren into a 3rd world failed Nation situation.

That choice is yours.

I suggest you make sure you are registered to vote.

The benefits of commentary

For me the benefit of restricting myself to commentary to other sites is that it helps to distill important ideas that I would normally present in a longer, more complex, blog post.

No one reads those beyond the few and dedicated that basically got the idea some years ago.

That is why I pluck my commentary from other sites and repost those with some added commentary, like what you are reading now, to help shine a light on the basic concept.

Thus for the idea of what the problem is with the federal government, can often be stated in someone else's stream of thought even if they aren't addressing the problem, directly.  Thusly reading through the latest page on Hot Air about the so-called 'debates' in the Republican Party hosted by CNN (which went all high-techy and I dutifully ignored as debates are turning into 'gotcha' forums), I ran across a comment that hosted the nub of the problem but was directed to finding an experienced 'manager' for the government.  My point is as follows, with warts and all and I'll try to put down my formatting problems as-is, also, for your copious amusement:

[..]Today the United States federal government is the world’s largest enterprise. Only China, Japan, and India have total GDPs larger than our federal budget. [..]

Adjoran on June 14, 2011 at 3:31 AM

Sorry to do a pull-out from a longer paragraph, but you have stated the problem to a T with that.

The federal government should in no way, shape or form be that large outside of a global war, and then it should only be that large as long as hostilities are going on and then fall back to a tiny size thereafter.

It shouldn’t require a very good or excellent executive to manage the thing. And we should be able to survive electing a dipstick with no experience by that said dipstick not being able to get his or her hands on so much cash and power. The size is the thing that is dangerous, not the experience, or lack thereof, of a candidate or official.

When we have a federal government large enough so that such in-depth experience matters, then we are in a bind as any single experienced mistake will destroy us. The idea now is to get someone who will reduce the size, scope and power of the government and get it out of our lives so we can survive mediocrity. Because, lets face it, most of our elected officials are reflective of the body politic and it is mediocre at best and awful for its norm.

Stop looking for geniuses and start looking at the problem.

ajacksonian on June 14, 2011 at 7:35 AM

Close enough, Hot Air does something funky with a line before blockquotes to differentiate them.

The problem is that those who are partisans are looking for geniuses.

The problem is the size, scope and power of government which now consumes a huge amount of our economy.

I'm looking for someone to put government back in its place as something that can and should be outside of our daily lives save at the most local of levels.

I'm looking for a dedicated problem-solver for reducing the problem of the huge size of government, not an awesome manager of an authoritarian State, which means I'm not a Republican.

I'm a Jacksonian.

See how that works?

Unthinkable, thought

The Economist presents an article on 02 DEC 2010 on How to resign from the club.

The 'club' in question is the Eurozone, and resigning from it is presented as a showing how Nation States can get over a debt crisis via examining past such crises in other Nations. The EU has a problem in that it is not a Nation State but a cooperating agreement amongst Nation States and, thusly, more of a confederation than a federation (as these things are normally termed for such governmental arrangements). Thus leaving the EU would be done to localize debt to those debtor Nations within the EU and as a result end the Euro as a currency. The article presents the rationale for this, but does not come down in an advocacy position, but a neutral one as this is an article to examine the process not the implications of it beyond the economic.

To start the reasons for leaving are put into question form:

The idea of breaking up the currency zone raises at least three questions. First, why would a country choose to leave? Second, how would a country manage the switch to a new currency? Third—and perhaps most important—would leavers be better off outside the euro than inside it?

Why Leave

First is the 'why' question for a country - what is the rationale for this leaving of a common currency?

The primary reason is economic independence from the common currency and there is a reason for doing so for both strong and weak economies (as measured in their economic activity, debt load and state of solvency).

Germany, with a relatively robust manufacturing economy that has been shedding social programs and increasing the retirement age, is seen as able to cover its debt better than other Nations in the EU. Thus their portion of the common debt would have the backing of a strong currency and even see an influx of funds from other countries from individuals seeking a 'safe haven' for their cash. This would require massive changes to the banking regulation which seeks to get at savings accounts outside the country, but that could be put down as effective for EU funds only, and those converted to other currencies (like the brand new Deutschmark) would not have that regulatory overhead. This would be kept in check, to a small extent, by keeping lines of credit open for liquidity to foster economic activity. The change-over would cause an export problem as the strong DM would mean that the value of its goods would rise as compared to under the Euro, but that would be from a stable economic base that has actual liquidity to it. Thus a transition, though hard, would not be expected to be long.

Greece and weak countries, at the other end of the scale, also need economic policies that reflect their populations. The Euro has been no boon to these countries, either, as the ability of the earned Euro to purchase goods from stronger Nations within the Eurozone has decreased. Weaker economies having to compete inside the Eurozone are unable to do so and they are pressed from the outside by Asian manufacturers able to undercut Eurozone production costs. Thus, while holding to a Euro means having a more powerful currency, you have far less of it due to lack of economic activity and governmental promises on retirement and other payouts to selected groups of people within their Nations. Leaving the zone means that these countries (Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland) can put out currencies that can be devalued and yet find a stable floor based on the state of the economy. These Nations would become quite poor as they have a non-economical basis for their social structure in regards to working life, labor costs, and taxing policy, all of which would return to local control without EU overhead. And independent Nation is better able to navigate social policy, as an example, than a larger Confederation forcing an end social policy via a currency and regulatory system that does not take local conditions into account. These Nations did not change their policies coming into the Euro, beyond some one year benchmarks, and continued their spending policy for a generation based on lower interest loans garnered by joining the EU. Now that all comes due with defaulting on debt looming on the horizon.

How to Leave

The 'how' part is the mechanical part - the way to get from Point A to Point B.

Here the article is short and sweet, with some analysis after:

How could this be done? Introducing a new currency would be difficult but not impossible. A government could simply pass a law saying that the wages of public workers, welfare cheques and government debts would henceforth be paid in a new currency, converted at an official fixed rate. Such legislation would also require all other financial dealings—private-sector pay, mortgages, stock prices, bank loans and so on—to be switched to the new currency.

That plus have the printed and coined new currency ready to go, and having the banks exchange the old and new. The original set conversion ratio would last for a period of time and then the old scrip is no longer legal tender (although a minor collector's item for numismatic enthusiasts for generation after). This has been done a few times in the history of the US and happens far more frequently outside the US.

Argentina is a Nation that did this during its fiscal crisis and, as a result, destroyed its own banking system with a contraction in available credit to cover losses on loans that had a more favorable exchange rate than other items so as to keep savers mollified.

Germany would tend to have a stronger currency than an abandoned Euro, not only because Germany has left the Euro but due to the Euro having represented an average value across all Nations: the less capable Nations brought the value of the Euro down as they did not change social and fiscal policy to that of thrifty Nations like Germany. A new DM would gain its own adherents and those that then convert their local currencies on the basis of the DM for purposes of trade and commerce. The cost of the value of its debt would fall, over time, if it could keep its fiscal house in order and maintain a productive economy with low economic overhead by the national government. Its current holdings in other EU countries would be devalued while its own currency gained strength, and limitations on capital movement from weak countries would limit the ability of Germans to shift those funds or convert capital into liquid assets.

Weaker Nations would have to set limits on the amount of withdrawals per person, per year to transfer into a DM. This is on top of the losses that all people would suffer (personal, commercial, financial and institutional) due to the sudden change in value of the Euro in regards to the currencies leaving it. Those in weak countries paid in devalued currency would not like that state of affairs and yet see that they have limits on exactly how much of that currency can leave the Nation. This acts in the form of a firewall that limits currency trading and capital flight at the expense of internal accounts being devalued. Thus some capital is retained even during a general currency devaluation. Here good laws would allow for a legal process of wealth transformation to take place so as to avoid lawsuits over the incurred costs of devaluation. The internal scrip for these Nations would be debt obligation (or IOU) scrips that would, over time, be converted to a real currency. It would be an extremely devalued currency, yes, but the only one for legal tender in the Nation after all the Euros had been converted to them.

While a shrunk Euro would still have its member Nations to back it, those outside of it would be faced with the EU board acting to the interests of members... although the question of how long the Euro would survive comes into being with Germany leaving or one or more of the weak economies deciding to 'go it alone' to survive.

Fallout

Shifting a National currency, even when done via normal means such as the need to replace one format of bank notes with another or going on/off a gold/silver standard is one that does happen for normal Nations. In the latter part of the 20th century this has happened more often than most people think as you consider the Nations that have gone off of a worthless internal scrip to create one of value: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany (moving to the DM then Euro), and Russia. These Nations all faced a scrip that was uniform under Communist rule, but of no real value outside of its trading block. Dollars went for ten to one hundred times the official exchange rates inside these Nations, and when time came to break away their currencies got unhooked from the centralized system run from Moscow. We don't notice those change-overs, in the West, but they did happen quietly and efficiently as the Eastern Bloc vanished in a matter of years, taking Russia with it out of the Communist era.

Argentina has been more problematic, but while facing a set of challenges for having a currency not pegged to a foreign currency, it is a set of problems largely under the control of the Nation and its policies. That is the goal of the exercise, to bring the financial house under sovereign control and have a Nation set its own path on what is agreeable and disagreeable to it and suffer what fate hands out to those choices.

The US

The United States has many artifacts of the EU in its common currency arrangement: member States taking on huge debt load at rates that they could not normally get, a massive decrease in productivity due to the overhead of the State, and the flight of capital and individuals from some States to others. Additionally the National system has taken part in multiple Ponzi schemes for public programs, these being Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, all while enacting laws and regulation that increase the cost of manufacturing causing a flight of capital overseas for decades, thus lower the rate of economic growth. On a National level spending, regulation and social payouts are the mirror of that in some European Nations now looking to cut back on them severely: Great Britain, Germany, France. Meanwhile there is also a debtor State problem with a number of States with their own social programs that are fiscally unsound in the realm of public spending: CA, NY, IL, MI, MA all come to mind.

There is already the start of a debt scrip system going on in CA as the State is now offering IOUs to those who should receive refunds on their income tax. At this point CA does not accept such scrip to pay off debt to the State, but the moment it does so it has its own and devalued currency. NY has made some similar sounds as well as a few other States so highly in debt that they cannot offer standard refunds on taxes.

This state of affairs of States having their own currencies existed right up to the Civil War and is perfectly legal but how you do it is important, and CA is not headed into good territory there.

Here are the powers of the Constitution in this realm:

Section. 8.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

[..]

Section. 10.

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

CA is running afoul of Section 10 of the US Constitution and to complete its system of scrip would be required to offer gold or silver backing for its debt obligations. Basically a gold or silver debt scrip.

Just how much gold and silver does CA have? Beyond what is in 'them, thar hills' not much due to the FDR Administration having gold taken into Ft. Knox from all over the Nation as it was illegal to have large quantities of gold. Which brings up the question: is it legal for the US federal government to have done that? As the States are permitted to make legal tender of gold and silver, does the US government have the power to stop them from doing so by confiscating the gold and silver from those States?

Consider a proposal to have CA, say, ask to have its portion of the US held gold and silver reserves returned to it via population size. It would be recognized that the federal government has its own need of reserves and that could be made at 30% of the total held for the Nation.

Just working with gold the US has 4,603 tons, or 147.4 million troy ounces, the latter of which is easier to work with for numbers (going via Wikipedia for ballparking here), and this isn't including other bullion reserves like those at West Point.

So a proposal to keep 1/3 in reserve for the federal government means the following is available to the States via population: 98.27 million troy ounces.

Current population of the US at the census site: approx 311 million people.

Current population of CA: approx 37 million.

Call that just a bit shy of 12% of the population, which would yield it 12% of the gold: 11.8 million troy ounces.

Total long and short term debt issued by CA (Source: CA Treasurer's Office): approx. $53.3 billion

Note that CA's debt is huge compared to any price of gold today.

With that said the State would have the legal basis to offer a currency with a conversion rate to the US dollar for CA incurred debt. If set sufficiently above the current rate of conversion, say at $1,500 per ounce, the new Golden Bear (which I invent for this purpose) currency would have a lower valuation than US currency but have full gold backing to it. CA could start issuing this currency to those who would be getting tax refunds or other forms of funds from the State and create a dual currency system within the State for its own gold tender and standard US greenbacks. In addition CA would probably place a holding time limit for cashing out gold, so that the Golden Bear will have time to circulate and get a real value, perhaps as much as 5 years for that.

CA would then have to decide if it wanted to incur debt via US dollars or its own Golden Bears. While 11.8 million troy ounces sounds like a lot, that is less than 1/3 troy ounce per citizen in the State. If CA can get its fiscal house in order in 5 years, stop the debt outflow and get a sane tax climate in place for investors, it can offer a 'safe haven' currency that is gold backed (possibly have silver backed ones as well, but it is difficult in getting the silver reserve figures) and holds the State to the value of the currency.

The Golden Bear would be a 'hard' currency and if set above the current conversion price of gold, then gain few attractors but serve as a reserve system to pay off internal debts owed to the citizenry. Citizens would be faced with a currency that would take a few years to convert to physical gold (with 1 troy ounce = 1.0971428571 ounce = 31.1034768 gram) with each Golden Bear dollar only about 0.02 gram weight or waiting to get paid in US greenbacks once CA got more of those to go around... which it might do by marketing Golden Bears or converting a portion of its debt into Golden Bears for payout (possibly the short term debt). Once in circulation the value of the US greenback would float compared to the Golden Bear and it is possible that CA might even see an influx of some cash if it can get its fiscal house in order.

Of course CA and probably AK would see a major uptick in the gold prospecting business as getting gold and getting gold backed tender in return makes the gold portable. CA might see an increase in gold reserves, over time, if it got its house in order. Other States might take this route to try and get some foundation to their economies and find some, final bottom to their fiscal woes as they have a new and much smaller economic platform to move to. This would mean that most of the 'services' in the way of regulations, 'entitlements' and even such things as public pensions would either get liquidated or devalued or have a final gold backed tender put into their holdings which they can sell at market prices.

Congress did not have the power to stop this after the Civil War and no power was given to it during or after then to allow it to stop such things: they are allowed in Article 10 explicitly. While paying off debts to the federal government would still be done in greenbacks, if those are seen as getting worth less and less, then the States would have a means of fall-back currency by issuing gold and silver backed tender based on the holdings being held for all of the people at the bullion depositories. The US federal government would still have a substantial gold and silver deposit for the Nation, but the rest would be used by the States to create legal tender in the States for State obligations. And as it is circulated debt backed by gold, it is not normal valued currency and might be impossible to tax (can you tax debt? my guess is: no).

A two-track system would be a PITA, to be sure, for each State, yes. But this might be a way to give the people of those failing States some assurance that there is a final, much smaller, fall-back position for their States that would have an opportunity to shed obligations and right their economies. And with a gold backed system the people would be assured of being able to get some useful currency after their State's bankruptcy and re-ordering to become solvent. We would still be a common Nation, but those in financial crisis would be allowed to figure their way out on their own and not put the entire Nation at peril for the spendthrift ways of the few.

The Devil Made Me Do It

President Obama along with the heads of Great Britain and France made a statement that they have INTEL that Iran has the facility up and running to enrich uranium and that the facility has no international inspection regime over it and that the worst must be suspected. France announced that Iran has until DEC 2009, after the German elections, to come clean on its activities and open up for inspection. Of course al Qaeda is already threatening Germany that it is not supine enough to al Qaeda's liking and that they better elect an appeasement and withdrawal government and get out of Afghanistan. The 'or else' is implied.

Iran doubled down on the reactors and they have two such plants.

Someone came in a day late and a plant short, that being the IAEA. They missed an entire enrichment facility in Iran and now we find out about it. I should think that building such a thing might just be a little obvious and that the IAEA would have had a clue some years previous to this.

Cause for worry, no?

But let me take up a position that I do not sponsor, do not believe in, because it is one worth doing, at this point. I will take up the Leftist position on Iran and now put forward the same, exact outlook that they took on Iraq. Fun will not be had.

Say that the Devil made me do it.

First off is that INTEL is so unreliable as to be useless. When tyrants bluster about sophisticated technology, it is just that, bluster. Really they are oppressed leaders of oppressed Nations and can't help but cry out to just gain attention. They need our 'help' not our confrontation because, you know, all those spooks and spies lie all the time to get their way on foreign policy. President Bush was one of the following or all three, depending on who you listened to on what topic and when:

A) A dunce who couldn't think his way out of a paper bag.

B) A fool who would believe anything that the CIA and other leaders put in front of him.

C) An evil genius looking to rule the world.

Ahmadinejad is just like Saddam in this in that he has said multiple, different things in order to gain attention and their missiles can only take regular, everyday, common warheads that they hand over to Hezbollah. Plus he says this is for making nuclear fuel AND nuclear medicines, and who would lie about those things, right?

Second is that the US is the oppressor. We put sanctions on Iran when they took our Embassy staff captive against all forms of International Law but, hey, that was decades ago before many on the Left were even born. Its HISTORY. Ok, the armed group Hezbollah has killed US and French soldiers looking to help Lebanon out, but that was HISTORY TOO! And Iran has been tied in with the Hezbollah attacks in Argentina because Iran's friend, Syria, wanted advanced missile and nuclear technology from it. But that... well that was in HIST... oh, wait that was 1994. Can't be history. Still we put on sanctions and CAUSED all of that, its OUR FAULT if they want high tech weapons. So we should end the sanctions, no harm will ever come to us because, you know, the past is history.

Third is that there are no, real, WMDs in Iran. No one has seen them, therefore they don't exist. And trying to say they are building them and just need the radioactive material is WARMONGERING. That's oppression! If we would just be NICE to them they wouldn't be so BAD. Probably tyrannical to their own people, yes, but we can help END THAT by GIVING THEM MONEY. If we did that we could get some access to their facilities, just like we did with the oh-so-nice USSR, no? Oh, wait... well... still giving money is a lot better than war! Having to pay Danegeld is always the best way.... We don't ever need to be worried about Iran actually trying to attack us and that they did that to our Embassy which IS considered sovereign territory under international law doesn't mean they broke international law! And electing one of the people who took part in the Embassy invasion and hostage taking as the head of the Nation doesn't mean that Iran is scoffing at international law!

Fourth is that it is all a plot to get Iranian oil. Everything is a plot. On the part of the US and Europe and Iran is just responding naturally to plots against it. Its our fault. No blood for oil!!!

Fifth is that these white leaders... errrrr.... Imperialist Leaders....ahhhhh.... semi-white capitalist sycophants? Hmmmm... that works! Semi-white capitalist sycophant running dogs (yeah RUNNING DOGS, lets see them respond to that!) of BIG OIL don't care about those funny people in Iran and are just out to exploit them and their natural resources and enslave them to have to work for a living! Yeah, that's the ticket!

The above are the Devil's Advocate positions put up by the individuals and groups who derided Bush and operations in Iraq, amended lightly for Iran. I count them as the message of the SLA: Semi-conscious Liberation Army.

If the Left had any consistency, honesty or courage, those are the things they would be saying about President Obama and the situation in Iran. I know that because I've heard them all brought up as multiple 'reasons' or 'root causes' in similar venues about Iraq, just put down the Embassy bombing and such to the fact that Saddam would not keep his agreements under international law after the First Gulf War, and that his funding of Palestinian terrorists, handing out processing techniques to al Qaeda that showed up in Hekmatyar's organization in London and in Afghanistan under the Taliban are the rough equivalents to the far cozier and deeper relationship of Iran and its founding of Hezbollah.

I mean if the Left actually BELIEVED those things then Barack Obama is one of many things:

A) A dunce being dazzled by more sophisticated leaders on the global stage.

B) A fool who will believe anything handed to him by these operators.

C) Naive in thinking that Iran means any harm to the world or anyone on it outside of Iran, save for some nasty incidents that really were just an indication of how oppressed Iran is.

D) Corrupted already by 'the system'.

E) Evil Genius, save that he couldn't sell a used health plan to anyone save the far Left who wants a total government take-over of everything, immediately, for our own good.

F) Being used by 'the powers that be' , lied to by international leaders who are trying to make him the sock puppet for their oil needs, and by Ahmadinejad who is playing back and forth on the 'do we or don't we, double or nothing' game just like Saddam did. Because, really, Iran, Russia and China are much better places than France, Great Britain or the US.

Or all of them. The SLA has never been all that coherent on things.

My view?

One - Iran is a threat and a demonstrated one since the Embassy take-over. They have never apologized for that nor offered those who take part up to the US to be tried under our laws for those crimes committed on US soil at our Embassy compound.

Two - Iran is a continued threat in using an extra-national private war organization called Hezbollah to attack targets on land and at sea without warning. The list of Nations that have a Hezbollah presence is long, and even limiting it to those they have attacked still leaves you with most European Nations, a scattering of North African Nations, Argentina (if not others although tracking them out of the TBA is damned hard), the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and a few other places less savory in the old 'stans area of ex-Soviet Republics in Central Asia. For its sea-based attacks Hezbollah is a piracy operation, and by funding those Iran is also culpable for those actions under its auspices.

Three - Iran has funded 'insurgencies' in Iraq and Afghanistan with literal tons of equipment captured that have been manufactured in Iran: missiles, bombs, machine guns, explosively formed projectiles, IED components, uniforms, radios... a long, long list of training and equipment. It meddles in the politics of Iraq via Moqtada al Sadr and endorses violence in Iraq, save when al Sadr gets cold feet and needs to run for 'religious training', no doubt with AK-47s and RPGs.

Four - Iran has had nuclear weapons ambitions very close to its founding during the Cold War, when nuclear weapons were seen as 'legitimizers' for playing in the arena of Super-Power politics on an international scale. After that they just want to destroy Israel and threaten their neighbors. The first was pure hubris, of course, but not to be discounted as a starting point. The latter two have driven Iran and Iraq under Saddam, especially during their 1980's war that killed millions on both sides and saw Saddam deploy nerve gas and Iran deploy children on the battlefront. Iran, on its end, formed a close alliance with Syria that had long range missile technology, has not signed on to the Chemical Weapons convention, has tried to get enrichment facilities for its phosphate deposits so as to extract uranium from them, gulled the Swedes into selling them such a plant, had started on a bio-weapons program, and has the manufacturing and technical expertise to know the WMD issues... if not the cash to carry them out. Iran has that cash. The Israeli's bombed the attempted start-up of a Syrian/North Korean processing site for getting enriched uranium beyond 'yellowcake' concentrations. There is some expectation that Iran has shared technology with Syria in that venue. So both are proliferating WMD technology. Further Iran took part in the AQ Khan network which has workable uranium bomb designs and schematics. Also that networked served to funnel Chinese, North Korean and even some Japanese nuclear technology into the network, with Japan having Mitutoyo sell 10,000 separators on the black market in violation of all international agreements Japan signed up to.

Five - Iran doesn't give a damn about international law. It breaks treaties, proliferates WMD technology, serves as a trans-shipment point for various black market networks (including such things as heroin, cocaine, and small arms to various Hezbollah organizations), encourages black market work by Hezbollah operations, and has sought to extend power and influence via Hezbollah into The Balkans, South America, Africa, Europe proper, SE Asia, and even into North America. The North American operations run by the late Imad Mugniyah incorporated such things as tobacco tax fraud, banking fraud, black/grey market dealings, car theft (if the reports are to be believed), and shipping drugs across North America via Mexican drug gangs. Each of those have cases in the US and Canada to back them, although the car theft part is harder to ID as part of the larger Albanian ex-pat criminal organizations that Iran semi-cooperates with. They do similar with Russia, with shipments of cocaine from Hezbollah in S. America showing up in St. Petersburg (Russia) in 20 ton lots. That ain't chicken feed.

Six - Iran is run by a group of individuals who are old, about one-deep in leadership, and who have a fantasy ideology about the end times and the 12th Imam. They also want to blow Israel off the map, bring harm to the US (the Great Satan) and generally get their belief on how Islam should run the world as an operational idea. Israel has a small unannounced but widely known defensive nuclear arsenal: you attack the with nukes and you can say good-bye to the world.

Seven - The money is on Iran having one or more nuclear processing facilities with the sweet possibility they are also using some small amount of Syrian help, and possibly giving better processing technology to North Korea.

Eight - Gazprom told the Russian government a couple of years ago NOT to invest any money into the petroleum/gas infrastructure of Iran. China pulled out of a $10 billion support deal for the Iranian petroleum infrastructure. All international analysis in those sectors points to a Nation ruining their natural resource exploitation system and that now must import not only refined gasoline, but even simple natural gas from outside their country. The infrastructure of Iran is being driven into the ground as bad or possibly even worse than Saddam did by not repairing his infrastructure: at least that needed wholesale replacement due to there being no infrastructure to repair. Iran is not so lucky and will need a retail replacement with each and every single part analyzed and replaced before it all implodes in the next five years or so. Want a real oil shock? Iran can't meet its export agreements and hasn't for years now. It is a net IMPORTER of natural gas and refined petroleum products. I disagree with Dick Morris on these points, and deeply: he has gotten the direction and amount of flow of natural gas and refined petroleum products wrong, and is still thinking in 1990's terms on Iran. Russia supports Iran for its own reasons, mostly getting paid for the stuff they have already done there, some for geopolitics against the West, some for the natural gas fields and oil fields in Iran that Russia could run better than Iran can at the moment.

When you add these things up you get an Iranian government (and I do hope the Iranian people can bring this baby down) that is: tyrannical, imperial, aggressive, expansionistic and dictatorial with a lovely dash of fantasy ideology thrown in to give the thing a piquant stench. Plus its eggshell economy is about to implode. I'm not too fond of the damned government and hope that the Iranian people can find the path to liberty and freedom and get rid of it. Unfortunately they are on their own in doing so: the US has given active and vocal support of their despotic government and not even a bone to those actually laying their lives down to free their fellow countrymen.

That is a black mark against America.

A deep stain that shows how callow we can be, as a Nation, to disdain supporting those who fight for freedom and liberty in all venues, even just in rhetoric.

Pushing 'health care' when there are nuts trying to get WMDs is a pointless exercise: when you are part of a WMD attack, no health insurance in the world will pay for that. Especially if you are dead.

You want WMD Life Insurance on that, instead. Good luck in finding it after the last couple of days.

To me the Left went certifiably nuts when they could not understand that there are Levels of Confidence with all INTEL and that no INTEL is 100%. To restate: there is no INTEL that is deemed 100% accurate with confidence. You may have a high level of confidence, say 90%, but that is not 100%. If you want 100%, you must invade and find out for YOURSELF on the ground what is going on. We have to trust these analysts as they are, surprisingly, conservative and don't like to step beyond their level of confidence in anything as it can come back to haunt them for the rest of their lives when they are WRONG. That is why you do NOT put political pressure of ANY sort on INTEL: the analysts must be given leeway to operate in an environment so they can weigh what is known, what they can't know and what they are trying to infer and political views get in the way of that no end and you wind up with faulty INTEL work. I don't like political pressure on INTEL from the POTUS and I don't like it from inside Agencies trying to run their own agendas, but that is something I have looked at multiple times elsewhere and will not further that here.

We cannot run a Nation or our relationships with others on good wishes and hoping for the best, because THAT is also a fantasy ideology and doesn't deal with the way people actually do things and why. Trying to imply motives is mind reading. What people do and comparing that to what they say then allows you to derive the truthfulness of what they say by what they do: it is evidence based analysis. It is prone to have levels of confidence. That sucks. That is how the real world works. If you don't like it, then please move to an alternate reality where that does work. Trying to bring that reality here will get us all killed.

Its not just about the candidates

H/t to Instapundit pointing to an article by Michael Barone on the difficulty the Republican Party will have getting a strong candidate in 2012.

 

Mr. Barone spends much time looking at the candidates in 2008 and what they did right or wrong in the Republican field.  He comes up with some succinct messages for a future candidate and I'll put those down here as lessons learned from each campaign:

John McCain - You can’t hope to win by waiting for every other candidate’s strategy to fail unless you have an in with Lady Luck.

Rudy Giuliani - You cannot wait too long to compete. If you bypass New Hampshire, you must compete in Iowa, or vice versa, or very soon thereafter.

Fred Thompson - Either compete strongly and early enough in Iowa to make a good showing in the straw poll or stay out of Iowa altogether (as John McCain did, to not significant detriment, in 2000 and effectively did, to no significant detriment, in 2008).

Mike Huckabee - Huckabee or a candidate with a similar profile can corner the votes of evangelical and born-again Christians and, starting with Iowa, can round up a significant number of delegates. It is conceivable that such a candidate, with the help of Republicans’ winner-take-all delegate allocation rules and if he continues to face multiple opponents, could accumulate enough delegates to win the nomination. But otherwise he is in the position of Jesse Jackson in the 1984 and 1988 Democratic contests, able to run a significant second or third thanks to strong support from one of the party’s core constituencies but unable to run first.

Mitt Romney - Run as yourself. Emphasize your strengths and avoid contests that are not suited to them. This will not guarantee victory, but it will make a victory in the battle for the nomination worth more in the general election, since you will not have to visibly pirouette from appealing to a relatively narrow primary electorate to the much broader (and potentially expandable) electorate you will face in the fall.

These are each succinct points about the campaigns, and they point to a cultural problem in the Republican Party as a whole: when no one else is winning, the party falls back to a 'default' Old Boy/Next In Line system.  That gets you a candidate from DC insider circles who has been in DC so long as to be isolated from the Nation as a whole.  Further, even with VP experience, such as Richard Nixon had running against JFK, you are not guaranteed to run a decent campaign even being through two National campaigns previously.  Richard Nixon needed to ameliorate that by moving out of the shadow of Eisenhower and re-establishing his credentials outside of the Old Boy/Next In Line system to re-run again in 1968.  VP Gerald Ford would run a decent campaign considering the baggage he had of pardoning Richard Nixon, but his good will and forward attitude did not end up being a sure deal sell against Jimmy Carter.

What George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and JFK all did was establish a group of contacts that served well on a Nation-wide, on-the-ground campaign.  Those local political connections into a wider party system allowed them to leverage themselves into the National spotlight, often with very little pre-established National credentials.  Of those only Richard Nixon and JFK had not served as a Governor of a State, although Richard Nixon ran a close campaign for that and lost by 300,000 votes.  LBJ was able to logroll his long-term service in Congress, and the legacy of JFK to his advantage in 1964, which served as his National establishment by just having wide-ranging, decades long political contacts and clout on the Hill.  Barack Obama is the only President of recent vintage, outside of George H. W. Bush who won as a continuation of the Reagan Administration, to have had to start a National organization from a very poorly known set of operatives, including the Teamsters, ACORN and SEIU.

The interesting note is not that Barack Obama won over 50% of the vote, but that barely over 50% of the voting age population showed up to vote.

That statistic is not one that bodes well for either party and leaves the Nation ripe for an insurgent political movement that will go asymmetrically to the two party political system.  I have written about the implications of that and it is clear:  neither Democrats or Republicans are presenting a viable platform or candidates to attract voters to the polls and the increase in population and decrease in percentage at the polls is no longer working to the advantage of any party.  The greatest source of votes is now OUTSIDE the two party arrangement, and not amongst traditional voting Independents, but amongst those that see the system as not representing their franchise.

Barack Obama made up for his lack of a good 'ground game' by relying on extremist political operatives and presenting an 'air game' to keep Hillary Clinton on the defensive and then picked off key races where his meager political influence could win him more votes, as a LOSER than the winner got in the primaries.  John McCain did not run either an 'air game' or 'ground game' even though the problems of the Obama campaign on the ground had been seen, too late, by Hillary Clinton's campaign.  The unfiltered, unaccountable money coming into the Obama campaign allowed the continued 'air game' with scant ground game that left the McCain campaign befuddled.  By not putting a strong political asset on the ground to grind through Appalachia, the northern tier of States from Michigan to Oregon, and generally hitting the Obama campaign where it was weakest, culturally, the McCain campaign wasted its asset of Sarah Palin in a series of 'Hail Mary' passes in SEP and OCT 2008 that did it no good at all against the strong air campaign of Obama.

The 'winner by default' system of the Republican primary system when there is no clear leader shows a lack of ability to FIND capability and a good message.  Once out of the primaries the 'ground game' needs to start immediately and NOT take three months (or more!) off from late spring to mid-summer.  The long primary in the Democratic party would serve whichever won as their presence had been on television and media all the way through to JUL 2008.  There was ZERO in response from the McCain campaign.  By the time of the convention, McCain's campaign was already seen as moribund and could not figure out how to capitalize on a game changing VP pick.  To defeat the presence of either Democratic primary leader, John McCain did not take time to establish a ground game, an air game or any strategy to actually win the Presidential election.

The lessons learned, then, from the previous campaign are serious, as the amount of CONSERVATIVES who demonstrated they were disgusted with politics as usual represented by McCain's campaign added into the already hard trend of non-voting in America.  Barack Obama is now doing the difficult job of disgusting LIBERALS by his policies, lack of ability to form an agenda, inability to show any fiscal rectitude, inability to support liberty, freedom and democracy, and generally not having the ethics to do what he said he would do on 'pressing issues' while continuing to garner more power for government which means higher taxes, fewer jobs, a longer recession and a devastated economy.  That will hurt the Democratic 'base' no end... and the Republican party is already finding it hard to re-attract ITS base.

The next Presidential election will be BELOW 50% turnout at this rate: neither party is attracting people to it, neither party has demonstrated that it can break with Progressivism which is making the Nation insolvent, and generally there is no difference between those who 'tax and spend' to those who 'borrow and spend' while both grow government.

To get to the Presidential election, any candidate must now navigate the rigged system that has grown up since the early 20th century made to exclude third parties.  That means either starting to build a third party within the next 1.5-2 years or having a candidate who can co-opt one of the parties by presenting a compelling message and then staging a coup inside one of the existing parties.  To some extent the government-centric Obama campaign did just that in the Democratic party, which now no longer stands up for 'the little guy' but for vested interest in Big Labor with a radicalist agenda for nationalizing large parts of the private sector, as was done by parties in Europe in the 1930's.  There is no equivalent of that in the Republican party as it is living with the legacy of Progressive ideals of Teddy Roosevelt and pro-government presence Hamiltonians.  Together that noxious set of views has slowly isolated the Republican party from everyday America, just as pro-Big Labor and its backing has done to the Democratic party.

For a different platform and agenda to appear that is compelling to voters takes not just a compelling candidate.  Richard Nixon and George W. Bush had little in the way of charisma, but lots in political savvy to get them through to victory.  Ronald Reagan cashed in on both charisma and message... and never delivered on the latter.  Republicans never learned that it was that latter that made Reagan compelling as a candidate and decided that 'star quality' became necessary to sell ideals... thus without such a star the ideals went out the door and the party reverted back to its previous stance of 'managing growth' of government.

Thus the positivist points are clear:

1. Present a compelling agenda that is neither government expansive nor about managing government growth, but about changing the direction of government to smaller via removing substantial parts of it that will become insolvent very, very soon.
   
2. Demonstrate adhering to this by being a stout supporter of the message either as a governor or in Congress and pressing hard against the tide of Big Governmentism.
   
3. Appeal to the non-voting population with this message by actively seeking out those who haven't voted and coalescing their reasoning into a compelling agenda that seeks to remove power from government and put it back in the hands of everyday Americans.
   
4. Establish a 'ground game' early to undermine your opponents.  Wherever they go, they should already find you there with your system in-place and working hard to keep a message going and to clearly state it and defend it.
   
5. Establish an on-line 'air game' to supplement the ground game, so as to organize the ground game better and establish it in more places.  Put out a broader set of reasoning online in text, imagery and video format, and seek support not just of the immediate campaign, but one to continue that good work win or lose.
   
6. Do NOT let personal attacks on yourself or your family go by: call those doing so out and to say that to your face and those of your family members, live on television.  It is amazing how few will find the courage to do that... and that will nip any of the personal attacks quickly in the bud.  Do NOT let those fester or pass-by.  If someone wants to say something nasty about you, invite them to do so without intermediaries, without supporters, and with the presence of cameras.  And if the attack is vitriolic enough, vile enough, seeing a smarmy attacker getting punched out is preferable to doing NOTHING to defend yourself and your family.  This does not mean knee-jerk response, but just pulling in those with the widest viewership/readership to do so.  Any that will not do so at your expense will be seen as a coward and their message collapse.  The concept of running a civil campaign and not tolerating incivility so that the issues of the NATION can be addressed are paramount - to stop the incivility it must be countered.
   
7. Money isn't everything.  Having people show up to vote IS everything.  Money is a means to an end, not an end to itself, and requires a good ground game and disdaining a corrupt air game and skirting the FEC.  Challenge your opponent to be just as open with financial records as you are, and then be damned transparent down to the smallest donor.  If you can't do that, then don't complain about the corruption in any other campaign.

Do as you say you will do.

Say what you mean.

Mean what you do.

That is Honor.

Run an honorable campaign to restore the meaning of representative government by making it more representative and attacking the corrupt system as it stands.

That is a killer full-time campaign as those seeking more power are the majority of both parties... and yet they are now far less than 50% of America.

Sunshine kills corruption, thus the answer to a wavering, corrupt democracy is MORE voting and MORE representation.

I don't expect a candidate from either party to be able to do that.

They are weak tea, these days.

It is time to brew up stronger.

What the Hamiltonians forget

Poor David Brooks is shocked (shocked!) that Barack Obama is a big government, big spending, high tax, class warfare liberal tending towards the Left if not hard left. That via Instapundit who has a nice round-up of articles of those suffering 'buyer's remorse' in supporting Barack Obama and then finding out that the contents list on the packaging actually contradicted the glitzy front panel on the box. Apparently reading the contents label of a man's political career was too difficult to do for some of those 'moderate conservative' or 'moderate' or even 'conservative' punditistas that signed on to the Barack Obama bandwagon based on the packaging glitz.

It is telling what the basis for David Brooks' particular problem was in this land of self-delusion:

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

Moderates now find themselves betwixt and between. On the left, there is a president who appears to be, as Crook says, “a conviction politician, a bold progressive liberal.” On the right, there are the Rush Limbaugh brigades. The only thing more scary than Obama’s experiment is the thought that it might fail and the political power will swing over to a Republican Party that is currently unfit to wield it.

Those of us in the moderate tradition — the Hamiltonian tradition that believes in limited but energetic government — thus find ourselves facing a void. We moderates are going to have to assert ourselves. We’re going to have to take a centrist tendency that has been politically feckless and intellectually vapid and turn it into an influential force.

Hamiltonianism is 'moderate'?

Alexander Hamilton was the guy who wanted a 'strong federalism' with the federal government taking on all sorts of things to guide the Nation. Foremost of which was to have federal input into the money and banking sector of the economy to help 'stabilize' it. Quite the contrary of 'limited' government, his first idea for a federal government was one that was aligned more to monarchy than republicanism. Although he would support the Constitution and compile the Federalist Papers, one suspects that the arguments of the Anti-Federalists, some few of which were arguing for a stronger set of checks and balances and more representation in the House, was something that Hamilton didn't care much for. That trend of not wanting to read and understand the full breath and scope of the founding era discussion (and some of the very personal venom that was going on) starts with Hamilton, Madison and the Federalist Papers.

Alexander Hamilton, in pushing for a type of Constitution that would see a permanent set of members in the Senate and President, was not looking towards a 'moderate' form of government but one that was, for his era, very conservative to the point of being hidebound and monarchist. His views of the elected elite having more wisdom than the common man would be moderated, and he would actively campaign for the ratification of the Constitution, but his view for a strong economic character of the National government to guide the economy is one that was fraught with problems from the very institution that he wanted: the National Bank.

I do write on this topic just a bit, and I don't mean to fetishize it, but this idea of a 'strong federal' presence in the economy, run by appointed officials in the Executive with rules drafted by the Legislative to meet petty, political goals is one that has caused problems both in the run-up and post-crash of 1927-1929 and the current housing inflation by Congressional rule changing that started in the mid-1990's but came to fruition after 2006 to present. I do so as the ills of such an institution are made when the Nation was founded and any institution trying to serve that role has the same ills that need to be addressed or it does the Nation little good to have it.

These problems were addressed long before our 'modern' era in the Bank Veto Message of 10 JUL 1832 and that message catalogs the ills of the institution drafted, then, as a monopoly concern by government. In kicking off that message the prime reason that every Hamiltonian gives for wanting a National Bank is given:

A bank of the United States is in many respects convenient for the Government and useful to the people. Entertaining this opinion, and deeply impressed with the belief that some of the powers and privileges possessed by the existing bank are unauthorized by the Constitution, subversive of the rights of the States, and dangerous to the liberties of the people, I felt it my duty at an early period of my Administration to call the attention of Congress to the practicability of organizing an institution combining all its advantages and obviating these objections. I sincerely regret that in the act before me I can perceive none of those modifications of the bank charter which are necessary, in my opinion, to make it compatible with justice, with sound policy, or with the Constitution of our country.

And just where is the authorization for a National Bank or Federal Reserve in the US Constitution? Remember, after this Veto there would be NO National Bank or Federal Reserve that can intervene in the markets as we know it today, and that this would last for over seven decades. I see much on coinage, interstate trade, tariffs, taxation and so forth, but nothing on actually creating and controlling such an institution. In the Law of Nations that is something a National government can do, but our Constitution is a negative rights document that only gives to the federal government those things explicitly stated. If it isn't in there, it isn't there, and Hamilton who advocated for a National bank was neither being 'moderate' nor a believer in 'limited federal government' from the start, although his views would change during the Constitutional ratification process, his moves after that to still seek such an organ of government that is not explicitly given to Congress to do (or any other branch of government) is one that should be deeply troubling for 'moderates' today.

Ever hear of 'strict constuctionism'? Why is it only applied to the courts when the entire federal arrangement falls under a very strict constructional arrangement? You know, State's rights and that sort of thing... oh, right, we chucked that out with the 'Progressive' era with Teddy Roosevelt leading the way.... so sorry! I had forgotten how long the big government bug has been in the intestines of the two party system.

So, what was the first problem with the National Bank that caused it to get nixed? Well, it took far too much control of things:

The present corporate body, denominated the president, directors, and company of the Bank of the United States, will have existed at the time this act is intended to take effect twenty years. It enjoys an exclusive privilege of banking under the authority of the General Government, a monopoly of its favor and support, and, as a necessary consequence, almost a monopoly of the foreign and domestic exchange. The powers, privileges, and favors bestowed upon it in the original charter, by increasing the value of the stock far above its par value, operated as a gratuity of many millions to the stockholders.

You mean they actually had a corporate body you could go to and address? Not just some high-up bureaucrat that trots before Congress once in awhile, but an actual board you could find and castigate? And it was a company, too? Any relation to Freddie and Fannie? I mean the Federal Reserve, Fannie and Freddie are all exclusive clubs... I mean 'organs of government'... that are put in place by Congress, right?

Now this foreign and domestic exchange problem, does that have anything to do with something like 'market intervention' to 'stabilize the currency' and 'buying other Nation's money' to help them out? How about intervention into the domestic market for, say, setting over-night bank loan rates and home mortgage rates? But we are, at least, lucky that the leaders of, say, Freddie and Fannie aren't mere political brown-nosers appointed to reward political support by giving the individuals a lucrative job in a controlled government organ to benefit partisan needs... oh, wait, they are that. Aren't we so lucky to have the latter and not a group we can easily point to as stock holders?

The problem, of course, is that politics then, as now, played a role in who got to do what in the National Bank, and so there was a ready scheme to utilize funds for political purposes and economic enrichment of those involved in it. And this would be yet another sticking point:

An apology may be found for the failure to guard against this result in the consideration that the effect of the original act of incorporation could not be certainly foreseen at the time of its passage. The act before me proposes another gratuity to the holders of the same stock, and in many cases to the same men, of at least seven millions more. This donation finds no apology in any uncertainty as to the effect of the act. On all hands it is conceded that its passage will increase at least so or 30 per cent more the market price of the stock, subject to the payment of the annuity of $200,000 per year secured by the act, thus adding in a moment one-fourth to its par value. It is not our own citizens only who are to receive the bounty of our Government. More than eight millions of the stock of this bank are held by foreigners. By this act the American Republic proposes virtually to make them a present of some millions of dollars. For these gratuities to foreigners and to some of our own opulent citizens the act secures no equivalent whatever. They are the certain gains of the present stockholders under the operation of this act, after making full allowance for the payment of the bonus.

Ah, a gracious President who says that those who passed the fool thing couldn't have foreseen the results that would come from it. But past problems do not require that they be promulgated: just the opposite, they are to be removed and if the basis of the institution is poorly founded then the institution must go. Giving a REWARD to those involved in the thing is just the opposite of doing that. Say, why are Fannie and Freddie get oodles of cash to hand out under the EXACT SAME regulations that CAUSED our current mess? What is up with that, anyways? Do our elected Representatives and Senators really think that these two institutions are worthy of the backing of the US government?

Still we don't have the stock prices of these institutions to worry about, we just pay and pay and pay into them with little to no accountability, as of late, and the Federal Reserve admitting that it doesn't know where up to half of the original TARP funds went. Not like we are handing out free money, or anything, heaven forefend. Mind you instead we are handing trillions more for government, the Federal Reserve and the two FMs to hand out. Can we at least get the entire boards of each of them tossed out and elect someone sane to run them? Oh, wait, those are 'political appointments' so we can't do that, we just have to trust our government... which got us into this mess in the first place.

On the foreign side, you do know that the largest debt holders in the Fannie and Freddie system are Russia and China, right? Its not like we are shoveling out hundreds of billions for a goodly portion of that to ensure that our debt holders don't get cold feet and pull out of our federal home mortgage system... yes, that's right, one of the reasons we are throwing out more cash than has ever been thrown out by any Nation in a few weeks is to make sure that our over-inflated housing market is pumped up to the benefit of these foreign debt holders. Because, you know, if they pulled their money out it might cause a 'crash'... scrambles to look at the Dow Jones hey an uptick at 6,840! Ah, well I do remember the days of the over-inflated 10,000+ Dow... you do know that percentage-wise we are pretty close to the same sort of drop as seen between 1928 and the crash of 1929, right? So given that we are already having one of the largest stock market crashes on record, just how much more painful would it be if Russia and China both left us? Russia isn't doing so hot what with the oil market in a tailspin and China laid off 2 million people and closed 70,000 factories. So we might be looking like a damned good investment right now.

So we are, basically, shoveling money out to keep the over-inflated system going and prop up Russia and China and reward them for investing in our bad economic behavior. Good job! We are now sure to get more of the same!

Now if you want to address the institutional problems of the two FMs and the Federal Reserve, we could take one of the solutions proposed for the old National Bank, and it is really something that is truly American:

It is not conceivable how the present stockholders can have any claim to the special favor of the Government. The present corporation has enjoyed its monopoly during the period stipulated in the original contract. If we must have such a corporation, why should not the Government sell out the whole stock and thus secure to the people the full market value of the privileges granted? Why should not Congress create and sell twenty-eight millions of stock, incorporating the purchasers with all the powers and privileges secured in this act and putting the premium upon the sales into the Treasury?

If you think the concept of 'privatization' is only something from the mid-20th century, you have thought wrong. Here is the concept: take the entire ball of federal wax that shouldn't be there and set a market value per share and offer as many shares as there are citizens and give each person the option to get a share in the resulting corporation either through direct payment to the government or as a check box on their tax returns with each member of the household getting a share (must be a US citizen). That way these institutions must get regular oversight, are accountable to the American People and must get a regular governing system set down that is separated from the political appointments of the government and elected by the share holders.

Instead of shoveling billions to all these companies for 'bail outs' why not tell them that they must give a share of their company to each and every American Citizen, distributed via the Treasury, and then be held accountable NOT to DC but to the American People directly? That then distributes the load of the system to all citizens and allows us to determine the value, if any, these companies have by TRADING the shares in an open market. Doing that would get rid of 'government oversight' and put it in the hands of the American People without exception: it is our government handing out our money and we deserve a direct say in these spendthrift companies government wants to prop up. Every additional 'bail out' is more shares due to each citizen.

Yes that will make any elitist 'moderate Hamiltonian' go watery at the knees at the concept that the American People can make a better decision on their own destiny than our government can in the financial arena. And if these companies ever start to make money, they can pay out dividends to EVERYONE. With that done the true market value of the companies and their assets will be found and adjusted for in a period of a year or less once average citizens start dissecting them like frogs in a science class. There aren't enough regulators in government to do that, but with the economic downturn we have lots of financial analysts that are unemployed and who could do a bit of hobby work on, say, AIG or Chrysler or Fannie Mae.

You see the Hamiltonians can't come up with this sort of deal as they don't trust the average American Citizen to make a good decision for themselves. Which is why they got co-opted by the Wilsonians prior to WWI when President Wilson re-created the National Bank in the form of the Federal Reserve. Ever since then Hamiltonians have let their elitist ideas of 'limited federal government' get overwhelmed with their 'moderate' views of what government should be doing FOR government in running the Nation. Why is David Brooks ticked off? Was it that Barack Obama went overboard? Or that he is a Hamiltonian with strong Wilsonian views that tend to be elitist, condescending and authoritarian? Hamiltonians were overjoyed that Ronald Reagan spent freely and never did get around to cutting government. Really, these are the 'moderates' who take the ratchet view of government that 'once it does something it cannot be undone' and forget the truth as stated in the Declaration that governments are instituted amongst men and can be changed or abolished by them.

We repealed Prohibition.

Perhaps it is time to undo the harm done by these grotesque federal organs that advocate policies of a faction of one party ONLY, and are elitist in their views and don't give a hot damn for anything but money. We will be impoverished to continue the wrongs that were created by ill-made institutions and ill-created regulations that guided banks and the American people away from sound banking, investments, and loans and to our current economic hardships. Remember those laws are still on the books.

A real President would trust the American People and not government.

Just like President Jackson proposed in 1832 and recognizes the proper place of government:

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society-the farmers, mechanics, and laborers-who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.

Nor is our Government to be maintained or our Union preserved by invasions of the rights and powers of the several States. In thus attempting to make our General Government strong we make it weak. Its true strength consists in leaving individuals and States as much as possible to themselves-in making itself felt, not in its power, but in its beneficence; not in its control, but in its protection; not in binding the States more closely to the center, but leaving each to move unobstructed in its proper orbit.

Experience should teach us wisdom. Most of the difficulties our Government now encounters and most of the dangers which impend over our Union have sprung from an abandonment of the legitimate objects of Government by our national legislation, and the adoption of such principles as are embodied in this act. Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress. By attempting to gratify their desires we have in the results of our legislation arrayed section against section, interest against interest, and man against man, in a fearful commotion which threatens to shake the foundations of our Union. It is time to pause in our career to review our principles, and if possible revive that devoted patriotism and spirit of compromise which distinguished the sages of the Revolution and the fathers of our Union. If we can not at once, in justice to interests vested under improvident legislation, make our Government what it ought to be, we can at least take a stand against all new grants of monopolies and exclusive privileges, against any prostitution of our Government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many, and in favor of compromise and gradual reform in our code of laws and system of political economy.

Perhaps it is time we heed our experience as a Nation and learn the wisdom of past acts undone.

I have had it with the prostitute we call government and the Congresscritters who act as its pimp.

And when it is our interests as a Nation being pimped off for the gains of the few, and we get the shaft, that is when, indeed, we must heed the words of Jackson and Jefferson.

We can change, to do so is hard as we will step back to the path we have not trod on for decades now. The path of liberty, freedom and equality under the law with no bias in the law for any. And get these financial institutions into the hands of the American People and NOT their elected representatives who are not up to the task of running them for us, so we must take that burden from them.

It is not too late to do so.

But time grows short.